Yesterday in Bible study we talked about the Day of Pentecost and the Holy Spirit moving as a divided tongue of fire throughout the building where people had gathered touching every member within. Instantly they began speaking in a different language and the people could hear what was being said in their own language coming out of the mouths of simple uneducated Galileans.
That had to be a great experience to have such commonality among all believers. So why did other languages develop in the first place? The Bible explains it this way:
“Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.”
So why is this in the Bible?
Hmmm . . . We know that after our ancestors sinned and were banished from the Garden of Eden there was the great flood. A united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, came to the land of Shinar and decided to build a great city and a tower. Its design was not to glorify God, rather themselves. God stated that if the people were united, there would be nothing they could not do.
So if mankind being united is such a bad thing why did Jesus pray for unity just prior to being crucified? (I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one–as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me. John 17:21)
Jesus was talking about the unification of the church in John 17 in order to build His kingdom and not a secular one. If the church becomes united then there is nothing we cannot accomplish.
Today there are some 43,000 separate denominations that mostly work independent of each other. The greatest thing that could ever happen to the church, (body of believers) would be to become united. God’s word remains forever and according to Him there is nothing we cannot accomplish when we unite and work together.
And that my friends is why satan and his demonic hordes work so hard to prevent that from occurring. Unity is absolutely essential because the church is the “body of Christ” and a body cannot be in disunity or disharmony with itself. If disunity occurs, it essentially ceases to be a body and becomes a disjointed group of individuals which causes chaos and disharmony. Jesus’ plan for His church is for people to be unified in the faith; that is what the Jesus Alliance is trying to accomplish.
Below is the result of God’s plan of unity. We should all think about this when we take a jab at other denominations . . .
Psalm 133:1
Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!
January 18, 2016 – Click here to listen