Sermon Tone Analysis
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God’s Discipline
Genesis 11:1-9
Every person can avoid God’s discipline by knowing the issues that upset Him.
Introduction:
I spent much of my ninth summer on a bicycle.
About a mile from our house the road went down a steep hill and turned sharply at the bottom.
Coasting down the hill one morning, I felt my gathering speed to be ecstatic.
To give up this ecstasy by applying brakes seemed an absurd self-punishment.
So I resolved to simultaneously retain my speed and negotiate the corner.
My ecstasy ended seconds later when I was propelled a dozen feet off the road into the woods.
I was badly scratched and bleeding, and the front wheel of my new bike was twisted beyond use from its impact against a tree.
I had been unwilling to suffer the pain of giving up my ecstatic speed in the interest of maintaining my balance around the corner.
I learned, however, that the loss of balance is ultimately more painful than the giving up required to maintain balance.
It is a lesson I have continually had to relearn.
As must everyone, for as we negotiate the curves and corners of our lives, we must continually give up parts of ourselves.
M.
Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled.
The people of Babel were enjoying the exhilaration of everything going their way.
In their joy they seemed to forget the God who got them there.
Issue I. Language
A. The issue that God was concerned about was not the language alone, but it was where this unified language was leading them.
Prior to the flood we don’t know how technologically advanced the people were.
They might have been very good with tools and machines.
They might have been able to do things similar to what people did just a few hundred years ago.
Since the time of the flood and the time of Babel it has taken the world this long to get back to that place.
One of the reasons they could do what they did was because of their unified language.
B.
If you want to travel the world you either need to have a good knowledge of the major languages of the world or you might want to have an interpreter with you.
When Jackie Poole went to Panama, the interpreter could speak the native language of the island, Spanish and English.
When speaking with the people of the island he would mentally change the language to Spanish and then change it to English.
As you might imagine this really slowed the communication process down and made it hard for these people to communicate with each other.
Even when we do have a good interpreter there can be phrases that we use that don’t make sense when interpreted.
C.
Now imagine how easy things would be in the world if we could remove that barrier.
We could easily and smoothly speak with people from anywhere in the world and there would not be a need for interpreters.
This had made it easy for the people in this passage to communicate with each other.
It also made the increase in knowledge much greater.
Making bricks and building a tower that reached the sky was a possibility because of the ability to communicate with each other easily.
D.
In v. 1 we are told that the whole world had one language.
I am wondering if this ability to do things had become their god.
In v. 6 God says, "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.”
This statement leads me to believe that God had been removed from the lives of these people.
In v. 9, “The Lord confused the language of the whole world.”
In v. 1 the whole world has one language, and in v. 9 the language of the whole world is confused.
E.
God disciplined these people because their ability to do things had become more important than God himself.
So God choose to make their ability to communicate much more difficult.
We need to be careful that our abilities don’t become more important than God.
A person who is smart of talented still needs God.
They may be hard to convince of that, but they do need God.
We should be careful that we are not pulled into that trap.
It seems that in our society we are slipping that way.
We have more technology than any generation before us.
It seems like the parts of the world where God is really working is in the places where technology is at its least.
Don’t let your technology stand in the way of your relationship with God.
Issue II.
Location
A. In v. 4 the people are saying to each other that they do not want to “be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
This might not seem like a big deal, but when Noah came out of the ark God told Noah two times, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.”
They were to fill the earth.
They could not very well fill the earth if they stayed in one place all of the time.
They needed to spread out.
They did not want to do that, so they choose to disobey the command of God.
B.
Their desire to not be scattered over the face of the whole earth seems to indicate that they knew what God wanted.
Instead they choose to do what they wanted.
They decided they would rather stay in one place.
The purposely choose to disobey God.
They choose to do things their way rather than to obey God.
C.
There are likely two events which would have followed the flood that would allow this dispersion to take place.
First, following such a great catastrophe there would be tons of debris floating on the waters.
These could have created floating islands that would have been carried by ocean currents.
Animals could have climbed on these islands and floated all over the world.
This would explain how kangaroos got from the Middle East to Australia.
A meteorologist has hypothesized that following such a dramatic change in the earth would cause climate changes that would introduce an ice age.
This ice age might have created some ice bridges in the northern hemisphere that would make it possible for animals and humans to move from Asia to North America.
This would clearly open us tremendous avenues of possibility.
D.
The real key here is that God told Noah and his family that they should be “fruitful” and populate the earth.
It almost sounds like a minor offense.
The truth is any time we rebel against God we are causing a major offense.
I don’t see that there are misdemeanors or felonies in God’s system of justice.
There is sin.
These people choose to sin and God disciplined them.
He forced them to do what he told them to do.
E.
Please do not take the commands of God lightly.
It is a serious offense whenever you rebel against God.
We rebel against God whenever we sin.
We might find that God will choose to correct us when we do wrong.
Issue III.
Legacy
A. This gets into some pride that these people were dealing with.
They knew if they stayed together they would be able to accomplish more.
If they put their heads together they could make great things.
So they decide that they will make a name for themselves.
They will bring honor and attention to them.
It is not something they are hoping to do for God.
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