What's This Babbler Trying to Say? (Genesis 11, Jeff Kliewer)

Tonight, there will be a prayer meeting. There was some question about whether we'd still have the 6 o 'clock prayer meeting because of Memorial Day. But we will have prayer meeting tonight if you'd like to come back at 6 o 'clock.

Maybe you've noticed we have shifted from three opening songs to four. Anybody notice? We're not conditioned for that. Our legs are not trained for four opening songs. So Ron in the back. Everybody see Ron in the back?

Hey, Ron in the back. Ron's one of the deacons. He had the idea of printing song sheets for anybody that does struggle to stand that long. Totally fine if anybody wants to sit down. The problem is if you sit down, you can't see past everybody to see the words.

So Ron has song sheets. And if you'd like one, you can just flag him down and he'll give you one. So you can sit for some of the songs if you prefer that. Youth, the Sunday school class is underway. Now, if you were at a wedding last night, I guess you have an excuse that you might not have been able to get out of bed.

But there's no excuse for next week. It'll be summer break before long. Kevin has done a great job preparing that. We are doing The Case for Christ. It's during first service at 9 o 'clock. And some have asked, why did you schedule it for 9 o 'clock?

It's because we don't want people to skip church to go to Sunday school. So if you can get up at 9 o 'clock for church, you could do that for Sunday school. But we don't want you switching one out. So please make the sacrifice, be strong and courageous, and get here at 9 o 'clock starting next week for The Case for Christ.

The next big event we have is a baptism service right out here on the church yard. At the wedding yesterday, there was this Korean barbecue, chicken on a stick kind of thing. Some fans of that. So I decided that we will commission them to bring that out for June 9.

Maybe add that to the debt. Is that Tom Ward? OK, ladies and gentlemen, Tom, come here for a second. I'm sorry, this is just too big of a deal. Tom became a deacon in April. And the next thing I knew, I saw a Facebook post that he had gotten married in the Philippines by the end of that month.

Can you just share, where are you now? Are you here?

Well, I was not expecting to say anything. So basically, just to give a quick rundown, I did not actually expect to quite get married at that day either. So it's been a running around different places in the Philippines to get proper documents.

Had to go to the embassy to get paperwork showing I've never been married in this side of the world. And then had to run around to different parts of the provinces, the Barangays, different areas of governments to get different documents.

Well, we finally get to the mayor. And there's this interview I had to go through. Basically, so the state knows, which is beautiful, by the way, the Philippines really do consider a lot of things through the Christian lens.

Although they get a lot of things wrong. But they look through the Christian lens. They want to interview you to make sure that when you are getting married to the Filipino or Filipina, that it's with Christ.

It's with that in mind. Although, again, there's a lot they do wrong. But they said my date was going to be after my flight home. And it cost quite a bit of money to get over there to begin with. So I wasn't going to be able to be there for that time.

And the mayor basically, without being verbatim here, said I can marry you right now. I have the authority. So we both considered it. Both prayed on it. And we thought that it would be good. Just we'll take the opportunity to do it there.

And then once I'm re-established, yes, I hope, to booth there, we will do a local wedding. But yeah, that's the long and short stick of it.

Awesome. All right, well, when are you going back to the Philippines?

So they're potentially by the end of this year. So the job I have now is the big thing we're not going to leave behind. I'm going to finish out the work, sign them out, just because it pays very well.

And that pay is going to be used to do investments to start various businesses over there. Like our father has a farmland. They're not doing anything with it. So we're going to establish a few different things on that farmland.

So we can also bring more employment to some of the local people, which is a big thing. They lost a lot of employment in the generation left for the city. Anyways, that will end in September. And then I have to wait two, three months for a spouse visa.

So December. OK, so we got you for the rest of 24, maybe. Yes. All right, let's pray for Tom and then open the service. Father God, we thank you. You have done great things for us. We are filled with joy.

Your word says, he who finds a wife finds a good thing and receives favor from the Lord. And we thank you that Tom has found a wife. We want to pray blessing upon Tom and his bride, his wife in the Philippines.

We pray that while they're apart from one another in these early months of their marriage, that you would keep their hearts united as one in Christ Jesus. That you would keep their hearts loving the Lord Jesus with all of their heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And bring them back together again in the Philippines, Lord. We pray for Tom earning this money for the businesses that he plans to start. That the hand of your good favor would be upon this man. And that you would cause this work to prosper and his home to be built.

Lord, we thank you. You do some surprising things and marvelous things. Lord, we do not put you in a box. We recognize that you are God and your will is just marvelous, Lord. And so we thank you. Thank you, Lord, for what you've done.

And we pray blessing upon Tom in Jesus' name. And now, Father, we pray that we would worship you in spirit and truth. That you would fill us with your Holy Spirit. That you would help us to worship you now.

In Jesus' name, amen.

And as we all stand, let's stand so we can sing. This is 1 Peter 1 .8. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.

Lord God, as we come before you with these songs of praise, Lord God, we do pray that you would fill us with joy inexpressible. Lord, as we sing glory to your name, Lord God, that we sing of the great things that you have done.

We sing of Christ, our Lord, King of kings. God, we give you all the praise and all the glory this morning. Hold us from our death. It was through him who loved us. For I'm sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of the Lord God in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Father God, thank you so much.

For what you've given us in this church. These gifted musicians, these who love you and spend time practicing and preparing in order to lead your people in worship. Lord, we pray continued blessing upon them and we thank you for them, Lord.

Help our hearts to be right in worship every time we gather before you, Lord. And Father, now as we open your word, we pray for your precious Holy Spirit to come and fill every heart. Teach us to see things your way.

Give us your worldview through the hearing of your word in Jesus' name, amen. I am completely convinced by the signs that I have seen that everything that this book says is true. That the word of God is to be believed.

Just to name a few of the signs that I have seen that have convinced me, not to mention my own life, that when I hear this word and obey it, I see the hand of God's favor and blessing. But objectively, to name a few of the signs, the uncontrollable precision of prophecy.

No one could control what God has written. From Isaiah 53 and the telling of the lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world so many years before Jesus died. From Genesis 22, where Abraham brings Isaac up that holy mountain carrying the wood of sacrifice and the sun lays down.

Only a ram in the thicket would substitute for him in that case. All of these prophecies and images that point to Jesus Christ, I am utterly convinced that the signs point to the reality of the truth of this word.

We have the testimony of eyewitnesses. Men who are willing to die for what they claim to have seen. Laying down as martyrs, having preached Jesus who was crucified and rose from the dead. We have the very claim of Christ himself claiming to be the light of the world, the good shepherd, the way, the truth and the life.

Who talks like that unless he really is who he claimed to be? Only a lunatic or liar would say such things, but Jesus bears every hallmark of the king of glory. We have the very measurement of time itself.

The world divided between BC and AD based on the birth of this one Jesus Christ revealed in this book. We have the testimony of John the Baptist. Jesus had his own announcer who himself was prophesied in the Old Testament to be the last of the Old Testament prophets to introduce Jesus to the world when he came.

We have the miracles of Jesus and no one ever denied that they had seen a miracle. Even his opponents, his enemies, claim that the power must have come from Beelzebub, but they could not deny that the miracles happened, the opening of blind eyes.

Truly, the miracles of Jesus attest as signs that this is a true book. We have the father's testimony. At Jesus's baptism, a voice came from heaven. This is my beloved son. On the Mount of Transfiguration, the glory of Jesus was revealed and the father spoke again.

And we have the empty tomb. You can go to the tombs of the other religious leaders of the world and find their bones, but Jesus rose from the dead. And this testifies that he is the son of God. To these things, and we talked about 30 evidences of that nature when we studied Doubting Thomas in John chapter 20, when we were studying through the book of John, but to that this morning, I would like to add another sign, another sign that this book comes from God.

And that is in the creation mandate, God told the people to disperse, to fill the earth and subdue it. But the people rebelled against God and instead gathered themselves in a place called Babel. And so what God did is he confused their language, sending them apart from each other, speaking different languages.

Moses records how this happened, but listen to this. 1 ,500 years later, a historian named Luke, writing the book of Acts, tells us that God gave a gift of interpretation of languages in order that they would hear the mighty works of God on the day of Pentecost.

Moses was 1 ,500 years prior to Luke, and yet God brings all of this back together, then to send the gospel out in pure speech to the nations of the world, proclaiming the King of Kings and uniting all peoples under one name, the name of Jesus Christ.

And I submit to you, when you see a connection like that, an intricate connection of what God did with languages in Genesis chapter 11, and then later in Acts chapter two, bringing it all together, we are going to see today that this bears the marks of one divine author.

The Bible was written by 40 different human authors on three different continents over 1 ,500 years, but the unity of this book, the way everything comes together in one integrated whole, the peculiar glory of the Bible, testifies that it comes from God.

Turn with me to Genesis chapter 11, to the story of the Tower of Babel. It's a story about pride, the heart of a rebellious people setting themselves to make a great name for themselves, not to exalt the name that is above every other name, but to exalt their own names.

And to the prideful, the gospel will sound like Babel. We will see how there is a connection between what happens in Genesis 11 and Acts chapter two, but also in the preaching of the gospel, because when you go out preaching a crucified Christ, the Son of God come in the flesh, what you say to the world will sound like Babel.

It will sound like foolishness to those who are perishing, but by the supernatural work of God, the miraculous work of God giving ears to hear, many will come to saving faith. It is a reversing of the curse of Babel on the day of Pentecost, and then in the sending of the gospel to the nations.

Before we read Genesis one to 11, let's review the first 10 chapters, because believe it or not, we finish our study in Genesis one to 11 this morning. What about the rest of the chapters? Well, we are going to study those on Wednesdays.

We're gonna begin studying on this Wednesday, Genesis 12 and going through Genesis 50. If you can't make it to the midweek Bible study here at lunchtime, we post it the next day. So on Thursdays on YouTube, you can continue on with the study in Genesis.

The plan here was to get you hooked on Genesis and feel like I gotta see this thing through to completion. I can't stop now. And then you continue on. And next week, we began here going through the book of Romans.

We're gonna study through the book of Romans and the gospel will be preached. Genesis one to 10 shows the foundations of the Christian worldview. And the reason I wanted to do a study of Genesis one to 11 is because the Christian worldview is being exchanged in our culture for a secular humanist worldview.

And what that worldview entails is a point by point refutation of Genesis one to 11. Genesis one, God creates the world. The secular world holds that the world evolved from eternal matter. It just developed over time, Darwinian evolution.

Genesis chapter two says God made them male and female and invented marriage between a man and a woman. The world rejects this definition of marriage and is even now beginning to reject male and female as a binary itself.

Genesis three, the problem in the world is sin. But the world in secular humanism says that there is no sin, there are only mistakes and not realizing your full potential. In Genesis four, God values life.

The innocent lifeblood must be protected as Abel's and also the young boy whom Lamech killed. But Genesis four pictures a world that devalues life. And we live now in a culture where lives are discarded if they're small in the womb or the most vulnerable.

You can judge a society by how it treats its most vulnerable, the elderly and those who are unborn in the womb. Genesis five is about godly family lines, the nuclear family, husband and wife together bringing children into the world and then raising those children under their umbrella of protection.

And that's what Seth did. He had a godly family line that was withstanding Cain's ungodly line. The world is now saying the nuclear family does not matter, that family is whatever people make it to be.

It could be a throuple or four or more people coming together in marriage. This polyamory has actually come into our culture in some cities. It is a complete repudiation of Genesis five, the nuclear family.

In Genesis six, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful. And these angelic beings procreated with the daughters of men. And the result was wickedness on the earth, the mighty men of old, the Nephilim, this wickedness that God had to judge.

The world says there are no demons. There is no devil. A materialistic worldview, a secular worldview that doesn't believe in the reality of good and evil. And of course, the thing that the world hates the most is judgment.

In Genesis seven, God floods the world in utter judgment, completely wiping away all but eight human beings. And the world says that never happened. There was no worldwide flood. And God will not judge and cannot judge.

The most famous verse in the Bible now has become, judge not, lest you may be judged. Missing the context of that in Matthew seven, where we are to make right judgments. But the point is the complete rejection of a God who would judge.

And so without a God who can judge, is there any mercy to be offered? In Genesis eight, you have the mercy of God. The floodwaters recede and God gives a new birth to the earth. And a fresh start, new birth and life made new.

But there's no mercy where there is no judgment. And so the world does not believe in mercy any longer. Genesis nine, God makes covenant through Noah. And he promises to keep the seasons, the times and the seasons, hot and cold, summer and winter, regulating temperature, controlling these things with the sign of the rainbow that God will withhold the flooding of the earth in judgment until the last day.

And yet what does the world say? The greatest danger is climate change. It's a complete rejection of the God who regulates the earth under the Noahic covenant in Genesis nine. In Genesis 10, as we studied last week, God intentionally sends people out in nations, each having a name descending from the three sons of Noah so that the nations could keep one another in check.

When an Adolf Hitler arises and seeks domination, another nation like the United States of America can restrain that evil. But what does the world say? This is very important. The world says that nationalism is the biggest enemy.

Desiring a one world government, it is the nationalists who stand in their way. But it is God who uses nations to restrain evil. And that's the point of Genesis 10. So we come into Genesis 11. And here we see the confusing of languages to create these nations.

But the point is to call out a particular people from one tribe, a tribe from Shem, through Eber, the Hebrews, ultimately Abraham. And then to graft into this tribe those from every tribe and tongue and nation, Revelation five, nine, every ethnic group, those who will believe in the name of Jesus.

He will unite them as one people under one name with a pure speech, Zephaniah three, seven and nine says that in the day of the Lord, there will be judgment, things will change. But with the coming of the day of the Lord, your sons and daughters shall prophesy, Joel chapter two, Zephaniah three to nine, they will be given a pure speech and God will pull down every proudly exalted one and bring together a people on his holy mountain.

We're gonna get to what that means, but understand just at the outset here that the curse of Babel is a blessing in disguise. It tells people to go to the ends of the earth as God originally told them to do.

It creates nations and it alienates people from one another but there is a blessing hidden in this. Now their prideful gathering in cities is dispersed to do the creation mandate. We'll see that in the text of Genesis 11.

And all of this is pointing forward to the day when in the gospel, God gives a new speech that unites the people of the world to call a people out to be a possession, Titus 1 .14 for God's name, Genesis 11.

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words and as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, come let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.

And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. No big deal here, nothing rebellious yet, they're just doing good things, being industrious with the things of the earth. But look at verse four, then they said, come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens and let us make a name for ourselves lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.

Now to understand the significance of that rebellion, we have to be in context, Genesis 1 to 11. In Genesis 1, 26 to 28, the creation mandate was what? Fill the earth and subdue it. Spread out across this planet that I have created, says the Lord, and bring all six day creatures and all birds, all animals under the dominion of man.

And the goal here, Habakkuk 2, is that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the seas. This is God's glorious design, to fill the earth with humanity that praises his name, making the name of Jesus known throughout this globe.

That's the creation mandate. So notice that verse four is a complete repudiation of the command. It says at the end of verse four, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. It's rebellion against the creation mandate.

More than that, it is the glorification of self. Let us make a name for ourselves. And so the problem here is ultimately pride. There is a proudly exalting people desiring to make themselves memorable for all eternity, to make their names great and stand out among the nations, among all the peoples.

This rebellious people, which I think does not include Shem and Arpachshad and Eber, the godly from that line are not participating in this rebellion, but there is a massive, even worldwide collaboration of peoples who's leading it.

You remember from last week? Nimrod, not a compliment to be called a Nimrod. Nimrod has brought everybody together, this mighty hunter, and they're gonna build a tower to make their names great. It's a pride.

And within days, we will begin in this country, in the secular humanist culture, to celebrate a month of pride. Pride, which goes before the fall. The proudly exalting of self and celebrating what God has deemed sinful.

Now, church, but for the grace of God, there go each of us. Our hearts who believe in Christ have been renewed. We've been given ears to hear and the call of Christ has come to us so that we've been made new.

But our position, having been saved out of the world, like Noah out of the world from which he was taken, our position must remain humble. We are not to exalt ourselves to make a name for ourselves, but the first will be last and the last will be first.

As our Lord taught us, we do not boast in our own righteousness. We don't boast. We have nothing in ourselves to be proud of. No different from anybody else in the world. And we brought nothing to the table from which God would see us and select us out of the world.

It's all his grace. And so we do boast, just not in ourselves. We boast in another, the one who lived a righteous life, Jesus Christ. We boast in the victor over the serpent. The snake brought the lie in Genesis three and the curse with it, death into the world.

But the promise came in Genesis 315 that a seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. And there is one who laid down on a cross and allowed his heel to be struck with the spear of a Roman soldier.

And he was lifted up in mockery and shame in order to be looked out upon by the nations and seen as glorious. Because in the striking of Jesus' heel, he crushed the head of the serpent. He's the victor.

He is that lamb that was foreshadowed in Genesis three. When an animal was killed, shedding blood in the garden and the shameful nakedness of Adam and Eve was covered. When God made coverings of skin for them, it was picturing the righteousness of Christ that now covers us.

When Abel was killed, his blood poured into the ground and Genesis four tells us that his blood cried out to God. But his blood was crying for justice, that God would punish Cain, that Abel would be vindicated.

His life was poured out and all that Abel's blood could do was cry for justice. But the blood of Jesus speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. His blood poured out on the cross, atoned for our sin.

He is the lamb of God, a substitute who died for us in our place. Jesus is the lamb of God. And so I wanna tell you, church, you are to boast, but only in Christ and in his cross. Exalt the name that is above every name.

This is the point in Genesis 11, four. The people wanted to make a name for themselves. That spirit of pride had overtaken them. And so they gathered in cities. By the way, there has been a movement within Christianity.

It was popularized by Tim Keller to glorify cities, cities. He learned it from Harvey Kahn, who was a very liberal theologian and one who rejected the inerrancy of scripture. And by glorifying cities, they oppose Genesis 11, four.

Now hear me, we are to go to cities as missionaries. Jonah was sent to Nineveh and should have had a heart of compassion for the people he was sent to reach. But we are not to glorify the city because here's what happens in cities.

Humanity gathers in a single place and where human depravity is concentrated, there is greater and greater opportunity for sin. The founding fathers of this country warned against the danger of cities.

One of them said, close to the sod and God, to be near the earth, to be separate from others, to be holy, that's what holiness means is separateness, has wisdom. Lot chose to cast his tent towards Sodom, but Abram removed himself.

We have a duty to protect our families as much as possible from the evils of this culture. Now God will send some into the cities, but that does not mean that we should glorify cities as a place of God's special affection.

In fact, look very carefully as we follow along Genesis 11, four, it was the building of a city that multiplied human depravity in a place. Now, verses five to nine, the famous part, and the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of man had built.

And the Lord said, behold, they are one people and they have all one language and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. In this conversation, he's not learning things by visiting, it's an anthropomorphism here that God is observing and recording for us what's going on.

And then he says in verse seven, come, let us go down and there confuse their language. Who is the us? Well, clearly God is the Lord and he's speaking, but he uses that plural us. Earlier in Genesis one, God said, let us make man in our image.

God has always existed in three persons, father, son, and Holy Spirit. I think it's likely here that the us is once again, the members of the Trinity speaking one to another. And one, perhaps the son, the second member proposes this.

Another option, because I'm never dogmatic in my preaching, I just like to lay out all the possible options. You might've noticed that, I'm being sarcastic. I will tell you another option here. It's possible that it is the second member of the Trinity as the Lord speaking to two angels.

Because just a few chapters later in Genesis 18 and 19, three come down from heaven, one is called the Lord and the other are referred to as men. The three gather with Abraham. Abraham begins to intercede for Sodom and Gomorrah.

The two go off to judge Sodom and Gomorrah. Those two turn out to be angels. But the one staying back is called the Lord. Abraham intercedes before the Lord. And then Genesis 19 tells us that the Lord called down fire from the Lord.

On Sodom. That is to say, the intercession didn't work. There were not 10 found righteous in Sodom and Gomorrah. And so when it says the Lord called down fire from the Lord, you have the second member of the Trinity, pre-incarnate, Jesus Christ, before that name was given to him, the son of God on earth.

Abraham is interceding with him because he's God. And when the judgment comes, because God is the one who will judge the world, the Lord calls down fire from the Lord. So the father sends fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah at the beckoning of Jesus, but it was two angels who went to mediate that situation and to rescue Lot.

And then his wife was turned to a pillar of salt. You remember the story. All that to say, this could be the same thing here. Let us could be Jesus coming down, or the son of God coming down with angels to do this confusing of languages, verse seven, so that they may not understand one another's speech.

He's going to, by a supernatural work, the changing of the wiring of the brain and the training of the tongue and the vocal cords, as that's developed over the years in each individual, he's going to so change that, that different languages will be spoken by different people and they won't be able to understand.

He will confuse their language. Verse eight, so the Lord dispersed them. And there's that theme. They wanted to gather to make a name for themselves, but the Lord disperses them over the face of all the earth.

And they left off building the city. Therefore, its name was called Babel, which means confusion, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there, the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

Now, that's the third time we've heard that. We shouldn't miss the theme that God desires to send them out, spread them apart, to fill the earth with the knowledge of the glory of his name, like waters cover the sea.

And here's where it gets incredibly interesting. Because in a supernatural work, God confuses languages to spread them out only to envision that 1 ,500 years later, when the earth is populated to the ends of the earth with American Indians on this continent and Australia populated and the distant islands filled with people, that at this time in history, he would gather, the word Pentecost means in gathering.

It's the festival of first fruits when God brings in the harvest. In Matthew, the end of chapter nine, Jesus says that the harvest is a metaphor for people. And the in gathering of people, they're white for harvest.

The fields are ready to be harvested. When the time was right and the nations were filled, that on the day of Pentecost, the end gathering, he would begin to bring all people to hear and certain particular people to hear with understanding, to believe in Jesus Christ.

We're gonna turn to Acts chapter two. And there, I think, are many assumptions that most Christians hold about Acts chapter two, that the text itself will dispel this morning. Traditions and assumptions that we bring to the text that Acts chapter two actually refutes.

And it's better understood having read Genesis 11, as we just did, that this is a reversing of the curse, an undoing. God grants understanding to a sound that otherwise would have sounded like babble.

You see the connection to Genesis 11? He babbles their understanding in Genesis 11. Then in Acts two, he grants understanding to their babble. In Genesis 11, he curses in order to bless. And now in Acts two, he adds blessing upon blessing by bringing all of this back together again.

It is just a remarkable thing, but pay careful attention because I think many people confuse some of the particular words and phrases in Acts chapter two. And just to spill the beans, I think it's a miracle of interpretation that's happening in Genesis two.

It's not each individual Christian speaking particular languages to individuals, but all of them essentially babbling as it would sound to someone without ears to hear. But God will supernaturally cause each one, it says, to hear them plural speak in their own language.

Watch this, Acts two. When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.

And divided tongues as a fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues. Glossia, what does that mean? They're speaking in other tongues.

Well, Babel will inform it, but keep reading with me. As the Spirit gave them utterance. Now, there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound, the multitude came together and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own language.

Now, if this morning I decided to break out a little Espanol, a little Spanish, would anybody be impressed? Not so much because there's probably many of you that speak multiple languages, right? Melania Trump speaks like six languages.

A lot of people can speak a lot of languages. For one person to know a language other than Hebrew would not be, or the Aramaic version of Hebrew that brought them all together in a common language. That would not be impressive.

That would not be a miracle. If you just happen to find, say you speak Parthian or Median or the Elamite tongue, if there was one Christian who's now speaking your language, you would not assume a miracle.

There's nothing miraculous about that, that one person speaks your language. But look at, first of all, the very words of Acts 2, verse six. Each one, whether you come from Parthia or Mede or Mesopotamia, Pamphylia or Egypt, each one was hearing them, this group of people, them, plural, speak in his own language.

That's the miracle, the hearing of this group in their own language. That's fascinating to me. But keep reading because the clincher is in verses 12 and 13. So it says they're amazed and astonished. They find this event to be amazing, astonishing, unexpected, completely unpredictable, kind of like Babel was in Genesis 11, now in Acts 2, it's the reverse of that because they're hearing this Babel in their own languages.

Now, wherever they're from, verses nine through 11 list those places and then at the end of verse 11, there's 15 nations here. We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God. Now, it doesn't say that they told the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It seems like they're praising God for what he's done in Christ. Yes, they talk about the cross, I'm sure in their own tongue, whatever this language is, they're praising God, the mighty works of God.

They're exalting God. It could be that they're singing. They're a group of people filled with the spirit of the living God and their hearts are ablaze. There is passion in them and it draws attention and then what they find so odd is that each one is saying, wait, I heard, it sounds like part, that's my tongue.

They can converse in their Aramaic Hebrew but they're shocked that all of them are hearing them in their one language. Now, notice this in verses 12 and 13. And all were amazed and perplexed saying to one another, what does this mean?

They're surprised and they're trying to understand the meaning of the event. Not what are they saying because they understand it in their tongue. They know something spiritual is happening here. Something big and cosmic.