Babylon - Man Versus God
Notes
Transcript
We began looking at Psalm 137 these past two Sundays. We haven’t finished with this Psalm but I want to look a bit closer at the cities this Psalm refers two.
1 By the rivers of Babylon, There we sat down and wept, When we remembered Zion.
We will start by looking at the biblical city of Babylon. Babylon is mention 262 in the Bible. The name means “the gate of god” or “the gate of gods”.
Babylon is located in modern day Hillah, Iraq, along the Euphrates River, about 53 miles south of Baghdad. Starting in the late 1960s, parts of the old Babylon have been reconstructed with a lot of the reconstruction done under Saddam Hussein and was meant to bring glory to Iraq and Saddam.
We read about its start in Genesis 10.
8 Now Cush fathered Nimrod; he became a mighty one on the earth.
9 He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the Lord.”
10 And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.
Babel, also known as Babylon was founded by Nimrod. Nimrod was the grandson of Ham who was one of Noah’s sons that was on the ark.
In the next chapter of Genesis, we read about the Tower of Babel, which can also be translated as Babylon. In Chapter 11, we read where man began thinking of himself as greater than anyone or anything. This thought led them to challenge God by doing the opposite of what God had told them to do. Let’s look at what and who these people put their trust in when they chose not to trust in God. People who trust in themselves over God are often referred to as carnal.
1 Now all the earth used the same language and the same words.
2 And it came about, as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
3 Then they said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and fire them thoroughly.” And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar.
4 And they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let’s make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of all the earth.”
5 Now the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the men had built.
6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they have started to do, and now nothing which they plan to do will be impossible for them.
7 Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”
8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth; and they stopped building the city.
9 Therefore it was named Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.
Carnal people trust in…
1. Innovation
Innovation has always existed, even if past eras seem less advanced in comparison to the current one. We tend to look back at older times through the eyes of modern tech.
In our text, the people shared a common language and as they moved back from the east in closer proximity communication was easier. All of this helped to foster collaboration and confidence which helped lead to more innovations.
One such innovation we see in Genesis 11 is the building material. Before they would build with stone and mortar and now they could make bricks which was easier than stone.
Have you ever stopped to think about all that mankind has invented?
Actually we haven’t invented anything; at least not in the sense that we created something.
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 He was in the beginning with God.
3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him not even one thing came into being that has come into being.
We have lights because we used God’s creation of electricity. Why do we need lights? Why do we have darkness and have to have “man-made” lights to get around in the dark? Because man has wandered away from God through sin. We have rebelled, no longer able to live with God-given light, we had to invent a source of light so we can get around during the night, in the dark.
A lot of “inventions” come because of mistakes such as the post it notes. They were trying to invent a new glue, a super strong glue. Something happened and they found the glue was not a strong glue. Someone then came up with the idea to use this weak glue to put pages together that can be taken apart easily. And from that mistake with the glue, we now have post it notes.
We live in a time of innovation. When you buy a computer, cell phone or other technology, it has to be updated so you can set it up. Think about it, from the time they build a computer, load the current software, ship it to the store and you buy it and take it home, you have to update the software just so it will operate. It seems like as soon as you buy any new tech, it is out of date by the time you walk out the front door.
The danger in this is that people start to think they are smarter than God. When we have a new scientific discovery and develop new theories, those people get rewarded with some prize. That theory, even while not completely proven, will somehow show that God cannot exist. Eventually those theories are better understood and even proven wrong or end up actually helping to prove the case for Christ.
In truth, we must recognize God. It is God’s creation and we can only work within those boundaries. it is through our God given knowledge that we can work and discover what is new to us.
Genesis 11:4
Carnal people trust in…
2. People
When these people moved back to live in the same area, speaking the same language, all with the common ancestor of Noah and his sons. they had a basic level of trust for each other. Because of sin, they had a broken trust in God.
They conspired to build a city with a tower that would reach to the heavens and make a name for themselves. They wanted to be famous. They wanted everyone who saw this tower that reached up into the heavens to know who they were. Building the city and tower wasn’t really the issue. Their motivation for building it was their problem.
God promised to make Abram’s name great. God promised to make David’s name great. Elsewhere in Scripture it is God who makes a name for Himself.
10 “Then You performed signs and wonders against Pharaoh, Against all his servants and all the people of his land; For You knew that they acted arrogantly toward them, And You made a name for Yourself as it is this day.
People were once again attempting to replace God with themselves.
A big reason was their sinfulness and their sinfulness led them to trust in themselves for their own future.
Trust is essential in human existence. We are wired to trust. From the womb we are wired to have trust in others. At that young age, we may not recogize the word but we place out trust in others. We trust them for the things we need; food, clothes, diapers, a place to sleep, something to help keep us warm. We start our development of trust with those who provide for us in life. That type of trusting relationship early on will guide us in how we trust others that we meet.
If you talk to someone who isn’t able to trust others, you will find a person whose trust has been broken; either through that trust being continually broken or traumatically broken.
I have used this before but I am going to again. What Kaitlyn was young, around 3-4, she decided to jump off the couch toward me. I was walking past the couch, headed upstairs and not paying attention. Just as she jumped from the arm of the couch toward me, she called, “Daddy!” She jumped and even though I was not looking toward her, she put her trust in my ability to catch her. We are wired for trust and that trust will either grow or shrink based on how well that trust is kept.
This trust is developed in multiple dimensions of life - emotional, physical, socially and spiritually. Our trust expands as we grow and mature. It starts with our family, expands to our friends, expands to other adults and eventually expands to professional relationships.
We learn to trust our earthly father, and other men who participate in our lives in a fatherly role before we put our trust in God. A major way we learn to put our trust in God is by putting our trust in our earthly fathers but also in our earthly parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, all of those adult family members who help us, or hurt us.
When we do baby dedications or infant baptisms, part of what we are saying is that we as a congregation, we as those who are in a relationship with Jesus, will share that relationship with this baby; we will help this person to learn to trust God by teaching them we are trustworthy.
Besides learning trust, we also learn to distrust. The level that we learn to trust God is the same level that we exhibit our trust of God in front of others.
But there is one thing we must always remember when we are putting our trust in another person. No matter how sincere that person is, no matter how much they try, they are and will sin and break that trust. It might be small ways or a big way but we each are fallible and therefor not completely trustworthy.
I say that not to make you distrust someone but to point out that God is always trustworthy and has never, nor will never break that trust. God cannot fail.
At the end of verse 4 we also see a fear these people had.
4 And they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let’s make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of all the earth.”
It is interesting they feared being scattered.
Genesis 11:5-9
Carnal people trust in…
3. Vain
We shift to a different view of the city and tower.
For so long, when I read this story I kept a view from man’s perspective. Whenever I read this story or thought about it, I had different thoughts. It must have been very high to think it reached into the heavens. How could men who had just recently learned to make bricks build a tower that was that high? I would wonder how it measured up to our modern day skyscrapers.
But it really doesn’t matter how tall their tower was built. It doesn’t matter how tall it could have been built because it was still small.
The writer takes us to God’s view of this mighty tower that was meant to reach into the heavens. It relation to God, it was so small that God had to come down to even see it.
Do you feel the irony? Man wanted to build a tower that reached into the heavens yet at their best, their work was still so small that God came down in order to see it.
When we place our trust in anyone or anything other than God, it will always be in vain. It doesn’t matter what the perspective we have of some might work, it will never measure up to what God can do.
We can reach into the skies with a rocket, or whatever we build next. We can send people to the moon, maybe even find a way to colonize the moon but putting our trust in people or innovation will always be in vain.
The irony of this story is that God still scattered them though he did more than simply scatter them. He sent them to certain places, making their boundaries and confusing their language so they no longer had these two things in common.
It might seem mean to scatter them but we must remember, they had been told to populate the earth.
1 Then God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.
Whatever you are holding on to, whatever you are placing your trust in, it is vain to keep it there. We pray weekly that God’s will be done instead of ours but if we do not trust God’s will, then we will put that trust in vain things.
Where is your trust? Are you putting your trust in God do you fight God?
Let’s pray.
