Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Babel
“What the sons of Noah brought forth” begins in 10:1 and culminates here.
God sets the boundaries of the nations Acts 17:26
But men and women were created to “have dominion”.
Their DNA is full of the unquenchable desire to order their surroundings, leave a mark and rule the earth.
Not each other, but the earth, as image-bearers of God.
But sin twisted that, and men began ruling over women (Genesis 3:16) and each other (Genesis 4), dominating, murdering, establishing their OWN kingdom where they reign supreme.
Millions of kings don’t get on so well.
So eventually one will raise himself up and promise a collective kingdom that will take the place of the lost kingdom of God.
Come.
Let us make a name for ourselves.
Brick, mortar - familiar tools to the Israelite slaves, and a reminder of what Egypt was for them.
The kingdoms of this world.
The allure and seduction of the trappings of glory.
The delicacies, the beauty, the lights and pleasures of the world,
Come - let us gather ourselves together.
United.
Working together.
Building our own kingdom.
Music, merchandise, gold, silver, silks, cinnamon, spices, wine and oil in abundance.
But it always ends the same way.
Israel knew how it was.
Wine and oil for Egyptian males.
For women, children, and others, only pain, toil, degradation and slavery.
For one to live in a grand palace of brick, another must make the bricks.
For one to have 70 virgins in a glorious harem, 70 others must be enslaved and degraded.
The weak are enslaved to build the kingdom of the strong.
This is why America can never be the kingdom of God.
The kingdom of God isn’t built on the genocide of California Indians or the enslavement of African Americans.
We need to understand that and listen to our history.
When your goal is to build Babel, it will always devolve into oppression, slaughter and tyranny.
It cannot be otherwise.
There has been no exception in the history of the world.
But in the middle of the building of the city of man, God is at work building HIS kingdom.
He is frustrating the efforts of the tower builders.
Earthquakes, famines, droughts, wars, disease, hurricanes, and so on are used by God to dismantle the kingdoms.
Abraham
Instead of “Let us make a name for ourselves” - God says,
“I will make your name great”
Abraham is one of the most significant men in the history of the world.
Every religion must deal with him in one way or another.
And yet, he himself was a man of remarkable simplicity.
He never owned any land except a grave.
He never built a city.
He never built walls.
He never built a civilization, or write a book, or rule over a kingdom.
He didn’t command armies.
He is famous for one thing.
He believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.
Now, centuries after the fall, God breaks through the silence by calling one man out of darkness into light.
Abraham is called out of Ur, the same land as the Tower.
Where the Chaldeans are rebuilding their kingdom, which will later be called “Babylon”, God is calling Abraham out.
He doesn’t tell him to “win Babylon for Jesus”.
But he calls him out, and makes of HIM a whole new nation, under a whole new principle.
The kingdom that God promises can only come from the word and power of God.
It will only come in God’s time, in God’s way, when God is ready.
To illustrate this, Abraham and Sarah are barren.
They have no children.
And nothing he can do can speed that up.
He will eventually panic and go in to Hagar, and she will give birth the natural way.
But Ishmael will be rejected.
He is still a sinner, born with the sinful desire to enslave and control.
His life is filled with contradictions, as all of our lives are.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh.
The kingdom will not be built on Abraham’s ability to have children.
Otherwise, why not build a harem and have 1000 children to carry on your legacy.
This was the way of every tyrant in the ancient world.
Now we call it “A Whole Army of Christian Babies”, or “militant fecundity”
We got off track, and started building the wrong kingdom.
Harems are right around the corner.
If the kingdom comes through a multitude of children, women’s bodies are limited - so you need more and more of them.
It is the only logical conclusion.
But that isn’t the kingdom of God.
Jesus corrects Nicodemus here and says, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; that which is born of the spirit is spirit.
Two citizens.
Two kingdoms.
The kingdoms of men populated by the offspring of flesh and blood.
And the kingdom of God, populated by those who are born again by the spirit of Christ, filled with his spirit, resting in the promise and waiting for his coming.
Paul calls it the difference between the child of the flesh and the child of the promise.
Babel depends upon wealth, power, and control.
The bricks have to be made.
But the kingdom of God is based on one thing - promise.
That God is preparing a king.
This king will execute justice and righteousness and lovingkindness in the earth.
He will gather his children together and utterly destroy the wolves who devour and destroy.
He shall reign forever and ever.
This is how it develops over the centuries.
Isaiah is ministering to Israel at the time when King Ahaz is obsessing over Babel.
Assyria, Aram, all of the kingdom builders are warring.
And God reminds the Jews of his ancient promise.
I will make your name great, and in your seed will all the families of the earth be blessed.
The land of the kingdom is the whole earth.
The king is the Lord Jesus
The people are all who are engrafted into him by faith.
And it is God who builds that kingdom.
So Abraham, who could have built a home, built a wall around it, started conquering it - he understood the difference between Babel and the Kingdom of God.
So he lived in tents.
He traveled from place to place.
And look at the text - he built an altar wherever he went.
As it turns out, the altar is next to the shrines of Canaan!
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