Acts 2

2 When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. 2 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
5 And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven. 6 And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were confused, because everyone heard them speak in his own language. 7 Then they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, “Look, are not all these who speak Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each in our own language in which we were born? 9 Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11 Cretans and Arabs—we hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.” 12 So they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “Whatever could this mean?”

Whatever could this mean?  That is the question that Peter set himself to answer and that is the question that I want to try to answer this morning.  So what was it that was actually happening? We have all heard about, and some of us have heard people "speaking in tongues", allegedly speaking in some secret language, whether it is claimed to be the language of angels or a "private prayer language", whatever that means, it sounds like nonsense to the uninitiated, a mechanical, meaningless babble.  That is most emphatically not what was happening here.  What was happening is almost the reverse of modern speaking in tongues.  Everybody understood what was being said.  These men's message was mysterious, it was incomprehensible, but it was unmistakable.  Their hope was repellant, and their faith offensive, everybody understood what they were saying.  The choice was to be offended and reject the message, or to step outside the bounds of humanity and accept it.  But the first question for us is how could they understand it, and what did it all mean.  To answer that I want to back up just a little to a question that we often forget to ask in this context.  Not why could everybody understand these men, but why is it that most of the time we can't understand one another?  Why can't I speak Chinese?  Why can't foreigners understand me when I yell at them?  Why is the customer service guy on the phone from wherever so stupid?

From Genesis 11 Now the whole earth had one language and one speech. 2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. 3 Then they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. 4 And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. 6 And the Lord said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. 7 Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. 9 Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

The story begins with human anxiety.  The fear of being separated from one another, "let us make a name for ourselves, so that we won't be scattered", the fear of the future, basically just saying, "I don't know what God has planned for us but, I don't trust Him."  That fear is the result of us deciding for ourselves what is good and what is not.  Distrustfully taking from God the determination of what is good for us and taking to ourselves the knowledge of good and evil always bears the fruit of fear and of death.  We were going in a bad direction, and God brought us this confusion as a way of putting the brakes on us.

13 Others mocking said, “They are full of new wine.”
14 But Peter, standing up with the eleven, raised his voice and said to them, “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and heed my words. 15 For these are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. 16 But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:
17 ‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God,
That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh;
Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
Your young men shall see visions,
Your old men shall dream dreams.
18 And on My menservants and on My maidservants
I will pour out My Spirit in those days;
And they shall prophesy.
19 I will show wonders in heaven above
And signs in the earth beneath:
Blood and fire and vapor of smoke.
20 The sun shall be turned into darkness,
And the moon into blood,
Before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.
21 And it shall come to pass
That whoever calls on the name of the Lord
Shall be saved.’
22 “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know— 23 Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; 24 whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it. 25 For David says concerning Him:
‘I foresaw the Lord always before my face,
For He is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken.
26 Therefore my heart rejoiced, and my tongue was glad;
Moreover my flesh also will rest in hope.
27 For You will not leave my soul in Hades,
Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption.
28 You have made known to me the ways of life;
You will make me full of joy in Your presence.’
29 “Men and brethren, let me speak freely to you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. 30 Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his body, according to the flesh, He would raise up the Christ to sit on his throne, 31 he, foreseeing this, spoke concerning the resurrection of the Christ, that His soul was not left in Hades, nor did His flesh see corruption. 32 This Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses. 33 Therefore being exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He poured out this which you now see and hear.

So, the confusion went away because the sin that made it necessary was taken away.  Confusion of tongues is a roadblock that God put in the way of our sinful course, there is no reason for there to be such a roadblock in the way of the spread of the Gospel.  And both in this passage and historically we see that the obstacle of confused languages provides little obstacle to the Gospel which has gone forth into the whole earth to tribes and tongues unknown to the rest of the world.  In Christ sin is forgiven and taken away, the fact of sin, the guilt of sin, the effects of sin, the consequences of sin both temporal and eternal, everything about sin is like it never was.  In fact, in its place we receive the fact of His righteousness, His merit, the results of His righteous acts both in this life and the next.  The heart of the curse of sin is death, and Peter's message is that Christ has overcome death, as is proven by His resurrection, and with the defeat of death, all of the lesser effects of sin, the confusion of tongues, the division of people, goes away.  Obviously for now this is only partial.  What Christ has obtained for us, God has only made a downpayment on.  Sometimes the curse vanishes from our lives, like it did on the day of Pentecost, as a sign that it is ending, that the curse is broken.

34 “For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he says himself:
‘The Lord said to my Lord,
“Sit at My right hand,
35 Till I make Your enemies Your footstool.”’
36 “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.”
37 Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?”
38 Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.”

And how is this sin and its effects removed?  By being identified with Christ and with His death.
 That is what the baptism that Peter called them to is.  It is to identify yourself with Christ in His death.  We have been judging for ourselves what is right and what is wrong for all of our lives.  And there is nothing that we will ever see that seems more wrong than the death of Christ.  It is an affront to the deepest part of our hearts and minds.  The good Father betrays His righteous Son when He needs Him the most, for don't forget that while Peter says that we murdered Him with lawless hands that it was all done by the determinant plan of God.  How can we trust a Father that would do that to His own son?  Why place our hope in someone who does the opposite of what we would hope for?  Christian hope cannot help but look and often feel like despair.  What more horrible place is there to be than in the hands of an omnipotent child abuser?  Christian faith cannot help but look like absolute cynicism and atheism.  What kind of trust can I have in the one who brought a sword to divide brother against brother, who makes our families our enemies and says that we are not worthy of Him if we do not abandon them?  All that we are is in rebellion against such a God.  We have judged good and evil and have judged ourselves to be good and Him to be evil, our way to be right and His way to be wrong.  But Christ didn't.  He put Himself into the hands of His Father when He seemed least good and least trustworthy with absolute faith and unshakable hope.  He endured the uttermost depths of His Father's wrath, certain that it was dispensed by a good and loving Father.  All baptism is, is agreeing with Jesus Christ.  It is believing that all appearances to the contrary, God is good and He loves us.  It is refusing to take the forbidden fruit, in the unreasonable faith that it is forbidden for good reason.  It is accepting having no name for yourself and no lasting place on the Earth, to choose the life of an exile, a despised pilgrim, outside the camp of human brotherhood, walking the Via Dolorosa for the joy that is set before you.  And in so doing, we gain a voice that can touch all men, that penetrates all confusion.