Readings: Genesis 11:1-9 | Acts 2:1-21 | John 14:23-31
Text: Genesis 11:1-9
What’s in your heart? If you’re honest with yourself, most of it’s not pretty! There’s a good chance there’s some anger toward your parents or teachers in there. Probably also some jealousy toward your friends or classmates who have newer cars, or bigger homes, or are smarter or more athletic than you. And I’m sure if you dug deep, you could find much uglier stuff than that.
Not that this should surprise us. God’s Word has plenty to say about our sinful hearts. Do you remember what God said before He told Noah to build the ark? “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). Or how about Jesus, when He said, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander,” (Matthew 15:19)? There’s plenty of sin in each of our hearts.
With that in mind, hear what happened again at Babel:
Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 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. 4 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.” 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6 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. 7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called Babel, 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.
It might seem like God made a bad decision there. After all, the people were all working together. They had the same language and they could communicate so much better than we can now. How much now is lost in translation! Leaders go to war over misunderstandings. Mistrust and animosity abounds when whites hear people speaking in Spanish, just as during World War II, the Japanese were carte blanche imprisoned for being ethnically related to the enemy. Why God, would you inflict this upon us?
This is where we must understand what God sees when He looks into the human heart. A much greater evil is there, and if that evil is allowed free reign, if all our projects could come to fruition, what a spiritual and moral wasteland it would be! If we had the ability to propigate what comes out of the heart—”evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness” (Mark 7:21-22) we don’t even want to imagine such a world. The way people use the Internet gives us enough trouble. What would it be like if we could do more of that!
Thankfully, God has promised to put something else into our hearts. “And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them” (Ezekiel 11:19). Last week, we also heard from chapter 36, “26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” (Ezekiel 36:26-27) Our hearts (that is our inner life, will, desires, and what we pursue) is not what God created us for. In sin, we use our hearts to ponder what is contrary to God’s design. We act on those desires. We strive for what is not good in His sight.
But this new spirit, this heart of flesh, God promises to put in our hearts is none other than His own Holy Spirit!
This is why Pentecost is such a big deal! The Father and the Son send forth the Holy Spirit so that the Third Person of the Trinity, God Himself, can come and fill our hearts. St. Paul marvels at this in Romans 8:11, “11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” Here, we learn that all three Persons of the Trinity work in perfect harmony and unity to grant us forgiveness, renewal, and eternal salvation. The Father sends His only-begotten Son. The Son lives, dies, and rises for our salvation. And the Father and Son send us the Spirit through Jesus’ Word and the Sacraments to create and sustain faith in our hearts. Through these means, faith is created and grows which clings to the Words and promises of God.
Even though our hearts are filled with sin and will be as long as we live, this is no cause to despair. The Holy Spirit resides in our hearts, too! This means that we live as redeemed children of God, knowing that Christ has washed away our sin and won’t count them against us.
What’s more, the Holy Spirit changes our sinful hearts as He dwells in them. He leads the charge in the struggle against the evil in our hearts: “16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” (Galatians 5:16-17) By This same Spirit’s power, we learn to truly love. “We love God because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). And, because we learn to love God, we also begin to love one another (1 John 4:7).
The Day of Pentecost marked the beginning of God pouring out His Spirit, not only so that people of many lands could hear the Gospel of Christ, but that such good news could be personally delivered to the troubled soul: “37 Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” 38 And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” (Acts 2:37-39)
This is your assurance on Pentecost, and every day of your baptized life. You are God’s child through faith, which the Holy Spirit gave and sustains in you. You are guarded against the evil that dwells in your heart, “9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” (Romans 8:9-10) The Holy Spirit is faithful to keep you until you are freed forever from sin in a blessed death.
In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.
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