MERRY MONDAY BY PARRIS –
Most of us should remember the tower of Babel in Gen. 11:6 where the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them”
Everyone spoke the same language and got so powerful that they were building a tower into heaven. The Lord had to confound their languages to squelch the rebellion. God uses language again to bring together the body of Christ and unite His precious body. In the book of Acts, we see tongues of fire given by the Holy Spirit that would unite us to God and give us power to proclaim His word with boldness. We can either build edifices in our own name or be filled with the language of the Holy Spirit and become united with the body of Christ. How do you use your gift of speaking? Man always gets in the way, did you hear me say ALWAYS!
BENGEL SAYS, “This company of brethren praising God in the tongues of the whole world represented the whole world which shall one day praise God in its various tongues’. Pentecost reversed Babel, not by bringing about a featureless monopoly, but by consecrating diversity, and showing that each language could be hallowed, and that each lent some new strain of music to the chorus.”
I love how Bengal says, “Each lent some new strain of music” all for the Glory of God. The book of James refers to our tongues as an instrument. Speaking in tongues reverses the effect of the Babel spirit of man taking over the world.
The commentary goes onto to say,”The sign of the Holy Spirit’s presence was a tongue of fire. It was a most suitable emblem, pregnant with meaning, and indicative of the large place which the human voice was to play in the work of the new dispensation, while the supernatural fire declared that the mere unaided human voice would avail nothing. The voice needs to be quickened and supported by that Divine fire, that superhuman energy and power, which the Holy Ghost alone can confer. The tongue of fire pointed on the Pentecostal morn to the important part in the Church’s life, and in the propagation of the gospel, which prayer, and praise, and preaching would hereafter occupy. It would have been well, indeed, had the Church ever remembered what the Holy Ghost thus taught, specially concerning the propagation of the gospel, for it would have been thereby saved many a disgraceful page of history. The human tongue, illuminated and sanctified by fire from the inner sanctuary, was about to be the instrument of the gospel’s advancement, -not penal laws, not the sword and fire of persecution; and so long as the Divinely appointed means were adhered to, so long the course of our holy religion was one long-continued triumph.”
What a beautiful collaboration of the Holy Spirit and us! Talk about supernatural evangelism!