SIN REVERSED
The Lord has a distinct way of dealing with sin. He punishes sin more severely than we would ever dare to. He hates sin more intensely than anyone has hated anything in this life. He crushes sin with a judgment that is swift and final and irrevocable. The Lord has a deep and impassioned distain for sin. But the Lord also uses sin. He doesn’t let one single sin go by in this world without using it for the good of those he loves. Sin is certainly despised by the Lord, but it isn’t wasted either. He takes sin and he manipulates sin and he turns sin in the direction he wants it to go. He even reverses sin sometimes so that what ends up happening is the direct opposite of what that sin was intended for in the first place.
In Genesis chapter eleven we have an example of sin reversed. The Lord takes a sin committed by the people and reverses it to carry out his will. It was a punishment upon the people of this world, without a doubt. But it was also something the Lord would one day use to bring about his grace. “Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, ‘Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly.’ They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.’ But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The LORD said, ‘If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.’ So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel - because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.”
This is really an unfortunate story in the history of this world. The people of the earth as a whole blatantly disregarded God’s command and decided to settle down in one place instead of dispersing throughout the different lands the Lord had given them. And then on top of that act of disobedience, they began to make a massive tower - a tribute to humanity - that would reach up to the heavens and stand as a beacon for all times showing how great these people were. But the Lord was going to have none of it. He was not going to allow a sinful people to stop his perfect will from being done. And the Lord makes it clear in this story that he does not get pushed around.
Throughout Scripture and even in our own lives we see the Lord putting up with a lot of different things. He doesn’t always immediately condemn sinners to death. He doesn’t always intervene when something awful is going to happen. He doesn’t always express his displeasure right away even if he is displeased. But when it comes to his will and the salvation of his people, he will not tolerate anything to the contrary. Our Father is not a parent who allows himself to get walked all over by his disobedient children. He does not let rebellion slide. He does not look the other way. He doesn’t excuse sin. He has never excused sin. Not even ours.
As Christians we sometimes have the tendency to think: “He’s my Father; I’m his child; he loves me; so I make a couple of mistakes here and there; it’s no big deal.” But the Lord never just shrugs his shoulders over sin. The Lord never says, “Ah, you’re a Christian, you’re a believer, so I won’t take the sin you just committed too seriously. I know you didn’t really mean it.” No, the Lord doesn’t consider our sinfulness as just a few bumps along that path that are not worth bothering with. It’s a mistake to think of sin as just a mistake, as a minor blunder, as an accident. Because the Lord doesn’t see our sins that way. Every sin that we commit - whether it’s something we do or a word we say or a thought we think - every sin is in direct opposition to his Word. Sin attacks God’s will. And anything we do contrary to God’s will is putting brick and mortar on the Tower of Babel all over again. Each sin is an attempt to build something for ourselves, to do something for ourselves instead of taking into consideration what God wants. And so the Lord takes sin personally. He should! He should be offended! He should never let sin slide!
He certainly didn’t let the sin of the Tower of Babel slide. He punished it. He stopped it. He reversed it. Instead of allowing the people to build this magnificent structure for themselves, the Lord instantly stopped it by separating the people with a confusion of languages. And instead of the people being able to gather together there in the plain of Shinar in that enormous world city, the Lord scattered them over the face of the earth. Just like he wanted them to do in the first place. Just like he had commanded them to do from the very beginning. Sin was not going to be an obstacle to the Lord’s plans. Sin was not going to thwart his intentions. On the contrary, he used sin to bring his plans to completion.
Now I want to jump ahead in history about 2000 years - from this event of the Tower of Babel to a time that was 50 days after Jesus rose from the dead, 10 days after he ascended into heaven, in a city called Jerusalem. Because there, during a Jewish festival called the Feast of Weeks, people from different cultures all over the world were gathering together. People with various customs and traditions, people with unique dialects and verbal idiosyncrasies all congregated in the capital city of Jerusalem to worship the Lord for this prescribed Old Testament celebration. But by and large the people that gathered there were still separated by a lack of communication. There were some exceptions, of course, but one group from one part of the world could not understand another group from another part of the world. Believers could not talk to one another about their God. Those who had a common faith in the Lord could not hear what Christ had just finished doing on a hill right outside the city. Those people may have been physically in the same place, but they were still far apart. The curse, the punishment of the sin of Babel still had some serious repercussions for the people gathered together there that day. And so the Lord reversed it.
As the 12 disciples were sitting in a room, waiting for the Holy Spirit that Jesus had promised to send them, Scripture says that, “Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. Utterly amazed, they asked: ‘Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs-we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!’ Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, ‘What does this mean’” (Acts 2:2-12)?
What does this mean? It means that the Lord reversed sin. It means that his plans would be carried out despite the punishment that he had to place upon the people of this world. This event of Pentecost was the Lord’s way of saying, “Sin will not get the best of me. It will not determine what I do or how I do it. Instead, I will determine how sin will work out according to my will. And I will reverse it if needs be so that my people are saved.” The Lord could have just left the world the way it was after Babel. He could have let them wander about with their own people in their own lands without ever having contact with the gospel again. The Lord didn’t have to bring them back. He didn’t have to search anyone out. He didn’t have to share his Good News with other countries in other cultures. But his grace compelled him to. His grace compelled him to give these disciples gathered in Jerusalem the miraculous ability to instantly speak foreign languages they had never spoken before so that his gospel could be shared with a world that should have still been speaking one language - if it hadn’t been for their ego in the plain of Shinar. God’s grace obligated him to reverse the punishment of sin he had pronounced 2000 years before and make it possible for everyone there to hear the gracious and life-saving words about the cross and the tomb.
That’s what Pentecost is all about! Pentecost is about the Word of God being shared with all people. It is about the Holy Spirit reaching out through the voices of Christians to make more Christians through their words. It is about bringing together again those who were once scattered across the face of the earth. It’s about sin reversed. In a very real way, you are a Christian today because of how the Lord reversed sin on the day of Pentecost. Would the gospel have reached you without the events that happened on that day in Jerusalem? Possibly. But Pentecost was the official start of the Great Commission that Jesus had given to his disciples: “Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations…” (Matt. 28:19). Pentecost was the moment of an incredible dissemination of the gospel about Christ that people there had never heard of before. They knew about the Old Testament laws and regulations. They knew about the sacrifices and the offerings and the coming Messiah, but this was the first time they had heard that the Messiah and come! And died! And risen from the dead! And ascended into heaven! And forgiven their sins! And these people from all of those different countries and cultures undoubtedly brought that gospel home with them and shared it and offered it and believed it.
And now you have it too. Over the centuries and throughout generations and down through the diversity of hundreds of different civilizations, you have the gospel. You have the truth about what Jesus did for you. You have the Good News about how he reversed sin for your good. You now know and believe that instead of your sin ending in your own condemnation, your sin condemned Christ. Instead of bringing you unbearable pain, it caused Christ to cry out in agony. Instead of sending you to hell, hell is where it cast your Lord. Instead of sealing your death forever, the Lord used it to break death forever. Jesus reversed the effects of sin so that now death is the entrance to life and the grave is simply a holding cell for our emptied bodies until that day they are reunited with our souls in heaven. Sin could not get the best of Jesus and, therefore, sin will not get the best of us either. It has been paid for. It has been nullified. It has been reversed.
And every time the gospel is preached today, every time it is shared, every time it is offered to someone else, sin is reversed yet again. The punishment of Babel is turned around, the separation that it caused is closed when the salvation that Jesus won is heard by those he won it for. And so continue to close that gap. Mend that tear. Make it your personal goal to bring everyone from every culture closer to their Lord through his Word. Give the Holy Spirit an opportunity to reverse sin in their hearts too so that one day we will all actually gather together in one city, we will all speak one language, we will all revel in the glory. But it will be the city of Paradise, not Babel. And it will be the language of praise, not personal pride. And it will be the glory of the Lord that we will revel in, not our own.
This is our Pentecostal privilege as Christians. We are the disciples with the words of the gospel in our mouths. We are the believers endowed with the Holy Spirit to share the Good News. And there are so many people around us who do not know it. But they need to. They need to know that their sin is real. They need to know that their sin is reversed. They need to know the One who reversed it for them.
Amen.
“You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” - 1 Cor. 6:11
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