Genesis 11

Good morning everyone…Today is such a great day isn’t it? I mean we have kids here going back to their teachers . We have had a sweet time of worship and prayer. We are joined by our friends online as part of our extended Spiritual family. We get to be together again and show our care and concern for our brothers and sisters. We get to open the Scripture and see what God has for us in his Word. I mean, today is just such a great day…Amen. :)

Now, I want to tell you a story that I experienced when I moved to Puerto Rico. You see I was like 19 years old and I needed a job to be able to start and rebuild a new life for myself. You see, when I first moved to Puerto Rico I truly only planned on being there for maybe 6 months. My plan was to live there long enough to save up some money and then move back to Dallas and set myself up with a new life. I had everything taken care of and I had it all figured out…You know, like every 19 year old man that has ever lived. Anyway, that was the idea…However, in order to save up money you have to have a job. Well, when I first moved I was instructed to just kind of hang out and get the lay of the land, so I did that. In other words, I mooched off mom and dad for the first couple of months. Then I finally started working for a guy named Mark Cody. Now Mark would end up playing a pretty significant part of my life, but I didn’t know that at the time.

Anyway, I went to work for Mark because he owned a company called Cody Electric. Mark was an electrician and I was going to learn electrical. I had worked in plumbing and roofing, and carpenters, so now I was going to learn electrical…all was good in my plan. For the first project that I worked for Mark, he had me installing a drop ceiling in the nursery at the church. He had me do the whole thing, I had to build the grid, install the tiles, install lighting, as well as the vents for the rooms. That was a task that took me probably close to a month I would say. It was pretty intense, but it was already teaching me some about electrical as well as the way that Mark would expect me to pull my own weight.

Then something else happened…Once I finished the project at the church, I assumed he was going to put me on another solo project like that. I kind of enjoyed just going in and getting my work done without any distractions and I could just focus and work. I listened to the radio and life was good…Well, anyway, eventually he had to put me on a job that made the company money, right. He had donated the work for the church nursery, but an employee cannot cost the employer more money than they pay him or that company will go out of business…So, the next thing he did was have me drive to the sight of a new Pep Boys that was being built. You see, Cody Electric had the contract to build all of the new Pep Boys and Walgreens store on the island, and they were going up like crazy. So anyway, he has me meet him there and then he introduces me to the sight foreman and to the electrical crew chief and then he leaves. So, Im a new employee for the company and they assume that I know what Im doing, so they tell me to go do something....There was a problem though, I had no idea what they were saying. You see, if you don’t remember this in Puerto Rico the primary language is Spanish. This is not a language that I have spoken since I slept through Spanish 2 in 11th grade. So now I have to figure out how to do things Ive never done in a language I don’t speak....that is not an easy process, let me tell you. There I was a tall skinny white dude that had no idea what I was doing…I worked hard and I was made fun of alot, but eventually I actually worked my way up to being a crew chief on another job a few years later. It was a cool experience, but let me just tell you how confusing it is to be working on a job site and not know the language of the people working right next to you...

Well, that actually ties right into what we are going to talk about today. You see we have been going through the book of Genesis so that we can understand where everything came from and how we got to where we are now. We have been looking through these first few chapters and seeing how God took 2 people and turned them into many nations. Then over the last few weeks we have seen how God brought judgement to his creation as they all forgot him and worshiped their own gods and their own ideas. We read that every thought of mankind is evil from birth…That’s harsh, but true. Well now that we have gotten to this point and we have seen some of the big events of what would be called the primeval time period. Now, God is going to zoom in and allow us to see how he does what he does. Remember last week we read that the sons of Noah scattered across the known world? We saw that some went to the Africa area and some went up into the European areas and some went out east. Well, today we get to see why and how they actually scattered. You see, they didn’t just wake up one day and say, “Hey, lets move”…No, there was a big event that took place and then they were scattered. That is what we are going to talk about today...

The Tower of Babel

Ok, I know you all were ready for that, but let’s go ahead and read this passage and see what God has to share with us this morning

Genesis 11:1–9 (ESV)

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

Whew, that is alot going on here to be honest. As I was reading this past week I really was struggling with what I should share and what I should hang onto for another time or another sermon another day…There is just truly so much rich Gospel information here that I want to share, but if I get it all out, we will be here till 1 and I know we all have things going on this afternoon…so, let’s start off by looking at

Man’s Rebellion

Ok, so let’s take a quick recap of the really big idea so far. Adam and Eve rebelled against God and God redeemed them. Later Cain killed Abel and God spared his life. Then the Sethites, who is the Godly line of Adam, ignored God and intermarried with the evil Cainites and there was evil everywhere. This all happened do to man compromises truth for sin…does that sound familiar? So after the Sethites and Cainites have intermarried and they have completely left all worship of God. Well, God sends a flood to wipe out every living thing and starts over with Noah and his family as they were faithful. However, after the flood, the descendants of Noah and his three sons refilled the earth, but even this was not without rebellion.

You see, last week we talked about how the children of Noah scattered and filled the Earth. The thing is that they didn’t really do that on their own…they needed a little push and that is what we are looking at this morning. The events in the Tower of Babel happened sometime between the end of ch 9 and the beginning of ch 10. Here is the problem that we see…God had commanded the people to be fruitful and multiple and fill the Earth. Buuuut, they decided to all move to Nimrod’s city of Babylon. This was a blatant rebellion against what God had commanded them to do.

They decided to build a tower that was known as a ziggurat. This is a pyramid like structure that was built with a walkway and steps around it to the top. On the top there would be an shrine that was dedicated to a god or goddess. Now this does need to be clarified. This tower they were building was not meant to get them to heaven, but instead of entice a god to come to them. This is a project that will be known throughout history as a pivotal event. Again, this is a blatant rebellion against God.

These are people that are resisting God’s command to scatter and repopulate the earth. Motivated potentially by fear as well as pride (which is far more damaging), they decided to build a city and a great ziggurat and stay together. But even more, they wanted to make a name for themselves so that others would admire them and perhaps come and join them. Their purpose statement was the devil’s lie in Eden: “You will be like God”. You see, they said we will do this and make a name for ourselves…We want other to know who we are.

Now, they were truly united in what they were doing. They had one language with one vocabulary, living in one place with one purpose. They were motivated and hard working…the only thing missing from this scenario is the approval of God.Their pride was leading them away from God, just like our pride leads us away from God. Now, what is our goal? I mean as believers, what is our goal?

2 Corinthians 5:9 (ESV)

So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.

Our goal is to please God. That means that their goal should have been to please God as well. In order to please God, all they had to do was obey his command and be fruitful and multiple over the face of the Earth. However, they had a better plan in order to get their own glory, kind of like Eve had her own plan to get her own glory…Do you remember how that worked out for her? Let’s take a look at

God’s Response

This is where we can think about what God did to this group of people. God came down against this group of people in the same way that he has throughout history and in the same way as he promises in Scripture. You see,

Proverbs 16:18 (ESV)

Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before

a fall.

Pride always leads to heartache. If you haven’t figured that out, you will…I have seen this play out in my own life as well as the lives of others. This is even something that Jesus warned his followers about in

Matthew 23:12 (ESV)

Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

When the people of Babel said, “Let’s go up.”…God said, “Let’s go down”. There is no investigation for God, this is said this way to show up the impact and the importance of what is going on. God is coming face to face with these other gods, just like he does in our lives today…God brought in confusion to the world, not becuase he was scared of what they might do, but becuase he wanted to give them a chance to repent. Remember Adam and Eve? God not only dealt with their sins, but he prevented future problems. We do that with our kids don’t we. They misbehave by playing a video game while they are supposed to be doing their homework and we remove their video games from the. That is logical. By confusing their language and scattering them over all the earth, God spared their lives and gave them opportunity to return to Him.

So there are a few things that are pretty cool that I want to share with you becuase words matter, and we can see some cool things when we look into the words that are written. The word “Babel” means “Gate of the gods”. Now the word Babel also sounds like the Hebrew name, which will become the name that everyone remembers, ”Balal” which means confussion. Do you see what God did here? Instead of the people making a name for themselves and becoming known throughout all people, God changed the name of the project from gate of the gods, to confusion. However, becuase we know that God is not the author of confusion, we can see that God sometimes uses confusion to humble us. Then we also have Shem, which means “name” in Hebrew, and Abraham as a descendant of Shem was promised by God that God would make his name great. You see, man cannot do what only God can do. Do we know the names of the worker of the tower of Babel? Nope, but Abraham has a name that is revered by Jews, Muslims, and Christians. There is a huge difference between mankind’s “We will make our name great!” and God’s “I will make your name great!” amen? Even today when people think of Babel we think og confusion, rapid talking…This is where the term babeling came from.

Throughout Scripture Babylon symbolizes worldly pride, moral corruption, and defiance against God. Babylon represents the world system that opposes God, hates Jesus Christ, and appeals to the baser sinful appetites of the human nature. Look at what God does when these are the choices we make. Turn over to

Romans 1:21–25 (ESV)

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools...Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts... because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

You see, when God divided up the nations through the Tower of Babel, he gave them over to their own gods. Basically, the Lord said that if you want to go worship other gods, then go for it. God disinherited these nations and these peoples and he focused in on one family through Abram. Now, even though Israel did not yet exist, God, in his sovereignty, directed the nations where they would need to be according to his purposes.

I will add that this is the place that the Jehovah’s witness will claim that they boarded another ark and traveled to the America’s with the patriarch called Jared and the nation called the Jaradites. Now, there is zero Biblical evidence for this except for where they have literally changed the words of Scripture in order to add themselves into their translation. Therefore, Jehovah’s Witness, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are a cult and while this is a group with high morals, they do not believe in the same Gospel or the same Jesus that you and I believe.

Lastly as we close out for the morning I want to you think about how every generation has our own “towers”. Maybe they were the boats to a “new land” or skyscrapers to show the technological advancement. Maybe we see mega-corporations that span the globe or dominate the internet, the idea is always the same…We will make a name for ourselves.

However, as Christians we have another mission. Instead of thinking “we will make a name for ourselves”…our mission is to “Proclaim the name of God” in everything we do. The Holy Spirit is using the church to bring about reconciliation to the nations. Look at the Pentecost and think that the early church was the beginning of a reversal of the Tower of Babel. Eventually we will see that every nation and every tribe will call to the name of the Lord. Look at

Revelation 7:9 (ESV)

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands,

When this day comes, the judgement of Babel will be done away with…the question is, will you be there? Each person must make a choice for themselves. Will we identify with Babylon and worldly pride, or will we identify with Jerusalem as the heavenly bride? Will I seek to make a name for myself, or will I seek to make Jesus famous in everything I do?

Listen, this morning we are focusing on Christ together as a family…but what happens when we leave? What happens when we walk out of these doors and we are heading to work tonight or tomorrow? What happens when we leave this building and we are hanging out at school with people that potentially aren’t interested in Christ? Are you willing to make Jesus famous, or are you trying to make a name for yourself?

If you are here this morning or joining us online, let me encourage you to reach out if you are struggling in any way. Let me encourage you to send me a message and schedule a time to get together and talk about tearing down that tower in your life, or maybe you are ready to hear a little more about Jesus. Whatever it is, reach out and let’s get together and talk. Listen, do not let today pass you by without making that commitment that you need to make to your Lord.

Next week we are going to be starting a new series and moving away from Genesis. However, the truths we have been talking about will be important to keep in your mind as we start our series called “We are the Church” 2022....

Let’s pray