Babeling Redemption

       So I recently finished reading the book "Simply Jesus"  by N.T. Wright and it was absolutely fascinating. In it, one of the things that he talks about is that part of Jesus' mission in coming to earth as a human was to announce that kingdom of God was at hand and with that comes redemption of the world and things being made right. Now granted things won't be made completely right until Jesus' second coming, but you can still see God's works of redemption happening in the world. It's been really neat to be reading this book while at the same time reading through the 4 Gospels during my devotional time over the past few weeks because Wright really helps you get a new perspective on who Jesus was when He was here on earth and why He said and did what He did. So all of this has been fresh on my mind and while I was at small group a couple weeks ago, I had an interesting revelation/thought.
       We were talking about the disciples and how they were transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit falling on them at Pentecost and how it caused them to speak in tongues so that everyone in the crowd heard the message of the Gospel in their own native tongue. Then out of nowhere came the thought, "This is the redemption of the fallout from the Tower of Babel." At first, I was sitting there thinking "huh?" and then it was like all the pieces clicked into place. In Genesis 11:1-9, it says,

 "Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. ² As people moved eastward^, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.³ They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. ⁴ 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; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”⁵ But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. ⁶ 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. ⁷ Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”⁸ So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. ⁹ 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."

        So originally everyone spoke the same language, but because they were using it to try and bring glory to themselves instead of God, He confused their languages and scattered them. However if you have read through the Bible you can see that not only is it an on-going story of redemption of the human race, but you can see that God can take even the worst circumstances and redeem them for his glory. In Acts 2:4-11 it says,

^"4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. ⁵ Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. ⁶ When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. ⁷ Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸ Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? ⁹ Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰ Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome ¹¹ (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” "

      The thing that struck me so beautifully about all of this is the sovereignty of God in all of this. In verse 5 above, it says that "there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven." So when the disciples start speaking in tongues through the Spirit, the Lord is using that event to redeem all the different languages (that were once used to confuse and defeat) in order to make sure that the story of Jesus (which is one of hope and salvation) is taken all over the world by way more people and places than the
apostles could ever hope to reach by themselves in their lifetimes. How cool is that?!? Our God is indeed a God of redemption!