Anatomy of Rebellion

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Don Filcek, Beginning with God: A Walk Through the Book of Genesis; Genesis 11:1-9 Anatomy of Rebellion

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Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service.
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This is a message from the series, Beginning with God, Walking Through the Book of Genesis, by Pastor of Teaching and Vision, Don Filsack.
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If you'd like to learn more about Recast or access our sermon archive, please visit us at recastchurch .com.
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Here's Pastor Don. Now this morning, we're going to be working through a shorter passage in the book of Genesis.
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Let me just back up and say that in the first service, Josh and Heidi Wheeler also dedicated their two children,
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Judah and Lucia, as well. And so part of that is that we go to two different services. And the way that that is, is you might not always rub shoulders.
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Of course with Josh and Heidi, you do, because he's leading worship right now. And so 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.
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So then in the passage, if you can turn to Genesis 11, verses 1 through 9, it's going to be a shorter passage.
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You'll find that on page 7 in the Bible in the seat back in front of you. It really is another passage.
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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.
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It's a passage that, one more passage in the early book of Genesis that could lead us into scientific inquiry.
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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 at face value appear mythical to some, and some have accused it of that?
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And 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.
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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.
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That's between you and God, and that's something that is an address of your faith to God regarding the text.
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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
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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
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God is going to do is basically show us three things about rebellion. And I don't usually give,
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I mean you guys can write this down on your calendar, I don't usually give a three -point message, but you're gonna get one this morning.
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So those of you who like to take notes, nice and tidy notes, I'm gonna give you three points. I mean, yeah, take a break on that one.
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The first point is the anatomy of rebellion that we're gonna see in the text. The second is God's assessment of rebellion, his appraisal of it or his assessment of it.
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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
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I'll just leave it at that. So the anatomy of rebellion, God's assessment of rebellion, and God's response to rebellion.
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So let's read this together, Genesis 11, 1 through 9. And again, if there's anybody here that doesn't own a
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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.
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But follow along, Genesis 11, 1 through 9. And the
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Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of man had built. And the
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Lord said, Their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.
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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
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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.
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Let's pray. Father, we have an opportunity to see a text that tells us an ancient story, what
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I believe is true, one that actually occurred. And yet the point of this is a walking us through the nature of our rebellion.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Father, I pray that you would help us to rejoice as a people who have gathered together, as those who have been forgiven.
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Not those who are perfect, not those who have everything all together in our lives, but ultimately those who have been forgiven.
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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.
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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, the words would flow out of hearts dedicated to you, devoted to you, worshiping you, rejoicing in you and the provision of your
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Son Jesus Christ for us. And it's in his name that I pray. Amen. Be sure to have your
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Bibles open to Genesis chapter 11, the first nine verses there. Just have that up on your left.
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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.
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And then also if you need to, you remember to get any coffee, donuts, juice that you need. Also restrooms, men's back there, women's up over there.
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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.
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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.
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And we come to this verse in verse one. Go ahead and look at it with me. Now the whole earth had one language in the same words.
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Now the thing about that is some people have pointed out what they perceive to be a discrepancy in scripture, some issue.
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So I just want to get that out on the table. Because if you were to go back two verses to the very end of chapter 10, look at verse 31 with me.
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Verse 31 says this, These are the sons of Shem by their clans, their languages, their lands and their nations.
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Okay, so there's languages, lands, nations, sons of Shem. We've just seen these genealogies.
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And then what does verse one say pretty definitively? Now the whole earth had one language in the same words.
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Does it appear at face value that something needs to be reconciled here? Previous chapter said there are multiple languages.
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Then we get to the start of this chapter and it says, now wait a minute, all the world has one language.
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And it does so in strong emphasis. Okay, so in Hebrew, it's very abundantly direct with some of the phrases that are used here.
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Here we see the whole earth with one language and the same words.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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So when was the earth divided? Before we even get done with the genealogy, the earth is divided.
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Then we go on to his brother, Jochten, and we list his sons too. So we see that the genealogy incorporates both a period of time before the languages were divided and after.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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And I encountered the following quote from an extremely credible resource called Wikipedia. Some of you maybe have heard of it.
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So how credible this is, you guys know that this is really significant research here.
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But it said this, the origin of language is declared to be the hardest problem in science. There was no footnote to that.
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So I just want to clarify that. In Wikipedia, there wasn't a footnote declaring that. But that was the statement.
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And I 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?
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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.
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They don't have a universal theory of how language forms, how it develops, or how it even progresses or moves forward.
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And 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.
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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.
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Because Ham, Shem, Japheth, Noah, and wives all stepped out of the ark together, right?
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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?
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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,
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God, Adam, and Eve, and Adam and Eve spoke the same language, presuming that.
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So then, of course, we go back to one language there. So I just wanna point out that if you believe in faith, you're believing what the
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Bible says and you believe that in creation or in the flood, of course, you're gonna take for granted that at one point in history, there was a common language for humanity.
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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.
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There are very few people in these fields today who do not believe, whether they're
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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.
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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.
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So just to use an illustration of water, aqua, agua, you can kind of get that prefix and that notion.
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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.
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And then that diverged into a variety of different ways to say what we call water, which isn't aqua,
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I don't know. Maybe we just kind of rebelled against that one or something. But you get the point. So I mean, 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.
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But again, the point isn't to prove that this story is scientifically accurate or that it's watertight.
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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.
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So my goal here this morning isn't to convince you that this is a historical account. I don't even think
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I can do that. I can't prove to you that this was historical. I take on faith.
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I think there comes a point where you have to decide, I'm going to take on faith that this is an accurate account.
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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.
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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.
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So in verses one through four, we're going to see the anatomy of rebellion. We already met the man last week whose name
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Nimrod, which means dummy, right? Was that what his name meant? No, no, that wasn't it.
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Nimrod, meaning we will rebel. That's the name of this guy,
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Nimrod. We will rebel. And we know that he created a very powerful global kingdom in the plain of Shinar called
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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
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Shinar. Now, do you think it's just chance that we've seen that now mentioned that location Shinar mentioned twice?
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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.
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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.
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And I wanna point out that Shinar, just to ground you in geography here, is in an area in southern
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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
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Babylonian empire and they can be found there still today. Archeologists are always uncovering stuff in the sand out there.
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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.
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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.
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So they are fruitful, they multiply and look for a great place to congregate and gather together.
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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.
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In verses three through four, we have the declaration of their intent. What's going on? What are they gonna do? So in verse three, you see, and they said to one another, come let us brick bricks, that's in the
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Hebrew. We put make in there because it makes better sense to us. They said, come let us brick bricks and burn them thoroughly.
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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.
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And he's actually reflecting to us what building looked like in his time and then also comparing it to that ancient culture.
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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.
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So what was building construction like in Israel and in the places that he was used to traveling?
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Moses was used to having rock that you could cut into brick, into big blocks and build with it.
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And then they had a process of producing mortar, much like we do today of mixing, certainly not quick concrete or anything like that.
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But they had a process for mixing mortar and taking rock or stone and building with it.
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And he says, well, what they did back then, Moses' words, what they did back then is they actually baked bricks and then use bitumen or tar for the mortar in between that.
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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.
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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.
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All right, ziggurat. Ziggurat is a Babylonian pyramid, okay?
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So picture a pyramid, but it's unfinished so the top of it is flat and there's stairs mounting up to the top.
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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.
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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
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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?
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Tombs, okay? So a ziggurat is not a tomb like in the Egyptian concept of pyramid.
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We've actually uncovered many of these ziggurats throughout the Middle East and guess what they're made with?
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Anybody want to take a guess? Brick that's fired in a kiln and tar for the mortar to hold them together.
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Exactly what's mentioned here, that it's very clear that the Bible is accurate on what kind of building materials that they used for construction during this era.
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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.
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They're producing kilns and they have to heat these bricks up to a pretty high temperature in order to fire them and get them solid.
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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
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PC, but not Mac yet, or I don't know what they had, but they didn't have iPads,
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I'm pretty sure about that. But I mean, think about the technology that they must have had.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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,
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I think that we have a sense of technological arrogance or what C .S. Lewis called chronological snobbery.
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We have this notion of caveman sloped forehead, ugh, ooh, fire, you know, and we have that concept of what that culture was like.
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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.
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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.
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And aside from that, very little difference. As a matter of fact, I would dare say few towns in the
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Wild West and the frontier had a kiln to bake bricks. You built your house with what you cut down with your hands, right?
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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.
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It also highlights how fast technology has grown on this planet. Isn't it amazing? These are some of the things that we have now.
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But not that far removed. What was everyday life like there when they're building this tower?
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Not too shabby, to be honest. Bricks and mortar are not the point of the people on earth here in verse three.
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It says certainly they wanna make bricks, they wanna burn them and then get this bitumen from mortar, but there's a purpose behind that and it's in verse four.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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That's what they're doing. So what are they doing wrong here? Look, consider where the building project begins.
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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.
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Us, ourselves. Us, ourselves. Who is their focus?
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Themselves. They are all about themselves, filled to the brim with themselves, doing for themselves.
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Is building a city wrong? Is there anything inherently wrong with building a city? No. Is building a tower inherently sinful?
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Once you get past a certain number of stories then you're just over the top. Now it's a sinful tower.
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Is there anything wrong with that? No. Nothing wrong with building a tower but the language employed here implies that the rebellion of these people is founded on two principles.
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So here's the anatomy of their rebellion. They're rebelling based on pride and self -preservation.
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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.
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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
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God. What did God tell them to do? Be fruitful, multiply, and disperse.
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And they're saying, lest we be dispersed. Who do they think is going to disperse them?
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Lest somebody disperse us. Put this in perspective. All the people in the world are gathered in this one location.
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Who do they fear? Who are they opposing? They're opposing him.
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Lest the animals come in and disperse us. Ultimately, they are seeking to show
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God that they really have no need of him. Thank you very much. We got this one.
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Together, we can do much. Together, we can take care of ourselves. Thank you for your offer of protection, but we've got it.
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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.
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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.
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And that changes things a little bit. I don't think of myself as a rebel. But wait a minute.
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Are you a sinner? Do you oppose God's law? Do you know what he's asked of you?
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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
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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.
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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.
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It's either pride that says, I will forge my own way. I got it. I know better than you,
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God. You've told me what to do. I'll get it. And so much of sin, if we're honest, is about making a name for ourselves.
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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.
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Think about this in these terms. How much of our interaction and speech with others is about making a name for ourselves?
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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,
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I have. Me and I think two of others. Three. Okay, now three of us. Where we recognize, and I think all of us have done that.
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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?
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That's true. So, so much of sin is about making a name for ourselves, but think about this.
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How much of our spending on cool gadgets and cars and houses and stuff is about making a name for ourselves?
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Having people like us or think that we've got it all together? How much of seeking a recognition in our workplace is about making a name for ourselves?
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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?
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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.
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Jesus had some harsh words for the person who would think that they can hedge themselves in and build their own kingdom like this.
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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.
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He says it another way, in another passage, store up for yourselves treasures, where?
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In heaven. In heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and thieves do not break in and steal.
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How many of you have already lived long enough to know that your stuff just doesn't last? Have you found that out yet?
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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
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RAM? I mean, have you been? I mean, it's like, this stuff just crumbles and it rusts and it goes away quickly.
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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?
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How many of you, if you're honest, you've had these thoughts, and I mean, I don't want to be a Debbie Downer or get all morose on you or anything, but how many of you are just like, reckoned with the idea, the thought, the notion that you are going to die?
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Have you dealt with that? You've been there? It's a reality. And one day it's all going to fade away.
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You know, he who dies with the most toys leaves their children with the biggest estate sale. That's the way that it's gonna go and it's just a headache for them anyways.
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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.
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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.
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Any of you like walking through cemeteries? It sounds kind of weird, but I actually do. I like just walking and looking at dates.
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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,
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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, birthdates.
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In the 1700s, just 100 yards from here. Some of these people in this cemetery died before the
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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.
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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.
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They didn't meet him. They're that far gone. And that's not in the very distant future to us.
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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.
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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.
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Those are the things that matter most. Now, that doesn't mean you can work your job for the glory of Christ, right?
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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.
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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 gonna be found.
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Jesus turns this whole thing up on its head and says, you're not gonna be most fulfilled when you are serving yourself.
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You think you are, right? If we're honest, we bought into the lie that the most fulfilling things are gonna be when
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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.
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Is that empty in the end? If that's what you're serving, those things get empty quick.
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Serving others joyfully unto God, those are the moments of greatest delight and joy.
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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 gonna be okay, it's gonna be all right.
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Storing up treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and thieves cannot break in and steal.
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I wanna 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.
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But I do wanna point out that this was likely a massive structure. There was the notion in ancient
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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.
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But archeologists think they've uncovered the base of this building, again, in the area of Iraq. And because of common building practices, the way that these structures were designed, they can pretty much estimate the approximate height of this had it been finished.
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And it's unclear from the text whether it ever got finished or not. But it would have been about 300 feet tall, conservative estimates.
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And how many of you, like when I say 300 feet, you're like, oh yeah, I got that snap. I can picture that in my mind. That's taller than any building in Kalamazoo.
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There's not a building in Kalamazoo County that's taller than this structure. So just to put that in perspective, drive downtown to Radisson or some of the bigger buildings that are down at the bank building.
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Taller than those, okay? Who, if this was in Kalamazoo County, it would be the tallest structure here.
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So again, pretty significant building. But that's not the point. The height of the building, the breadth of the city isn't the point.
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But the anatomy of rebellion looks like mankind doing things their own way, making a name for themselves and preserving themselves as priority numero uno.
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Let me look out for myself. But now in verses five through six, we find God's appraisal of their rebellion.
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He's gonna check things out and give his assessment. And verse five is one of the most laughably ironic verses in scripture.
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They've been working hard to build a tower to reach where? Heaven. They wanna get up and get God's attention so that they can come up and see him, visit with God.
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They're building this tower with that mindset. And the image that we have here in verse five, and the Lord came down to see the city of the tower, which the children of man had built, it's like God is sitting on his throne and he looks down and he's like, it looks like the people are doing a little something down there.
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But I can't quite make out what they're doing. Hmm, it looks like they might be building something.
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I'm gonna go down. I'm gonna condescend. I'm gonna lower myself to go down to see this tower that they're building.
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Do you get the picture? They're thinking that they're super awesome and building this super massive structure that's gonna grab
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God's attention. He's gonna be like, whoa, this is so cool. How'd you guys get up here? And no, it's like, what?
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Now, can God see anything from anywhere? Yeah, so I mean, this is the author's way of illustrating and ultimately including irony in the text saying
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God is like sitting on his throne going, oh, look, my little children, my little people, those little children of men are in the sandbox playing again.
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I'm gonna go see what they built. You get the picture? But we see that God doesn't take this rebellion lightly even though there's irony in the text.
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What is ironic is not necessarily laughable. His assessment is that they are working together as one.
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They have one language. And that the city and tower is only, it only represents the beginning of their capability regarding rebellion.
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That's the problem. Nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
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And although this must be in some sense an exaggeration or hyperbole that I don't think God was saying, well, they'll eventually be gods or something like that.
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They can do whatever they want. I think that this shows that God had a pretty good handle on their ability for technological advance even in those ancient times.
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Did we surprise God when we built a combustion engine? Did we surprise God when we created airplanes?
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Or when we created iPads or whatever technology? Oh, I know, they really surprised him with Google Glass, right, that new thing that they're working on.
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That was the big surprise. No, he knows that together when we're unified and when we're working together that we are able to accomplish some amazing things.
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Would you agree with me on that? And God sees that and he knows that and he's very well aware of it. But I don't think
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God is primarily concerned with the technological advance. Some will tell you technology is evil, right? Have you ever heard that before?
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Technology is evil, it's the devil. Well, can it be used to do evil? Yeah, but can it be used to do great things and bless people and remove cancer and do amazing surgeries and awesome things?
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Absolutely. So it's not that God is primarily concerned with the technological advance, but when he comes down, he sees that his humans are growing in rebellion and opposition to him.
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And that is what concerns him. This makes me ponder what God thinks of the global unity that is developing today in this massive global economy and culture that we're living in.
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I'm not convinced it's the Christian's primary role to thwart the global economy, but I do imagine that as we get closer to a one -world government,
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God on his throne says this is only the beginning of what they will do. Nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
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And I wonder how he looks at that. I want to use this as a chance to communicate that not all unity is good unity.
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You guys aware of that? I'm going to illustrate it, but I think that you probably have some sense in which not all unity is good unity.
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For example, street gangs offer unity, but it's a unity in rebellion, right?
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There is a real sense in which cities provide a sense of unity that can be detrimental.
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Would you agree with me? There's an anonymity. Any of you ever lived in a city, one of the big cities in the United States? There's a sense in which living in the city is kind of cool and hip and fun.
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And boy, there's a lot of stuff and there's culture going on. But there's also a lot of evil that happens when you get a lot of people together in close -knit quarters, right?
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There's a sense of degradation that rapidly moves in. There's a sense of peer pressure that I think many of us have experienced that looks a lot like the group thing going on in the building of this tower that ultimately leads towards rebellion against God.
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Now, unity in Christ is a precious thing. Would you agree with me on that? That when we gather together, we are the body of Christ.
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And I love the connection time and before the service and after the service when people are chatting and talking and there's interaction.
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And I know, I just look around this room and I know many of your stories and I see the connection. And if we're honest, many of the connections that we have here are solely based on Christ.
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You wouldn't have run into each other were it not for the church, the body of Christ in which you are now a part.
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And you go, I would have run into you at the grocery store and said, hey, excuse me, I need to get to the pickles or the
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Lucky Charms. Probably more likely that. But you know what I'm saying? We would have just kind of bumped into each other and maybe set a polite high to each other.
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But now it's because we know together we are in Christ that we gather together. Our voices combine to bring worship and praise to our
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God. It's an amazing thing, isn't it? When you really think about the unity that we experience. So there's an awesome kind of unity.
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There's a glorious kind of unity. But there's a scary, dangerous, sinister kind of unity as well.
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And we need to be very cautious. Recast, we need to be careful about the different kinds of unity that exist in our world.
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There's a type of unity in this world that makes people comfortable rebelling against God together.
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Do it together. We'll get together on this and I'll feel, strengthen numbers and I'm less scared because I know you do it too.
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Do you get what I'm saying? There's a type of unity that makes people comfortable living fake, self -righteous lives together.
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Unfortunately, often this occurs within a church. It's a great setting for us to fake each other out.
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A great setting for us to act self -righteous because everybody else is too. Do you know what
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I'm saying? And we could easily slide into that type of feeling where everybody has to live a perfect life and if you're not perfect, then you don't fit in and you're not one of us.
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The message of the gospel is the exact opposite. We are a hospital for the wounded and hurting. That is what a church is supposed to be.
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Not a museum of saints who have their act together and they've got it all together, right?
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And that's where authenticity is on the back wall here and we want to take that seriously. But there's also a type of unity that makes people feel safe while holding hands and heading toward hell together.
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Do you know what I'm talking about? I think we've got to strike a balance of being authentic and honest with each other and simultaneously calling each other towards a higher calling in Christ.
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You ever felt the comfort that, oh, you watch that TV show too? You overhear a conversation, you watch it too?
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Oh, I feel better now. I feel better, like I'm justified in watching it because you watch it too and so now there's strength in numbers that go,
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I'm not sure, that's a dicey show. Boy, some of the times I feel like shutting it off but boy, I'm into it and I'm just following the characters and I'm learning about, you know,
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I just do it as, it's just academic for me. I'm just learning about our culture. But I'm kind of roped in and then
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I find out you watch it too and you watch it too and you watch it too and it's like, oh, okay, now we're justified because we all watch it.
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Are you getting what I'm saying? Have you felt that kind of unity with people that's like, that's dicey?
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Or that sense like, you got drunk last weekend too. Okay, all right.
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Boy, I feel better about that. I didn't really get drunk last weekend. I didn't say that in the first service so they probably think that I got drunk last weekend but I didn't,
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I promise you. But still, yeah, you get what
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I'm saying. A sense of like, unity in sin. And we heard the word during the family dedication of accountability that the
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Franks were telling us they desire our accountability and yet I fear that so much accountability in the church is gathering together and feeling better about our sin.
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Like, sharing that together and then the end result is, okay, good, I know you struggle too. I know, so now we just all get together and we're like comfortable with our sins rather than taking people to the word of God.
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True accountability. Accountability only is as good as it comes back here to the word of God and addresses it in all of our lives.
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Do you get what I'm saying? Accountability that ends with my experience and your experience is no accountability at all.
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It's this kind of groupthink. It's rebellion in a sense against God. Do you hear what I'm saying? Because unless we root ourselves to the firm word of God that's going to convict us and direct us and guide us then we're playing something different than real genuine accountability.
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Are you getting what I'm saying in that? Is that making sense? There's a dangerous unity and it is a unity that looks like getting comfortable with rebellion against God and that's my point.
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God's assessment of that rebellion is dramatic but not angry. You see in verses seven through nine we find
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God's response to the rebellion and just like the flood, God doesn't completely solve the rebellion in the hearts of humanity but he slows its progress by dispersing the people through confusing their languages.
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The people have rebellion in their hearts. He doesn't smite them or judge them but he confuses the languages so that they can't progress in sin together in unity.
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But we see the results of this. Nimrod is going to move to Nineveh out of Babel. He's the leader and he moves and establishes a new empire in Nineveh.
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The people of Japheth are going to move up north. The Hamites are going to take a more southerly trip.
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The people of Shem stay in the area and some of them head out a little bit east. And in verse eight we find that they leave the city unfinished.
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Now it says directly that the city is left unfinished but it doesn't mention the tower. So it's quite possible that the tower was finished but not the city.
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But regardless of how that went down, the project that once represented their hope for unity, their hope for the pride of humanity, their hope to demonstrate self -dependence on themselves, it now stands unfinished.
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And the unfinished city was called Babel which means confusion and from that place, all of the peoples of the world were scattered.
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I found an amazing quote from USA Today article, a little bit more credible, slightly more credible than Wikipedia.
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But USA Today, July 2007 says this, many linguists say that historical language cannot be studied backwards beyond an 8 ,000 year threshold because at that point the language is changed too much.
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Linguists acknowledge that as they trace language backwards, 8 ,000 years ago there was an explosion of languages that they can't account for and they can't untangle.
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But they acknowledge that boom, all of a sudden on the scene, it's like language exploded and there was a variety of them that they just can't untangle.
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Now it's not to say that every linguist now bows the knee before God and says, oh the tower of Babel was real, it happened and oh it's so obvious.
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You bring your bias to it and you're gonna see what you wanna see but I just wanna point out that what we believe, or at least what scripture says, there's scientific evidence for that.
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That in the history, now it depends on how you date the genealogies and figuring out the math but somewhere about five to 10 ,000 years ago there was a radical shift in languages and the scripture, if you do the genealogies in a certain way and you figure things out, about five to 10 ,000 years ago there was a significant shift in languages.
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You see how that matches up? And again, I'm not giving you proof, I'm just suggesting to you that you don't need to be scientifically illiterate to believe these things.
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Are you getting what I'm saying? It's not gonna prove it to anybody and it's not like you can pull that card out of your pocket and share it with a coworker and they're gonna be like, oh
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Jesus is my savior. Just because you told them that 8 ,000 years ago there's a shift in languages. But regardless of how you understand these events, the point remains the same.
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Humanity is caught in a pattern of rebellion that focuses on our own pride, making a name for ourselves, self -preservation and God's assessment of our rebellion is that it is serious and worth his action.
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And so he is a God who takes measures to help slow the progress of rebellion. Doing these things in the old covenant that ultimately point forward to the new covenant where God is going to set things straight ultimately and fix the problem of the human heart through the cross of Jesus Christ.
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So for us in 2013, I wanna point out three applications for us. So we've gone through this text, kind of three points, the anatomy, the appraisal and then ultimately
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God's response. But I just wanna say this, I'm gonna give you three applications and the fear that I have about giving applications,
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I don't do this very often because my fear is that I'll miss the one that God really wants to point out to you because how many of you know there's more than three applications from this text?
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Would you agree with me on that? More than three things that the Holy Spirit might impress on you and you might walk out of here going,
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I don't struggle with any of the ones that Don mentioned so I'm free and clear to go. But if there's 100 people sitting in this room, there's really 100 different applications to this.
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Would you agree with me on that? So I want you to listen to the Holy Spirit but I wanna point out three things that God has pressed on my heart to do over the course of this week in studying this.
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The first, as a personal application, I would like everyone to take an assessment of their own rebellion before God and ask the questions, how much of my life is currently devoted to making a name for myself?
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Do I do what I do for the glory of God or do I do what I do for the glory of self to make others like me more, to lift my name higher?
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It's possible that we need to repent of some very fundamental things about the way we live our lives.
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I mean, you think about this and it's a subtle shift but it's fundamental, okay? So the place that I work, the car that I drive, the house that I live in, all of these things, is it okay to work and do my best at my job?
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I work for Bronson, you work for the school system, you work for UPS, you work for Pfizer, you work for Stryker, you work all different kinds of places
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I represented here. Now, I missed yours and so now you're going, this doesn't apply to me, right? I didn't say
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PNC, so now you can apply it to yourself. But ultimately, is it okay to do the best that you do there?
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You should be doing the best that you do but ultimately, what is it for? Is it for your own glory?
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Is it so that you can amass wealth? Is it so that you can gain fame in your community and in your corporation?
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Or is it doing the best that you can for the glory of God? Who do you work for? It's a fundamental question.
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Who's your employer? Is it God? Could that rightly be said of you that you work for God?
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It doesn't matter what your title is. It's not just those who work at a church that work for God.
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Not just those who work for Youth for Christ that are working for God. All of us.
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All of us should live our lives as though we're employed by Him. It's not wrong to have a nice car, is it?
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Is that wrong? Sinful? No. We should be checking cars in the parking lot, right? No. But it is wrong to have a nice car for your own glory.
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Think about that. It's not wrong to have a big house but to have a big house for your own glory. It's not wrong to build a good career but who's getting the glory?
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And that leads into a very obvious second application for us as a church when it comes to who gets the glory.
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I wanna point out to you I plan these messages months in advance.
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I usually try to sit down and plan my preaching schedule for a year in advance. And so I sat down a few months ago and planned out what text
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I'm gonna be on. What are they doing in the text? Just very fundamentally, at a base level. What are the people doing?
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Building something. What is Recast talking about right now? Building something.
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Do you think God might have a little bit to do with it? Do you think it's just coincidence that we're talking about building and the text is talking about building?
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So the question fundamentally for us as application is why build a building? Would you guys acknowledge that it's a process that's full of danger for our church?
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Do you agree with me on that? It is. It has the potential to be a dangerous prospect for us to build a church. And here's what
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I think is most dangerous. And I get a chance here to, I've been wanting an outlet to kind of share my thoughts on this and then the text is here.
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So I feel free to do so. But I just wanna say this statement. Many crystal cathedrals have been built with a veneer of honoring
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God. It's a very thin coating of we wanna bring honor and glory to God.
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And we want his name to be glorified by our construction. And by his name, we technically mean our name.
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By honoring him, we technically mean honoring us. You know what
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I'm saying? And that's a dangerous place. I'm excited about having a modest facility.
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An emphasis is on modest. A place for the furtherance of God's kingdom, a place to gather together as God's people, a place to worship him together.
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But my prayer is that God would take away from us any spirit of pride that would build a building for the glory of recast church.
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It is for the glory of Jesus Christ. Now, there's another thing about this though.
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I want an unpretentious building because we are called to be an unpretentious people. And what
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I mean by that is just, as we've gone through this process, we've had some interactions with Zion church builders down the road.
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What they do, they do well. They build churches. And of course, they like building churches and they like building big churches because that's what they do for a living.
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And so there's a notion in which multiple times in the course of interacting with them, and this isn't to malign them, it's just the reality of the way that business runs and the way that things happen.
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They've said, boy, we just want this. We want this building to pop. We want it to snap. You know, you drive down that road and you just come up over those railroad tracks and boom, pow, wow, you know?
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You know what I'm talking about? The sales pitch, the boy, wham, there's a church. Boom, glory to God.
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Everybody, pagans will be driving down the road and go, oh, we're bowing our knee before Jesus because the building is so beautiful.
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Do you know what I'm saying? And I've said, and he said a couple of times, well, we want people to just stand in the parking lot and admire this building.
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We want them to see that. And I corrected him and I said, no, no, no. God forbid that people stand in the parking lot and admire this building.
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I want them to hurry in the doors to meet the people and rejoice together as God's people, to worship him, not the building.
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I want a modest facility. I want it to be like, you drive over those railroad tracks, you get there and you go, meh, meh.
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Boy, is that, that's a church? That's all they could do? That's it?
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But to come in, because how many of you know, we are the church. This facility, look around us.
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This has been awesome. This has worked great for us. You drive in and you go, meh, right?
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I mean, be honest. The first time you saw this facility, you're like, a church meets there? How is that possible, right?
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And I mean, it's really funny. I have a couple of people, about once or twice a week, I'll be sitting here in the office and somebody will just walk in and they'll be peeking in the door.
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They don't go here and they're looking in. I'll walk them in and they're like, their first comment is, well, it's bigger inside than it looks like from outside.
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They didn't say, what an awesome facility you have. Nah, it looks a little bigger. Looks a little bigger inside than it does outside.
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You really pack people in here, that's good. Are you getting what I'm saying about this? An unpretentious building, a modest facility, something that works for us.
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That's the nature of the way that Recast has started and that's, I'm excited about the way that it's gonna progress and move forward and I'm trusting in God for this and at the same time, recognizing that God is not more glorified by the amount of stained glass or the height of the steeple or the square footage.
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He is most honored by the hearts of men and women and children in love with him above all other things.
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And a coffee bar, only as much as it serves keeping your attention on the word of God.
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The last application is regarding the response of God. How does he respond to them? And I want you to look in the text for the anger of God.
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Go ahead and look for it, where do you find it? It's not there, you can keep looking but you might as well stop or trust me that it's there and you can look for it later.
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It's not. Try and find his fury and his wrath. Some of you have been raised to expect that God is extremely angry in this text.
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He's just vindictive and he's looking for a chance for his people to mess up so that boom, he can strike them and get back at them and we are now through 11 chapters of the book of Genesis and not one time have we seen our heavenly father angry.
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What does that tell you about God? What does that tell you about our father? Now, will we see a theme throughout scripture of his anger?
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Will we see him finally come to the end of his patience? Yes, but he has an extreme patience with his people.
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An amazing level of patience. And in our text, we see him working to cool the flames of human rebellion by confusing their languages, not by smiting them.
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He's a loving God who responds to those who trust him. And we know from our vantage point that the flood didn't solve our rebellion, the dispersion of the people didn't solve our rebellion, but the cross of Jesus Christ is the thing that solves the problem of our rebellion against him.
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At the cross, the father took the punishment of our rebellion that we deserved and placed it on his son, and his son willingly took that on himself, and that is love.
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That's the greatest love. Some people have accused, have identified the atonement, the concept that God the father punished his son for you and I, they've called it divine child abuse.
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Have you ever heard that phrase before? God beat up his son for you, okay? But it takes, it totally removes the concept of the trinity in there, that the son fully took that wrath that we deserved, and he knowingly stood under that wrath of the father for you and me.
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What love, what amazing love that he would take the consequences of our rebellion on himself.
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So we come to communion to celebrate the provision of God, and if you trust that Jesus is Lord, and you've asked him to save you, then please join together in communion.
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But before you eat the cracker and you drink the juice, I'd encourage you to take a moment to consider your own personal rebellion.
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Every one of us has rebelled against our father, and I'd encourage you to take a moment to confess your sin before him, and thank him for the way that he dealt with your rebellion on the cross.
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Some of you here, for some of you, all you have known is an attempt to build a kingdom for yourself.
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That's what you've done. You're building this kingdom for yourself, and you recognize it isn't enough. It will not satisfy.
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I'd encourage you that you could pray right now, you could pray during this song, and ask Jesus to forgive you of your rebellion against him and his will.
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And he will forgive you. And not only that, but he will give you a fresh start.
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He promises a new heart and a new life, not a life where he takes care of every problem that you've ever faced or are going to face, but a life with resolve and purpose.
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Come and talk with me if you would like to start a new relationship with Jesus Christ today. I'll be standing over by my office at the end of communion, let's pray.
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Father, I thank you so much for your grace and your mercy. We see in this text a model, a reflection, a mirror image of our own rebellion against you.
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We see our own tendency in here to live for self and to ignore you and to push you aside.
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And it's very easy to come to church on Sunday and get kind of built up and strengthened or encouraged or hear from your word and feel like we've done it, and then
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Monday for that resolve to just go down to nothing and to live for ourselves and to push you aside.
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Father, I pray for different things for us this week. I would bring honor and glory to you because of the great sacrifice of your son,
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Jesus Christ, that as we get an opportunity to take this juice, we would remember the blood of Jesus poured out for us, that as we take this cracker, we would remember the body of Jesus crushed in our place.
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Where we deserve to be crushed, he took it for us out of his great love and sacrifice.
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Father, if there are any here who do not know you as Savior, who are in their futility, trying and trying and trying to please themselves and make a kingdom for themselves and just crumbling around them,
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Father, that you would save them before it's too late. I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.