Charles Stanley Daily Devotional  18 May  2024 | Topic: Many Languages, One God 

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Many Languages, One God

Our God is a powerful Redeemer—He transforms our failures into testimonies of His grace.

May 18, 2024

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Acts 2:1-11

Pentecost is most often associated with the Holy Spirit’s arrival. But it also demonstrates God’s remarkable ability to redeem. 

To understand just how amazing Pentecost was, we need to go all the way back to Genesis 11, when everyone “used the same language” and were “one people” (Genesis 11:1; Genesis 11:6). Their problem wasn’t unity—it was self-idolatry. God had said to fill the earth, but they instead built a city and tower to “make a name” for themselves and prevent being scattered (Genesis 11:4). Only after God confused their languages at Babel did they disperse as He had ordered.

Pentecost offers an amazing contrast. The disciples waited in Jerusalem, as Jesus commanded. (Acts 1:4-5). The crowd was “amazed and astonished” to hear their different languages united in meaning (2:6-7). “We hear them,” they said to one another, “speaking in our own tongues of the mighty deeds of God” (v. 11).

That harmony of praise in Jerusalem redeemed the confusion at Babel. And while the church was also “scattered” after that, believers took persecution as an opportunity to sow seeds for the gospel (Acts 8:1; Acts 8:4; Acts 11:19). Their obedience made it possible for us today to declare “the mighty deeds of God.” And one day people “from every nation and all the tribes, peoples, and languages” will sing of the salvation of God and the Lamb (Revelation 7:9-10).

Bible in One Year: 2 Chronicles 24-25 

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