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Genesis

The Tower Of Babel

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January 7, 2024
Genesis 11
Steven Lee
Pastor for Preaching & Vision

Pride & Humility

The Glory of God

Sin & The Fall

Transcript

0:13Would you join me as we pray? Father in heaven, we want to know you from your word. So open our eyes now so that we would see wondrous things from this chapter so that we would be a people that is increasingly conformed to the image of your son Jesus, that we would think like him and live more like Him. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. So this morning we have the very first sermon of 2024. I know you have all been eagerly awaiting this like I have, and as we think about 2024, how are we feeling about it? Some of you are hopeful, some of you are feeling anxious, maybe a little fearful. It felt like just yesterday when we were talking about 20 20, 0, 20 21 will be better.

1:15And then we said that about 2022 and then we said that about 2023. And here we are in 2024. Well, this morning we come to Genesis 11, which is both a judgment upon the people, but it's also a word of hope for us today. Genesis 11 is the bridge from the creation and flood account all the way to Abraham. So think, think about the whole Bible like this. If you think of the whole Bible in four categories, creation, fall, redemption and recreation, you essentially have creation in Genesis one and two and then you had the fall and the effects of the fall from Genesis three through 11 and then from Genesis 12, all the way until the last two chapters of Revelation, you have the story of redemption.

2:11And so what we have this morning is the close of one chapter and it sets the stage for the next chapter. And what we'll see is that this chapter concludes on a note of hope. Now some of you don't remember where we left off before Advent, some of you don't remember what we said last week. That's okay. Uh, we were in the aftermath of the flood. God had rescued Noah and his three sons and their wives from worldwide destruction. But then Noah unfortunately gets drunk, passes out naked. This leads to the cursing of ham and the multiplication of Noah's three sons into 70 nations. And we noted that Genesis 11, one through nine explains how these 70 nations scattered and developed.

3:08So the story of the Tower of Babel, which you just heard read, really precedes the development of these 70 nations. Now the story of the Tower of Babel is a well-known story. It seems rather straightforward. The people built a tower to make a name for themselves. God comes down, sees them, scatters them, simple enough, right? Well not quite what the Tower of Babel reveals is that the folly of human achievement takes place apart from God. Tower of Babel reveals the folly of human achievement apart from God. So here's our plan. This morning we're gonna ask three questions, three main questions of our text.

3:57First, what is the significance of the story of the Tower of Babel? It's always a good question to ask whenever you're reading your Bible, why is it here and how does it contribute to our understanding of God, of our world and of us? So what is the significance of the Tower of Babel? Second, we read the fifth and sixth genealogy. So what's the significance of those two genealogies? Remember how Genesis is structured around the word generations or todo in the Hebrew? And so why do we get these two genealogies at the end of chapter 11? And then the third question is, what is the significance then for us this morning?

4:41If scripture is designed to make us more like Jesus, how does this really distant history inform how we think live and walk today? So our first question, what is the significance of the Tower of Babel? Verse one tells us that the whole earth had one language. It literally says one lip and the same words or speech. Now this is rather unimaginable to us, but all of humanity was unified. They were one people, they were able to communicate and to cooperate because they had the same language and culture. We can hardly cooperate with our family or in our workplace much less in our state or in our country.

5:32And so this is unimaginable, but what they're unified in is not just the same language, not just the same speech, but they're unified in the same culture. And you would say, well what culture is that? And that culture is opposed to God, which we'll see in just a second. Now, verse two tells us that the people migrated from the east or another way to say that is they went eastward. And this is a clue if you've been with us throughout the Genesis series, your spidey senses should be going off after the fall of Adam and Eve. They were driven. And where did they go? They went east of the garden. Chapter three verse 24.

6:13And then when Cain left the presence of God, he went east of Eden chapter four verse 16. And then if you look ahead lot journeyed east toward the Jordan Valley lot. And Abram kinda looked out over the land and he says, take your pick. You go first and lot goes east towards Sodom and Gomorrah. That's chapter 13, verse 10 and 11, Jacob in chapter 29 will flee his homeland to live among the eastern peoples. Going east suggests that the people are moving further and further away from God's presence. This is why I live west of the twin cities, unlike all you heathens in the East. Just kidding. But it it, it's a word picture for us to that if you go east, you're wandering away from God's path of blessing, you're leaving his protection, his presence.

7:10So that's what we're supposed to see, that as these people move and settle east, they're departing further and further away from God. Now we wanna see who built this city. If you look back at chapter 10 of Genesis, look at chapter 10 verse 10. You'll see a description of Nimrod who was a mighty hunter and warrior. And it says, the beginning of Nimrod's kingdom was Babel in this land of shear. So this was a city established by Nimrod in the valley of shear and shear refers to the region of Babylonia. And later in the Old Testament refers to Babylon. So Babel is a precursor to Babylon, the epitome of a secular city or the city of man, if you will, that is opposed to God.

8:03Now if you look at verse two, you'll see the word settled there that the people settled there. And that word is significant because the entire story is about the scattering of the people. This is the opposite of what God had intended. If you'll remember and recall with me, God said, be fruitful and multiply and then what? Fill the earth. And God reiterated that command in chapter nine verse one. He said, be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth. God wants to fill the entire earth with his image bearers. And what do God's people want to do instead? They want to gather together in one singular city that is opposed to God to advance their own glory.

8:56So we see this disconnect, this tension that is building here. Now what we learn is that these people discover this new technology of firing bricks and all of a sudden they think we are on top of the world. This is the best thing. Since sliced bread, we've become like God. Now there isn't anything intrinsically wrong with building a city, but this shows us, verse four shows us why it was wrong. They say, look with me at verse four, 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. What we see pictured here is sinful ambition and striving for autonomy apart from God.

9:48They want greatness. And they proposed to essentially make a stairway to heaven. You might picture an ancient OT like the one that they'll show on the screen in present day Iraq. You can kind of see the stairs that go upward. And that indicates it's very similar to probably what they had made, that we can go up to the heavens and meet God. We're supposed to see not just neutral ambition of these people, but a desire to be exalted above God. And does this sound familiar? Remember back in Genesis three, the serpent says to eve, how did she tempt Eve? How? How did the serpent tempt eve? When you eat of the fruit, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God.

10:46And that's the same thing in mind for these people. If we can build this tower, we can be like God. And yet at at the root of it we see this deep fear and insecurity as well. At the end of verse four, they said, less we be dispersed. It's the same fear that we find in Cain in chapter four verse 14, where Cain says, my, my, my curse is too great for me. I'm gonna be this perpetual wanderer. So this pictures the human heart for us this morning, doesn't it? We all want to be great. We all want to be someone. No one wants to be insignificant. And yet there's this deep seated fear that we have of what if I'm not what?

11:37What if I fail? What if we prove to be nobody's? What if we're scattered and dispersed? And that's what every false religion tries to tap into. We can help you become great. Do this to make a name for yourself. Do this and you can earn your way to God. And yet Genesis 11 this morning for us is a reminder that we cannot make our own names great. We cannot merit our salvation. We cannot work hard enough or try hard enough to make God accept us. Our salvation is fully dependent upon the unmerited and undeserved grace of God. And so it reminds us that in the midst of all that we have going on in this coming year, we need to come and humble ourselves before Almighty God.

12:36Now before we look at God's response, I want us to see the chiasm that's in the text. The chiasm is this literary technique that looks like an X where the story mirrors itself in reverse order. So it kind of starts up here, it goes in and it comes back out. And kind of right at the middle is the central theme. So I'm gonna see if we can see that together. Verse one says, the whole earth had one language and then if you look at verse nine, it says, the Lord confused the language of all the earth. So they both talk about language and then in verse two, the people settle in the land of shaar, whereas the verse eight says, God scatters the people.

13:12And then verse three, they say, come let us make bricks. And in verse seven, God with some irony says, come let us go down and confuse their language. So it begins to move inward. And right at the center of that is verse five, which I think is the central kind of theme if you will. The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of man had built. This is ironic, the people build this tower, we can reach the heavens, we can get all the way up and make ourselves like God. And God says, wait, you guys built something. I can't see it from here. Let, let me come all the way down.

13:55Let me pull out my magnifying glass and maybe I can catch a little bit of a glimpse of it. It's like an engineer examining the Lego creation that his son built or Van Gogh admiring his toddler's son's scribbles. He had no children though God ultimately is not impressed. He is, as we've seen from Genesis one through 10. He is the artist, he is the architect, he is the engineer, he's the creator and sustainer of everyone and everything. One commentator put it this way, God comes down to see a tiny tower conceived by a puny plan and attempted by a pint sized people. Now we, we shouldn't misunderstand this because God is gracious to receive the meager efforts of his children.

14:50Is he not it? It's like when my kids bring me one of their drawings, I love to receive kid drawings. I receive them as a joy of a father. God receives our flawed offerings that are offered in faith and in love and in obedience and yet he has no room for human boasting. This has echoes of Psalm two, which we had read right at the beginning of the service. God sits in the heavens and laughs as the nation's plot and rage in vain. Man is small and God is great. They thought they had something to brag about, but God has to come all the way down to see it. God does not need, he's not coming down physically.

15:40It it's a word picture to show us how small human efforts and achievement is in light of how big God is. It's a reminder for us this morning that whatever New Year's resolutions that you might have, human achievements don't merit God's favor. It doesn't matter where you graduated from or if you run a big Fortune 100 company or you're an employee of a Fortune 500 company or that you sit on a board of some organization or that you hold multiple patents or you pioneer some game changing industry shaking technology even today, we still think this way, don't we? When I lived in Wheaton, we were just outside of Chicago and people were still proud of the fact that the Sea Sears Tower, which was now called the Willis Tower, stands as tall as it does.

16:42And today the tallest building in the world is the Burge Khalifa in Dubai. And there's bragging rights with that aren't there? It stands 2,717 feet more than half a mile from top to bottom. And I anticipate in the next five years someone else will have those bragging rights to have the tallest building in the world. It it's showing human kind of aspiration and the folly of it all. God sits in the heavens and laughs. Now verse six and seven, show us where this story goes. Let us go down and they confuse their language so that they may not understand one another's speech. This lu us is either divine contemplation or early indicator of the triune God like we saw in Genesis 1 26, let us make man in our image.

17:42And just like that, God confuses their language. How unusual would that have been? We were just having a conversation yesterday and now I have no idea what you are saying. Different people, different customs, different languages, different cultures. And this causes the scattering of these 70 nations. And it says in verse eight, they left off building the city and then verse nine says, therefore its name was called Babel because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth, the word Babel. There is a play on the Hebrew word confuse, which is Baal. They wanted a name but they didn't get the one they wanted.

18:28God gave them the name confused. Despite human ambition, God continues his plan of redemption. The people refuse to fill the earth and so God scatters them in order to fill the earth. Now when you first come to the Tower of Babel, sometimes I, I think we, we might feel a little bit odd about it. We, we might wonder if this story makes God look bad. Like does God look or sound a little petty in this story? Look at verse six. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. It almost sounds like God is sitting in the heavens afraid of humanity's advance. Like look at what they're doing.

19:12They could do anything and and we don't want that somehow they're gonna grow too powerful. Is that what What's happening? No. God had just flooded the entire earth. He pressed control, alt, delete and reset everything. I know some of you don't get that reference because you're too young. It's like a factory reset for your iPhone, right? God had just reset everything. God is graciously preventing humanity from growing too wicked too quickly. And let me see if we, we can see that together back in Genesis three, man, Adam and Eve had just eaten of the fruit of the garden. And this is what God says in Genesis 3 22.

19:56It says, now lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever, let me drive them out of the garden. Now why does God do this? It's not that somehow if they lived forever that that would be particularly horrible. But rather it would be this man will develop great evil if they live forever. And so God numbers their days. Something similar I think is happening here. If human ingenuity and ambition coupled with evil and wickedness goes unchecked, how much wickedness could we come up with a lot? And so God scatters them to temper human wickedness. This is not heaven shaking in its boots.

20:50This is God's grace to mankind to prevent them from making a shipwreck of things more quickly than he designed A secular city that is absent of God, absent of virtue, absent of righteousness will become a nightmare on a grand scale. And so it's God's grace that topples the tower and the self exalting city of man to prepare the way for the city of God. So the Tower of Babel is a story of warning and grace. And so we're to hear in the year 2024 that we are to beware of human ambition and ingenuity without virtue or godliness. And do you see this at work in our world today? You don't have to look far just scanning some of the headlines.

21:49Do you? Back in March of 2023, seems like a lifetime ago, several people in the tech world all penned an open letter to pause all AI experiments, all artificial intelligence experiments because they were beginning to see the dangers of these AI systems. And these were the people who were actually running the experiments themselves saying, uh, it's starting to get a little bit outta control. We should probably pull it back.

22:21And and these were some of the things that they were worried about. What if AI becomes sentient and takes over the internet? What? What if some use it for mass manipulation with deep fake videos? Now you can create a video with someone else's face moving their mouth. So it just looks like a normal video of them. What if we experience an information apocalypse where we can never know what is true? Feels like that already sometimes. What if AI entities control and manipulate our infrastructure, our power grids, our communication networks, our military or our financial markets? All of these are frightening scenarios which I had chat GBT generate for me.

23:07It it, it's very ironic. We can see very quickly apart from God, apart from Christian virtue, we will very quickly destroy our world. Will we not? We have that capacity right now with our nuclear weapons. And yet in this story, what do we see in the midst of human wickedness and evil rising up? We see God's gracious scattering of humanity to slow the advance of human pride and sin. But he's not just slowing it down, he's preparing the way for his plan of redemption that would come in Jesus. The whole story is pointing forward to Christ and we can trust that even today, even however this year goes with the election and everything else, God sees all that is going on.

24:09He sits in the heavens and he laughs. He is not shaking in his boots. He is unconcerned. My plans will stand, Jesus will be victorious. He is coming back. There is nothing that we can do in our world to ultimately decisively thwart God's saving plan in Jesus. Isn't that good news? He will cause his glory to cover the earth as the water covers the seas. So the main point returning to our opening question, what is the significance of the Tower of Babel? God graciously scatters the people to make way for his kingdom. His kingdom is coming and it's already arrived in Jesus and it will be consummated.

25:06How would this story have landed on the original audience of Israel when they were hearing it? It would give them hope because they would be looking around all these evil secular cities rising up filled with evil, anti-God full of human trafficking and prostitution and abuse and slavery. And the reminded that God will break down every wicked kingdom that set themselves against him. Now let's look at our second question. What is the significance of the fifth and sixth genealogy? We had the fourth genealogy in Genesis 10 and we said that was a unique one where it showed the spread of 70 nations.

25:50Now what do we to see from Shem and terrors genealogy? First, you should notice that she's genealogy is largely repeated because we saw some of it back in Genesis 10 21 to 31. We already traced she's line, but now instead of it spreading out into 70 nations, it just goes from one generation to the next. And this was the pattern. It returns to this linear progression of the seed of the woman. You remember that we talked about the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent and God is showing the perpetuation, the continuation of the seed of the woman. It's going from Abraham all the way to Noah, to Shem, to Tara.

26:31And now to Abram, the second thing, did you notice what's missing from this passage? What did you not hear when it was read out and he died and he died and he died and he died like in Genesis five. Why? The accent is not on the effects of the curse anymore, but the accent is now looking forward. The focus is looking forward to the hope and the blessing that would come through. Abraham. Notice several other things. If you do the math, you can see this decreasing lifespan. Shem lives 600 years. That 100 he has children lives another 500. He lives 600 years, but Nahor lives only 148 and Tara lives 205.

27:19So shortening by more than two thirds we see this decreasing lifespan. You should also notice that from Shem to Abram, our 10 generations continuing those round numbers that Genesis likes to do and the continuation of the line of blessing. And then notice also that repeated phrase, they had other sons and daughters. The creation mandate is to be fruitful and multiply. And that continues to happen in a sense, what we're to see through these genealogies is that life is getting back to normal. Yes, there was the big worldwide flood, but people have children, they get married and life continues unabated.

28:02Everything is pointing forward to the call of Abraham. Now you should notice there's something interesting here. The word sheem, the name sheem is the same word as name used in verse four. The people wanted to make a name for themselves. So in a sense they wanted to make a name for themselves and God says, I've already given you a name, it's Shem and that name is going to be the name through which this offspring will ultimately bring blessing. Now the genealogy from 27 to 32 sets the stage for the story of Abram and, and we'll kind of see more of that next week in Genesis 12. But there's just a few things we should note right now we're introduced to lot Abraham's nephew, we're introduced to Abram's wife Saray who we're told is Baron.

28:49And you should hear that. And and, and you should have that ominous note in in your mind like dun, dun, dun, right? Because everyone else had sons and daughters and they had sons and daughters and sons and daughters. And then all of a sudden Abram's wife is barren. And that's going to be the issue that we will need to look at in the coming weeks. They go to Canaan, but they settle in Haran. This ends with the death of Tara. We, we didn't get indicators of anyone else dying, but we get the indicator of Tara's death in order to show the end of an era the passing of the baton. Because from this point on Genesis 12, all the way to 25 will all be about Abram or Abraham.

29:36So what's the significance of these two genealogies? It's continuing the seed of the woman that begun with Adam, that goes through Seth, that will go all the way through Noah to Abram and then culminate in the birth of Jesus. It gives hope that human ambition opposed to God cannot thwart his plan of redemption. God will carry out his plan. God will save all the peoples of the earth through one man Jesus Christ. And even if mankind gathers in one city, raises their fists against God, we won't spread out. We won't be used by you. God blows on them and they scatter. So if we're to summarize Genesis 11, we would say this, that God is making way for the kingdom of God by scattering the people and perpetuating the seed of the woman.

30:45It's a reminder for us this morning, God will carry out his plan of salvation. Nothing we can do can thwart that. And that's good news, isn't it? Your sin cannot thwart God's grace at work in your life. He will bring you to your knees so that you turn and repent and come to him. Question three, what is the significance of Genesis 11 for us? So what, what does this text have to say to us this morning? We can probably relate most to the aspirations of the people of the Tower of Babel. When when you read the other chapters of Genesis, you think, oh, good thing I'm not as screwed up as those guys sometimes, right?

31:35You, you think, I've never wanted to kill my brother, so that's good. Um, you know, at least I won't be found like Noah after the flood. But the people of Babel, we can resonate with their aspirations. We find solidarity with them. We can harbor idolatry that longs for glory and self exaltation. We wanna be great. Even if you don't think you wanna be great, you wanna be at least respected or loved or honored. Maybe you don't care to be the richest, most powerful, most famous person in the world, but we still want to be great. You wanna be the most, uh, you wanna be the best pickleball player among your group of friends.

32:21You wanna be the most theologically astute among your small group. You wanna be the most educated in your family, the most well read. You wanna be the most successful among your old high school friends. You wanna be the best baker among that group of Facebook moms. You wanna be the most stylish or attractive or smart or responsible or accomplished among some group, no matter how small it may be. We all deep down, long for greatness. And what does our culture say to this? Our culture feeds this monster within us constantly. About a decade ago, Nike debuted a campaign that was called Find Your Greatness.

33:11And one of the commercials showed this. There was a young overweight boy jogging on this country road as these words are being spoken in the background. So imagine it with me. Greatness. It's just something we made up. Somehow we've come to believe that greatness is a gift reserved for the chosen few, for pro, for superstars, and the rest of us can only stand by watching. You can forget that greatness is not some rare DNA strand. It's not some precious thing. Greatness is no more unique to us than breathing. We're all capable of it, all of us. And then across the screen, the words find your greatness and the unmistakable Nike Swoosh.

33:59This captures the spirit of our age. You can all be great. Here's your participation trophy. We all want to be great, but babble tells us that greatness at the end of the day is not found in us or in our name. Greatness is not found in our accomplishments or achievements, our resume, our family, our net worth, our home or in our body. It's found in the name of Jesus. And Jesus alone. Jesus did not say to his disciples, don't seek to be great. What did he say to them? Matthew 26, 20 26, whoever would be great among you, here's the path of greatness. You must be your servant. We are called by Jesus to pursue greatness according to how he pursued it.

34:56Humility in service of others. Jesus himself said that he came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. And so Genesis 11 is a reminder that God will strike down every wicked kingdom and human ambition. And the way we find greatness is by following Jesus, our Lord. The story of Babel is a warning against human pride. It reminds us that God will throw down, overthrow every wicked kingdom from Babel to Babylon, from Afghanistan to America or from China to Columbia. Jesus came not to establish any earthly kingdom but to establish his heavenly kingdom that even the gates of hell cannot withstand and prevail against it.

35:54But Babel is much more than judgment. It points to God's plan of redemption that he is unfolding right now. We saw a glimpse of it at Pentecost in acts that as the disciples stood up, it said that there were people from every nation under heaven. And the Holy Spirit rushed upon the disciples. And each one was hearing the disciples speak in his own language. Here was this temporary undoing of the curse of Babel so that it would point to the work that the gospel would bring the transformation unity not in opposing God shaking their fist at God, but a people unified in praise and worship of God. And despite humanity still being divided by language and tribe and culture.

36:54Today God is uniting one people under heaven. He's uniting people in worship of King Jesus. And they will gather around the throne of Jesus from every tribe and language and tongue and nation. And every single one will be crying out worthy is the lamb who was slain. That is going to be an amazing image and picture on that day that we will be gathered around and there will be all sorts of other people in all in our own language. We will be crying out this collective song of praise in worship of King Jesus. And it shows us, it highlights for us this morning that Jesus is worth it. He's worthy. God is carrying out his plan of redemption.

37:49John has already seen what it's going to look like. So what should we do this morning? It's not run away from cities and live in the country, though you can live in the country. It's to be aware of the temptation of self exaltation, to make a name for yourself. We don't have to seek a great name because we've already been called by God and we've already been given a great name. Colossians three 12 says that we are chosen and called holy and beloved by God himself, imagine that he calls you chosen holy and beloved. That is your name more than Olsson or Johnson chosen, holy and beloved called by God.

38:44And even better than having a great name is having our names written in the lambs book of life. We have been saved by the grace and the mercy of Jesus. And so we come to him and declare our allegiance, putting aside all human ambition that raises its fist against God. And we bring that human ambition under the Lordship of Jesus so that we would worship him and Him alone. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we do ask that you would incline our hearts to you now and cause these truths to resonate deep in our souls so that we would love and know and trust Christ. And for those who do not yet know you this morning, we pray that you would call them into your out of darkness, into your marvelous light.

39:35We pray that in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Genesis 11

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