Who's Name, What Future?
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Claim of the passage - God thwarts the efforts of mankind to find security outside of Himself, for it is rooted in pride.
Focus of the sermon - Culture seeks security through building (unifying) ‘names’ for ourselves, (empires, work, families, even churches) but unified security is only found at conversion (pentecost) and ultimately the new earth in Christ!
Function for the congregation - to drop the dream of security on earth and rest securely only in the unifying Gospel of Jesus
We Want a Good Future!
We Want a Good Future!
That is who we are as people - we can’t help it.
The future makes us tick.
We plan that big braai in a couple of weekends time to get through the week.
We have that holiday booked so we can get through the term.
If you’re at school, you’re there to secure a bright future.
If you’re working, you’re there to secure a future for you and your family.
Politiacian, activists, emplyers, sportteams - all offer a great future!
The Conservative Government,
We must do these 5 things to ‘build a BETTER FUTURE’
Labour
We need pride and purpose back - here is how to get that future back -
From the front page of the just stop oil website:
‘No-one’s going to save us, we need to come together to do that for ourselves. - JUST STOP OIL’
If only the whole world would unite as one.
If only they would come together in peace to build a strong and stable and equal world.
Where the environment was cared for,
race or class, or nation, had no bearing on opportunities,
poverty and starvations eradicated,
wars ceased.
What a world we could have.
It’s what we pray for isn’t it?
It’s what God desires for us and our world isn’t it?
pause
Genesis 1:31 (NIV 2011)
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.
A unified, secure, very Good, world was made by God in the beginning,
but as we have seen through Genesis 1-9 it’s gone very wrong.
We may not all be murderers as Cain was in chapter 4,
but we have seen week after week how our Holy God now sees us all,
The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.
Mankind deserve God’s judgement, and that is what it got in chapter 7 in the great flood.
Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died.
Everyone that is spare Noah and his family.
So was Noah to bring the new rest, the new future we all want?
Well no, as we saw last week, Noah is laying drunkenly unconscious and naked,
His son mocks him,
Curses are declared.
And the consequences of sin are still here - Death for all mankind.
Noah lived a total of 950 years, and then he died.
So we reach this new section,
and it’s all about our future.
It shows the natural human desire for a good future,
but
It explains the realities and reasons for our very divided world and scary future,
And the reason is a shocker.
1 - A Divided World
1 - A Divided World
If you Skim through chapter 10 and the list of family groups descended from Noah,
2 interesting things should stand out to us.
1 - They are scattered, or spreading out, across the world.
And we might think - brilliant - humanity is finally doing what God has commanded.
God’s command to Noah and his family after they came out of the ark.
As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it.’
The Future is good, Rest is coming - peace security, becasue people are obeying God! Hallelujah!
But the second thing we should notice should raise a question.
end of 10v5 each clan has it’s own language’
and
These are the sons of Ham by their clans and languages, in their territories and nations.
Why do all these scattered people within in just 2 generations of those who were on the ark have different languages. And why are they called clans, and nations and ‘territories’
This is not a chapter of unified peaceful humanity, living at peace with one another under right obedicene to God’s command.
This is a divided world.
Clan against clan,
language against language,
race against race,
This is the world we live in! the post flood world.
A world of confusion, danger, racism, nationalism,
division?
But how and why did this happen?
1a - A Divided World - How?
1a - A Divided World - How?
The answers are at beginning of chapter 11, which explains the the reason for the division of chapter 10.
Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.
Of course they did, they are all people of the Ark.
And what did this one language people desire above all?
You’ve guessed it - a great future:
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.’
They wanted to disobey the command of God.
God said multiply and fill,
and the people said - No!
Let us make our own name!
Let us unite as humanity,
build a tower called Babel - literally meaning ‘gate of God’.
Not to get to God, but to be as God!
To elevate the pride of humanity!
Look at US!
‘Join us, help us build a better future’ shouted the conservative MP of the Shinar dessert counsil of Babaylon. We have a 5 step plan for world peace and a name and legacy for mankind!
Step one build a whacking great tower with our name on the top!
‘For once we agree’ proclaim the labour government - together we will restore
Pride and purpose for Mankind!
‘We’d rather you didn’t use bitumen as mortar’ said the climate protestors, but even they have stopped blocking the roads for this name building project.
‘No-one’s going to save us, we need to come together to do that for ourselves.’
If we build a big enough name for mankind, unified completely - we will be great and have future even greater!
But here comes the shocking reasons the world is divided.
No, says God - seek a name for yourself and you will not be great,
you will not find security,
you will not find peace:
In the words of Jesus, a different time, but the same message.
Luke 12:51–53 (NIV 2011)
Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.
or in Genesis language,
(notice he mocks their unity language ‘Let us’
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.’
Look how keen mankind is to disobey my commands says God.
Imagine if I let them remain unified as one people - their plans will explode - into endless designs and technological advancements to elevate the pride of mankind!
And so another judgement, confusion and division, is put upon us.
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.
Babel - the gate of God’ in a play on the Hebrew word is redefined by God as ‘Babel’ meaning confused.
You will not have peace on earth.
You will not make a name for yourself.
The shocking reason we have a Divided world is that it is God’s right judgement upon a sinful humanity.
He did this - becasue of our sin. Our fault, but His design.
So we are a world of division, disunity, racism, wars, and fear of those who are different.
But why does God not want us to find peace on earth?
1b - A Divided World - Why?
1b - A Divided World - Why?
Well, becasue he does not want us short changed.
He does not want us to miss out.
God did not cause a divided humanity becasue peace and unity are bad.
But becasue seeking peace, and a secure future outside of God - is bad!
The key is in the phrase - let us make a name for ourselves!
Of course we believe in good politics, and most certainly we desire peace,
we hate racism,
we should care well for God’s world.
but the Conservatives, Labour, the UN, Black lives matter, Just stop Oil - none of those names will ever achieve the future we all want!
No earthy name ever has or ever will!
The cause might be good - but the future will never be good outside of ‘God’s name’ being glorified.
God does not want us to think that a peaceful earth is the end game for us.
Because whatever we achieve in the name of mankind, is NOTHING, and is deserving of judgement.
God looks on the efforts of mankind to make names for ourselves and says in
That’s the tower of babel
for her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes.
We cannot build our way up
instead God promises to bring ‘down to us’ what we desire.
The apostle John had a glimpse of our future in Jesus, and it was very different to the building up of the tower of confusion.
And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.
Jesus is the only NAME to trust in for a secure future - for he will bring a brand new perfect future down with him when he returns.
It’s why he says:
‘I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.’
Our peace is not of this world, it is in Jesus and His future for us.
We have seen glimpses of this future already on earth,
- at pentecost after Jesus rose from the dead and sent his Spirit upon his apostles to speak in tongues, in foreign languages -
When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken.
it was a picture of Babel being reversed.
Jesus’s name unites and gives us peace and future - Christians already across our globe share an inexplicable unity in Jesus’ name - but it’s nothing to do with politics or campaigns.
But these are just faint glimpses of the future we truly await in His name not ours:
A city built by God’s own hand,
I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendour into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honour of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
So, finally,
2 - There is a place for your name
2 - There is a place for your name
I don’t think i want my name on any great human legacy, I don’t need a family heritage, or a business I’ve changed.
I don’t need GC to remember that great pastor Sam.
Far from it!
The only place I want my name,
The only place you want your name,
the only place you want your children’s names,
Is not on a sports trophy,
Is not with the Letters CEO before it,
Is not on some great mission legacy,
Is not on an honours degree certificate.
We don’t need our name ‘up’ anywhere, we need it written ‘down’ in the Lamb’s book of life.
That secures the future we all dream of.
And we get our name in that book not through politics, of activism, or association, and great education, playing sports
but through lowering our name through humble repentance.
By lifting up the name of Jesus each day not ours!
Here is a good question to ask when we have decisions to make each day,
Whose name am I elevating by doing this? - mine, or Jesus’s?
Jesus, the Lamb of God - who took our sin and confusion,
bore God’s wrath for us on the cross,
rose again,
gave us his unifying spirit - so we might have peace in Him and not be troubled by this divided world.
We should fight injustice, and racism, and care for this world, and work hard - but not in some nieve dream for a wonderful future.
Don’t be making a name for yourself on the sports field when you could be sitting under the name of Jesus.
Don’t sacrifice Jesus name for promotions at work, or degrees.
Look after the environment, but do not think saving the environment will save you or your children
All these ways of thinking, means You’ll have no future at all - just misery now and eternal judgement to come.
Instead lift up the name of Jesus -
Read of his name in the bible,
Hear of his name on Sundays,
Discuss of his name in your homes and Home groups,
make His name great - so yours, your families, your loved ones might
have their name not lifted up, but written down, in his book.
Or to put the whole irony of Babel in context in 1 short sentence:
The name of the Lord is a fortified tower; the righteous run to it and are safe.
Pray