The Warp and Weft of Redemption

Well, this morning we have the opportunity to begin our review of our time in Genesis.

Over the past two years we have plotted our way through this book of beginnings, and now that we've come to an end, as is our custom, we want to give opportunity to summarize and consider some of the important takeaways from our time.

So we'll do that first with Genesis 1 through 11. And there was some question when we had first begun

Genesis all those years ago whether we would stop after chapter 11, but we decided to press on and began the patriarchal cycle.

We thought at least Abraham, we can't ignore him, and so we marched through chapter 12 and then we said, well, we've got to include

Isaac once we've done Abraham, and then you've got to go with Jacob once you've done Isaac, and then, of course, how could we leave out

Joseph? And it seems like perhaps we'll be marching right out of Genesis into Exodus in due time.

More thought and prayer about that in the coming weeks. But in the time we have this morning, we do want to consider

Genesis 1 through 11. Next week we'll consider 12, perhaps up until chapter 38, 40, we'll see.

We might do several of the patriarchs all in a go and then bring Joseph home. The book of beginnings, that is

Genesis, the infamous words, in the beginning, the most controversial book of the

Bible, no less controversial ever since it's been written, still controversial today.

Derek Kidner says, there can scarcely be another part of Scripture over which so many battles, theological battles, scientific battles, and historical battles have been fought.

Raise your hands if you're under the age of 30. All right,

Kenny, keep your hand down. Martin Luther wrote this about Genesis chapter 1.

The first chapter is written in the simplest language, yet it contains matters of the utmost importance and it is very difficult to understand.

It was for this reason that Jerome once asserted, among the Hebrews, it was forbidden for anyone under the age of 30 to read the chapter or expound it for others.

I haven't been able to source that out. I don't know where Jerome exactly got that from, but it's striking, isn't it?

This book is profoundly simple and yet profoundly complex. We allowed you under 30s to be a part of our

Genesis experience in chapter 1, so I'm sure you count yourself blessed. We read not only chapter 1, but all the way to chapter 50, and we saw throughout

Genesis that the themes of Genesis, whether in substance, whether being quoted, whether we see them sort of metaphorically or as an image elsewhere, we find it throughout the rest of Scripture.

This is the book that begins Scripture, but it's also the book that has its content interwoven throughout the rest of Scripture.

Another way of thinking of it is Genesis is the foundation for all of Scripture, but the content of Genesis is not only the literal textual foundation of Scripture, the content is also the foundation for all of history and the foundation for all of life.

A foundation determines what type of building can be built upon it. It determines the height and the weight and the shape of everything that is to come, and that is what

Genesis does, not only for Scripture, but all of human history and all of human life.

Genesis truly is the book of beginnings. In it, we understand something of who we are.

In it, we understand something of who God is. We have our identity and our relation to God as our creator.

That is the beginning, but then also we're introduced to God's redemptive activity.

Not only is He our creator, but we come to see Him as our savior. We come to see

Him as our shepherd for believers. We come to see Him like Abraham, as our friend. So this morning, we want to consider the warp and the weft of Genesis 1 through 11.

I wonder if that's new language to most of us. It's relatively new for me, the warp and the weft of redemption.

If you think of a loom, maybe some of you children or maybe you adults when you were children went to the old

Sturbridge village and for the first time you saw a loom. And on this loom, you saw a beautiful garment or a piece of fabric being woven.

And you had these long lines of cloth, vertical longitudinal lines, and then transversing those lines, you had another piece of yarn or fabric.

And that's what we mean by the warp and the weft. So a loom is the contraption that holds these long lines and these long straight lines are held in tension across the length of the loom.

That's the warp. Think of these long straight lines of yarn held in tension lengthwise.

That's the warp. And then you have the weft and the weft is often the same yarn or even a thicker yarn and that's woven, transversing back and forth, sort of snaking over and under the warp.

And so the weft is woven back and forth over these long warp lines.

I think a helpful way for us to think about the book of Genesis is simply that. The loom is the creation.

The loom is that which holds together the warp, these long lines, which very early on in Scripture, chapter 3, is sin, the fall, and the spread of the conditions and the curse of the fall.

So here's creation, here's this loom, and held in tension are these long lines. It's the spread of the fall.

It's the spread of the condition of curse. And the weft is God's grace, working over and under, patiently weaving and working, working its way up through that spread of sin so that where sin abounds, grace much more abounds.

And the weaving together of the warp and the weft presents to us God's work of redemption.

Sin and grace woven through creation unto

God's full consummated redemption. So let's talk about that.

First, the loom, creation. Who am I? Why am

I here? Why am I like this? And where is this all going?

All of these philosophical questions are addressed by the book of Genesis. What is man?

What is man here for? Why is man the way that man is? And where is man going?

All of this is compacted in the book of Genesis. Creation, this loom, sets in course our minutia of the daily day, what it means to be us and why we are the way we are.

But whether you're zooming in at the closest distance or zooming out at the widest consideration, all of that is compacted within the doctrine of creation.

Perhaps more than ever before, the biblical presentation of creation is needed in our culture.

I can't think of a time, honestly, in our society, in Western civilization, perhaps in human history, that the biblical doctrine of creation is more needed than now.

There's nothing new under the sun, but there's frontiers with science and technology.

There's issues related to what is man, particularly what is male and female. All of these things demand a biblical consideration of creation.

When we look at the cultural abominations that arise from misunderstanding creation or losing sight of neglecting creation, not having creation firmly fixed in a

Christian worldview, then what happens is we tend to marginalize all of the things that make

Christianity what it is. Christianity mutates into something else, and we'll talk about that when we talk about the warp of sin.

So perhaps more than ever before, the biblical presentation of creation is needed in our culture.

We didn't spend a lot of time emphasizing fossil evidence or the human genome or things like that.

I'm thankful for those who are skilled in doing so. Many of you, if you're being homeschooled, will have to encounter some of that as we go.

But we need the big picture, the big tectonic plate of how creation sets up everything about who we are, who

God is, and what history is moving toward. In our time in Genesis, we largely avoided an apologetic reading, reading just to demonstrate the history or the veracity of scientific claims.

Largely we avoided that, not because there's not benefit there, value there, there is.

But in my mind, Christians will only consider Genesis when it has something to do with challenging

Darwinian evolution. We only go to Genesis when we're looking for answers in Genesis to the challenges of the secular world and Darwinian mindset around us.

Again, thankful for those who can do that ably. That's needed. It's good to have an answer ready for the hope that lies within.

But at the same time, Genesis is much deeper, much more profound, much more significant than reducing it to the cultural apologetics of our day.

We need to understand a larger flow of Genesis. We need to understand that chapters one through three are a relatively small part of chapters one through eleven, which are even a relatively smaller part of the whole of the book of Genesis.

If we go just by proportion, the reasons that most Christians approach Genesis today are at odds with the bulk of what

Genesis is actually about. That's a very important point. So how should we read it? We need to read

Genesis in terms of the whole theology of Scripture, looking at the biggest pictures, the biggest themes, the biggest movements of God and how

Genesis sets up everything else that will follow. Creation is the loom that introduces the warp of the fall and the weft of God's grace, the promise of redemption.

All of that is contained in Genesis. All of that, frankly, is contained in the first three chapters of Genesis.

If all of Scripture and all of history can be summarized as creation, fall, redemption, if that's the whole of Scripture, we already have it just in chapters one through three.

That's amazing. All of the main themes are found, creation, the fall and the promise of grace, the promise of a coming redeemer.

We talk about Genesis one through eleven as the primeval history. It takes us from a time that Moses is recalling and recording for us, moving out of creation through Noah's flood, even to the judgment upon Babel where we'll sort of close this morning.

Along the way we see the mystery and the awe of God's creation. It's not just there in Genesis, it's taken up in worship.

We just read Psalm 148, why? Because Scripture can't help but reflect and meditate in the awe of what

God has made and how all that God has made brings Him glory. Psalm 19,

Romans 1. We see the image bearing authority of humanity, something we spend a lot of time on if you recall how man was given a mandate dominion to bring the glory of God that was there expressed in His presence in Eden and expand it to the very ends of the earth.

Primarily John Fesco writes, and please notice he says primarily, he doesn't say exclusively, he says primarily,

Genesis one through three is not about science, it's not about history, it's the entry point of the work and person of the

Lord Jesus Christ. Without creation there can be no place for the interweaving of the fall with God's grace.

Without creation there can be no redemption. It will be individualized, it will be something interior.

Well, it's just about me getting on with my life, coping with difficulties in the world, a sort of spiritual view, a positive attitude toward life.

That's what Christianity looks like when you take away creation and take away the promise of redemption, when you start tearing apart the loom that we have presented before us in Genesis.

No loom, no garment, in other words, no creation, no redemption. So that brings us to the warp, that's the significance of the loom.

Genesis and creation theology in general, but also taking a step forward into Genesis, the warp, it appears almost on the second page as it were, right in chapter three.

Genesis 1 through 11 not only brings us to the theology of creation, but also the event of the fall, and with the fall the spread of sin.

In chapters 1 through 11 we see the first murder, the blood of righteous

Abel gurgling in the soil. And the ground is crying out, gulping down this blood.

It's shrieking out for God's justice. We see the

Lamechian savagery of man. What a phrase.

Lamech, the original tyrant as it were. We see the cheapening of human life.

I kill a man for looking at me cross -eyed. That's Lamech, the cheapening of human life, something that we've only seen more of in our own day.

The defiling use of technology, that's all there in Genesis 1 through 11 with the Cainite civilization.

We see the dehumanizing, defiling tendency of technology. We ultimately see in Babel at the very end the abhorrence of an evil society.

And that sets our hope toward the city of God, the promise of Zion, the city that Abraham was looking toward beginning in chapter 12.

So Genesis 1 through 11 really is this enclosed world that describes the fallen condition, the sinful condition of man.

Man in all of his defilement. Man in all of his rebellion. Man as an evil being.

Now there's a lot of debate about the doctrine of sin. I was sharing with some of the guys yesterday morning. This week

I listened to a seminar with a man named Simeon Zoll who's been working on a book for some years now on the doctrine of sin, what's properly called

Hamartiology. And he noticed that for the most part it's been relatively stable across interpretation over 1 ,500 years or so.

There's not a lot of variance. Augustine laid certain things down right out of the Bible and really there wasn't need to redress that at all.

There was some perhaps slight variation in the Middle Ages, but generally speaking the doctrine of sin only ever is clarified by the

Reformation especially. It's never quite challenged until you get to the Enlightenment. So the first real challenges to the idea of sin or the depravity of man really come about in the 18th century.

And you move up to say the 1970s and then you have some of the most radical challenges to the doctrine of sin as it's biblically understood.

Now part of that is can we truly actually be responsible for sin? Is sin just our condition and we're guilty by virtue of the condition of sin or are we guilty by virtue of our activity in sin, our moral responsibility for sin?

For those that are interested in looking into these things, that's the debate over voluntarism. A significant thing is this, and I want to say

Genesis shows us both. This is really important. Genesis shows us, and we've seen this not only in chapters 1 through 11 but through the whole, that man is responsible for his action.

He's guilty because he sins, but he also has the condition of the curse.

He's born into sin. This is what Augustine would lay out, that we are responsible for the guilt that we have inherited through Adam.

This is what he said, Adam's crime has become our nature. Adam's crime has become our nature.

We act out of that nature and we're guilty because we act out of that nature, but we're also guilty because we've inherited that nature.

Adam, Romans 5, he's our covenantal head unless we're taken out of that headship, out of that condition of curse and adopted and brought into union with the

Savior who becomes our head and the covenant made in His blood. Adam's crime has become our nature, and we cannot escape that unless it's by the grace of God.

We cannot break out of that by our own effort, by our own desire. We can't pray enough, read enough, do enough good works.

There's nothing we can do to escape that curse. Something that was so influential in Elisha coming over to Calvinism, I think back 15 years ago, sitting at Barnes &

Noble Cafe and would have these little Bible studies with a few others, and it was a quote from Spurgeon about the depravity of man, and he said, if I could not perform a task when my arm had strength, man made in original righteousness, how can

I perform it when my arm has been broken? We cannot escape the condition of the curse unless God is the one who brings grace, irresistible grace into our lives, takes out that heart of stone, gives us a heart of flesh, puts

His Spirit within us, writes His law upon our hearts and gives us sufficient grace to walk with Him.

Even our faith, then, is a gift. We consider our own day, sin is largely spoken of in terms of biology or medicine.

Sin has been outsourced toward everything but the will of the agent, the will of me.

It's not me who's sinning, you see, it's my upbringing, my predilections, my biological predeterminancies, the medicine that I'm on.

The medicine that I need that I'm not on, that's where sin arises.

Physiological, psychological responses in the body, this is how people understand the human condition today.

We look at Genesis 1 through 11 and we cannot follow. That is not, medical categories cannot ultimately explain the human condition.

The warp is the fall. All the things,

Simeon's all pointed this out, all the things that once would have brought men and women to their parish priest, thinking of pre -reformation days, problems with anxiety, problems with relationships, problematic relationships with food or with money or with sex, those are religious issues, those are soul issues.

Almost all of those now are turned over to a therapist or some medicine.

The problems that we once would have taken to the church to be dealt with between us and the Lord, we're now convinced they just need the right medication and the right therapy, the right therapeutic help so that even the

Lord Jesus is understood in terms of the great therapist. I come to church so that I can receive my therapy.

And in many ways, Christianity and Christian churches have merely baptized the way that the world understands the human condition, the brokenness, the plight, the depravity of man.

That's understood in strictly medical or biological language. But what we need to understand from Genesis 3 and really all of Scripture, all of God's great loom of creation weaving together this great work of redemption is that Christianity as a theology is built around God's response to sin.

So when we begin the book of Genesis and we come to chapter 3 and we have the fall of man, the fall of our covenantal head, bringing, plunging all of humanity with him into this condition of death, into this condition of the curse.

Now, all is an active, willful rebellion against God. We understand that that happens at the very beginning of Scripture because all that God is and does as our

Redeemer is built upon it. Christianity is the divine response to human sin.

It's not an add -on. It's not something on the side. It's not that thing that we sheepishly admit, you know, maybe in one of our readings, but then nothing else in the church service ever really touches on it.

It's foundational. It is the load -bearing structure of God's revelation to us.

This is true. Zal pointed this out. This is amazing to think about this. We have these early controversies in the church that require great counsels and great effort to put forth creeds that we still stand on today, the

Nicene Creed, the Chalcedonian Creed. He points out that we often just think, well, this is an issue of, you know, how do we understand, we'll take

Chalcedon, how do we understand Jesus as both God and man? How are we to understand the

Incarnation? We simply think, yeah, Chalcedon was about working out how is it that Jesus is God and man, but do you know why that had to be worked out?

How must we understand the Incarnation if Jesus is the one who atones for and deals with and cleanses us from our sin?

What does it mean for Him to come into this condition and yet not actively sin?

How much of this condition did He have to take on in order to atone for it? That was the issue, you see.

Sin, atonement, that is the center of Christianity. In Genesis 1 through 11, we see the spread of sinfulness so profound.

Do you remember this? God repented that He had made man. The pre -flood world, not a lot of detail, just simply the descriptor that the abomination was so overpowering on the face of the earth that God repented that He had made man.

And then He brought judgment. Over the entire face of the earth,

God's judgment flooded the abomination of sin.

It's the meta -judgment, the flood judgment. It's the decreation of creation.

Water being symbolic of death, and He brings the judgment of death upon a world that celebrated and spread death throughout all of the life that God had brought into being.

So it's not just a surface punishment, as though a worldwide tornado or earthquake could have been substituted.

It's the picture of drenching life, drenching creation with decreation.

Remember, creation emerged out of the waters, out of the chaos, as it were, and God brought dry land, dry earth, life flourishing.

And so He practically turns that in on itself in the flood of Noah's day.

It's utter judgment. But, praise the

Lord, our Bibles are not six chapters long, and we're still here to read, because even through that almost global judgment, almost, except for a little wooden ark buoying across the top of the floodwaters,

God's grace came even through that judgment. Noah and his family are saved.

Humanity is reestablished. God reaffirms His covenant, this creational mandate given to man.

And we see that even in the midst of that scope of judgment, God is working

His weft of grace. We learn from Genesis 1 -11 that Satan is at work in the world.

We know that Adam and Eve are responsible, as we are responsible for our sins. We are only punished for our guilt unless our guilt is punished on another.

But their actions are inextricably bound up to the one that they heed, the serpent, and the voice of the serpent.

They become His children. They do His works. And so we see

God's work of redemption. It's being worked out, as it were, behind enemy lines, in a fallen world with the prince of the power of the air, occupying and puppeteering, as it were, the powers and the principalities.

And in Genesis, we're not told so much how the serpent's defeat comes about.

In fact, we're not told, really, until Genesis 20, His destiny in verse 10 of chapter 20 to be in that lake of fire forever and ever.

But we are told, even in Genesis 3 -15, that His head will be crushed.

And so though God is working His grace very carefully, over and under the weft of grace, working through the warp of sin, already it's a theology of victory.

Because God has promised, His promise is sure. And though at times it looks incalculably at odds with how the world is and what

His people are up against, we know that the victory is all but assured. And so third and last, the weft.

We talked about the loom, which is creation, the warp, which is sin, and then lastly, the weft, which is grace.

Again, taking Noah and the ark as an image of this, God's judgment is brought upon sin, but through that judgment,

God demonstrates His grace. And that is a preview of Calvary. We want to remember that Genesis is not just the foundation of creation, but more significantly than that, it's the foundation of the

Gospel. And that all begins, as it were, after the fall, in God's promise to the woman.

There's this serpent that has brought deception upon man and woman, and they're no longer able to stand in that original righteousness in which they'd been created.

Now, they've brought this cursed, exposed, vulnerable condition of shame and evil and abhorrence into them.

They can no longer be with God in the land of Eden. They can no longer fulfill that great creational mandate as it would have been fulfilled had they not entered into sin, but now thorns and briars and sweat and pain enter into God's good world.

We remember that the foundation of the Gospel begins after God's assertion of judgment.

After He brings these curses upon men and women for their sin, He shows grace.

He clothes them with sacrificial clothing, and He promises the woman that there will be a seed, and that it will be her seed that, though the serpent will strike his heel, he will crush the serpent's head.

The whole of Scripture, Alec Motier, the whole of Scripture is not packed into every Scripture, but we may expect every

Scripture to in some way prepare us or make room for what happens next, and that's how

Genesis 3 .15 works. Genesis 3 .15 not only sets up the expectation, but it considers all of Scripture in but a sentence.

Genesis 3 .15, the whole story and purpose of God, the mystery of Christ in seed form.

The promise of Genesis 3 .15 creates an expectation of a Redeemer who will be seed, and that's a key word.

Our ears ought to perk up when we hear seed. As we work through 12 and following next week, we remember seed as pivotal in God's promise to Abraham.

Land, seed, dominion, major themes in the patriarchal cycle.

And so it's like, as one put it, the ring of a church bell. In Genesis 3 .15, we're introduced to the seed, and we don't see that significantly again until the promise that God makes with Abraham.

But we did see it in the genealogies that were a part of Genesis, especially in Genesis 1 -11.

There were several books or tables of generations, tables of seed, and we talked about that.

That's sort of the structure of the book as a whole. We remember, of course, this is establishing the person and the work of Christ, and so the promise of the seed has everything to do with these genealogical tables that keep hurtling down toward the coming of that seed.

It's why they drop out of view in some ways after Genesis and Chronicles. You get some with Nehemiah, but then there are the

Gospels. We're reintroduced to this form. The genealogy of the seed. The promise being fulfilled with the coming of Jesus.

And so we open our eyes when we read things like, these are the generations. These are the generations.

The generations of God's wefting of grace even across centuries, millennia of the warp of sin.

Generation by generation. God's grace at work in people's lives to be faithful to what

God has revealed to them. Faithful to walk not according to sin or their flesh, but according to His Spirit and power.

And God in that way wefting grace until the fullness of the day when Christ comes. Adam. Noah.

Shem. Terah. Abraham. So we keep this wefting work of grace in our minds not only when we approach the book of Genesis and we see the spread of sin, but even in our own lives.

I hope if you're a believer here this morning, you can attest that God's grace has wefted its way over and under the warp of your life.

Genesis is the entry point to the person and work of Christ.

If you're reading the book of Genesis rightly, you can't but see both. Warp and weft.

The fall, sin, and grace. Working, unfolding, weaving together

God's work of redemption. All of this begins in the promise that God made to the woman in Eden.

Now as we close, there's one other thing I want to highlight for us that was a key point in our time in Genesis 1 -11 and that is where chapter 11 brings us, which is

Babel. Babel, of course, is the mighty empire of the day.

The world empire. It could be put on parallel in the biblical purview with Babylon or Egypt or Rome.

It's more than an empire. It's something serpentine. It's something that's almost metaphorical for the fallen kingdom of man, energized and empowered by the serpent.

And here we find Babel sprung by the loins of Nimrod, as it were, tyrannizing, domineering, dehumanizing creation.

It's a city, if you remember, of mud and slime. And they want that mud and slime to reach up to the heavens.

It's the symbol, as far as Scripture is concerned, of godless society. Arrogant.

Full of wicked persecution of the righteous. Drunk with pleasure and obsessed with sin and idolatry.

Blinded and made numb by its riches and wealth. And that paralyzes it into an inevitable doom.

That is the picture of Babel. And we live, in our day, in a

Babel, awaiting the city whose builder and maker is God. Genesis sets us up to see this.

We live in a civilization that seeks to build a tower. And why, in the ancient mind, do you build a tower?

It's a defensive structure. It's also a symbol of power. Don't mess with us, because look at what we can build, and we can see you coming.

And if you come, we'll be able to deal with you. We have towers, we have walls. It's a way of having security, and securing provision for themselves, and defending themselves, and having power over all of the realm around them, over the environment, over the information, over communication.

Don't we live in a Babel today? Controlling the environment, managing the curse of God, seeking provisions for ourselves.

We live in a world with technology, much like canine technology, that causes persecution to spread through communication and information.

We have Babel builders who are using CRISPR to splice genetics, and now there's this advent of transhumanism.

It's Babel. The project of Babel is grandiose. All the men speak one language, and that language is full of excitement and awe.

Who needs God? Who needs God's Word? Who needs the sacrificial altar, and who needs prayer?

Look what we can build. Look what we can do. Look at how secure and satisfied we can be, even in this world of thorns and briars.

That is sinful man's priority. Babel is the spirit of fallen man. We talked about this in terms of counter -creation, and the way that God responds to counter -creation is decreation, judgment.

And as judgment falls upon Babel, it's an abandoned construction site to this day.

And that is the most that sinful man can ever hope to achieve, ultimately an abandoned construction site, because of God's judgment.

That is what an individual can expect to receive when they've devoted their life without reference to God, and they try in their own way to manage the effects of the fall, their own sinful activity, also that sinful condition.

Remember what Christopher Ashe at the Bolton called the cords of death. We find the brokenness in our minds, in our health, in our relationships, cords of death that reach out and bind us.

But how does God deal? We talked about the weft of grace here. How does God deal with Babel, with Babalite civilization, with the spirit of Babel and fallen man?

How does He ultimately answer this waxing rebellion against Him and His will for the world?

Well, He brings judgment, but remember what we said already with Noah. Remember what we said already with Genesis 3.

When He brings judgment, He also brings grace. It's grace through judgment.

And even here, as we end chapter 11 and begin chapter 12, we find the cataclysm of Babel, the foolishness of a tower of mud and slime, truly a statue of man's prideful sin.

And we find that in the humility of Abram as he's called out of Ur of the Chaldees. To trust

God, to lead him in a direction he does not know the way, he does not know the end. He just simply heeds the

Word of God. And so, Abraham in many ways is the first type to follow

Adam. Where Adam failed to listen to the Word of God being deceived by the serpent, here's

Abram in the city of Babel, as it were, in the ruins of that civilization as it's shown in Ur.

And he hears God's words and he obeys. So even here, in chapter 11, we're being set up,

Psalm 1, there are two ways to live. There are two ways to live.

There's the way of the wicked that will perish and there's the way of the righteous that live by faith.

How does God answer countering rebellion? How does he steadily bring about the fulfillment of his promise of Genesis 3 .15?

Patiently wefting his way through the warp of man's sinful rebellion.

How does he move out of Genesis all the way toward Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?

Toward the fulfillment in the center of history, the promised seed crushing the serpent's head and bringing redemption from the fallen condition.

Does God do that by building His own tower of massive stones run by rulers and legions of angels?

No. He patiently, faithfully, purposefully weaves his way down through the line of Shem.

And that grace patiently, faithfully, purposefully weaves its way down through the line of blessing unilaterally until it falls upon Abram.

And from Abram weaving down through the centuries patiently, faithfully, purposefully until it comes to David.

And then after David patiently, purposefully, faithfully to David's greater son.

This is the manner in which God demonstrates his wisdom, his power, his patience, his grace.

We see it time and time again. We see it with Babel. What is God's answer to Babel? A barren couple living in Ur.

That's God's answer to Babel. What's God's answer to the domination of Pharaoh?

We're about to go there if we go to Exodus. A stuttering shepherd. A stuttering shepherd.

What's God's answer to the ravages of King Ahab, a prophet being fed by ravens in hiding?

What is God's answer to the debauchery and the pomp and the pride of Roman imperial might?

Little pockets of slaves that are gathering to worship Jesus and sing hymns to him. You see the picture here in Genesis already.

God works through weakness. God works through humble means. God works through the things that are not so that no flesh can boast, so that he receives all the glory.

God's full and final answer to the cosmic bondage, the evil torrent of sin, the ruin of the fall, is the yes and amen that falls out of Genesis 3 .15

by way of a helpless baby being born in a manger in Bethlehem. That's God's answer to it all.

But it's not just that he was born in the manger in Bethlehem. It's that he was born in the form of a slave in the weakness of the flesh, obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.

Zephaniah 3, verse 9 says, Then I will give to the peoples purified lips, that all of them may call on the name of the

Lord. Do you remember that? This is the time that men began to call upon the name of the

Lord, the institution of corporate worship there in Genesis 5 and following, to serve him shoulder to shoulder.

What a picture. God's going to move by his spirit, purify the worship and the speech of his people.

They will stand shoulder to shoulder in unity, calling upon his name. And I will remove from your midst your proud, your exalting ones, never again to be haughty, to be arrogant on my holy mountain.

You see, the spirit of Babel is incompatible with Mount Zion. And so I will leave among you a humble and a lowly people.

They are the ones who take refuge in the name of the Lord. The desire of the wicked will perish, we're warned in Psalm 112.

So let Babel and the spirit of Babel make its arrogant boast, flex its muscles, pose for its

Instagram post, but let the spirit of Babel do as it will. Christians, by the grace of God's deliverance, are left to be a humble and a lowly people, a people that see the need for and actively take refuge in the name of the

Lord. If you don't feel that in your life, in our world today, in our modern -day

Babel, if you don't feel the need to take refuge in the name of the Lord, you probably have more of the spirit of Babel in you than you realize.

Let Babel tower up to the sky. What does Abram do? He fixes his eyes on the promise.

He waits upon the name of the Lord. In our weakness, we trust the work that God alone can do.

Remember, our arm is broken. He must bind it. He must mend it.

We must work out the grace that He gives us in our lives, the good work that He has ordained us to do, the very work that He has undertaken on our behalf, so that He can continue this great purpose of redemption in the world.

We are the generations that are to be faithful to Him as He's working, wefting

His grace through the warp of the sinful world. And as we do that, we do not look at things which are seen.

We look at the things that are not seen, because the things that are seen are temporary, but the things that are not seen are eternal.

And so we show diligence, diligence to the full assurance of hope, even to the end.

We don't become sluggish, but rather imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

The contrast to Babel, and this is where we'll go next week in our summary, is the city of God. The city of fallen man drops its disgusting footprints across the face of the world, and all of God's people shelter and refuge under His name, living in those conditions in lowliness and humility, calling upon His name, awaiting the fullness of His promise, which is still cascading down toward us.

Even on the other side of the cross, we still have a hope of glory. We still, like Abram, are looking for that city to descend from heaven and make its manifestation upon the earth.

And as we look for the city whose builder and maker is God, we're reminded of, and I'll close with this, what

Jesus said to encourage His believers in really much the same way. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, and blessed are the meek.

They are the ones that inherit the earth. Let's pray.

Father, we thank You for Your Word, Lord, even attempting to summarize a chapter, much less 11 chapters,

Lord. There's such depth, such richness that we glide over so easily.

Help us to see, Lord, our lives. Every life here this morning is bound up in this unfolding story.

For believers, Lord, may it be an opportunity to recount the many ways

You have patiently, graciously woven underneath and over and through our fallen lives, our backslidings, our evil intentions.

Let Your grace be magnified, Lord, in our lives. We ourselves are pictures of this great redemption that You are weaving.

We thank You, Lord, that Your promise is sure, as sure as the day You spoke it in Eden, so it is this day.

We look, Lord, to the crucified Savior who has crushed the serpent's head, and while that serpent writhes in the agony of His inevitable death, we live awaiting the fullness of Your victory.

We know His destiny, Lord, and for those in this room, I pray, we know ours. Is there someone here who does not know their end?

Who cannot say that they've seen Your grace weaving in and through and under their lives? May You convict them and illuminate this to them,

Lord. Open their eyes, open their ears, that they may behold their sin, their need for a

Savior, be moved to repentance. May they see from the very beginning it's always been a matter of life and death with eternity in the balance to exercise faith, saving faith in You.

May today be the day of salvation, Lord. May You help us as a church to be meek and lowly, knowing that the arrogant, the prideful, those who are indwelt by the spirit of Babel rather than by Your Holy Spirit will have a swift, sudden, terrifying end.

But those who walk meekly before You and take refuge in Your name will be saved in that glorious hope and be filled with the joy and the security of all that You have done and will do for them.

And all of this, Lord, brings us in thankfulness and awe for Your Son whom You sent into this world, the ultimate picture,