Introduction
Every year, the church prayerfully participates in the 10 days following Jesus’ ascension. During that time, the disciples awaited the promised gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Now, we learn to wait with them, longing for the Spirit’s renewing work and tracing a pattern in Scripture: God ascends to reign and fills people with the Holy Spirit so they can rule with him.
We have seen God’s people gathered together in prayer, waiting for the gift that Jesus promised. We have seen the Spirit descend in wind and fire, filling them with his holy presence, recreating a new humanity as the embodied presence of Jesus on earth. Now, with Jesus on the throne, God reverses the scattering at Babel to bring his Kingdom to the whole world.
Babel Reversed by a New Kingdom
When the Holy Spirit fills the disciples in the upper room, pillars of fire reveal that God’s holy presence has come to live in humans. As such, these followers of Jesus become true images of the true God, as intended from the beginning. Now, the Spirit empowers these sons and daughters of God to participate in Jesus’ ascension. They speak in different languages, proclaiming Jesus as King to all the nations that had once scattered from the Tower of Babel.
On day two, we saw how the construction of the Tower was an anti-ascension, a rebellious attempt to seize heavenly power for a rival kingdom. In response, God divided the nations by confusing their language. Now, the apostles call the nations back to God in their own languages. Babel divided rebellious nations among rival gods. Pentecost brings the nations back under the Kingship of Jesus, the Son of God.
Pentecost in Exodus
In the disciples’ day, Jews celebrated Pentecost in part to remember how God gathered a mixed multitude of nations at Mount Sinai after rescuing them from slavery to oppressive powers. There, they heard God claim them as his own people and make them one kingdom. Now, in Acts, another mixed multitude is gathered at the mountain of Jerusalem, where they hear the Kingdom proclamation in every language: Jesus, the enthroned King, has destroyed rival powers and is claiming all nations for himself (Acts 2:6).
The Nations in God’s Kingdom
Just as a mixed multitude became God’s chosen people at Sinai, God has now reclaimed every nation. Through the many nationalities present at Pentecost, Jesus’ reign spreads from Jerusalem to every nation on earth (Acts 2:7-11). Under Jesus’ rule, through the apostles’ proclamation, the nations that once suffered oppression under rival gods are welcomed into a Kingdom of peace. Where they were divided by war with each other and rebellion against God, they are welcomed into a Kingdom of forgiveness. Jesus’ Kingship and his Spirit-filled church become the instrument of healing, not just for one people or language, but for every people and every language.
Guided Prayer
We pray now as Jesus, the ascended King who is bringing all nations back to God, taught his church:
Our Father in heaven
Hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts,
As we also have forgiven those indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.
Amen.