Tower of Babel (start 5)

How do we exalt the name of the LORD?

How does the LORD exalt his name through humanity?

The LORD draws out our pride

mirrors the sin of the garden by trying to achieve power independent of God - both are trying to be like God - put themselves in the place of God.

Humans often think that our achievements are worthy of praise - but God looks down. There is a striking contrast between human viewpoint of such endeavors and God’s viewpoint of them

The LORD disrupts our prideful ambitions

The people of earth messed up before the flood. God punished them and gave them a second chance. Immediately after the flood they mess up again. God seems to try another strategy in order to get them back on the right track.

why was the tower an offense against God? What was it about the people’s unity that God rejected?

This is an act of God’s gracious intervention to insure that humanity would eventually attain the promissory blessing… We see the same irony occurs in the scattering of the church in Acts 8, where persecution propelled the church into diaspora, so that by taking the gospel they accomplished the charge of the resurrected Lord… to fill the earth with the name of the Lord.

The LORD disperses us over the face of all the earth.

Though they sought a great name, they recieved the humiliating name Babel

God responding to the scattering with the selection of one man to be the head of one nation through which he would bless and save the whole world.

Since then it has only been one nation, one people, who have known and honored God. but the time is coming when…

The goal is not for our name to be big, but for the name of Yahweh to be proclaimed over the whole earth. Throughout all of history this never happened to the full extent that Yahweh deserves. So God sent Jesus to pay for our sins. He sent Jesus to pay the penalty that we deserved for elevating our own names. And God will send Jesus again, to bring his kingdom down to earth. The LORD will come down again. and this time it will not be to see a sad city that humans have built, but to bring his own city down. the new Jerusalem will come down and will display the glory of God for all to see. When Jesus comes again, all of the earth will live for his glory. All of the earth will know him and make his name great!

Zeph 3:9 11:1-9 Ps 47:1