Worshiping the One True God

Lesson Connection

If We Build It

We’ve heard a lot of ministry about Noah and the ark and his family of late. This morning I want to talk about what comes next, but I also don’t want to leave Noah too far behind...

I want to present a theory to you today...

Suppose that long ago, a man by the name of Nimrod was thinking about the short history of humanity’s troubles:

“We had a Paradise, but what happened to it? Our enemy got in. We built cities everywhere to defend against our enemies - they could defend themselves against powerful tyrants. But then even the weak men began to dream of how they could destroy others. Then, our God destroyed them all in the Flood. Our father, Noah, built an ark to escape. He used wisdom and built a giant structure, mathematically precise. What if...”

And perhaps it was at this point in thought, Nimrod could have made a different decision. He could have decided to follow God and let God be the builder and maker of a great city. Nimrod could have been Abraham (his story comes directly after the failure of Nimrod!).

But that’s not what happened.

Nimrod decided the fundamental problem of the human race was they allowed themselves to live at the mercy of God instead of uniting together and becoming independent of God.

And he may have further thought:

“What if we take the ingenuity of Noah and the Paradise of Eden and combine them with the cities of Cain? What if we roll all of the best ideas into one and work together on a universal scale and make a paradise city built on the technological principles of Noah. It will withstand any flood; it will elevate man to the Paradise of Heaven; it will bring us all together in mutual cooperation. We will be so busy making ourselves gods that we won’t have time to squabble and fight over altars and fields and wells and silver. And… and… we will call our city… the Gate-of-God!”

Those Who Built the Tower of Babel were Filled with Pride

They Sought to Make a Name for Themselves

Genesis 11:4 NKJV

4 And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

There are a few phrases in this verse that seem to stand out:

“Let us make a name for ourselves.” The words “let us” were the very same words that God Himself used in creating man! “Let us create man in our own image...” It is as if the people at Babel were trying to remake man in their own image.

The phrase “lest we be scattered abroad” reveals the fearmongering that often makes the foundation of false religions. The necessary ingredients for a successful false religion are a threat and a proud and idolatrous promise to neutralize that threat.

The Ignored God and Chose Their Own Way

It’s important to notice that this narrative follows the stories of human failures and God stepping in. We might say that everything surrounding the building of Babel was an attempt to build a secular religion by copying, on some level, faithful Noah’s religion.

But these people only were able to copy Noah’s technology and didn’t bother with Noah’s faith. To really sum it up, the Tower of Babel was an early attempt at a secular religion, one that acts like true faith but substitutes the rule of God with the rule of man.

secular - non-religious, worldly.

So, truly, they were ignoring God and going their own way.

We Must Never Ignore God or His Word

The way of the people of Babel led to where humanity’s way always leads: confusion and division.

And, this is very important… the religion of Babel is still alive today. As a society we may well be, at this moments in the middle of yet another Tower-of-Babel project.

Video: “Elevate” feat. Jonathan McClintock

Pride Will Destroy A Relationship With God

Pride Goes Before Destruction

Proverbs 16:18 gives us that famous warning that pride comes right before destruction. And it’s true on not only the individual level (for you and me), it’s also true on the society level.

Our culture is ignoring the warnings of the past and arrogantly building its own version of Babel. This tower, which is being built in an attempt to unify human beings, will ultimately lead to greater confusion.

God Resists the Proud

So this pride that they were so nastily displaying, was actually going to produce even worse results for them, because God always works against the prideful. The Bible says that He “resists the proud”.

You’ve probably experienced opposition in your life. We all have experienced opposition in many forms, ranging from mild resistance (a car full of people disagreeing over where to go for dinner) to more powerful forms of resistance.

You probably remember what it was like to have a parent resist what you were trying to do. When we were little, our parents were simply too strong and had too much control of circumstances for us to carry on for long without caving in.

Take this to another level: imagine being opposed by, say, an angel or a demon. No amount of work on our part alone could overcome such power. Yet the angel or demon too is merely subordinate to an even greater power.

What if God Himself opposed you? What hope could you possibly have? What power could you call upon to assist you against such a terror?

And this is who the proud are up against. When pride enters the equation, failure and destruction are no longer just a possibility. They are a certainty.

We Must Fight Against Pride

Before God becomes our opponent, we would do well to resist anything God resists.

We are called to walk humbly before both God and man. The apostle Paul taught the Philippian congregation to esteem others as better than themselves. Is this the view you take of the average person in your life? Do you regard that person - any person - as better than yourself?

The Apostolic way is the way of humility. We are not even to seek equality for ourselves individually. Though we hope our government recognizes everyone as equals, our spiritual task is to submit ourselves to others. One way of ensuring we don’t turn God into an enemy is to humble ourselves before everyone we encounter.

Human culture is bound in a seemingly endless cycle of trying to forge its own way forward. But God’s ways are above our ways. Let’s take a look at our own times and consider how the practice of God’s Word has led the way forward.

Show image: “Is our world adopting a holiness view of men and women?”

Is our world adopting a holiness view of men and women?

Recently, important news companies have produced a steady stream of articles denouncing the sexual exploitation of women. One article complained that the NFL profits from having cheerleaders dress provocatively; another accused Hollywood culture of depicting women as mere sexual objects, compelling women to dress (or, more precisely, undress) provocatively; another column criticized Victoria’s Secret for parading nearly naked women around, like animals in a zoo; and another article was appalled at the fact that our culture is so depraved that the magazines one sees in grocery store lines profit in direct proportion to the amount of skin the model reveals.

Additionally, you might notice how focused our cultural commentators are these days on proper male conduct. Off-color jokes are now off-limits. On campuses, front offices are enforcing strict, no touching, no propositioning, no ogling, no flirting ordinances. Consensual relationships between a man in a position of authority and an employee or student are potentially fireable offenses.

We could go on and on...

Where are we? What is happening here? It’s quite strange… if we close our eyes real tight and use just a bit of imagination, these publications almost sound like old-time revival preachers of years past!

But this is also confusing...

I’m old enough to remember that these are the same publications that, even as recently as ten years ago, mocked Christians for teaching modesty and sexual purity. Hadn’t they called us “silly puritan fundamentalists” and “fanatical prison wardens with a Bible in hand” for frowning upon cheerleading?

Maybe you well remember these same writers saying that Christians who detested celebrities’ loose lifestyles were holding back some neurotic obsession with sex. And now that #MeToo has come, along with a few other cultural shifts, their tune has changed a bit...

So what I want to submit to you, is that maybe there is a pattern of sorts, here.

Could the world’s great discoveries simply be re-discoveries of what the biblically-based church began living a long time ago??? The world’s idea of progress is merely to rehash what the church has taught from the beginning! When the church practices holiness, the world mocks it; but then like expert antiquers, years later the world goes through the old houses of belief, picks through our beauties, and brings them out to the marketplace, trying to pass them off as products of its own genius!

This might be an application of the Book of Psalms where it says the stone the builders rejected has “become the chief cornerstone”. Maybe this has been the nature of the relationship between the world and the church all along. It seems that worldly progressivism is always about fifty years behind the times!

The worlds treasures are only ever secondhand. And every day the world has to start over from scratch: all of its temporary, fragile work being blown over and destroyed by the merest breath of the Holy Ghost! Its converts almost always refusing to be real disciples of the devil; its leaders rarely being anything more than lukewarm for the doctrines of the world, constantly being tempted to give themselves over to the faith by the awesomeness of Creation and the goodness of God!!!

God Responds to Sincere Worship

Sincere Worship is Birthed in Humility

You have praise, and then there is worship.

Worship is essentially the overflow of the heart. The humble heart is full of grace, gratitude, and wisdom. Where there is humility, God’s work will soon be in evidence.

Consider, for example, some of our own Pentecostal history:

You will experience a bit of deja vu is you reread an account of the Azusa Street Revival, particularly the way the columnists for major publications (like the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle) understood the goings on in that old Azusa Street warehouse. By and large, they were condescending and trash-talking, especially of the face, that the Azusa Street congregation consisted of blacks, whites, and Hispanics. Mixed worship troubled the writers!!! One hundred years later, columnists for the same… exact… publications… cannot shout loud enough their support for the cause of minorities.

But all of that newfound virtue they have… it’s merely secondhand virtue, an easy virtue to practice now that the church has shown the way.

Where was the San Francisco Chronicle in 1905 when Pentecost was but a tender branch, a root out of dry ground? The truth is: they were standing where the world always stands on important issues - in the dead center of public opinion!

Let me tell you: the Christian church has been endowed with a wisdom far beyond its years. We are a part of something greater than the sum of our members! There are countless examples of the church partaking in a wisdom its people didn’t all completely understand, even while it was being preached. We follow the leading of the Holy Ghost wherever He goes and remind the world that every spirit must be tried!

The church quite often practices principles that the world will need a century (or more) to understand. And when the world finally does understand, it will invariably act like it invented those practices and treat the Church like the enemy of progress.

And THERE IS THAT PRIDE!

I Will Worship Only the One True God

Paul said that this would be the way of things - the Church in front, piloting the way to a new creation, as the old creation groans, waiting for the sons of God (Romans 8:19). He said:

1 Corinthians 10:11 KJV 1900

11 Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.

Notice that he didn’t say the church had come to the ends of the world; rather, the ends had come to the church!

But what ends was Paul talking about? He was referring to the eschaton, or the age in which the Holy Ghost rules - the age of peace; the age of innocence; an age which the prophets characterized as a time when the wolf would lay down with the lamb, the child would walk unharmed over the snake hole, the swords of war would be transformed into instruments of agriculture, and the reaper would have so much work to do that he would still be out in the fields gathering when it was time to sow again.

In other words, in the eschaton, the struggle between races will end. Wars will cease. There will be a fullness of life and peace. The people would be skilled in the art of goodness and forget the art of war.

This age, Paul insisted, is what has come to the church - the future. The church does not have to wait for the future; the future has already come to the church. The reason the church is always out ahead of the world is because the future - through the gifts of the Spirit - literally reaches back into the present and equips church with power the world will only know in the age to come.

And if you’ve ever been warned or become aware of something in prayer before it ever happened, you have experienced this!!!

Knowing God has made for our end to be glorious, we will choose to live our lives in worship to the one true God!

Internalizing the Message

Time Travel

Just suppose for a minute, that time travel were possible and a traveler carrying technology from the 21st century was to go back to the 11th century and teach, say, the tiny kingdom of Armenia how to use and create this future technology. Before long, Armenia, no matter how small, would be leading the world.

Just so, the Spirit has given the church gifts that will only be fully available at the end of time. The gifts of the Spirit empower the church to live and be witness to that blessed future in the present.

And here’s something more, if we are given the tools of the future, we are also required to live the ethics of that end-of-time kingdom.

That’s why Paul became so rankled by church members going to a pagan judge to sue a brother. He heard about this kind of thing, and immediately his mind went to the future. he didn’t say that going to the pagan court diminishes our witness (even though there is truth there). He didn’t complain that taking a lawsuit before a pagan judge was far beneath the present dignity of our future occupation.

This is also why Paul was so adamant that the church be made up of one people under one covenant and Lord. Many of the people around him wanted one covenant under the Messiah for the Jews and another for the Gentiles, but Paul said no. In the age to come, the wolf lays down with the lamb, or, in the words of Ephesians 2:14-15:

Ephesians 2:14–15 KJV 1900

14 For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; 15 Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace;

Paul was always thinking about how the church is living the future, Spirit-ruled age in the present!

This is exactly why, when Azusa Street came, a characteristic of the age to come was present from the start. A strange, other-worldly peace between races had settled unbidden over the people there - our spiritual forefathers!

Right in the middle of Jim Crow evil, God decided to put on a show - not a minute before, not a minute after. In the fullness of time, He stepped into an era steeped in old-fashioned worldliness, took a reality that will be the law of the land in the future, and bestowed it upon a small gathering of people He called His church.

My fellow Apostolic... don’t trouble yourself that your church is so different from the world. In this present age, that’s the whole point. In time, future Babel will secretly admire your stand so much that it will try to build its own religion out of it!