Scattered by Grace

Good morning my name is Jeff Kammerer and I’m the NextGen pastor here. Excited for the opportunity to share with you this morning and fill in for pastor John who is getting a nice break this weekend with friends and family.

I’ve had the opportunity to work in student ministry for the past 9 years and 8 years before that I was in another church working in students ministry so I’ve had a lot of time around teenagers. And if you’ve spent time with teenagers you know they have their own language. Sometimes they make up their own words. Like Rizz and Bussin and Finna. And sometimes they take words that you’ve heard of but have different meanings to like Bet or Drip. Sadly I do know what all those words mean. I can remember getting a text from one student before and there were three words in the text message that I needed to translate. But I actually always enjoyed learning because I want to know their language because it gave me the ability to communicate with them. Language is important and I think it’s one of the many gifts God has blessed us with. Have you ever considered language, words, writing, speaking, those are all gifts from God and they are given exclusively to people.

What we will see in our text is that even though we misuse the good gifts from God he still demonstrates grace to us.

We’re going to be in Genesis 11:1-9 and we’re continuing a series that we started in January called Creation or Chaos and we’ve looked at a majority of the first 8 chapters in Genesis. One of the themes we notice early in Genesis is how people destroy the good things of God, and Genesis 11 is much of the same.

When we were last in Genesis we went through the account of Noah and the next few chapters record genealogical records of Noah and his family. And if you look at a few verses in chapter 10 you see similar phrases.

Genesis 10:5 ESV

5 From these the coastland peoples spread in their lands, each with his own language, by their clans, in their nations.

Genesis 10:20 ESV

20 These are the sons of Ham, by their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations.

Genesis 10:32 ESV

32 These are the clans of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies, in their nations, and from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood.

Most of this makes sense because you assume that the people are following the command God gives them in Genesis 9:1 “1 And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.”

But we see something in these verses in chapter 10 that are confusing and seem to come out of nowhere. Why are there nations all of a sudden and people speaking different languages? That’s what we read about in Genesis 11:1-9. This is a fairly common technique in Genesis where we get the basics of an event and then immediately after we see how those things happen. So this is not a discrepancy the events just aren’t listed in chronological order.

Let’s read Genesis 11:1-9

Genesis 11:1–9 (ESV)

1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”

5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

Prayer

The first thing we see in the text is…

1. People like to build up their name.

Verse four describes the reason we have this account. They wanted to build this for two reasons. The first is,

a. They wanted to make a name for themselves.

Another way to describe this is pride. Pride is the thing that sneaks its way in and cause multitudes of sin and what’s challenging is that we don’t even realize it.

Is it sinful to build a tower?

Is it a sin to have good communication and to work together?

Is it wrong to have the ambition to build the tallest tower on earth?

Is it sinful to advertise that you have the tallest tower on earth?

I think I could probably answer all these questions the same. No, but maybe yes.

And herein we can see the real issue with pride. Sometimes we don’t even realize it’s there. You know it’s fairly difficult to deal with sin if you don’t even realize it’s there. Look back to verse 3 because here’s the clearest example of pride among these people… “let’s make brick and use them instead of stone.” Stone is a natural material, and it’s not present in this location. They would’ve had to excavate in from far away. So what did they do? We’re not going to rely on any natural resources, we’re going to make our own bricks. We don’t need to depend on God, look we can handle things ourselves. Are there things in your life that you are trying to handle yourself?

Maybe it’s a sin that you keep returning to

Maybe it’s just the common practices of your walk with Christ (Prayer, reading the bible, journaling, giving)

As I was dwelling on this this week, there’s nothing in your walk with the Lord that should be done in complete isolation. I don’t mean that we shouldn’t have time alone with the Lord because we certainly should. But there should always be people who are willing to ask us these difficult questions. Are you struggling in sin? Are you spending time with the Lord? How’s your prayer life? I had some conviction on this this week because as I’ve thought about my life I could point to people who were walking alongside of me but I don’t know if I ever gave them the express permission to ask me these questions. Through that conviction I did give them permission. When you have people walking alongside you you have a much greater chance of identifying pride and getting rid of it.

Because they wanted to build up their own name it led to an intentional rebellion against God’s command… Verse 4 continues let’s build this so we won’t be scattered.

b. They didn’t want to be scattered.

The reason this is significant is because it’s intentionally disobedient from God’s word. If we move from the account of Noah and the ark we can see one group of people. Verse 1 they have the same language and the same words. That’s not redundant, it’s speaking that they were in unison, yes they spoke the same language but they also agreed with one another. There was unity.

God’s command was to be fruitful and multiply. That part of the command we see. There’s lots of people. But the second part of the command was fill the earth. They aren’t doing that. They are moving together and found a plain in Shinar and that’s where they settled, all of them, together. They didn’t want to separate despite God’s command.

Do you know why God issued this command? Because he knew they only way to continue growth was to scatter. Think about plants and the seeds they contain. There are several different mechanisms that plants use to have their seeds dispersed. It could be water, or fire, or other animals, or like in the case of the dandelion, wind. Why is that? Well if the seeds just fell down then plants would be competing for all the nutrients they need to grow healthy. God’s command to disperse was so that they would be able to be fruitful and multiply in a healthy way.

Sometimes when God commands something it is very obvious why and other times it’s a little more obscure. But the challenge for us is to be obedient in any situation, whether we know or understand why God is commanding us.

When have you been disobedient to God’s command?

In giving?

Serving?

Praying?

Sharing the gospel?

All of us have specific things we can read in Scripture that God expects from us. It’s the same as these people had, a direct word from God. Maybe you need to reflect today on the word from God that you are intentionally or unintentionally ignoring?

Here’s what we see next…

2. God intervenes.

The tower they were building was most likely something called a Ziggurat. This was just a tall structure and it would have stairs that would wind around the outside so you could walk all the way to the top. Often there would be a room at the top and they would add this as a place of worship for deities. They were temples for false worship.

And we don’t know how long they were working and how far they got but God interrupted their plan. In verses 5-7 God comes down. Why is it that God comes down? God is always present, he’s not in some far away location. He has been monitoring this project the entire time. I think it’s a form of irony. They are building this huge structure in order to be closer to their gods, and God from heaven says, oh i can’t even see that from all the way up here I better go down.

God’s conclusion of their work is in verse 6 Genesis 11:6 “6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.” and when I first read this I thought wow it sounds like God is intimidated by man. If they keep working together it’s no telling what they will accomplish, like God is worried about them, and especially so as they grow. How do you handle this? What do you do when you read something in Scripture and you can’t seem to make sense of it? Do you ignore it? Do you ask someone? I’ve done both of those but most commonly I sit and reflect on what I know about God from his word to see what clarity that can give me about the text I just read. It’s important to have a full picture of the entirety of God’s word. Some churches will spend all their time in the New Testament. Or maybe in your personal time you skip through sections of the bible because they are difficult or challenging. Let me challenge you to read through Leviticus, go through Chronicles and Isiah and Ezekiel. The benefit of reading the entirety of God’s word is you get more clarity on who God is.

Going back to verse 6 I knew that’s not what the text meant. God is not intimidated by man and when you approach the text with that there’s one very clear conclusion you can make, God is referring to man’s sin.

Have you ever thought of language as a gift? God gave us the ability to communicate with one another and with him. But here’s what we read so often in Scripture and what our experience is. We take this thing that was intended as a gift and we use it for evil.

James describes our tongue as a restless evil, full of deadly poison. That manifests itself through lying, gossip, insults, rumors, profanity and here in Genesis 11 it’s seen in the uniformity of rebellion against God. So his conclusion is, If I allow this to continue there’s no telling how much deeper into depravity they will tumble. I think it’s somewhat common to view the variety of people groups and languages as a punishment. I’ve certainly thought that on the various mission trips I’ve been able to experience where you see a real barrier that exists and you think, how much easier would it be if we all spoke the same language. I think this in God’s word so we can arrive at the conclusion that it wouldn’t be easier because sin would be more rampant.

Here’s what we can see as we consider how God intervenes..

a. God is gracious.

We have a good gift that was abused, and yet God still chooses to demonstrate grace. Grace is God’s favor toward those who are unworthy. This shows up all the time in our life, unfortunately we have too narrow a focus, and if you want to know a reason why journaling is beneficial is because it gives us an opportunity to look back on our life and more accurately see God’s favor despite us not deserving it.

b. God is just.

Even though this is God demonstrating grace I’m sure it felt a lot like punishment. They are having fun and enjoying one another and then all of sudden they can’t understand each other. We don’t get any indication of time but i’m sure it wasn’t long before they had no choice but to give up and go their separate ways.

Which of these two do you think they focused on more? God’s grace or his justice? Which do you focus on more? I’d challenge you as you consider this text this morning. Do an inventory check on your life. What is a moment in your life where you spent days, weeks, months believing God was disciplining you or punishing you but when you look back you see it was really his grace spilling out into your life.

I don’t intend to diminish God’s judgement on sin because that is certainly present. But I’m not sure how much benefit that provides for us when we dwell on it. Maybe you are in a season of difficulty and you think well I bet this is a punishment because I treated that person poorly. Or you talk with your spouse if we had better boundaries when we were dating maybe God wouldn’t be doing this in our life now. It’s not going to offer any value for you to dwell on past sins. If you have already given something over to the Lord and sought true repentance, don’t dwell on it as a sin you are awaiting punishment for. Allow yourself the freedom to dwell in the grace of God and think. That sin, because this is true of any sin, that sin should have led to death and forever separation from God but yet I’m still here. We are all still here by the grace of God. I think that is what’s worth dwelling on. Show proper remorse for sin, yes. And true repentance involves a turning from sin. But I’d suggest lean more into the grace of God.

3. God’s plan prevails.

Here is this short account we see a few key ingredients that lead to successful completion of projects. Verses 3-4 we see that the people had a commitment to this goal. In verse 6 we see they were really close to one another. In verses 1 and 6 we see they had good communication with one another. But the last ingredient is in verse 7-9 and they didn’t have it… submission to the will of God.

The people were doing so good. I imagine God as a proud parent like look at my kids working together and accomplishing things.. Parents if you have multiple kids in the house when is the moment you are most scared.. It’s not when you hear fighting or yelling, it’s silence. We’re fearful of the silence because it can mean they are doing something that is either borderline rebellious or intentionally rebellious. And it hits you all at once right, things are silent, oh no. And you start wandering back to where they are and you’re praying please don’t let me walk into something crazy. If seen both sides of that.

Here the people were doing all these things right except the most important thing, they refused to submit to God’s command. We can fill our lives with a lot of good things, but are those things aligned with God’s word and are we willing to submit to him in all things? Because if not I imagine at some point he will step in and stop you.

The way God stops them here is by creating different languages, that creates different nations and people groups. And through this they become obedient to God’s command, they now fill the earth. Who knows how long it took for them to start scattering, i can’t imagine it took long. You’ve had conversations with someone who didn’t speak English right? If you don’t know they don’t speak English how does it normally go? You say something. Then they something back in a different language. You look and smile awkwardly at each other and walk away. There’s not much you can do. But we can rejoice in the fact that in heaven one day there will be people from every tribe, every nation, speaking every language, but in full and complete unity without the presence of sin.

Let me close with this question.. Have you considered the alternative to Babel? In Proverbs 18:10 it says this

Proverbs 18:10 ESV

10 The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous man runs into it and is safe.

You can choose to build yourself a tower and communicate with God in your own way. Or you can turn to the name that is above all names. That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord. Is Jesus Lord of your life or have you been building up your own towers. We’d love to discuss that with you before you leave. Someone sitting next to you would love to discuss that with you. I’ll challenge you to press into that before you leave this morning.

Close in Prayer

Parent Commissioning

[First Service] Before we close our service I’m going to invite a few families from our church up front for a parent commissioning.

[Second Service] As we begin our service I’m going to invite a few families from our church up front for a parent commissioning.

The word commission can be used in a variety of ways but when we use it here in church as a reference to parents we’re using it as a way to describe parents being on a mission. You are on a God-given mission to raise your child in the training and instruction of the Lord. These families have all been part of a class where we’ve explained that to them and the purpose of this time is to allow parents to make a public commitment to this God-given mission. It’s a chance for them to acknowledge, “yes I believe I am the primary disciple maker for my child and I’m committing to this responsibility.”

We do this publicly in our worship service because we’re also challenging our church members to come alongside of them and help them in this holy calling with encouragement, support, accountability, and any number of things that will come up as their child grows.

Since we are calling the church to be participants in helping our families we like to take just a minute to introduce them to you. And then we’ll end our time with a word of prayer. When I call your family if you’d come up front...

The Flora Family: This is Matt and Elizabeth. Matt is a one of the deacons here and Elizabeth is on staff working with our preschoolers. Liam is here with them, he just turned 2 years old. They adopted him through the foster care system and they are also currently parenting a newborn. Anything can happen with the foster care system so we’ll see who God ends up bringing into their household to be cared for.

The McMillan Family: This is Jacob and Brianna and they are here with Lawson who is 3 and Walker who is almost 2. Brianna attended Rainbow Forest when she was a teenager but the whole family has been attending for about a year now and they’ve already been involved in several different ministries.

The Welch Family: This is DJ and Bridgit and they have Harper who is 18 months. Bridgit has been here since she was a kid and she introduced DJ to the church. They are currently helping us in the Nursery on Sunday morning, which is always a big blessing.

We’d like to encourage you to partner with these families in prayer. Give them encourage when you are able. Come along side of them as they raise their children to know and love the Lord. All these things are the basics of what we should be doing for others in the church body and we’re thankful we had a chance to introduce them so you can have more opportunities to be the church.

Prayer