1 Genesis 11: Preaching/Teaching

Succeeding at wrong things!

Our Families mission is to,

“Know God and make God known.“

I want this to be true of me all the time but I have to fight to make this true of who I am.

Youth Sports might be the most growth experience I have ever gone through:

Recently I went to watch my boys play. And you go into these games you want your kids to do well, you want their teammates to do well. You want to win.

My kids are good basketball players but you get into the moment and for some reason you expect every one of their games to like they are Kevin Durant.

We are getting destroyed and no one is playing well, I am angry the parents are angry, seriously I have seen fights break out with the parents at these games before.

I am leaving the game thinking our hope as a family is to,

I start thinkint to myself where was God in any of that

Know God and make him known did not happen @ this AAU basketball game.

But in this moment my real passion is that my kids would dominate and we would be the best basketball players in the world, and it would be all about us and how great their dad is.

Instead of worrying about pursing God and his Kingdom, all of the sudden I am preoccupied with pursuing the world’s version of success: the American dream of comfort, and security And of glory for me and my kids.

How do we so easily get caught up in succeeding in the wrong things?

Is success to you the American dream?

Or is success to you loving and knowing God?

What if you defined success by if you are knowing God and making him known?

But even as Christ followers This is hard to live out regularly.

We have seen in this Genesis study that man is made in the image of God. We were made to know and enjoy God

Mankind was created for greatness.

But because of sin:

Mankind is capable of terrible things.

History is a living testimony how far whole cultures and countries can go when it comes to succeeding at the wrong things.

You don’t have to look much futher than WW2. Hitler brought hope to a hopeless Germany only to turn Germany into a hell on earth during that time. Over 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. It is estimated that 75 million people in all were killed as a result of WW2.

It does not take long to see what can happen when a nation or civilization goes a way from God.

We saw last week that the initial human race went away from God and it went so bad that God literally brought a flood wipe out the huge mess.

Today I want us to be successful in our spiritual lives.

We are going to define spiritual success as knowing God and making him known.

We can live a life here and now of knowing God and making him known.

Today I want to give us some landmines that that we must navigate so we can succeed spiritually.

The first landmine we must navigate so we can [Know God and make him known] or succeed spiritually is:

1. Pride (1-4).

Setting:

Genesis 11:1–2 NAS

Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words. It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.

Can you picture there only being one language on the whole earth.

They found a place that seemed good and decided to make their home there.

They settled in a place in Mesopotamia.

Pride Defined

The Concise Dictionary of Christian Theology Pride

Pride Usually, excessive self-esteem, together with a looking down on others. On occasion the term may refer to a proper sense of self-esteem and satisfaction in one’s well-being and accomplishments.

But we all know a prideful person when we see one.

Pride is a funny in this regard. When you think you are not prideful that is a very sign that you are.

The real problem of pride is that we put it in ourselves and not in God.

We see a prideful action!

Genesis 11:3 NASB95

They said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.” And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar.

They wanted unity but the wrong kind of unity. LET US-this unity was based on THEM and not on GOD.

I am not a kill joy it is fine to have unity in different things, I think that we see the Astros are back in the world series and everyone is rallying around them, it is not bad to have some unity, but ultimately the unity God has created us for is unity around him. This is called fellowship.

We see the action, but now we are going to see why they acted this way.

They wanted to make their name great instead of God’s.

Genesis 11:4 NASB95

They said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

Ryrie Study Bible Expanded Edition: New American Standard Bible, 1995 Update Genesis 11

11:4 a city, and a tower was built in order to prevent people from scattering through the earth, in direct defiance of God’s command (9:1). This tower, unlike ziggurats, which were built for the purpose of worshiping a deity, served these people as a rallying point and symbol of their fame.

Without even thinking about it we do this all the time. We are more worried about making ourselves great than making God great.

Don’t settle for trying to make your name great instead of praising the greatest name that have ever been uttered.

In that moment on the basketball court my motive was not to see God glorified. It was to see my boys glorified and everyone to think how great of player my kids were. I wanted to be Tiger Woods dad and live through my kids. I was acting out of pride.

What areas of your life are you prideful in right now?

Is it at your house?

At your job and career?

What are some areas of pride that you need to do battle with?

Making their name great was directly tied to disobeying God. Remember what God said in Genesis 1.

Genesis 1:28 “God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.””

What they are saying in this verse is if WE build this we will disobey God.

Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible 2. The dispersion at Babel 11:1–9

Both motive and object were ungodly. God had instructed man to fill the earth (1:28), to spread over the whole planet.

Application:

Are there areas in your life right now where pride is evident?

Remember we just saw that when we are prideful we disobey God.

I want my passion to be to know God and make him known.

After that basketball game I had to go to God and confess to God, Lord I was prideful at that game. My heart was not right. I was looking at success directly to our family getting glory and not you bringing glory to God.

Where is pride keeping you from knowing God and making him known?

Take a minute to yourself and a confess a place in your life where you have been prideful recently?

The next landmine we must navigate so we can [Know God and make him known] or succeed spiritually is:

2. Avoid the wrong target (5-8).

How do we avoid the wrong targets.

We have to know what God values.

What does God consider success.

Genesis 11:5 NASB95

The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built.

One thing we have been reminded of in these first 11 chapters is God is omniscient and omnipresent. What in the world does this mean:

He knows everything

He sees everything

This should terrify us a little. But it should also amaze us that the God of the universe who knows everything about us good the bad and the ugly and that he still loves us.

Let’s see how God evaluates them.

Genesis 11:6 NASB95

The Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them.

He literally says that nothing they do will fail. Would this not be awesome if God said nothing you do will fail. But this is not a good thing, because they are failing at the wrong things.

Story about guy who succeeded but his family did now want anything to do with him. Here is what he said. I realize my whole life I was climbing a ladder on the highest building making it to the top only to realize that my ladder was on the wrong building.

When we hit the wrong targets we are in danger of putting our ladder on the wrong building and succeeding.

We know that God sees it all and we know that they disobeyed God, so how does God handle this.

How do we avoid the wrong targets.

We embrace God as our ultimate judge.

Ultimately every one will give an account before God on their lives.

Genesis 11:7–8 NASB95

“Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city.

How were they judged:

They were scattered abroad

Their city was stopped

Their plans failed.

Ultimately all will be judged by God.

Instead of worrying how others judge you and what this world thinks of us we should look to God as our judge.

Salvation-Either you have trusted in the finished work of Jesus Christ or you have not. Those who have will be forgiven of their sins and spend eternity with the king of kings and lord of lords and those who do not will spend eternity disconnected from God.

Rewards-I think a way I look at it is this: All who have sincerely accepted God’s gracious gift of what Jesus did on the cross are going to heaven. But there are rewards. Believers are called to build their lives on eternal things. I kind of think of rewards like this: Those who build their lives are eternal things are like those people who graduated with honors. When I graduated high school and college I definitely did not graduate with any special recognitions. And at the time you kind of act too cool to care. Those with honors did not graduate more than I did, but it was almost like their was this sense of achievement.

Application:

Are you hitting God’s target of knowing him and making him known.

RECAP

Church we can live our lives in such a way that we are going to know God and make him known, or we can live like the people in this passage where we make it all about us.

Making disciples is all about multiplication.

Genesis 11:9 NASB95

Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth.

We want to be a church that multiplies and makes disciples.

FBC in Conway

God will even break up churches because we were made to multiply.

Even though man had messed it up our purpose was still the same to be his image bearers to the ends of the earth.

Hab 2:14 ““For the earth will be filled With the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, As the waters cover the sea.”

Revelation 7:9 “After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands;”

Put this story under pt. 2