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Preacher: Ross Macdonald
Scripture: Genesis 11:1-9
Well, this morning, we continue on in Genesis 11. Although, in a certain sense, we're not continuing on at all, as we are again looking at the first nine verses in this episode of the
Tower of Babel. And as I mentioned last week, we're going to focus a little more on application today, drawing out what this episode in Genesis 11 might say to us in our time, in our lives.
And so, again, we saw the bigger theological picture of Babel last week.
We saw the importance of Babel as the theme of the city of man unfolds throughout
Scripture as Babel becomes, as it were, Babylon. And that brings us all the way into Revelation 14 through 18.
And so we saw this beginning of the penultimate city of man, the serpentine kingdom.
And I want to, again, just remind us of the significance of that.
It won't be the last time we see it, even within Genesis. We have this city made of baked mud bricks and bitumen.
The King James, I love, translates bitumen or tar as slime. And so this is our tower of mud and slime.
This is the effort of fallen man to make a name for himself, to manage the curse that God has brought upon sinful humanity.
Man seeks to protect himself, make his own destiny, forge his own path, and builds this city with a great tower of mud and slime.
Babel increasingly comes to symbolize godless society. It's arrogant. You can imagine a city of that kind as every city, as we said, crushes men, women, and children to a pulp.
It's the beginning of tyranny. It's full of pleasures and sins and idolatries.
It's the harlot that we read about in Revelation last week. It's riches, it's luxuries, as it were, getting the kings of the earth drunk.
Meanwhile, that harlot herself is getting drunk, intoxicated on the blood of the persecuted believers, intoxicated on the blood of the saints.
Babel in Exodus becomes Egypt. Later it becomes Babylon. By the time
John writes Revelation, it's clearly Rome, the seven -headed beast. This is the serpentine kingdom.
It goes by many names, but they all join together successively as the city of man, as opposed to over against the city of God.
Now, we said last week, kind of an introduction to today, in the areas of individual freedom, in the areas of family, family stability,
God's design for the family, in the areas of church, church and state relationship, church autonomy.
We're increasingly living on the plain of Shinar, under the shadow of Babel, and it's a dangerous place for Christians to live, and a dangerous time for Christians to live, because the people around us are acting as though God doesn't matter, and they can indeed manage their own lives, their own destiny, the environment around them, the fallen condition that allows there to be death and famine and destruction, war and rumors of war, division, hostility, suffering, poverty.
They think that they can find a salvation within themselves that they can then offer. They have a Messiah complex.
These are the Babel builders in the year 2021. We live in a civilization that is building its own tower of mud and slime, offering control over all those things that would plague us.
No need for God. No need for God's explanation of the world and our lives within it.
We can master the environment. We can have enough data to control human communication, human psychology, genetics, and therefore human destiny.
This is the mud and slime tower of the city of man in our time. Now you contrast that city of Babel with the city of God.
This is going back to Augustine in the early church, who straddled in his life the collapse of the
Roman Empire, and his great work was the city of God. It was sort of his running commentary on this theme in the
Bible, contrasting the city of man, fallen man, and the victory, the conquest of the city of God.
The city of God is like Babel, many different names throughout Scripture. The one that we want to put before us this morning is
Zion, the mountain of God, the city of God on high, the heavenly
Jerusalem, Zion. Mount Zion is the sanctuary of God's dwelling.
It's the picture of God's reigning presence, not only over His people Israel, but over all things.
In the latter days, that little foothill becomes the highest mountain. It dominates the landscape of the earth.
And this is picking up several themes. It's an emblem of solidity, something absolutely firm and immovable.
It's the greatest earthly picture of stability possible, the mountain of Zion, the city of our
God. And who dwells in Zion? Who composes Zion? Zephaniah 3, we read it last week.
Then I will give to the people's purified lips. All of them will call on the name of the Lord to serve
Him shoulder to shoulder. Then I will remove from your midst your proud, exalting ones. You will never again be haughty on my holy mountain.
You see the contrast there with Babel? You'll not be arrogant on my holy mountain, on Zion.
I'll remove the ones that exalt and boast and build with mud and slime from among you. My people will be a meek people, a humble people, a holy people.
And they will take refuge in the name of the Lord. Jesus said, Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
The Babalites wanted to build a tower to reach into heaven. Who inherited?
Not the Babalites. They're brought to an end. They're brought to destruction. Who inherited?
The poor. The poor in spirit. Babel wanted to have security on the face of the earth.
So they built this great city to dominate and make a name for themselves. Who inherits the earth according to Jesus?
The meek. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. So we are
Zion. We are, as believers, as the church of God, the city of God. A royal nation, a royal priesthood awaiting the full consummation of Zion.
We are the Zion of God. We want to consider that this morning in three parts. In contrast to Babel.
And this will be where a lot of our application comes from. Zion as a city in three parts.
And those three parts are, first, Zion, a separated city. A separated city.
Secondly, Zion, a shining city. And third and last,
Zion, a secure city. A separated city, a shining city, and a secure city.
That's what Zion is. That's what we are. So first, a separated city.
Remember that God has divided the people of Babel. He's divided the tongues of Babel.
And as we considered, in salvation, that comes out of that judgment. He unites at Acts 2.
He unites all the different tongues at Pentecost. He makes a people for himself out of every tribe and every tongue.
And this is the answer or the redemption of what God did at Babel. And so now, all these different tongues are being united.
And they're hearing the message of God's kingdom. Of what He's going to build. Of a dominion that He will exercise over the earth.
His name will be made great and everlasting. And ironically, perhaps, in God's answer to the division of Babel, He unites a people from all across the world.
He's also dividing them from the world. So there's an irony here.
At Babel, God divides a united people. And they spread out to become the nations of the world.
But in Acts 2, God, as it were, unites these peoples, unites these tongues.
And yet, in doing that, He is dividing them from the world. He's separating them out from the world unto
Himself. So we see that the gospel of the kingdom, the kingdom of God, the city of God, both unites and divides.
Necessarily. It unites believers into one body.
That is, the body of Christ. It divides believers from the darkness around them, from their former ways, from the world in all of its defilement.
In other words, from the city of man. Believers are divided from the city of man, united as the body of Christ, united as the city of God.
Come out from her and be separate, says the Lord. We are a separated people, a separate city.
God separates us from the world when He gathers us together. No longer do we erode in the same flood of dissipation.
He's given us a new heart, new affections, a new hope, new desires, new values, new loyalty, new allegiance, new relationships, new community, new understanding, new calling, new kingdom, new king.
We're separated utterly and completely from the city of man, unto God as the city of God.
Now this is the thing about the city of man. The city of man has always had a desire to unite.
From the very beginning, Babel sought to unite, gather together, let us build, let us make a name for ourselves.
There's this imagery of working together in unison, coming together, the same pervasive spirit of Babel that we see living on even down to our own day.
The Babel builders are the repetition of the Cainites. The Babel builders, as we said, are the original progressives.
Always dangling in front of the eyes of the world some offer of unity, change, progress, hope, some hollow claim to manage the condition of the fall that they deny.
Truly the only unity the city of man can forge comes through tyranny. Whenever the city of man unifies, they have to unify by bayonet point, basically, by coercion.
That's the only unity the city of man can ultimately bring about. They cannot unite people that come from different walks of life, different socioeconomic levels, different races, different baggage, different claims, different idols.
Only the gospel does that. The city of man aims to unite, but they always divide.
And so in the rhetoric, the social classes are divided, the races are divided, the sexes are divided.
And sadly, Christians get pulled into this division. We follow the tune of the culture, which is following the tune of the deceiver.
We inevitably swallow the lie and think maybe the city of man can really overcome this.
Maybe the city of man is on to something here. They've put their finger on the right division. No, no, no.
We say, no, only the blood of Christ can heal these divisions. Only the blood of Christ, only the gospel of the kingdom overcomes these divisions, this hostility.
The city of man tries to do it by coercion, by force, by tyranny, by law and legislation, by policy.
They make the division worse. Look at all the attempts of the past century for the government to try to unite our nation.
Almost everything they've done has led to further division. We live perhaps in the most divided time in our nation's history.
Only the blood of Christ can heal such division. The world has no answer for that. The world is ignorant entirely of it.
So we're reminded that God has divided us from this world and its hollow claims, its failed attempts, and he's united us together.
He separated us from the world unto himself. When he separated us from the world, he didn't separate us from people of different means or different cultures than us, people of different colors or tongues, people of the opposite sex.
No, he just separated us from the world. And all of that is united as the body of Christ.
The division that exists in the world in this sense is truly between those who belong to God on the one hand and those who don't on the other.
That's the only real division in the world, brothers and sisters. Those who belong to God and those who don't.
Those who have been born again with new life in Christ and those who are dead in their trespasses and sins.
That's the real division in the world today. Those who are building a tower of mud and slime or those who are looking for a city whose builder and maker is
God. The division is between those who want to honor and serve the living
God and those who want to follow their own way and forge their own path and make their own destiny.
As we said last week, man is inescapably religious. Because man is made in the image of God, man cannot cease to be the image of God.
Even while dead in sin and trespass, man still images
God. He is the image of God. That means that everything man does is in light of that.
Man is inescapably religious. Eternity is put within him. As much as that may be repressed and materialism might be embraced, oh, we're nothing but flesh and bone.
We go from existence to non -existence and that's just the course of our evolutionary lifespan.
No, no, no, no. Man is inescapably religious. When you repress that, it comes out in other ways.
It used to be, about 150 years ago, 120 years ago, the claim was that the direction of Western society would be increasingly secular, increasingly materialistic.
And religion, this is what they always say about Christianity, isn't it? It will just die a slow, lingering death.
There'll be pockets in the Ozarks of people who believe in the supernatural or in Christian religious claims, but really, inevitably, this is dying.
And what's happened in the past 50 years is what philosophers call the religious turn. Now our nation is forging into religion of one sort or another more than they ever have before.
The problem is its superstition. Eastern religion, mysticism. The point is, because man is inescapably religious, man cannot repress that.
Man cannot live consistently with materialism. It comes out in all sorts of irrational ways.
People that the culture said were going to be secular, atheistic, materialist today have crystals in their pockets, or they have weird rituals because they're trying to be connected to the universe, do you see?
That religion comes out in all sorts of irrational ways. Man is inescapably religious.
And so that means, when it comes to culture, we must be sobered to the fact that the current battles that we face in our culture, the current division and hostility we see over marriage, a
Christian understanding of marriage, a Christian understanding of gender, a Christian understanding of sexual identity, all of these things are inherently religious.
Of course the city of man is going to address these things in their defiance of God.
They're inherently religious. Every aspect of life is inherently religious. What is culture?
The great missiologist Henry Van Til had this wonderful insight.
He studied cultures as a missionary, as a professor of missionary studies.
And he said, culture is religion externalized. That's what culture is.
Culture is religion externalized. Man is inescapably religious.
And what comes out of man's community is therefore religious too. Human culture is inherently religious.
It's religion externalized. What is your religion? Who is the God of your system? What kind of morality or values does this
God impose? Culture is religion externalized. So how do we approach the religious culture of our godless age as Christians who are denizens and citizens of the city of God?
How does our culture live within, confront, engage, evangelize the culture of the city of man?
How does Zion cohabitate, infiltrate, devastate the city of man?
What we're trying to discern, how do we live in this world without being of this world?
That's the perennial battle, isn't it? How to be in this world and yet not of this world.
Is culture bad? Is culture good? Do you think about these things?
That's the question here. Maybe you know me enough to know there might be a via media, a third option here.
Just ponder this. Is culture bad? Or is culture good?
Well, let's review it. Let's review these options. First, if you're leaning towards thinking that culture is bad, inherently bad.
Culture itself is inherently bad. When you think culture is inherently bad, you're denying that God created humanity to exercise dominion over the world as His image bearers.
And therefore, whenever human beings gather in community, they produce culture. And culture is part of the expression of human domination.
Part of the expression of image bearing. In that sense, even an attempt to resist culture still creates culture.
Culture is inescapable, right? You look at the Amish, right? Some of you might go on vacation and see some of the
Amish and just imagine. Boy, can you imagine living in that? They're hostile toward modern culture.
They're hostile toward modern forms of technology. But they couldn't be anti -culture if they tried.
They just have an Amish culture. A culture of their own. Culture is irresistible.
In that sense, there's good and bad culture, isn't there? Culture is not inherently bad. It's part of God's design for human beings to exercise dominion over earth.
When humans come together with all of the different gifts and abilities God has given them, they create culture, whether they want to or not.
But when you think culture is inherently good, when you say, amen, culture is great, I love culture.
Anything and everything I can get from culture. I sit at the table of culture as a little dog, and any scraps that fly off of it
I love to gobble up. I love culture. When you think culture is inherently good, meaning our culture or any culture, you can get lulled to sleep.
You start getting intoxicated by the luxuries and idolatries of Babylon. You're no longer able to discern those aspects of culture that put you in bondage, that are now weakening you to the effects of her drunkenness.
Remember Revelation 18 last week. So the point is, it's difficult to answer whether culture is good or bad.
It's yes and no, depending on what aspect of culture, in what place and at what time.
And Christians are meant to be thoughtful about these very things. We don't reject and resist the world that we live in.
Creation ought to ground the way we understand God's redemption in the world. We follow Him in that common grace way of seeking redemption and restoration.
Therefore, we have to be involved in culture. We are whether we want to be or not. But at the same time, we don't do so blindfolded with our mouths open, willing to participate and glean from any and every aspect of culture.
Christians have to be thoughtful about this. The problem, the real danger here is when you think culture is neutral.
And what I would argue is Christians, conservative Christians, evangelical
Christians, for far too long, and I'm including myself, hopefully you include yourself in that lot, conservative evangelical
Christians, for too long we pretend culture is neutral. For far too long.
When you think that culture is inherently neutral, it just kind of depends what you do, how you make it.
You've lost this thematic picture of the city of man, the city of Babel, the tower of mud and slime, the whore of Babylon.
This is the thematic imagery that Scripture gives us to understand the kind of culture we're up against as the city dwellers of Zion.
When you think that culture is inherently neutral, you give territory over, wholesale, to the gods of secularism.
You give, bow -tied, gift -wrapped, you give to Caesar what actually belongs to the
Lord. And this is the problem with thinking anything in this world is neutral. Any values or moral systems.
Some conservatives live off nostalgia. Oh, we just want to kind of go back a little bit. You'll never get there.
You'll never get there. We don't cede to Caesar what belongs to the
Lord. Culture is not inherently neutral. What I mean is, all too often, well -meaning conservative evangelicals treat culture as something neutral, rather than something that Christians engage as the people of Christ, as the servants of Christ.
They confront the culture with the claim of Christ. Whether His grace in that confrontation is sown into the culture and over time, generationally, that seed begins to come to fruition and the culture is transformed into a greater restraining of evil, a greater advancement of the kingdom, or whether, as that seed is sown, it is rejected under the judgment of God.
The point is, either way, the culture is not neutral and Christians don't treat the culture as neutral. They understand that the claim of Christ is always against any claim of man.
Nothing is neutral. To borrow the language of Jesus engaging the
Pharisees, what I've noticed in the past year is Reformed thinkers who ought to think better because they're basically tithing mint leaves and swallowing camels.
They're dancing to the tune of a culture that they're pretending is neutral. And so they host massive conferences to basically virtue signal.
We hear what you're saying, godless culture, and we agree with you. Can we sprinkle some Bible verses to show how relevant we are to you?
This is a major problem, frankly. It's not pressing the lordship of Christ.
It's not understanding that the blood of Christ is the only answer. It's really nothing more than trying to be relevant and acceptable to a culture that is hostile to Christ.
And so when we see the parachurch ministries, the ones that we've benefited from, and they're beginning to kowtow to whatever the latest cultural screech is, ignoring the fact that they're walking into the trap, the rhetoric that they're surrendering to is being used to build mud and slime towers in defiance of God.
It's all coming from this view that culture is somehow neutral. What we're saying is no.
Every aspect of life, every aspect of culture must be weighed against the claim of Christ.
Jesus is Lord was the claim of the earliest Christians from the earliest decades.
And they claimed that frequently and consistently enough until Rome turned its targets, its bullseyes upon them.
You can only say Jesus is Lord so much to Caesar that he stops rolling his eyes and starts sharpening his swords.
Jesus is Lord was the claim of a group of slaves and fishermen and peasants and widows that formed the earliest churches.
And they would not back down from that claim. They understood in saying this, we are confronting every aspect of the world around us.
Jesus is Lord. That's not footnoted.
Well, of course, these are dangerous times. We want to come alongside the
LGBTQ community and express our remorse and repentance for the things that we have done.
Can't we just be relevant? Won't you please accept us? Jesus is Lord in the little footnote. The culture says keep your morality out of our politics.
It's a different God, different system. And the church, the church at large has said, okay, yes,
Romans 13 and be kind and this is how we'll be salt and light. That's not how you become salt and light. What would have become of Christianity historically if the early
Christians had ever approached Rome or Roman culture in that way? It would have fizzled out within two generations.
Jesus is Lord implicitly claims Caesar is not. Jesus is
Lord is not some bumper sticker sentiment. It's an incredibly exclusive, all -encompassing claim that demands allegiance and obedience and submission from every corner of the earth.
Jesus is Lord. Caesar is not. Babel is not. Ozymandias is not.
Nebuchadnezzar is not. Jesus is Lord. When we deny that culture is neutral, we surrender to Caesar what belongs to Christ.
We surrender the great commission. We think we're becoming relevant in this process.
We're actually becoming irrelevant. When God calls upon the prophets to confront
His sinful people Israel, if they're true prophets of the
Lord, they don't come with smooth words and flattering speech. They don't come to be relevant. They're relevant because they're irrelevant.
We don't want to hear that. Shut them up. Put them in prison. Put them in a pit. We don't want to hear that. That's what makes the prophet relevant.
It's the prophets like Hananiah and Jeremiah 28. No, no, no, we're going to go back. God spoke to me.
Everything's going to be great. Those are the irrelevant prophets that the culture loves. They're so relevant.
This is just what we wanted to hear. We're so happy to have the churches dancing to our little tunes. If the church is to restore a prophetic presence in our culture, we have to understand that claim of Christ's Lordship is a confrontation.
It's a confrontation. We've seen this, brothers and sisters, again and again and again.
Influential ministries and ministries sit back. They're content to be relevant in the eyes and definition of the world rather than be prophetic in the eyes of God.
And it's why we're here, frankly. It's why we're here. It's why our nation is in the state it's in.
The church of Jesus Christ cannot afford to be the proverbial frog in boiling water.
As long as you put them in when the water's tepid and lukewarm, it won't start hopping out as soon as the water starts boiling.
We're in a cultural cauldron right now. That water is pressure cooker superheated right now.
And the church is still trying to adjust to the temperature. At what point will she jump out and say,
Alas, you city, your great sins. Jesus is Lord. These practices and policies are abominations in His eyes.
You're bringing judgment upon your land. Jesus is seated at His throne.
The Lord said to my Lord, Sit here until I make all of your enemies a footstool for you.
If you have that kind of understanding behind the Great Commission, we don't engage the culture as pencil -necked, thin -wrist, oh,
I think there's something relevant here. We're pressing the Lordship of the world's true
King. He made this world for Himself. It was made through Him and by Him and for Him.
He is Lord. Please note that Jesus Christ does not sit at a round table with Caesar and Xi Jinping and whatever other babble builders might want to lay a claim or have a stake.
No, Jesus sits on a throne. There's no shared equivalence of His authority.
There's no domain carved out for Caesar. Everything is under submission to Christ. And so when the church addresses
Caesar, even submits to Caesar in anything that's lawful under God to submit to, we do so as unto
Christ. Because everything is under His dominion. If the martyrs of the early centuries had pinched ash to Caesar, Jesus symbolically would have been invited to the round table of the false gods.
Yes, we'll allow you Christians to be here. Yes, we'll allow Jesus to be alongside all the other gods under Caesar.
And that's why the Christians didn't pinch ash. They didn't bow down. That's why they were torn apart in Colosseums.
That's why Tertullian could say the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. Because they understood when you say
Jesus is Lord, it means something. It means Caesar cannot be Lord. Caesar has no exclusive claim.
It means whether it seems like Caesar's in charge or not, we know who the world's true King is. We know who has all authority.
We know, Caesar, that you could not do these things to us unless they had been granted to you by God. We follow Christ in that very way.
You're only doing what you've been prepared to do beforehand. And you'll be held accountable to it.
His claim is all exclusive. All exclusive. He doesn't give a quarter of an inch of his coat tail to Caesar.
His claim is all encompassing. Allegiance to Christ always exposes the true gods of a given society.
If culture is religion externalized, when you confront culture, you find out who the gods of that religion are.
Whether it be the god of the state or the god of man, the god of self. You find out what the idols are very quick.
Nations and empires rise and fall, but the same dynamic plays out again and again. The claim of Christ goes forth, conquering.
The city of man is constantly crumbled, edged back, farther and farther, getting closer and closer to Revelation 19.
But brothers and sisters, understand what I'm saying. This is only the case when we realize and act as though we've been a separated city.
Come out from her. Be separate, says the Lord. Lest you share in her sins.
Zion is a separated city. The city of God. And it's a shining city.
Notice this unfolding promise. Isaiah 9, verse 2. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.
Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined. Jesus is that light that shines in the midst of darkness.
He says in John 8, I am the light of the world. He is the light for the world.
The nation sat in darkness. Because we sang about that this morning, didn't we? The nation sat in darkness.
Christ came as the light of the world, the great light. He came to shine amidst the darkness of man, against their mud and slime towers, against all those claims that come crumbling down and lead to further misery and further destruction.
He came to offer hope and a future and a kingdom and inheritance to those who would take refuge under His name.
They become a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people. They've been called out of darkness into His marvelous light.
Now He is the light of the world. It's His marvelous light. Christians are called into that light. And as a result of being called into that light, what do
Christians become? What does the city of God become? The light of the world.
Christians are the body of Christ. We are the presence of Christ in the world. Truly, Jesus is the light of the world.
And yet because we are the body of Christ, the presence of Christ on earth, we are the light of the world.
Jesus says as much, Matthew 5 .14. You, plural, you are the light of the world.
I thought you said you were the light of the world. Yes. We're the light of the world? Yes. I thought you said you were the light of the world. Yes.
Because you're my body. You're my people. Your light is my light. I've given you life and light everlasting.
Now go and shine in the dark corners of the world. Shine before men that they may glorify their
Father in heaven. Go shine. You are a shining city.
That's what He says of Zion. That's what He says of His church. You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.
You're this city set on a mountain. Better translation, I think, in light of Zion.
You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand.
Do you notice that? This is just the beauty of the imagery. If you're a Christian, you are light. You don't, over time, become light.
You don't start breaking out a few rays here or there. When you're transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light, you are light.
When you're in union with Christ, you are light. And so He says the failure for that light to shine is not because you're not light.
It's rather because you're being covered. It's like a basket's being put over you. What you truly are is light, and yet you can become so intoxicated with the way of the world.
You can refuse to see yourself as a city separated and become something joined and intermarried to the world.
That's like putting a basket over your light. So you become very relevant, very popular, because the cross has lost its offense.
You're not preaching Christ and being crucified. You're not pressing the lordship of Christ. In that sense, you're the light of the world still, but you're under a basket.
Jesus came as a light shining in the darkness. And what did the world do to that light when it shone in the darkness?
John 3 .18 and following. This is the condemnation. That the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.
But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.
You see, this is the result of light shining in darkness. Men hate it.
The city of man hates it. Caesar hates it, because it's light, and it's truth, and it exposes darkness.
And Jesus says this is the condemnation. This is what he experienced in his own ministry. That's the reaction. Everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light.
That's how the dark world, the dark room reacts to the lamp. And so brothers and sisters, what do we do?
What do we do now that we are the presence of Christ on the earth? We've come to shine a great light before the darkness of men.
Paul says in Ephesians 5, You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.
And what's the therefore? What's the therefore? This is what you are. This is indicative. What's the imperative?
What flows out of the fact that we are now light in Christ? Walk as children of light.
For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, truth. Find out what's acceptable to the
Lord. Have no fellowship with unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.
This is part of how we live in the shadow of Babel. We walk as children of light.
That light exposes unfruitful works of darkness. And what we're doing from day to day is celebrating what is good and what is righteous and what is true.
It's trying to discern in our own lives in whatever station or season we're in, what is acceptable to the Lord? What would the
Lord have me do? And Jesus says, That bleak, dark, corrupted shadow of Babel, it can't withstand the light you shine as you do that.
Let no one deceive you from the simplicity there is in following Christ. Put Ephesians 5 and Matthew 5 together.
Light shining in Matthew 5 is works. It's good works. It's goodness, righteousness, truth, discerning what's acceptable and acting on it, walking as a child of light.
But then Paul says in Ephesians 5 that the works of darkness are unfruitful. Isn't that interesting?
The works of darkness, evil works, they don't amount to anything. They don't preserve or nourish or sustain anything.
It's mud and slime. It's unfruitful. What does he say just before this in Matthew 5?
You're the salt of the earth. You preserve. You nourish. You give light.
You sustain. You cause there to be flourishing. We're called to be light, not for our own sake, but like Christ for the sake of a dark world.
This again is grounding us in creation theology, right? He doesn't make us light in Him just so that we can bask in ourselves.
Ah, isn't this great? I'm just going to wait this out until I get even more light. We're not light for our own sake.
And it's even too gimmicky or too shallow of an answer to say we're light for the glory of God.
Because you actually have to spell out what you mean by that. Yes, what do you mean by light for the glory of God?
We look to Christ and He came as a light not to glorify Himself, and not to somehow generically glorify the
Father by being light, but to glorify the Father by being a light to a dark world.
You see, you must connect it to the whole point. We're a light in Christ as His bodily presence for the sake of the world.
Lamps are not put in a room for their own sake. They're put in a room so that they can illuminate the room, bring light to the room.
When God separates us from the world, point number one, He doesn't do so in a way that we have nothing to do with the world.
He separates us from the world so that we can be in the world for the world.
We cannot be for the world if we're of the world. So He separates us from it. When He says,
My kingdom is not of this world, He means it doesn't run the way the kingdoms of man run.
It's not another city like you've seen. It's not a kingdom that runs in these ways. It's a kingdom of righteousness and truth.
My God, it's for this world. It's why I've come. I've come to bring lost sons and daughters home.
I've come to give sight to the blind, and to heal paralyzed, and to cleanse lepers.
I've come for a dark and broken world, a sin -corrupted, sin -bonded world. And so if we're going to be the body of Christ, the light of Christ in the world, it's not for our own sake.
It's for the sake of the world. It's for the sake of the world. The church is the light of the world.
And so when we see darkness and depravity around us, we should have a painful sense of responsibility for that darkness.
We've been living under a basket. We continue to weave them with all of our virtue -signaling conferences.
We're not acting as light and as salt. We're not exposing what is unfruitful. At the same time, we can find great encouragement here.
As it gets darker, the light only has greater opportunity to shine. And as it shines in that crystal clear contrast, more will be drawn to it.
We live in an age of decreased biblical literacy. It's something that is going to make us very awkward to our culture as we homeschool our kids and teach them what the
Bible teaches and help them to memorize certain Bible verses. And they're going out and living in the midst of a culture that doesn't know the first thing about the
Bible, doesn't know the difference between big numbers and small numbers in the Bible. We'd be able to maybe find
Genesis if that. We're biblically illiterate. That's something to mourn.
But there's also great hope in the midst of that, isn't there? That the Gospel can be heard with new ears for the first time.
That there's an opportunity for the church to address a world that's been ignorant of what God has said. If we have the courage and the basis with which to say it.
We're laboring to have a prophetic presence in the world. You have to understand that this is intention.
These things are intention, brothers and sisters. We're here in Genesis and we're beginning with an affirmation of creation.
God created the world. He created it to be something and to run a certain way. And sin corrupted and damaged all of that.
But we then don't ignore creation because God's not done with creation. In the midst of that corruption,
He brings judgment. And through judgment, salvation. That's the theme that we've seen. And what is that salvation?
It's a restoration. A redemption. A new creation. And so that causes us to have a certain relationship to the world.
We're not just a passing through. Please, please, get rid of this theology of this world is not my home.
I'm just passing through. I circle the wagons. I wait for a rapture. Christ bled for this world.
This is God's world. This is the world He redeems. And so there's this tension because He calls us to be prophets to this dying, darkened world.
Remember that this is a good world that had good intentions and it's become sinful and rebellious.
And so there's a tension now. On the one hand, Christians are called to be more than conquerors. More than conquerors.
But then there's a tension because we're also called to be pilgrims and sojourners. Both of these things are true.
Both must be held together. Don't let one image dominate the other. On the one hand, we are in exile.
We're sojourners away from our home and we're traveling toward it. First Peter. On the other hand, we're in conquest.
We're marching around the city of man and it's Jericho walls waiting for them to crumble down.
That the conquest of God might be complete. You see, these things are held in tension. If we deny the essential goodness of what
God intended, we run into this theological problem. We have nothing to do with the world.
We're detached from it. We become very mystical. And we have a hope that is apart from our calling in this life, in this place, at this time.
But on the other hand, if we deny the reality of the fall, if we're singing Kumbaya because God made the world good, we're forgetting the problem of the fall and the answer of the cross, which grounds us.
The cross was planted in this world, in this earth. And so there's a tension, brothers and sisters, and we live with it every day.
On the one hand, we're called to come out of Babylon. On the other hand, Jeremiah 29, we're called to seek the welfare of Babylon.
Seek the welfare of the city. You're going to be here for a while. That's what God tells His exiles.
Don't listen to Hananiah. You're going to be here for a while. Build, plant, marry, have children. Seek the welfare of the city.
Come out of the city. Seek the welfare of the city. Be separate.
Shine. That's what He's saying. On the one hand, we think carefully about affirming
God's good design for human flourishing and His common grace and His desire for what a human being is meant to be.
Christians think through and articulate and labor at what might cause human flourishing. We reflect something of His common grace to that.
We look at problems that sin causes and we try to be Christ's hands and Christ's feet. We try to bring that physician's compassion into our engagement with the world.
We seek the mutual benefit of our fellow image bearers. We seek to love our neighbors. That's seeking the welfare of the city.
But on the other hand, we need to think carefully about the dominion of Christ and how His enemies are bringing blood underneath His feet.
That the world is hostile to us. Hostile to the claim of Christ. And therefore, we have to be very mindful that that definition of welfare, seeking the welfare of the city, the city's going to reject our attempt to bring welfare to it.
It's not going to like the scent of Christ that's on that welfare. They want to change the definition.
Change the morality. Change it so that it's weaponized against God. It becomes counter -creational.
How do you seek the common good when the culture says we'll tell you what good is and it's going to be in defiance of God?
We're going to institutionalize sinful depravity. How do you seek the welfare of the city then?
We can only begin to answer these questions when we separate and then we shine.
We have to remember that while we shine as lights in a dark world, you only light a lamp because it's dark.
And the day is coming when there will be no more darkness. This is the Christian hope, isn't there? When the sun rises, there's no need for a lamp.
The light of the sun floods the house. And that's the Christian's hope.
Our light is not the light of lamps. We know that our lives are inconsistent and pockmarked by sin.
Our lamps flicker and waver and they scatter light. We live in a dark world. Sometimes we contribute to that darkness.
But when the sun rises in His consummated triumph, which encompasses a new heavens and a new earth, our lamps are absorbed into His radiance.
What does John say in Revelation 21? The lamb is its light. No more lamps.
No more lamps, just the lamb. Lastly, brothers and sisters, a secure city.
We separate and it's painful and can be nerve -wracking. It's costly. It will cost you your reputation.
You're a Christian. You have to think about how you're living in the midst of the culture. It's a fallen culture. Are you engaging it for Christ?
Or are you participating in it against Him? Against His desire? Against His will?
Young people thoughtlessly use technology, especially social media. You ought to be thinking in these ways about that.
Is it Christ's will for you to build a tower of mud and slime? Make a reputation for yourself?
Manicure your life to come across a certain way? That's a way of building a Babel tower. Be mindful about these things.
But when you separate, when you go through that way of the cross, and you separate, and it's costly, and that's why
He gathers us together, that there's reinforcement and encouragement. When you separate, and as you're separating, you're shining and your radiance is leaking into other lights in Christ.
The city of God expresses itself as utterly immovable. Don't you love reading the reports of the underground churches in China or places like that?
Zion is immovable. It's immovable. It is secure.
The city of man thinks that they can build a Babel, they can control, they can plant their roots and defend their walls.
They'll have ultimate security. And it always comes crumbling down. And meanwhile, believers,
Christians, we're trying to clean the walls, and it looks like it's all going to fall down, and if a fox jumps on it, it's going to fall down.
We're thinking, how is this thing going to even last? It doesn't seem like we're going to make it another generation. All the alarm bells are going off. And yet God comes to us and He says, if only you could see my perspective.
This city is immovable. It's unshakable. It's unassailable. Security is not just something defensive for Babel.
Like on a military scale, they're really tapping into a fallen human condition here. It's this compulsive drive for power that makes the quest for security.
And so that leads to corruption and idolatry and tyranny. It's a desperate search for significance, right?
Let us make a name for ourselves. When we try to do that, we corrupt our values in the name of freedom, independence.
We try to form our own identity instead of the identity we have in Christ. In all these ways, the spirit of Babel can live even in a
Christian if that Christian is determined to find meaning in this life and in this world apart from God.
When you try to find meaning in this world apart from God, you end up in opposition to the fabric of the universe and what
He's revealed in His Word. These Babel builders wanted security. They thought they had it, but they lost it.
They never had it. God was mocking them, their little mud -slime tower. They thought they were domineering the earth.
But they were building on sand with mud and slime. It's the only illusion of security. Zion dwellers, we also want security.
We act as if we didn't have it. You see the difference? The Babel builders, they want security.
They think they have it. Oh, we'll get rid of these churches. We'll shut down churches. We'll get rid of the Christian witness. We can end this within a generation really.
Christians, we want security too. But we don't think we have it. Oh, they're going to shut us down.
What are we going to do? Christianity is going to end here. The next generation is practically lost. It doesn't always seem secure to us, doesn't it?
But it's immovable. It's unshakable. It's all victorious. Unless the
Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchmen watch in vain.
The Lord is building His city with living stones, immovable, unshakable, though they shake in tremor, though they lament and grieve and cry out and earnestly pray.
God looks and He says, Zion is built on a mountain secure.
All who come to My name find refuge. I fight for them.
I defend them. Blessed is he who trusts in the name of the Lord. We find our peace and our security in the
Lord. People in every age and every culture seek peace and stability somewhere, seek identity and meaning somewhere.
They do so often just to find security. And they try to find it in their own strength, through their own ambitions, through their own pursuits.
They try when that fails, they try to escape it. The pressure of it, through drunkenness or drugs. In the eyes of the world, there really is no real security.
It's why there's a messianic complex to every politician. Everything's up for grabs.
The economy's always on the brink of disaster. Threats of violence and terrorism are ceaseless. The earth itself is on the verge of ecological catastrophe.
In the eyes of the world, nothing is secure. The future is entirely uncertain and we better do something about it.
Come build with us mud and slime. But this is not how a Christian views the world.
Sure, we grieve and we get sucked into the vortex of despairing things and there is decline and there is real war and real famine and real poverty and real economic crisis.
But we return to the truth of God's promise, to the truth of His Word. We come to know Him and to love
Him and to trust Him and that trust has an effect. The effect of trusting God makes us like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved.
It abides forever. Our security does not come from who we are, what we do.
It comes from who God is. And so it doesn't matter how much the world shifts and shakes around us.
God is immovable and therefore the city of God is immovable. It abides forever.
Blessed are you when you trust in Him. We can be stable because God is absolutely stable.
He is a being that cannot change. He is the same yesterday, today, forever.
Sometimes we approach Him as though He's changed toward us. We forget this beautiful truth that we're not consumed because He changes not.
He's a God of compassion. Our little hearts are shaken by doubt and trial.
What a picture in the Gospels of the disciples that were always so fearful. So fearful. And what a contrast with the patient Savior who is trusting in His Father and therefore was immovable.
We become steadfast when we look to the One who is steadfast. We become immovable when we worship and celebrate and enjoy the
One who is immovable. This is the great sight of faith. A sight that on its fullness will become like Him.
Seeing Him, we shall be like Him. And so I encourage you as we come to a close, brothers and sisters, separate.
Come out from Babylon. Go through this week and take ways that you're participating thoughtlessly in this culture and think through, is this good or is this bad because it is not neutral?
It is not neutral. Is this toward Christ or away from Him? Is this leading me in means of grace or depriving me of them?
Think through these things. Separate from Babylon. Don't share in her sins. Don't be intoxicated and fall asleep under her spell.
And then shine. Shine. Not in this cutesy little way of a sort of liberal social gospel, but shine in the same way that Christ shined.
And it brought sometimes a lot of opposition and hostility. And yet through that, it also brought many lost sons and daughters, many lost sheep into the kingdom.
Shine. Shine in that way. Shine with the offense of the cross. Shine with the testimony
He's given you. Shine with what He's done in your life and what He said He'll do in this world. And then because of the hostility and the pressure that you face as you do that in the workplace, among relatives in all those awkward times and exchanges, as you do that, as you shine, trust.
Trust in Him. Trust in the Lord. You are the city of God.
You are Zion. You cannot be moved. Great is the
Lord. Psalm 48. Great is the Lord. Greatly to be praised in the city of our
God, in His holy mountain, beautiful in its elevation. The joy of the whole earth is
Mount Zion. On the sides of the north, the city of the great King. God is in her palaces.
He is known as her refuge. Let's pray. Father, we thank
You for Your great promise. Lord, we cannot see it play out in this world unless we behold it with eyes of faith.
Lord, it always looks like an uphill battle to us, something always precarious. We need the
Prophet to put His hand on our shoulder and say, there are many more with us than against us.
We need You to open our eyes, Lord, and show us the great armies, the spiritual hosts and the heavenlies, and the
Lord who reigns over them. We need, with eyes of faith, to be as the earliest
Christians were when the image of Caesar was stamped and molded and statued on every corner of the world.
And yet they were claiming Jesus is Lord. And they patiently worshipped and feasted and planted and sowed and discipled as Caesar's empire crumbled like every babble crumbles because You are
Lord. And Your enemies are being made Your footstool. Teach us, Lord. Teach us as a church to know this balance between seeking the welfare of Babylon and yet not partaking in her sins.
From being present, Lord, because we're grounded in Your good creation and Your common grace, we reflect
Your compassion for a lost and dying world. We follow our Savior in this way, and yet we also follow
Him in the great denouncements and that prophetic confrontation as we demand from this world obedience to God and not to men, holiness and righteousness and not corruption and evil.
Lord, help us to be prophetic, not relevant in a way that becomes irrelevant, but relevant because we're prophetic.
Relevant because we're looking to Your approval and not to the approval of man. Relevant because we're fearing You, not fearing flesh and blood or what they can do to us.
Help us to discern, Lord, in our own lives ways that we've become complicit with the culture around us. Ways that we've bought into neutrality.
Ways that we're being shaped by technology. Ways that we're pulling the wool over our own eyes willfully because we enjoy the pleasures and luxuries of Babylon.
Let us contemplate her end. Let us contemplate Your promises and the glory that awaits. Chastise us,
Lord. Sanctify us that we can walk on the straight and narrow path where difficult is the way and yet so few find it.
Help us, Lord. I pray for each soul in this room that no one is left to walk that wide path of cultural destruction.
Turn them around by Your Spirit, God. Give them eyes to see, ears to hear, a heart to believe and know
You. Let them run to the name that alone gives refuge and true everlasting security.