Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

I have become somewhat of a coffee snob over the past 18 or so years.

It all started when I began taking classes in seminary part time.

I’d need a little pick-me-up to make it through that 7-10 pm class after a day of work.

I now prefer to prepare my coffee at home just how I like it.

But for many years, Starbucks was the primary place where I got my regular caffeine fix.

Since I had given Starbucks so much of my money, I was interested hearing the story of Starbucks’ founder, Howard Schultz, when he was interviewed on 60 minutes back in 2006.

He grew up in my hometown, Brooklyn, NY, but under different circumstances than me.

He grew up in the projects because his family was poor.

His father was a delivery driver, picking up and delivering cloth diapers.

His father fell on the job, broke his leg, and was subsequently fired.

With no worker’s compensation or disability package, his family spiraled down from working class to poverty.

He said that he saw the fracturing of the American dream first hand at age 7.

Howard Schultz grew up in the ghetto.

You could see the emotion in his face and the tears welling up in his eyes as CBS filmed him walking down that same hallway to apartment 7G.

As a teen, he says, his dream was to get out.

“I never allowed myself to dream beyond that.

I was afraid to dream beyond that.”

His dream was to get out of the ghetto.

He could think of nothing better than to be free of ghetto life.

It’s easy for us to resonate with Shultz’s dream if our sole picture of the ghetto is a run-down, densely populated urban area characterized by blight, crime and poverty.

But y’all are sharp people.

Since you’re so sharp, you’ve already realized that I’m only going through all of this to set you up.

See, I also have a dream.

And my dream is that the church of Jesus Christ would have a divine dissatisfaction for ghetto life.

My dream is that the Church would get out of the ghetto.

What do I mean by that?

I’m not talking about a ‘ghetto’ in its more common use, but ‘ghetto’ defined as an environment where a group of people live or work in isolation, whether by choice or circumstance; groups or communities living in isolation, getting their sense of worth and dignity from their identification with that community.

And we have all kinds of ghettos in the church; racial ghettos, political ghettos, socio-economic ghettos, generational ghettos, academic ghettos, and the list could go on and on.

When I look at what I see is that ghetto life, that type of ghetto living is the result of God’s judgment upon humanity at Babel.

It is a blight, not a blessing.

Our text is comprised of four scenes, so I want to work through this message, “Get Out of the Ghetto,” with four “C’s,” Coexistence (One Big Happy Family), Construction (in Solidarity), Confusion (Deconstruction by Confusion), Community (Life in the Ghetto).

Coexistence

Practically everywhere we look we see bumper stickers and billboards, posts on social media calling out for peace and civility.

In Howard County, MD, where I used to live, a few years ago there were bumper stickers all over the place saying Choose Civility in Howard County.

You see bumper stickers calling for us to co-exist, seek peace not war.

Rodney King asked a question twenty years ago that has become iconic in this land of hostility.

“Can’t we all just get along?”

People are left frustrated that we’re unable to come together as a human race and create this peace and civil coexistence.

Well, there was a time in human history when everyone had the same language and spoke the same words.

Humanity was in solidarity.

Moses tells us that everyone could speak and understand each other.

They migrated together from the east and settled down in the land of Shinar (Mesopotamia).

Everybody’s getting along.

So what’s the problem with this picture?

Before we hear the people speak themselves in v.3, vv.1-2 let us know that, yes, everyone’s on the same page, but they’re on the same page in their rejection of God’s command.

They’re on the same page in their rebellion against what God has explicitly commanded them to do.

After the Flood narrative in , God once again commands humanity to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth (9:1).

Yet, what do we find humanity doing?

In direct and conscious rebellion they determine, “we don’t want to fill the earth, we want to settle down right here.”

It’s not that they were ignorant of God’s command.

They couldn’t claim that they didn’t know what they were supposed to do.

We don’t find the Serpent here in ch 11 like we find in chapter 3, tempting humanity to disobey God’s word.

Man as one big happy family was one big happy family against our Creator.

The term “from the east,” or, “eastward” in v.2 marks a separation in Genesis.

It conveys the reality that the Babelites are outside of God’s blessing.

We see this reality expressed throughout Genesis.

In 3:24 when God drove Adam and Eve out of the garden of Eden, he placed the cherubim and flaming sword at the east of the garden.

In ch.4 when Cain killed his brother Abel, he went away from the presence of the Lord, and settled in Nod, east of Eden.

In ch.13 when Lot separates from Abraham he journeys eastward to settle in Sodom (cf.

25:6, 29:1).

So, in moving eastward and settling in Shinar the big happy human family is outside of God’s blessing.

That’s why bumper sticker theology is fruitless.

Bumper sticker theology calling for coexistence by itself isn’t enough to do anything.

Even if by some means we were able to achieve this corporate civility and peaceful coexistence by our own efforts, we would still be a corrupt people unified only by our sinful rebellion against God.

As vv.3-4 tell us, our solidarity would be expressed in trying to use God’s gracious gifts to usurp his authority and make a name for ourselves.

Conctruction

Look at vv.3-4.

Humanity has one language, speaking the same language, and look at what they say to one another.

Here’s their solidarity expressed in their construction project.

There’s no attempt to even fake obedience to God.

This is the warp, the dysfunction, the disordering that sin creates in the human heart.

The sinful human heart wants to find significance by our own achievements.

The sinful human heart wants to make a name for ourselves apart from God.

The sinful human heart wants more than anything to have all the glory and fame come to ourselves.

(The name they earn is “Confusion”.)

Let’s examine what they do in their futile efforts to establish significance and immortality by their own achievements.

The rallying call is to make bricks and mortar in order to build a city and a tower with its top in the heavens.

In the ancient Near East, cities were not designed primarily to be lived in.

They were intended for religious and public purposes.

There, in Mesopotamia, they employed their technology to build this city whose central focus was this tower known as a ziggurat.

The ziggurat was a massive and lofty, solid-brick, staircase structure.

In Mesopotamian culture, it was an inseparable part of the city, and sometimes the temple complex was the entire city.

Waltke,

Like Jacob’s staircase (see Gen. 28:12), the ziggurat mountain, with its roots in the earth and its lofty top in the clouds, served in mythopoeic thought as a gate to heaven.

This humanly created mountain gave humanity access to heaven (28:17) and served as a convenient stairway for the gods to come down into their temple and into the city.

The city reveals the fact that the human spirit will not stop at anything short of usurping God’s throne in heaven.

This is the city of man.

At the heart of the city of man is love for self and hatred of God.

Those are strong words, but they’re no less true today than they were back in Babel.