A Monument to Human Pride

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I want to invite you to take out your Bible and turn with me to Genesis 11 and hold your place at verse 1.
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One of my favorite areas of study is language.
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I enjoy the art of the spoken word.
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Brother Mike often comments on my love of words in a positive way.
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I don't make that sound like it's negative.
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He tells me all the time that's what I like, his words.
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And I do.
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I love to find new and interesting ways to say things, share ideas, and promote concepts.
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And when I study for my sermons, I dig into language.
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I enjoy seeing how the biblical writers express the truth in different ways.
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And one of the things that I come up against, as you may well know, is when we begin to dive into the Bible and really dig into what it's saying, we're immediately met with the fact that there is a wall of separation between us and the writers.
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And that wall of separation is what we call the language barrier.
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Biblical writers did not speak English, even the King James English.
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English didn't exist.
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The Old Testament writers wrote in Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek.
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And part of my task as the expositor is to examine those languages to better understand the text.
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But sometimes I wonder if we understand why we have all these different languages.
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Why is it that all around us the world exists with such variety of speech and writing? A few years ago my wife took a job.
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She works in the mornings from about 4.30 till about 8 o'clock teaching ESL.
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If you're not familiar with that acronym, ESL stands for English as a Second Language.
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And she teaches Chinese children how to speak English.
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And one might wonder, well, why are jobs like that necessary? Why is it that there are so many different languages? Why do companies like Rosetta Stone become million-dollar, billion-dollar industries? Why do we have to press 1 every time we call a call center? If you look to culture for the answer, if you look to science and history, and particularly those who are involved in evolutionary sciences, they will say that evolution is the answer.
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They argue that man began with a series of either grunts and noises or some form of gestures and pantomimes, and eventually those grunts and noises and gestures became language.
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Over time, those rudimentary communication abilities became sophisticated language that we have today.
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But I got to tell you, if there's anything about evolution that should really cause us to take a step back and say, that just ain't right, that's it.
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If the complexity of the human body isn't enough to make us say, wait a minute, evolution doesn't really make sense, the complexity of language should also cause us to step back and say, listen, that just doesn't work.
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In fact, I want to quote, this is from the Linguistic Society, this is a secular group, this is not a biblical group, but this is what they say about the human language.
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No other natural communication system is like human language.
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Human language can express thoughts on an unlimited number of topics, the weather, the war, the past, the future, mathematics, gossip, fairy tales, how to fix the sink.
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It can be used not just to convey information, but to solicit information, ask questions and to give orders.
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Unlike any other animal communication system, it contains an expression for negation, what is not the case.
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Every human language has a vocabulary of tens of thousands of words, built up from several dozen speech sounds.
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Speakers can build an unlimited number of phrases and sentences out of words, plus a small collection of prefixes and suffixes.
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And the meanings of sentences are built from the meanings of the individual words.
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And what is still more remarkable is that every normal child learns the whole system simply by hearing it.
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This is why I say language is so fascinating.
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Nothing like it in the natural world, nothing like human language is found among the animals.
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Human language is not just a higher form of communication, it's a different category of communication.
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Evolution is simply not a sufficient cause.
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So if we do not believe evolution brought about the diversity of human languages, then from where did it come? Well, that's what we're going to look at in our text today.
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But before we read, I want to say this, there's more to today's story than just the origin of the diversity of language.
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This is a story about human pride.
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And it is a story about the mercy of God in the midst of judgment.
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The mercy of God in the midst of judgment.
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So with that said, let us stand together and read Genesis chapter 11 beginning at verse 1.
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We'll read verses 1 to 9.
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Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.
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And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and settled there.
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And they said to one another, Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.
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And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar.
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Then they said, Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens.
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And let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over all the face of the earth.
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The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built.
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And the Lord said, Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language.
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And this is only the beginning of what they will do, and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
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Come, let us go down.
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And there confused 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.
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See, therefore, its name was called Babel.
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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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Father in heaven, as I seek to give an understanding of your word, I pray that you would first and foremost, Lord, keep me from error, fill me with your spirit, give me boldness that I might preach truth, and to do so without fear.
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Open the hearts of your people to be moved toward closer conformity to Jesus Christ by the preaching of your word.
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And for those here, Lord, who do not know you, may today be the day that they understand the desperate need that they have for Jesus Christ.
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And it's in his name we pray.
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Amen.
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One of the most common objections to the Bible by skeptics and unbelievers is that the Bible is filled with myths.
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Now, mythology in and of itself is not necessarily bad.
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You know, there's room for myths in history.
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But when someone says the Bible contains mythology, what they're saying is that part isn't true.
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That's what they're saying.
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And that's the part we really have to understand.
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A myth is by definition an account that is false, a fable, a story, something that didn't happen.
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And many of the historical accounts of the Bible are claimed to be mythology.
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We've already looked at some.
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The creation account, that didn't really happen.
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That was mythology, according to the skeptics.
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Then we get to the fall.
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No, that didn't happen.
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That was myth.
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Who believes in a talking snake? You know, and they look at that and they say, that's the myth.
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And then they go on forward to the flood.
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Oh, of course the flood didn't happen.
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There's no way water could fill the whole earth and cover every mountain.
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So, of course, that is a myth.
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In fact, I will tell you this.
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We're coming to the end of the 11 chapters of Genesis that make up what we call the prologue.
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In fact, next week I'm going to close the prologue of Genesis so that we can begin looking at the history of the Hebrew people.
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And that's what happens at the beginning of chapter 12.
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And so we're coming to the end of the prologue.
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And honestly, the whole world, and we're going to talk about this more next week, the whole world wants to get rid of these 11 chapters.
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Because these 11 chapters form the foundation of everything that we believe.
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About the nature of man, about the nature of sin, about the nature of God and His judgment.
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All of that is found in these 11 chapters.
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And so how does the world attack it? That is just a myth.
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But the Bible never presents Genesis 1-11 as mythology.
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It presents it as narrative history.
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We are told that these narratives are essential to the Bible's whole story.
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In fact, I want to tell you that this story today that we're going to read, this narrative account of the Tower of Babel, this narrative is important to the whole Bible.
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And I hope to show you today how this isn't just some obscure historical account found in the first 11 chapters of Genesis, but this actually will have effects which will ripple throughout the Bible and have their ultimate fulfillment in the new heavens and the new earth.
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So this story, and when I call it a story I don't mean an untrue story, I'm just saying this account is historical narrative with a larger effect in understanding the whole of the Bible.
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So I want to say this from the beginning.
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I believe this account is both factual and accurate.
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I believe this account is both factual and accurate to the facts.
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Now, having said that, I do want to say this though.
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There are some myths that have arisen in other cultures where we believe they probably have their origin in this story.
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I want to share a couple of them with you.
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Remember when I did this with the story of Noah? I said the story of the flood has other myths that came out of it that probably tie back to this original account.
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Well, the same things happened with the Tower of Babel.
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Listen to this.
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This is a myth that is very common in Southeast Asia.
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I'll read you a quote for you.
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When the tower was almost completed, the spirit in the moon enraged at the audacity of the chins, that's the people, raised a fearful storm which wrecked it, and it fell from north to south, and the people inhabiting the various stories began to be scattered all over the land, and they built themselves villages where they fell, and that's where the different tribes and languages and customs come from.
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That's believed in Southeast Asia.
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It sounds very similar to the story, and we can see how the true story in Genesis could have been converted somewhat.
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That story is very close.
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The Hindus actually have a myth that I believe is based in our story.
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Theirs gets a little bit more out there, but you can still hear.
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I'm going to read it to you.
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You can still hear the ties.
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It says, There grew in the center of the earth the wonderful world tree, the knowledge tree.
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It was so tall that it reached almost to heaven.
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It said in its heart, I shall hold my head in heaven and spread my branches over the earth and gather all men under my shadow and protect them and prevent them from separating.
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But Brahma, that is the great spirit in Hindu mythology, to punish the pride of the tree, cut off its branches and cast them down on the earth when they sprang up as water trees and made differences of speech and language, belief and customs to prevail on the earth to disperse men over its surface.
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See, in that myth, it's not a tower, it's a tree, but it's still the same idea.
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Men had this wonderful world tree that reached to the heavens and Brahma, the spirit, came and diversified them by spreading them out.
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It's interesting that the similarities to the biblical account are so present there, but yet you can see how they have been somewhat corrupted and changed through history and mythology, but the beauty is we have the true account here in the Word of God.
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God has revealed to us what actually happened.
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So we can interpret the later accounts through the biblical account.
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So again, the value of our study today is we have the revelation of God as to what actually happened at the Tower of Babel.
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And I've broken today's lesson into two parts.
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If you're taking notes, I'll put it on the board for you.
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We have basically, I usually have three.
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I was only able to come up with two.
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I think the story lays two parts.
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First is man's monument, verses 1 to 4.
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The second is God's judgment, verses 5 to 9.
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So that's the outline, and we'll look at both parts.
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Let's look first at man's monument.
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This begins in verse 1.
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It says, First there was a single language.
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Look at verse 1.
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It says, Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.
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Now in Hebrew, the idiom there is literally, man had one lip.
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And the phrase one lip means that essentially he had one language.
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And this is what tells us that this story logically precedes chapter 10.
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Remember chapter 10 that we studied last week? It told us the table of nations.
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There were 70 nations that had divided.
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And of the 70 nations, how did it say they divided? By their lands, by their tribes, and by their languages.
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Right? Well the languages had not yet divided.
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So the story of the Tower of Babel actually is chronologically before the genealogy of chapter 10.
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And so we see here at this point that when this narrative begins, the men of all the world shared one common language.
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We don't know what that language was.
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Some people believe it was Hebrew.
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I say I don't think it was Hebrew because people spoke Hebrew after this.
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And if that was the one universal language, then it does...
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I think God confused, and we're going to talk about this in a moment, I think God confused the one universal language, and that's where we get language families out of.
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But ultimately, I don't think that this one universal language is still spoken today.
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But some people believe it's Hebrew.
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Of course, Muslims believe it's Arabic.
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Muslims believe Arabic is the language of heaven.
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In fact, they believe that the Koran is written in heavenly language.
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And really so, they have this view of their language being the universal language.
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The one language I know it weren't is English.
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English is relatively new.
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However, it is becoming more of a universal language.
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Almost every nation in the world teaches English.
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And if you ever know somebody who's an air traffic controller, I thought this was interesting, all air traffic controllers have to learn English.
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So, because obviously, there's got to be a universal communication, and that's the universal communication.
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It's almost like English is like trying to fight back against the Tower of Babel, you know, get back to a universal language.
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The problem is English is so hard, it'll never be the universal language.
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Our language is ridiculous.
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I don't want to get into that, but it really is.
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Our language is so weird.
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But there was this one single language that every person spoke, and whatever the language was, it would soon be confused by divine providence.
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It also says there was a single settlement.
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Verse 2, it says, And as the people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and settled there.
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Now, in chapter 10, this gives us a time frame, because if you go back to chapter 10, just for a moment, in some of your Bibles, you just have to look up a little bit.
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Look up to chapter 10 in verse 8.
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It talks about Nimrod.
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Remember I talked about Nimrod last week? The warrior king? And it says, Cush fathered Nimrod.
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He was the first on earth to be a mighty man.
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He was a mighty hunter before the Lord.
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Therefore he is called like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord.
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The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Arak, Akkad, Chalne, in the land of where? Shinar.
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This is the same Babel that's spoken of there.
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And so this is where this is.
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And Nimrod, remember, means rebellion.
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And so that fits the attitude of what we're going to see.
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Because the attitude of those who are here in this account is that they are not doing what God has commanded them to do.
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You say, well what has God commanded them to do? God has commanded them to fill the earth.
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Genesis 9.1 God blessed Noah, said to his sons, Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth.
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But instead, Nimrod says, No, we don't want to be scattered.
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We don't want to fill the earth.
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We're going to settle in one place with one language.
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And guess what? One ruler.
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Who's going to be the ruler? Nimrod.
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In fact, many people who do a lot of study in eschatology, which is the study of end times, they look at the final antichrist, which I don't want to get into a lot of eschatological differences, but they think about this last antichrist as being another Nimrod.
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Another one who tries to set the world up as one unified system where he's the ruler.
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See, Nimrod has set up this one place where he's the ruler.
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One language, one location, one man in charge, and guess what? It's me.
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Nimrod.
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Not me, but him.
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He's the ruler.
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Pastor Brian Borgman, in his lesson on this sermon, also points this out.
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He says there's also a geographical note that should be mentioned here in verse 2.
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And that is that it references that they came from the east.
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They migrated from the east.
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And Brian said this.
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He said there's a theology to geography.
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I thought that was kind of a neat little play on words.
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He says there's a theology to geography.
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Throughout the Bible, whenever we see east come up in the text, it's typically referring to some form of rebellion.
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Again, Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden.
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The cherubim guarded the garden east of the garden.
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And then we see later with Abram, Lot left and went east.
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And so it's not a hard, fast thing, but we tend to see eastward being referenced with rebellion.
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Cain settled in the land of Nod.
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Where was the land of Nod? East of Eden.
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East of God's presence.
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So east sort of has a biblical focus on being apart from or in rebellion to God.
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And so we see that here in verse 2.
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East symbolizing, as it were, moving away from God's presence.
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So the people had one language.
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Unified language.
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They had one location.
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Unified location.
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And they had one purpose.
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Look at verse 3.
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The purpose is in actually verses 3 and 4.
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It says, And they said to one another, Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.
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And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar.
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And then they said, Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower and with its top in the heavens and let us make a name for ourselves lest we be dispersed over the face of the earth.
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So 3 and 4 give us the purpose, what they're doing.
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And you'll notice the phrase, Come, let us.
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Come, let us.
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There's this statement, because later you're going to see that statement again.
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But from God.
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He's going to say, Come, let us go down and confuse their languages.
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So God will, in a sense, respond to their coming together against Him by coming together against them.
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And we see the use of bricks here.
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Now, in the commentaries I was reading, a lot was said about the fact that they used bricks rather than stone.
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Some people even think that this was perhaps Moses sort of pointing to their ignorance, because the Jews were not known for using bricks.
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They were known for using stone in their architecture.
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And stone, of course, being much different and better.
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And they say, What fool would use a brick if he could use a good Palestinian stone? And so maybe this was Moses sort of accounting for their ignorance.
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But it also could be looked at the other way.
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This could be looked at as a form of technology on their part.
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They were able to take clay and burn it and make bricks.
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And that's a technological advance.
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And this points us back to the sons of Cain.
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What were the sons of Cain known for? Technology, right? They had artisans and craftsmen and all this.
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And so the fact that they weren't out collecting stone or mining stone, but rather they were able to take clay and make it into stone, make it into bricks, was a sign of intelligence and a sign of working together, a sign of ingenuity and technology.
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What happens when men come together in rebellion against God? They do some amazing things in their rebellion.
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And so we're pointing to here a technological thing.
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Brick is not easy to make.
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Therefore, this intention in their heart is one of they're willing to work for their rebellion.
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Does that make sense? They're willing to work for their opposition towards God.
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And so, like Cain, their spiritual ancestor, they became city builders.
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In fact, a lot of people focus on the tower and the tower is the key, but notice it's not just a tower.
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It says in verse 4, it says, Come, let us build a city.
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They want to build a city.
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Who was the first city builder? Cain.
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And what did Cain build a city for? To make a name for his son.
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Remember, he says, I'm going to name it after my son and there's going to be a name here.
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Why are they building the city? It tells us in the text, it says, let us build a city and a tower with its top in the heavens to make a name for ourselves.
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This is about the exaltation of the person.
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I would say, in a sense, it's the exaltation of Nimrod, but you could go further and say it's the exaltation of man in general.
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We want to build this thing that is going to cause all generations to remember who we are.
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And in the midst of the city, there will be a monument to human pride.
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The landmark, which of course is most associated with the story, the tower.
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Now when we think of the tower, I think we often get a picture in our mind, something like this.
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Like a tower like that.
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Because we think of something like the Sears Tower, we think of a tower.
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Or we think of a cell phone tower.
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Or the Eiffel Tower.
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Or even the Leaning Tower of Pisa is a tower that goes straight up.
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But what is most likely being envisioned here is not something like that, but something what we would call a ziggurat.
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A ziggurat is more like a pyramid.
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But not exactly like a pyramid like we see in Egypt, but rather it would be a pyramid built sort of like a house.
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Right? And what's interesting about this is you see these all around the world.
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You go to the Mayans, you see them down there.
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You go over to the Middle East, you see them there.
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And I think, again I can't prove this, sometimes preaching they say, don't ever say what you think.
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I'll tell you what I think if I think it's right.
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And you can be the person who evaluates that.
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I think that the reason why we see these all around the world is because sort of this architectural design began here in Babel and just was used by men as they went in different directions.
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Because what this becomes is this becomes the fountainhead of idolatry.
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What are these places used for? They're used for worship.
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They're temples.
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And Babel, we'll talk about this later, Babel literally means the gate to God.
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Now later it would become to be used the word for confusion because the Hebrew Babel, Babel, would actually be referred to as like babble, like babbling.
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But the word Babel or Babel is gate to God.
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And so the idea that this was their way to experience the divine.
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This was the gateway to experiencing divinity or maybe even better said this was the gateway to becoming divine.
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Where is God? He's up there.
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How do we become God? We go up there.
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We get up there to where He is.
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And this is why I say it's a monument to human pride, right? They're trying to build a tower to get to where God is so that they can be like Him.
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They don't want to get close to God.
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This is the thing that often, when I was a kid I was like, what's wrong with wanting to build a stairwell to get to God, right? What's wrong with wanting to be close to God? And honestly, for just a moment, can you sympathize with that? If somebody said, well what's wrong with wanting to be close to God? That's not the point.
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They don't want to be close to God.
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They want to rule as God.
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They want to take His place.
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They want themselves to experience His divine nature.
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And how do you do that? You get up high.
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Now some people believe they were building it also just in case there was another flood.
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Some people believe they were building it so high that in case another flood came they could escape God's judgment.
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That's not in the text.
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Again, that's just a commentator.
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But I will say this, even if that were the case, that's another way to say I want to be God.
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Because I'm not going to submit myself to His judgment.
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I'm going to build a way.
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And think of it today.
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It's a way for man to have salvation without God's way.
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He's going to make his own way to God.
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He's going to make his own gateway.
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He's going to make his own stairway to heaven.
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He's going to make his own porch to heaven.
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He's going to make it himself and do it himself.
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We haven't gotten away from this.
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Today men still want to find their own way.
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You tell them Jesus is the only way to God.
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They'll say, no, I don't need Jesus.
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I'm going to get there on my own.
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It doesn't work that way.
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It doesn't work that way.
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So, this is the perpetual sin of all man.
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We want to be God.
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We want to be our own rulers.
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We want to have our own Baybels.
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We want to have our own.
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In fact, later, just a quick reminder, this place would eventually become another place.
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Baybel would eventually become Babylon.
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And what is Babylon through the Bible? It's the place where men exalt themselves against God.
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So, that's why I said this has ripples throughout the Bible.
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Right? This has ripples throughout the text.
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Baybel becomes Babylon and throughout the Bible.
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Even into Revelation.
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What is it? Babylon the Great.
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The Great Harlot.
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Right? It's still there.
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Because it's the setting up of the rebellion against God.
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And so, just think about two instances.
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Nebuchadnezzar.
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What did Nebuchadnezzar do? He stood up on top of his home and he looked out at everything.
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And he said, what? Look at all that I have done.
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Look at all that I have conquered.
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And what did God do? Took away his natural mind.
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Sent him out to eat grass like an ox.
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Right? God showed him, you're not in charge.
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A few centuries later, there was a man in Jerusalem named Herod.
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Herod, in Acts chapter 12, he addressed the people.
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And the people said, he is a god and not a man.
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And the Bible says God struck him dead right there and the worms ate him right in front of the people.
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He said, you're a god and not a man? Boom! You're done.
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Because the exaltation of pride is the first step to the fall.
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The Bible says, pride goeth before the fall.
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As Francis Thompson wrote in his poem, he says, All man's Babylon's strived but to impart the granders of his Babylonian heart.
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I'll say it again.
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All man's Babylon's strived but to impart the granders of his Babylonian heart.
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Why do we build towers of Babel? Why do we build our Babylon's? Because we have a Babylonian heart.
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Because we're trying to strive for our own sense of being God rather than submitting to the God who is.
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So that's man's monument.
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That's verses 1 to 4.
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Now we're going to look at God's judgment beginning at verse 5.
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We see first the Lord's observation.
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This is verse 5.
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It says, And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of man had built.
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I love this verse.
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And I love it.
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Because sometimes we miss sarcasm.
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And I think that this verse is dripping with sarcasm.
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Even though we probably don't automatically recognize it.
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But understand a couple things.
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One, God is omniscient, meaning he knows everything.
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And he's also omnipresent, which means he's everywhere.
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So when the Bible describes him as having hands, it's usually somehow trying to describe his care for us.
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We're in his hands.
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He holds us up by his right hand.
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Or when it describes his eyes.
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He sees everything, but it's describing his focus.
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He's focusing on something.
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He sees me.
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He knows the hairs on my head.
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So when the Bible describes an anthropomorphic reference to God, his hands, his eyes, his feet, his whatever, it's focusing on some aspect of God for that moment to call our attention to it.
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And what is the anthropomorphism in verse 5? And the Lord came down.
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God doesn't have to come down.
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Unless what he's saying is this big tower that you built, that you thought was so high, I gotta get down on my knees and my hands to see that little tower.
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What you think is so massive and so high and reaches the heavens, God has to come all the way down just to see it.
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You see, there's sarcasm there.
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The idea is God came down to see what they had done, as if he didn't know.
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As if he couldn't see.
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Kent Hughes in his commentary says this.
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Their tower was so microscopic that the all-seeing, omnipotent God had to come down to see it.
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It was as if God stooped down like a man on his hands and knees and lowered his face to the earth to see the great tower.
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The psalmist reminds us, he who sits in the heavens laughs.
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The Lord holds them in derision.
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So the Lord's observation.
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Verse 5, then we see the Lord's declaration.
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Which, by the way, I don't think any of them heard.
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This is God speaking to himself.
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Moses records it for us.
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I don't think anybody at Babel heard this.
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But this is what God says to himself.
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It says, And the Lord said, Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language.
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And this is only the beginning of what they will do.
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And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
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Now, I want to say something about this verse.
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This verse is not complimentary.
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Some people would read that and say, Wow, look how God thinks of us.
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We can do anything we want if we just put our mind to it.
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And I'm sure, I don't know, I didn't find one, but I'm sure there is some teacher somewhere, one of these health and wealth, prosperity, that's where I'm looking.
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I'm sure there's some prosperity preacher somewhere who used Genesis 11, 6 to say, See, you can do anything you want if you just have enough people on your team and you're doing it with all your might.
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Again, I couldn't find anybody who said it, but I know it's there.
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Somebody has used this as a compliment.
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But this is not a compliment.
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He is affirming man's potential, but he's not confirming man's potential for good.
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He's confirming man's potential for evil.
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Notice what he's saying.
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He said, there are one people and they have all one language.
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And this is only the beginning of what they will do.
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Well, what are they doing? They're rebelling.
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And he's saying, as long as they have this one language and this ability to work together, their rebellion will not end.
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It's just going to grow and grow and grow and grow.
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When men work together in their rebellion, their potential seems limitless.
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Consider the examples of what men have been able to do without complete unity.
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Even without unity in our world, what do we see? Bombs that can destroy entire cities.
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Governments that can destroy entire populations.
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Men who create religions that enslave billions of human hearts.
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And that's without unity.
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Think of Islam.
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Islam is the greatest slave maker in all of history.
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It's enslaved 2 billion souls.
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All because one man says he saw an angel in a cave.
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And people have been willing to fly airplanes into buildings for such nonsense.
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And so we see what man can do divided.
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Imagine the rebellion he could have were he united.
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That's the point.
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So God chooses to intervene.
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And verse 7 shows the intervention.
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It says, Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language so that they may not understand one another's speech.
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Now I want to say something very quickly.
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He does use the plural pronoun, Come, let us go down.
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There's a lot of discussion about why that is plural.
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We have already seen this in Genesis 1 where he says let us make man in our image and our likeness.
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And I would confirm that this is likely a veiled reference to the Trinity.
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There are some who believe that this is God in using heavenly beings, the angels, to do part of his work with him and for him.
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I don't know that I would go there.
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But I wouldn't say, I don't know if I would say that's heresy.
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But I think the Trinity is a good enough answer for me to say let us.
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So if that confuses you, I don't think that it necessarily should.
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But if it does, hopefully that's satisfactory that when he says let us.
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God can speak of himself in the individual and he can speak of himself in the plural because he is one in essence and three in person.
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And he says, Come, let us go down.
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Again, this is a reference to what they've already said.
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They've said, Come, let us make bricks.
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Come, let us make a name for ourselves.
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And God says, Well now, come, let us go down and respond.
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And his response is to confuse their language.
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Now this does not tell us how the Lord did this.
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We know up until this point, they only had one language.
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And some people think that God immediately changed their language where they now all had different languages.
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And so it would be like, you know, Brother Mike's painting the wall and I'm in there, you know, maybe putting some sheetrock in, you know, obviously not the same as 7000 years ago.
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But, you know, we're both in there working and now he's speaking Spanish.
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And I'm speaking Italian.
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And now we can't work together because we can't communicate.
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That's the picture I think that some of us have.
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But that's not exactly what it says.
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What it says is it says he confused their language.
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And the word confuse in Hebrew literally means to confound or to mix up.
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And so, if you look at today in our modern world, there are over 7000 different languages.
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I don't think God created 7000 different languages on this day.
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But what I do think is I think God confounded the one language, which caused people to have to go in different directions.
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And they did.
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And in those different directions were birthed language families.
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You see, because out of the 7000 or so languages that are today, there's only about 140 language families.
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And even those language families can be backed up to an even smaller group of families.
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English, German, French, and most of the languages that we're familiar with, Western languages, all come from what is called the Indo-European family of languages.
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And so, what likely happened was as the people spread out and separated, they did have at least enough basis for language to begin to create these forms of speech.
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But as God separates them out, He's given them enough to work with each other, but not enough to work in unity.
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He confounds the one language into many.
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And how many? We don't know.
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But I know this.
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He didn't create Greek and Latin and German and all those this day.
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He created language families, and out of those were birthed the thousands of dialects and languages that we have today.
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And so we come then to the dispersion, verse 8.
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It says, So the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.
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And this reminds us something.
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This is a little side application note.
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Communication is essential for fellowship.
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And communication is essential for working together and building up relationships.
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And so that could be a sermon all itself.
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How important is communication? God takes away their ability to communicate.
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Now they can't work together.
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Now they can't do anything together.
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Now they have to separate.
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And how many churches have been destroyed because people just fail to communicate? So again, another sermon, another time.
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But that's there, right? Communication is essential.
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And then finally, verse 9.
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It says, Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the people of all the earth, and from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.
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And again, that word Babel, the Hebrew word can be translated differently.
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It can be translated gate of God.
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It can also be translated confusion.
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I think it became, it's sort of like the word barbarian.
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Do you guys know where the word barbarian comes from? The word barbarian was actually an onomatopoeic word.
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You know what onomatopoeia is? It's a word that has a sound like pop or snap or crack.
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That's an onomatopoeia.
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And so Babel is like the word barbarian.
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Barbarian is the idea of bar, bar, bar.
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If I don't understand what you're saying, all I hear is bar, bar, bar.
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So when the people were, when they saw someone they didn't understand, they called them barbarians.
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They were barbarians.
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They didn't understand their language.
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And so in Hebrew, Babel is sort of the same, the same idea.
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And so it became known as confusion or mixing up of the language.
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So let's look now at a few ways to apply this text, and we'll draw to a close with our application.
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I thought of three things to apply.
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Still got to my three.
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Said I was going to do it.
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I had two points, but three points of application.
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Number one, we see the dual danger of both pride and disobedience.
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The dual danger of pride and disobedience.
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Disobedience stems from pride and increases pride.
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I'm going to say that again.
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Disobedience stems from pride.
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The reason why we disobey God is because of our pride.
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I am convinced in my heart that pride is the mother of all sins.
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Because before we ever sin, we have to say to God, at this moment, I know better than you.
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At this moment, I want something that you don't want for me.
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Therefore, I know better than you.
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Therefore, pride is what gives birth to disobedience, and then disobedience gives birth to pride, and it becomes this vicious cycle of growth.
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Because as I become disobedient and more disobedient, I become more prideful in my disobedience.
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1 Timothy 3 tells us it was pride that caused Satan to fall.
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Genesis 3 says it was pride that caused Eve to fall, because Eve saw the fruit, and Satan said to her, you know you will be like God.
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And so she ate of the fruit.
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Proverbs 16, 18, as I said earlier, pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before the fall.
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Every act of disobedience before God is an act of pride, because in that moment, we're declaring we know better than God.
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Is it any wonder, Brother Andy kind of referenced this in his prayer earlier, is it any wonder that some of the most heinous sins in all of the world right now are attached to one word, pride? What do we call pride parades? Celebrate pride? Consider this, the desire of the heart of every believer should be exalting the name of God and not self.
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What did the people of Babel want to do? Exalt their name, that we might make a name for ourselves.
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I've said it before, and I hope it really is the intention of my heart, is that I want to preach the gospel, die and be forgotten.
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Preach the gospel, die and be forgotten, because it's not about me.
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It's not about me.
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And it shouldn't be about us.
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It's about God and His name and His fame in the earth.
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Number two on application, the world united is more sinful than the world divided.
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Now this one, I promise I'll only take a second, but I want to explain this.
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Why did God divide mankind? He tells us.
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He says, because left unified, there will be no end to their sin.
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And so, the divisions of nations that we have in our world are often seen as really bad.
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Oh, we don't need divisions between nations.
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We don't need borders.
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We don't need anything, right? You just got to come in, everybody come in.
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No, there's a reason for the division.
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And honestly, I'm going to catch it for this one.
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God created nationalism, because some people think the worst thing in the world is to have animosity between nations.
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God said the worst thing in the world is to have unity between nations, because when all nations are unified, they will be unified in one pursuit, and that is rebellion against Him.
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So, God doesn't like the United Nations.
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I didn't say that.
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What I'm saying is the whole idea of unifying, where does unity always lead? Unity and rebellion, always.
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God divided the people for a reason, that they would not be able to unify against Him.
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And third, and this is where I hope to tie it to Christ and the gospel, so this is where I'll really be closing.
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The diversity of language is an example of God's judgment.
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As I just said, there was a merciful judgment, because He divided the nations so that they couldn't continue in rebellion.
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It was merciful, but it was a judgment that will one day be lifted, because in the new heaven and the new earth, we ain't gonna need no Rosetta Stone.
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Turn to Acts chapter 2.
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I want to show you something, and then we'll close.
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In Acts chapter 2, we have the story of Pentecost, and you all remember what happened, right? Let's read it, because this is valuable stuff, because what we see here is actually what I think is the prototypical view of the new heaven and the new earth.
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And actually, Zephaniah, don't turn here, but Zephaniah 3 tells us, he says, At that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, and they all will call upon the name of the Lord and serve Him with one accord.
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There will come a day when everybody calls upon the name of the Lord with one speech and one voice and one accord.
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And it's here in chapter 2 of Acts that we see the prototype of this.
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It says in chapter 2, When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place, and suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting, and divided tongues as a fire appeared on them and rested on each of them.
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And they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues.
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That word means languages.
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They spoke with languages as the Spirit gave them utterance, and now there were dwelling in Jerusalem devout men from every nation under heaven, and at the sound of the multitude coming together they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own language.
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And they were amazed and astonished, saying, Are not all of these men who we hear speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear each in his own native language, Parthians and Medes, Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and parts of Libya, belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.
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There was no barrier to language in Pentecost.
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And this is a picture of the new heaven and new earth where every man and woman who knows the Lord Jesus Christ will cry out in one unified voice, Worthy is the Lamb.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your truth.
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I thank you that we have a great day to look forward to.
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A day that we can cry, Worthy is the Lamb, with every other person who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ from the beginning of the ages to the end of the ages and we will all cry out, Worthy is the Lamb.
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Father, we look forward to that day.
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And yet Lord, we know that even now, among us there are those who have yet, in this life, to cry out, Worthy is the Lamb.
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Perhaps, Lord, it is because they still have a Babylonian heart.
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They have a heart that wants to build their own kingdom and not the kingdom of God.
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Lord, take out our Babylonian hearts.
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Give us a heart of flesh that we might serve you in spirit and in truth.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.
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We come now to our time.