Babel will destroy you
Genesis 11:1-9
Introduction- Good morning online church.
I am glad that you have joined us this morning. If you would turn in your bible or bible app to the very first book in the bible Genesis and then go to chapter 11.
Genesis which means beginning is God’s account of creation and answers some hard questions of who we are and where we came from.
It certainly is not a book that evolutionist want to read or have you read because it tells us very quickly that we did not begin as an ape and turn into man. No, it talks about creation, and then our fall from grace because of rebellion against the very God that created us.
In chapter 11, our text this morning gives us a glimpse of why we now have so many different languages in the world today when only Noah and his family were smart enough to get on the ark of safety that the Lord had provided.
I want to talk a minute about the tower of Babel - What it stood for and what the problem was that God had with the people to tear down the tower.
Prayer-
Genesis 11:1-9
There is great debate of the tower and great debate of what it means and who was the architect if it did exist.
I read through tons of comments of who was right and who was wrong.
I did see that the Smithsonian has joined the side of believing it was an actual building that existed because of bricks found in Iran, the modern day place where they have remnants of the building with King Nebuchadnezzar name inscribed on them.
On these bricks was found inscription of maker and a black tar substance in the bible called bitumen.
I believe it was an actual place with man’s attempted purpose of getting to heaven and God seeing their rebellion and separating the people to scatter and spread out instead of finding the plain of Shinar and building a city that was in total defiance of what God had instructed them to do.
For you doubters, I would ask you to see the lesson, the very important lesson that needed to be learned and why today we have some of the problems we have because we feel we know better than God. We think we can build ivory towers that will escape God judgment and we think we are smarter than God.
What person do you know that was created by God that thought he was smarter than God and who thought God would give up that seat to him? Satan… Satan thought that he would take over and come up with a plan to dethrone God. This is an illustration and model of how God has brought down the delusional thought of making a name for yourself that would be above God.
Isaiah 14:13-14 - But you said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit on the mount of assembly in the recesses of the north. 14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.
Daniel 4:28-30 – “All this happened to Nebuchadnezzar the king. 29 Twelve months later he was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon. 30 The king reflected and said, 'Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty? ”
History
They believe that the tower was built in the fourth generation after the flood which a generation is 40 years so they believe 160 years after the flood.
They had already stopped being reminded what the rainbow meant every time they saw it in the sky.
Noah had three boys Shem, Ham, and Japheth- Nations descended from them- Some good but mostly ones that rebelled against God.
The debate is where the language barrier begun by the three descendants and then nations.
Chapter 10 Table of nations already saw a language barrier and chapter 11 is where the Lord breaks the unity of one language- to me simple, chapter 10 happened after chapter 11- The Lord can word it anyway He wants too!
I think we need to look at the text for what it is and what it is trying to tell us.
Let’s assume we don’t know it all and take God word at being God’s word- What lesson can we learn today?
Mesopotamia is in modern day Iraq- Parts in Turkey and Syria. The tower was erected in Shinar. Noah’s ark landed on Mt Ararat which is in turkey.
Let figure out what we know so we can see what we can learn.
Illustration Moments-
We all have moments that are etched in our mind-they are very real to us and we know what we were doing and some cases what we were wearing when these events happened. These memories we do not forget and we sometimes share them with others- the older we are our memories are someone else’s history. Some remember the day Kennedy was shot- others it is history read in a book. 911, School shootings are national memories we remember and share.
Some are personal like children’s birth, love ones gone, marriages.
Sometimes our moments change the direction of where we are headed in life.
Sometimes they become a path to a new path.
For the people building the tower of Babel they had forgot in four short generations what God had done for them… for their relatives- Great Grandpa Shem and Ham and were now a part of a people in rebellion with God. Does that sound familiar to you today?
Wesley Bible Note-
We as humans are always attempting to make a name for ourselves.
Much of scripture addresses this problem, which appears at all times and places in an astonishing array of masquerades.
Idolatry is perhaps the first order sin, our deadly fundamental mistake as humans-honoring something other than God with our primary allegiance.
Often we claim center stage for ourselves trusting in our derivative powers above all others while forgetting that we are creatures only, not the creator.
Sometimes this forgetfulness is passive, other times it is aggressive. At all times it is destructive of our relationship with God and one another.
Remember….. Every time they saw a rainbow it was to remind them of God’s unconditional promise to never destroy the world again with a global flood. Yet, it didn’t take long for them to look inward to their own genius and choose to try to outsmart God.
The structure - a tower - would be a symbol of their pride and arrogance and rebellion against God as well as their united power and self-sufficiency.
They didn’t need God to rule over them—they could rule themselves; they could reach the heavens on their own terms, with their own hands, by their own means, using their own skills - not to honor God and not for the glory of God, but to bring honor and glory for themselves.
This grand scheme was a deliberate rejection of God’s instruction to “fill the earth” {Genesis 9:1} and a flagrant example of the insidious pride of man - “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; lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth."
Notice the words of the ancient historian Josephus: “He also said he would be revenged on God if he should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower too high for the waters to be able to reach and that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers” (Antiquities of the Jews, Book 1, Chapter 4). God were smarter than you, we will build a tower where you can’t flood us again.
Evolutionists would like us to believe that early humans scraped their knuckles on the ground and that it took 10’s of thousands of years for man to venture out of their caves and advance beyond “hunter/gatherer”.
Who knows how long before they were capable of writing or having advanced thoughts required to construct civilizations with cities at their center.
We are living in an accelerated times- advancement in the last 100 years is at an all time high!
Technology is moving so fast that by the time something comes out it is in the process of being obsolete.
Tremendous strides for good and evil
Charles Duell commissioner of the Patent office in 1899 said “everything that can be invented has been invented. That quote is out of context but you can see that the advancement was much slower than what it is today.
While it is true, that our advancements have been rapid in the last 100 years compared to the previous, say, 500 years, it is a mistake to assume that technological capabilities are restricted to us “moderns”. No doubt, Noah would have brought a library of information with him into the ark as evidenced by the fact that it only took 4 generations after the flood, for a people to build great cities and have the capability to think up and execute the building of a tower that “reached to heaven.”
God had gone looking for Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:9 and saw the extent of man’s sin in Genesis 6:5. Now He went to see what humans were up to on the Plain of Shinar and came to an interesting conclusion: “They all speak the same language and if this is what they are capable of now, nothing will be impossible for them in the future.”
God knew that He must, once again intervene. This time He disrupted their plans in a single step. One language became many.
Today there are over 7,117 languages world-wide {studyanylanguage.com}:
It was a genius move. (Like God needs man to tell Him that He is smart)
Construction stopped and the project abandoned as the people went in a desperate search to find anyone with whom they could communicate.
The result:
By default, the people would do what God had wanted them to do all along - fill the earth.
Global unity was broken - slowing the spread of sin.
Some went North. Some went South. Some went East. Some went West and they took their knowledge with them - effectively forcing every community to start over from scratch and contend with knowledge inequality. Now hunter/gatherers would live next door to tillers of the soil and builders of cities.
This is an important story.
It shows us how quickly sin and rebellion infiltrate and how deceitful the human heart really is - including yours and mine.
It shows us that even though we make grand plans and often, deliberately, step outside of the Will of God, He has the final say.
It shows us where the development of all future cultures begins. While we may have different skin colors and speak different languages and come from different cultures, our origins are the same. Deep within all our collective DNA is one post-flood father = NOAH.
Think about this- unity used in the wrong way is still destructive
There are different kinds of unity. Some types of unity are positive and beneficial, other types are very destructive. It cannot be assumed that simply invoking the word “unity” to justify a particular action makes that action OK.
The standard for beneficial unity is found in Jesus priestly prayer in John 17 – “So that they may be one as we are one.” (John 17:11 NIV emphasis supplied). The last part of that sentence, “As we are one,” makes the Trinity itself the measure of whether the unity we are pursuing is legitimate or not.
A call for unity does not automatically become legitimate because it is frequently repeated.
It does not automatically become biblical because it is issued from those high up in the church organization.
It does not automatically become legitimate because it enjoys majority support.
It does not automatically become legitimate because it is couched in religious terminology.
We have to ask, “Does it meet the acid test of John 17? Does it measure up to the kind of unity that exists within the Trinity?”
There is a big difference between man saying Let us come together and build a city and make a name for ourselves and a Holy God looking down and saying let us go down and confused (stop) what they are doing by breaking their sinful unity
Idolatry is rampant today but we don’t call it idolatry- we call it doing our own thing. We call it being who we were made to be. Be honest to who we are.
You may not have physically built a tower to God but we have all at one time or another thought we were smarter than God and defiant and rebellious.
The worship of someone or something other than God as though it were God. The first of the biblical Ten Commandments prohibits idolatry: “You shall have no other gods before me.”
Modern day idolatry is alive and well. Anything that you love, treasure, prioritize, identify with, or look to for need fulfillment outside of God, can be acting as an idol in your heart and life. What is this?
How do you know if something is an idol?
An easy way to test whether something in your life is an idol is to ask yourself, “Does this make me look good, or does it make God look good?” Ultimately, all people worship one of two beings: God, or themselves. All other false gods, religions, and idols are tools people use for their own purposes
Prayer-
