Sermon Tone Analysis

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:

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

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.