Genesis 11:1-9 Anatomy of Rebellion

Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service. This is a message from the series Beginning with God, Walking Through the Book of Genesis by Pastor of Teaching and Vision, Don Filsek.

If you'd like to learn more about Recast or access our sermon archive, please visit us at recastchurch .com. Here's Pastor Don.

The Tower of Babel as a Picture of Rebellion

Now this morning, we're going to be working through a shorter passage in the book of Genesis. Let me just back up and say that in the first service, Josh and Heidi Wheeler also dedicated their two children, Judah and Lucia, as well.

Part of that is that we go to two different services, and the way that that is is you might not always rub shoulders. Of course, with Josh and Heidi, you do, because he's leading worship right now. Again, just a reminder to us as a body that although we're in two different services, we work together to seek to encourage them as well.

In the passage, if you can turn to Genesis 11, verses 1 through 9, it's going to be a shorter passage. You'll find that on page 7 in the Bible in the seat back in front of you. It really is another passage.

As we talk about the Tower of Babel, raise your hand if you're familiar with the story of the Tower of Babel. You were maybe raised in church, or you're familiar with it to some degree. It's one more passage in the early book of Genesis that could lead us into scientific inquiry.

We could get bogged down in the science of this text and miss some of the main points. The confusion of languages that occurs in this account, could it face value, appear mythical to some, and some have accused it of that?

Just like the flood and with creation, I don't see it as my primary purpose to try to prove to you scientifically that this occurred. Now, I will sprinkle some scientific thoughts throughout this text, or throughout this message this morning, but I'm ultimately going to preach the point of the message and leave it up to you to conclude whether or not this is a true historical account.

That's between you and God, and that's something that is an address of your faith to God regarding the text. But I do want to point out that just like the flood and just like creation, I want you to be sure that, to understand that I believe that this is a true account from the word of God.

But if you're sitting here and you do not believe it's true, I want you to at least hear the point of the story because what God is going to do is basically show us three things about rebellion. And I don't usually give, I mean you guys can write this down on your calendar, I don't usually give a three point message, but you're going to get one this morning.

So those of you who like to take notes, nice and tidy notes, I'm going to give you three points. I mean, yeah, take a break on that one. The first point is the anatomy of rebellion that we're going to see in the text.

The second is God's assessment of rebellion, his appraisal of it or his assessment of it. And the third is God's response to rebellion. I didn't illiterate it for you, I probably could have worked hard at it, but instead I'll just leave it at that.

So the anatomy of rebellion, God's assessment of rebellion, and God's response to rebellion. So let's read this together, Genesis 11, 1 through 9. And again, if there's anybody here that doesn't own a Bible, please take that one that's in the seat back in front of you with you when you leave.

It's a gift from us to you. But follow along, Genesis 11, 1 through 9. 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. Let's pray. Father, we have an opportunity to see a text that tells us an ancient story. What I believe is true, one that actually occurred.

And yet the point of this is a walking us through the nature of our rebellion, and it's something that is recapitulated in our lives, something that we do ourselves. We rebel against you, and we get your appraisal on us.

And then we get to see your response to our rebellion as well. And so, Father, I pray that you would open our eyes and open our hearts to see that our rebellion has been dealt with at the cross, and that if we would accept by faith the work of Jesus Christ, that we can be set free from the ramifications and the results of our rebellion.

Father, I pray that you would help us to rejoice as a people who have gathered together as those who have been forgiven, not those who are perfect, not those who have everything all together in our lives, but ultimately those who have been forgiven, and so therefore have much to rejoice in, because we are all sitting here as sinners.

But some here have given their lives to you and have recognized that the only way for them to be made right in regard to their rebellion is by the blood of Jesus Christ, and I thank you for that. So would you please move in our hearts to offer up sacrifice of praise to you as we sing these songs, that they would come out of, that the words would flow out of hearts dedicated to you, devoted to you, worshiping you, rejoicing in you and the provision of your Son Jesus Christ for us, and it's in his name that I pray, amen.

Be sure to have your Bibles open to Genesis chapter 11, the first nine verses there, just have that up on your left, I think that's helpful for you to be able to follow along and kind of as I reference it from time to time throughout the next 30 minutes or so.

And then also, if you need to, remember to get any coffee, donuts, juice that you need, also restrooms, men's back there, women's up over there, so if you need that. Obviously we're drinking a lot of coffee this morning, so don't know where you need to, you might need to use those.

The Ancestry and Geography Behind Babel

But, so right off the bat you see in this text, I mean you kind of get the idea where we've been, we've been through the whole Noah flood fiasco and all of that, and we come to this verse in verse 1, go ahead and look at it with me, now the whole earth had one language and the same words.

Now the thing about that is, some people have pointed out what they perceive to be a discrepancy in scripture, some issue, so I just want to get that out on the table, because if you're to go back two verses to the very end of chapter 10, look at verse 31 with me.

Verse 31 says this, these are the sons of Shem, by their clans, their languages, their lands and their nations, okay so there's languages, lands, nations, sons of Shem, we've just seen these genealogies, and then what does verse 1 say, pretty definitively?

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words, does it appear at face value that something needs to be reconciled here? Previous chapter said there are multiple languages, then we get to the start of this chapter and it says, now wait a minute, all the world has one language, and it does so in strong emphasis.

So in Hebrew it's very abundantly direct with some of the phrases that are used here, here we see the whole earth with one language and the same words, that is they called things the same thing. So when everybody, every human on the face of the planet, when they saw a rock they called it rock, or whatever the word was for it, so same words.

So I think that I don't want to belabor the point, because it's not a really significant discrepancy when you understand how scripture works and some of the things that we've already seen from the text.

What we see is that chapter 10, the one that we went through last week, covers an extensive historical context that includes genealogy of those who were alive both before the Tower of Babel and after the Tower of Babel.

As a matter of fact, if you were to just look just a few verses up, you would see this guy in verse 25 of chapter 10, "...to Eber were born two sons, the name of the one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided.".

So when was the earth divided? Before we even get done with the genealogy, the earth is divided. Then we go on to his brother, Joktan, and we list his sons too. So we see that the genealogy incorporates both the period of time before the languages were divided and after.

Does that clear it up for you? Do you understand? So what we have here in chapter 11 at the start is kind of like a flashback into those genealogies that this event that we're about to see occurred prior to the conclusion of those genealogies where we find that now they have different languages and different nations and things like that.

So that's what's going on here. Hopefully that clears that part of it up for you. But there is another potential problem in your mind that might not come from the text but maybe comes from science. And that is, in just a short amount of time I did some research this week regarding the origin of languages and how they formed and how they started and all that stuff.

And I encountered the following quote from an extremely credible resource called Wikipedia. Some of you maybe have heard of it. So how credible this is, you guys know that this is really significant research here.

But it said this, the origin of languages declared to be the hardest problem in science. There was no footnote to that. So I just want to clarify that. In Wikipedia there wasn't a footnote declaring that.

But that was the statement. And I do think that it might be a little bit of an exaggeration to say it's the hardest. How do you determine that? Was that a scientific finding that it's the hardest issue in science?

But I do believe it's one of them. And after doing a little bit of research it becomes apparent that science has a hard time explaining the origin of language. They don't have a universal theory of how language forms, how it develops, or how it even progresses or moves forward.

They think they have a good handle on that though. But a fundamental question everyone must answer is whether or not you believe that everyone at one point in history, all humanity, spoke a common language.

Now if you're a person of faith and you kind of take the first several chapters of Genesis at face value, you believe that the flood actually occurred, then your answer is yes. Because Ham, Shem, Japheth, Noah, and wives all stepped out of the ark together, right?

And so if you believe that that's a historical account, they're the only ones that survived, do you think it's probably a pretty good chance that they all spoke the same language? Ham, Shem, Japheth, the brothers, and then their wives, and then, so you kind of have that there.

But maybe if you're not so keen on that then we could take it even a step further back and go, okay, creation, God, Adam, and Eve, and Adam and Eve spoke the same language, presuming that. So then, of course, we go back to one language there.

So I just want to point out that if you believe in faith, you're believing what the Bible says and you believe in creation or in the flood, of course you're going to take for granted that at one point in history there was a common language for humanity.

But as I mentioned last week, I got a little ahead of myself, but scholars in the area of language study and linguistics take it as an almost given. There are very few people in these fields today who do not believe, whether they're Christians or not, and the majority of them are not, take for granted that there was a common language, that all languages diverge, they don't converge.

So all languages are coming from a common source. And one of the ways that they do this is in linguistic science they'll kind of get commonality between words. So just to use an illustration of water, aqua, agua, you can kind of get that prefix and that notion.

And so back there we'll kind of take languages backwards in history and kind of go, at one point it seems like aqua, something to do with aqua was the common word for water and then that diverged into a variety of different ways to say what we call water, which isn't aqua.

I don't know. Maybe we just kind of rebelled against that one or something. But you get the point. So you look at that and you can kind of see how they do this science, they call it science, and try to get back to a common language.

But again, the point isn't to prove that this story is scientifically accurate or that it's watertight. I've talked about this before. You'll bring a bias to the text and then you'll find your conclusions based on your bias.

So my goal here this morning isn't to convince you that this is a historical account. I don't even think I can do that. I can't prove to you that this was historical. I take on faith. I think there comes a point where you have to decide, I'm going to take on faith that this is an accurate account.

And yet at the same time, I want to sprinkle in throughout this message some things that science actually identifies that I don't think you have to throw science out of your brain in order to believe that this was a historical, accurate account.

But that's not the point. Really what I want to point out is this entire concept of rebellion, that is the point of this text. So in verses one through four, we're going to see the anatomy of rebellion.

We already met the man last week whose name Nimrod, which means dummy, right? Was that what his name meant? No, no, that wasn't it. Nimrod meaning we will rebel. That's the name of this guy, Nimrod. We will rebel.

And we know that he created a very powerful global kingdom in the plain of Shinar called Babel. That was told to us in the text last week in chapter 10. And verse two connects us back to chapter 10 about Nimrod by letting us know that the people migrated in the east and came to a very flat, wide plain called Shinar.

Now do you think it's just chance that we've seen that now mentioned that location Shinar mentioned twice? It's mentioned as the place where Nimrod sets up a mighty kingdom. And now it's mentioned as the place where the people congregate and gather together as one world people to build this city and this tower.

Do you think Nimrod probably were supposed to assume he had something to do with that? I think so. And he's seen as this tyrant king, world ruler, the highest, the chiefest, the most mighty man on the face of the planet, the text told us last week.

And I want to point out that Shinar, just to ground you in geography here, is in an area in southern Iraq, just north of Kuwait. So that's the area where this place is. And actually they've uncovered some of the remains of the Babylonian Empire and they can be found there still today.

Archaeologists are always uncovering stuff in the sand out there. But verse two connects us with that concept of Nimrod. When Noah and family stepped out of the ark, they were commanded by God to be fruitful and multiply and to spread out over the entire earth.

This was the command of God to them in Hebrew, those three words, very definitive and in the imperative command form of Hebrew, be fruitful, multiply, spread out over the face of the earth. So they are fruitful, they multiply and look for a great place to congregate and gather together.

You hear the rebellion in that? What did God tell them to do? Spread out, spread out, disperse. And so they are desperately wandering around in the east looking for a place to congregate, to settle together as a unified people.

In verses three through four, we have the declaration of their intent. What's going on? What are they going to do? So in verse three, you see, and they said to one another, come let us brick bricks. That's in the Hebrew.

We put make in there because it makes better sense to us. They said, come let us brick bricks and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. Now I found it kind of interesting that Moses, the author of this, understood building in his time and he's actually reflecting to us what building looked like in his time and then also comparing it to that ancient culture.

So we actually get a backwards window, very few passages in scripture that we get a chance to do this. But we get to see something about Moses' time as he's writing about an ancient culture. So what was building construction like in Israel and in the places that he was used to traveling?

Moses was used to having rock that you could cut into brick, into big blocks and build with it. And then they had a process of producing mortar, much like we do today, of mixing, certainly not quick concrete or anything like that, but they had a process for mixing mortar and taking rock or stone and building with it.

And he says, well, what they did back then, Moses' words, what they did back then is they actually baked bricks and then used bitumen or tar for the mortar in between that. Are you getting what I'm saying here?

So I'm probably more excited about that than you are, but we get a chance to see something about Moses' culture in the midst of something that he's referring backwards to. Now how many of you have ever heard the word ziggurat or used the word ziggurat?

It's a fun word, say that with me, ziggurat. All right, ziggurat. Ziggurat is a Babylonian pyramid, okay? So picture a pyramid, but it's unfinished so the top of it is flat and there's stairs mounting up to the top.

And at the very top in the flat area, so you got a flat area on the top of this pyramid and in the middle of it is a little hut made of stone. It sits kind of bare out there in the middle of that. And that's the place where if you build this thing tall enough, the concept is that the priest gets to go up to that hut where the God comes down and meets with him, okay?

So that's the concept of a ziggurat, not like the pyramids that you see in Giza in Egypt that were primarily, what were those built for? Tombs, okay? So a ziggurat is not a tomb like in the Egyptian concept of pyramid.

We've actually uncovered many of these ziggurats throughout the Middle East and guess what they're made with? Anybody want to take a guess? Brick that's fired in a kiln and tar for the mortar to hold them together.

Exactly what's mentioned here that is very clear that the Bible is accurate on what kind of building materials that they used for construction during this era. Now I think it seems reasonable that the technology of the pre-flood world was carried forward through Noah and his family, that some degree of what that culture was like was carried forward but we do see here that they have the technology to at least make bricks and not just make bricks but they have a process of oven firing those bricks.

They're producing kilns. They have to heat these bricks up to a pretty high temperature in order to fire them and get them solid. That's pretty significant technology if you think about it and I think they had better technology than we give them credit for and I don't think they had computers yet, maybe PC but not Mac yet or I don't know what they had but they didn't have iPads, I'm pretty sure about that.

But I mean think about the technology that they must have had. I mean have any of you ever seen any of these structures? Have any of you been to Egypt or been to the Middle East and seen some of these structures?

I mean some of these things are massive on a huge scale that they're producing. Simple machines of pulleys and levers and inclines and some of the things that had to be employed. I mean we're talking, how many of you know we're talking about physics to some degree when you're talking about using pulleys and the advantage that a pulley produces or inclines or things like that.

I mean there's some physics involved in that and they had an understanding of their world to a good degree. I like to say I think that we have a sense of technological arrogance or what C .S. Lewis called chronological snobbery.

We have this notion of caveman sloped forehead, ugh, ooh, fire, you know, and we have that concept of what that culture was like. But think about this, aside from gunpowder, there was not much difference living in this culture that we're talking about here from 150 years ago on the frontier.

Very few difference. Now steam power was on the way in during the frontier times, so you might say, well they had steam, okay, steam power just on the way in and then gunpowder. And aside from that, very little difference.

As a matter of fact, I would dare say few towns in the Wild West on the frontier had a kiln to bake bricks. You built your house with what you cut down with your hands, right? So I mean thinking about that, I mean how different was culture for thousands of years in there and there was just a trading of information and growing a little bit.

It also highlights how fast technology has grown on this planet. Isn't it amazing? It's just some of the things that we have now. But not that far removed. What was everyday life like there when they're building this tower?

Well, not too shabby to be honest. Bricks and mortar are not the point of the people on earth here in verse 3. It says certainly they want to make bricks, they want to burn them and then get this bitumen from mortar, but there's a purpose behind that and it's in verse 4.

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 themselves. They weren't looking to pile up bricks in a brickyard just so they could say they made bricks.

They have intention behind this, their goal, to build a city, to make a name for themselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. So what is it that they're doing? They're building a city and a tower and that's the point.

But not merely a city, but a city for themselves. And not just a city for themselves, but a city to keep their unity together. And not just a city to keep them unified, but a city with a tower. And not just a tower, but a tower with its tops in the heavens.

That's what they're doing. So what are they doing wrong here? Consider where the building project begins. Look at it again. 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.

Us, ourselves. Us, ourselves. Who is their focus? Themselves. They are all about themselves, filled to the brim with themselves, doing for themselves. Is building a city wrong? Is there anything inherently wrong with building a city?

No. Is building a tower inherently sinful? Once you get past a certain number of stories, then you're just over the top. Now it's a sinful tower, right? Is there anything wrong with that? No. No, nothing wrong with building a tower.

But the language employed here implies that the rebellion of these people is founded on two principles. So here's the anatomy of their rebellion. The rebelling based on pride and self-preservation. Those are the two things.

Pride and self-preservation. They recognize the power of strength in numbers and the plane of Shinar provides the area that they need to settle all together in opposition to God. And you can say, Don, why, hold on, did you just take a logical leap from them building a city and building a tower to opposing God?

What did God tell them to do? Be fruitful, multiply, and disperse. And they're saying, lest we be dispersed. Who do they think is going to disperse them? Lest somebody disperse us, put this in perspective, all the people in the world are gathered in this one location.

Who do they fear? Who are they opposing? God. They're opposing Him. Lest the animals come in and disperse us or ultimately they are seeking to show God that they really have no need of Him. Thank you very much.

We got this one. Together we can do much. Together we can take care of ourselves. Thank you for your offer of protection, but we've got it. And I think in this we see the anatomy of all rebellion. Some of you are sitting here and you're like, hold on a second, I'm not a rebel.

Rebel with a cause, rebel without a cause, I'm just not a rebel, okay? But if we take the word rebellion and we just tweak it a little bit, we really come down to the word sin and that changes things a little bit.

I don't think of myself as a rebel, but wait a minute, are you a sinner? Do you oppose God's law? Do you know what He's asked of you and sometimes just turn it away and say, I got this one on my own, God, I'll take care of this.

You can come back in five minutes, but here I am, okay? And back talk or talk bad about a coworker or gossip or spread things or get angry with your family or whatever. I'll come back to you, God, later, but I got this, I'll take care of it.

When we sin against God, we're replicating this model of rebellion. It's either pride that says, I will forge my own way, I got it. I know better than you, God, you've told me what to do, but I'll get it.

And so much of sin, if we're honest, is about making a name for ourselves, it stems out of pride and making it all right for us. And I want to point out how subtle the sin becomes in our everyday lives.

Think about this in these terms. How much of our interaction and speech with others is about making a name for ourselves? Putting a good foot forward, right? I fear that some of it might have even happened already here this morning where you have put on a nice mask for somebody and somebody says, how are you doing this week?

Oh, everything's good, just keep winning. When inside, you've just lied because you know that you are broken and things are not going well. And rather than, I just don't have time to get into it this morning standing here, so you know what, I'll just act like everything's okay.

And not only that, but if we're honest, it's hard to measure our own motives, but sometimes it's to make ourselves look better than we are, right? It's to paint ourselves in a good light. Would any of you maybe confess to having done that a time or two in your life?

To say, yes, I have, me and I think two others, three, okay, now three of us. Where we recognize, and I think all of us have done that, we just don't like to raise our hands when I ask that question. But absolutely, we know what it means to put our best foot forward and act the part when in fact there are things going on inside of us that if other people knew, we were afraid that maybe you wouldn't like me so much, right?

That's true. So, so much of sin is about making a name for ourselves, but think about this. How much of our spending on cool gadgets and cars and houses and stuff is about making a name for ourselves?

Having people like us or think that we've got it all together, or how much of seeking a recognition in our workplace is about making a name for ourselves? If we're honest, much of our lives are spent building a tower in a city for our own self-preservation and for our own glory, and we think we're building a buffer between us and the pain and the suffering of the world by just accumulating stuff, and oh, that's going to make me feel better, and that's going to solve the problem, and it doesn't solve the problem, does it?

The solution to the problem is, if you're trying to find it in stuff, is more stuff and more stuff, and that catches up with us pretty fast, if we're honest. Jesus had some harsh words for the person who would think that they can hedge themselves in and build their own kingdom like this.

We live like we're hedging ourselves and protecting ourselves, and Jesus says, fool. It is a foolish man who builds his house on the sand. He says it another way, in another passage, store up for yourselves treasures, where?

In heaven. In heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and thieves do not break in and steal. How many of you have already lived long enough to know that your stuff just doesn't last? Have you found that out yet?

Have any of you ever bought a new computer, and two months later, it's obsolete, and the new program that your employer wants you to run already doesn't work, and you need more RAM? I mean, have you been?

I mean, it's like, this stuff just crumbles, and it rusts, and it goes away quickly. It will not satisfy, and yet, if we're honest, how much of our time is spent building our little kingdom, making it for ourselves, a name for ourselves?

How many of you, if you're honest, you've had these thoughts, and I don't want to be a Debbie Downer or get all morose on you or anything, but how many of you are just reckoned with the idea, the thought, the notion that you are going to die?

Have you dealt with that? You've been there? It's a reality. One day, it's all going to fade away. You know, he who dies with the most toys leaves their children with the biggest estate sale. That's the way that it's going to go, and it's just a headache for them anyways.

They don't want your old junk. You know what I'm saying? I mean, when it really comes down to it, that's the way that it goes. And the reality of it is, one day, one day, in the not-so-distant future, we are going to be just like the names on the headstones in the cemetery behind us.

Any of you like walking through cemeteries? It sounds kind of weird, but I actually do. I like just walking and looking at dates. And just on the other side of this fence, I can see it out the window right there, just beyond this wall, if you get a chance this spring, I'd encourage you to just walk, especially this end of the cemetery.

There are some really old, very old dates in there, dating into the 1700s, birth dates. In the 1700s, just a hundred yards from here. Some of these people in this cemetery died before the Civil War. They never even knew there was a Civil War.

Can you imagine that? There is nobody alive today who has met some of the people that are buried back there, that could vouch for their character, that could testify of whether they were a good person or a bad person.

No, but nobody even knows them. Now somebody might be around in the area who goes, that was my great-great-great-grandfather or my great-great-grandfather. They didn't meet him. They're that far gone.

And that's not in the very distant future to us. And yet, consider then, in light of how short, the brevity of this life, how strong the sense in us is of the pettiness and the temporariness of things, that we build a kingdom, this temporary kingdom of getting more and accumulating more, and what is it that we're living for?

God forbid that we forget that the only things that will last are those things done for the glory of Christ. Those are the things that matter most. Now that doesn't mean that you can work your job for the glory of Christ, right?

So that redeems that, that gives that value. So I'm not saying the only thing, you should quit your job and go and just serve the poor or something like that. I mean, there's value in where you work and what you do if you do it for the glory of Christ.

If you're investing in others, that's where true joy is going to be found. Jesus turns this whole thing up on its head and says, you're not going to be most fulfilled when you are serving yourself. You think you are, right?

If we're honest, we bought into the lie that the most fulfilling things are going to be when I'm entertaining myself. And those things get empty in a hurry, going to movies and being entertained and getting the tickets to the concert and doing all that stuff.

Is that empty in the end? If that's what you're serving, those things get empty quick. Serving others, joyfully unto God, those are the moments of greatest delight and joy. But Satan doesn't want you to know the truth.

He wants to deceive you into thinking, boy, if you're serving yourself, then you're going to be okay. It's going to be all right. Storing up treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and thieves cannot break in and steal.

I want to point out that the focus in this text is primarily on the city. Most Sunday school lessons will focus on the tower and act like it's the height of the tower that matters. But I do want to point out that this was likely a massive structure.

There was the notion in ancient Babylon that if you built the tower tall enough, you could get the gods to interact, get up to the gods and interact with them. But archaeologists think they've uncovered the base of this building, again, in the area of Iraq.