The Sin at Babel: Pride

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Pastor Keith expounds the event that separates the days of Noah and Abraham, the raising of the Tower of Babel. He brings to light some common misunderstandings about this story and goes on to apply the text to modern Christians who are also faced with the requirement to be submissive to the Word of God.

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This morning, we are going to take a little detour.
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We have been studying the book of Hebrews verse by verse.
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And in the eleventh chapter, which is where we are now, we find ourselves with a listing of various Old Testament persons and how their faith was an example to us all.
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It was a demonstration of what a life looks like when God regenerates a heart and provides that person the ability to come to Him.
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And when they come to Him in true faith, and that's what Hebrews 11 is, it's just person after person after person who exemplified true faith.
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Now, the reason why I said we're going to take a detour this morning is because we've already looked at the person of Abel, the story of Cain and Abel.
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He was the first one on the list.
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We've already looked at the person of Enoch, one who the Bible says walked with God.
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We've looked at the person of Noah and we spent five weeks, four weeks rather, looking at the person of Noah.
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The next person in the list is the patriarch, Abraham, arguably the most famous person in history.
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Possibly Jesus Christ might supersede that, but Abraham is considered the patriarch of three major monotheistic faiths.
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We're going to talk about that next week.
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But before we get to Abraham, before we talk about Abraham, I want to take a detour with a story that is not in the book of Hebrews.
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I want to look at a situation that came about between the time of Noah and the time of Abraham.
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And it is the story that most of you know is called the story of the Tower of Babel.
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So this morning we are going to go to Genesis chapter 11 and we are going to study about the Tower of Babel.
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I feel like it is important, since we are somewhat doing an Old Testament overview as we look at these character studies, I feel it is important to include this story because this story is the story of the dispersion of the different ethnic groups in our world.
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How there was a time when there was only one family, one person, Noah and his three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, and from them came every ethnic group in the world today.
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I wanted to demonstrate that this is an important turn in human history because whereas up until this time mankind had lived closely together, God separates the people by language and geography.
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And as such we see the world we live in today as much the result of that separation.
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So with that being said, let us begin by asking you again to stand because we give honor and reverence to God's word.
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So we stand any time it is written, or rather read, and we read Genesis 11 verses 1-9.
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Genesis 11 says these words, it says, Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.
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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 bicumen for mortar.
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And they said, Come, let us build for ourselves a city and a tower that is its top is in the heavens.
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And let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.
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And 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 all have one language.
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And this is the only the beginning of what they will do.
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Nothing that they purpose to do will now be impossible for them.
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Come, let us go down and there confuse their language so that they may not understand one another's speech.
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So the Lord dispersed them and there over the face of all the earth and they left off building the city.
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Therefore, its name was called Babel.
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Because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth.
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And from there, the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.
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Father, as we come to you in Jesus name, I ask you, O Lord, first and foremost.
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Give me the strength to preach the message and keep me from error.
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And I pray that you would guard the hearts of the congregation.
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Open them to truth and keep them from error.
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Lord God, as we examine this text of Scripture this morning, I pray that you would open our eyes to see its truth.
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And not only to understand it, O God, but to apply it to our own lives, as there is so much here that we need to understand.
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We ask all of this, O Lord, in Jesus name and for his sake.
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Amen.
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Now, had we been doing a verse by verse exposition of Genesis, I would make a big point to mention that the events of Genesis chapter 11, verses one through nine are not in chronological order with the events of chapter 10.
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If we were going verse by verse, I would demonstrate that this actually happened toward the beginning of chapter 10.
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Chapter 10 is an overview, and then this goes back and gives a subset story of something that happened during the overview.
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A very similar thing happens in Genesis 1.
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In Genesis 1, we have the outline of creation, including the creation of man.
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And then in Genesis 2, it tells us how the creation of man came about.
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It was Adam first, and then Eve, and Adam came from her rib.
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And we know the story, and we know how the chronology, Adam came from her, Eve came from his rib.
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I'm sorry, I thought I knew the story.
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I guess I was a little mistaken.
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But you understand that sometimes the Bible will give us an overview, and then it will go back and take and set a story and say this actually happened in this time.
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And that's sort of what's happening here, because what we are seeing here is we're seeing something that happened before the people were dispersed on the earth.
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If you read through chapter 10, it actually says in chapter 10 that the people went out and they filled the earth.
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And it seems as if they were obeying the command of God, because the command of God was to go out and fill the earth.
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It was to go out and take his glory to the ends of the earth.
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But instead of going out and taking his glory to the ends of the earth, the people stayed in one spot and they decided to build a monument for their own glory rather than filling the earth as a testimony to the glory of God.
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So we see Genesis chapter 11 comes the story of the Tower of Babel actually comes in the midst of chapter 10.
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And the only reason I bring that up is if you went back tonight and you read chapter 10, that might confuse you.
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And now you can see how those two things would fit together.
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But now, now that we understand that, let us go and how we do Bible study here for those who are new visitor with us, have been with us for a while.
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We read the text, we explain the text, we apply the text.
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That is what the method biblical interpretation.
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That's how you're supposed to do it.
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That's called expository teaching.
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So we're going to just read this text verse by verse.
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We're going to seek to understand it and then we're going to apply it.
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Now, it says in Genesis 11, verse one, now the whole earth had one language and the same words.
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Now, what language would this have been? It would have been the same language as Noah and his family had.
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It is only natural that a generation of people from one family would have but one way to communicate.
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It wouldn't have made sense if Shem spoke Chinese and Ham spoke Japanese or Mandarin or some other different language or French or English.
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It wouldn't have made sense if the three brothers spoke a different language.
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Obviously, they all had one language.
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And as such, the language of the people at this time, the language where it says here, the whole earth had one language.
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It would have been the language of Noah.
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We have no idea really what that language was or if it is still in use in any form today.
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Some might conjecture that it was Hebrew because Abraham was a descendant of Shem.
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Shem was a Noahite, so you have Noah to Shem and then there's a descendant named Abraham.
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However, the situation with Abraham came well after the disbursement of the languages.
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So we don't know which language that the descendants of Shem would have used.
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So there's no way to know if it were if Noah's family was speaking the Hebrew language.
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We know that there would have been no reason to diverge from it until God separated the languages.
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It would not have been natural for the people to formulate their own language simply to bring division among themselves.
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It is only natural that how the Bible explains the situation that it occurred.
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So at this point, we have an entirely unified communication system and as such, an entirely unified human race.
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The whole earth had one language and the same words.
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Now, I think there's something important to note in that because it sounds like a redundant statement.
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They had one language and the same words.
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Well, if you said they had the same words, isn't that the same way as saying they had the same language? Well, it could be a redundant statement, but it could also be an attempt to make the point that there was clarity in how they understood one another.
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There are a lot of people who speak English that I don't understand.
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They speak the same language, but they don't use the same words.
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I can go north and it's like a different it's just like going to a different continent.
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Sometimes they use words and they say the words differently.
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And you go over to England, they're speaking, obviously, English, but it sounds different.
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They use different words.
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Communication breaks down even within the English language.
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We see that all over the world.
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So it's I think it's attempting to make the point that not only did they have the language, but they use the same words.
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There was clear communication among the people.
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There was no division in how they communicated with one another.
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And that gave them great strength, as we will see.
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But let's just go on now to verse two.
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And as people migrated from the east, they would have been migrating from the point of Noah's landing on the ark, because that is the event that just preceded this.
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And as they migrated from there, they found a plane in the land of Shinar and settled there.
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This would have likely been close to modern day Iraq.
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Shinar would have been close to where Iraq is now in ancient times.
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It was later called Babylon.
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So we see what was Shinar became Babylon, and then today is called Iraq.
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Babylon comes from the term Babel, by the way, it's a derivative of that phrase.
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Verse three, And they said to one another, this is the crux of the story.
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And they said to one another, Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.
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They were in that sense, they were craftsmen and engineers.
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We often think of our ancestors as being some type of primitive, low intelligent people that lived in mud huts and caves.
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Well, there were there were people who lived in mud huts and caves, but guess what? There's still people who live in mud huts and caves, go up to the mountain areas.
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There are people who still live in these types of go over to Africa.
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There's still people who live in tribal conditions.
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The idea of the caveman, the idea of the Neanderthal is an evolutionary principle that has been ground into our brain that is not found in Scripture.
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We are created in the image of God.
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And from the very earliest days of mankind, he was an intelligent being.
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He was not the great ape.
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He was an intellectual.
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We see from the very earliest times he made bricks and he built towers.
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He didn't carve just a place in a stone to hide himself from the elements.
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He went out and he built things.
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It says he made bricks and burned them thoroughly.
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And they had brick for stone and by human for mortar.
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Then they said, come, let us build ourselves a city, not just a tower.
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This is an entire city planner idea.
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This is the coming together and building up of a metropolis.
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Let us build for ourselves a city and a tower when it's top in the heavens.
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And let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.
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This is the key point in the story.
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Some people believe that maybe I may I want to point something out because some people read the story of the Tower of Babel and they think that the sin of the people of the Tower of Babel was that they were trying to get to heaven where God is.
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I'm not going to ask for a show of hands, but I remember that from as a young man.
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People say, well, the sin of Babel was they were trying to build a tower so that they could get up into heaven with God.
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That is not the case.
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The text does not indicate that their destination was to be in heaven with God.
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They desired to build a tower whose top was in the heavens.
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Remember, every time you read the word heaven, don't think automatically that the word heaven is talking about the abode of God.
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There are three distinct uses of the word heaven.
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One is simply the sky.
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The other is what we call the stellar heavens or the place, the abode of the stars, the moon and the sun.
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And then there is also what we call heaven or the abode of God.
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So those are three distinct ways in which the word heaven is used.
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And when it says here they wanted to build a tower whose top was in the heavens.
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They're talking about building a tower that had a point and pinnacle that was higher than any place else in the land.
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So that every time people walked by their tower, they would look up and see nothing else that was match its massive height and say, wow, it must have been a great people who built such a great tower.
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You see, because it says in the text that their goal was to make a name for themselves.
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Do not kid yourself to think that they were trying to draw close to God.
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This is rubbish.
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Their goal was to make a name for themselves.
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Their goal was so that every time someone saw that tower, they remembered that generation and called them great.
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The great sins of the people of Babel were twofold.
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If you're taking notes, the two sins of the people of the time of the Tower of Babel were one pride.
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And to disobedience, pride and disobedience.
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Their pride caused them to want to build a monument to their own remembrance.
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And their defiance or disobedience caused them to want to prevent their separation.
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If you look at the text again, it says they said, let us not separate.
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Let us stay here.
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Let us be together.
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And you see, that was the one I think is the greater of the two sins.
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I mean, pride is a great sin.
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But the second one, the desire to not separate, was actually in rebellion to the command of God.
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God had commanded them in Genesis chapter 9 and verse 1, go out and fill the earth.
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Yet instead of going out and filling the earth, they said in defiance, let us build this tower, build this city, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth.
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You see, their whole intent was to not fulfill the command of God.
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God commanded, go out, fill the earth.
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They said, no, we're fine right here.
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God said, go and do this.
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They said, no, we're going to do that.
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And this brings an interesting question to mind.
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Why was it so important for God that he commanded the people to separate and fill the earth? That's the question.
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Why was it so important to God that the people be separated and fill the earth? First and foremost, I would say it was to spread his glory to the ends of the earth because man is in the image of God.
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Thus, we bear a mark that no other animal creature in creation bears.
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And thus, to fill the earth is to fill the earth with God's glory and the proclamation of his name.
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But second of all, I would say it was for this for the specific purpose.
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And this is going to strike you as probably odd that I would say this.
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I think God's purpose in separating the people was to break up unity.
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Now, hang with me for a minute, because when I say I think God wanted to break up unity, you might say now, wait a minute.
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God's all about unity.
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No, he's not, because they were unified in sinful rebellion.
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And any time there is a unification and sinful rebellion against God, this is not a good thing.
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People talk about we should have unity at all costs.
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No, we should not.
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Unity at all costs means that we must compromise truth because the majority of the world doesn't believe the truth.
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Unity in itself is not necessarily a good thing.
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Now, people all the time talk about the value of unity.
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But unity at the expense of obedience to God is not virtue.
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Unity at the expense of obedience to God is not righteous.
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In fact, it breeds unrighteousness and leads to destruction.
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This is why as a church, people who are called to be the children of God in the world, this is why in the church we do not seek unity at all costs.
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Some have tried to do this in the past.
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They have worked to unify different religious groups into a worldwide ecumenical council group.
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And often they are praised for their work because, hey, they're promoting peace and they're promoting understanding.
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However, what is often not recognized is that this type of unity always demands the compromising of one thing, and that is the compromising of the gospel.
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It demands leaving the exclusive claims of Christ behind and adopting a form of universalism.
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I cannot be unified with a Muslim.
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I cannot be unified with a Hindu.
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I cannot be unified with a Buddhist.
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I cannot be unified with a Unitarian.
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For these people reject the gospel of Jesus Christ, and as such, though I can have a relationship with them on a social level.
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We cannot be called unified in the cause of our faith to be unified with those who reject Christ would demand that I reject the gospel.
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And that cost is too high.
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It is never good for the righteous to be unified with the wicked.
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Paul tells us in 2nd Corinthians 614, Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers for what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness and what communion has light with darkness.
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Why is this true? Because the wicked have so much influence over the righteous.
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We know this.
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The Bible tells us in 1st Corinthians 1533, Do not be deceived.
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Bad company ruins good morals.
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Your mom ever tell you that when you were growing up? Did your mom ever say, Hey, be careful who you hang out with if you lay down with dogs, you get fleas? Well, she was paraphrasing 1st Corinthians 1533.
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That's all she was doing.
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She didn't know that maybe, but that's what she was doing because Paul said the same thing.
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Bad company corrupts good morals.
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Oftentimes, people who call themselves Christians and this, I wanted to point this out this morning is important.
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Oftentimes, people who call themselves Christians will hang out in unseemly places and with people who are not interested in seeking righteousness.
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And you'll say, well, why do you do that? And they'll say, oh, I'm trying to bring light into a dark place.
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Well, first, I would say more often the problem is that the person actually likes the darkness.
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I'm not judging you if this is you, but I want you to ask yourself, is it is it that you're trying to bring light into a dark place or do you just like the darkness? The second thing I would say is even if your motives are pure, you are on a dangerous course because bad company corrupts good morals.
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If you do not spend time seeking holiness and seeking pure things and seeking righteous things, then that darkness is going to overcome your light.
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Happens all the time.
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So what we see is that people going back to Genesis 11, what we see is that people who are unified by their language and instead of obeying God's command to fill the earth, they instead decide to satisfy their pride and stay together and build a monument to their personal glory.
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God wanted man to separate and spread his glory throughout the earth.
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Man wanted to stay in one spot and proclaim his own glory.
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That's the division.
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Verse five, And the Lord came down.
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This is an interesting perspective as how it views the Lord as having come down to to sort of inspect what is going on.
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It says the Lord came down to see the city and the tower.
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It's not as if the Lord didn't know what was going on.
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This is what we call anthropomorphic language.
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It's giving us a view of God, helping us understand sort of what he's doing, how he's acting.
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So he 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 all have one language.
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And this is only the beginning of what they will do.
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I love that little section.
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Have you ever heard that this is just the beginning of the snowball? Snowball begins this big roll down the hill.
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By the time it gets down the hill, it's an avalanche.
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God said this is just the beginning of what they will do and nothing that they propose to do will be impossible.
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Beloved, there is power in numbers, especially unified mobs of people.
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With a charismatic leader can be very dangerous.
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And the leader in all this, if you go back to Genesis 10, the leader is a man by the name of Nimrod, a mighty man in this time.
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And he would have likely been the one who was the who was the one standing out in front, leading the people to do these very things.
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And as long as man was unified in his quest for sin, he had great potential for success.
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The text says nothing that they propose to do will be impossible for them now.
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Now, something important I want to point out about that short sentence.
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Some people in the health and wealth movement.
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Which we should repudiate, for it does not preach the gospel.
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But there are people in the health and wealth movement who will take that verse and they will say, see here, there's great power in the mind.
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And if you believe it, you can achieve it.
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And if you see it, you can do it and just put it in your mind and you can make it happen.
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And they'll say, see here, it says nothing that they propose to do will be impossible for them.
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The beloved, this passage is not about the power of positive thinking.
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This is a statement about man's ability to accomplish a number, what he could not accomplish alone.
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It is saying that when man is unified and man comes together, there's nothing he can't accomplish because he comes together in mass to do it.
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Reverend Adrian Dialman, I think I'm pronouncing that correctly, said this.
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He said criminals, political action committees, lobbyists.
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He could have just said criminals.
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Criminals, political action committees, lobbyists and special interest groups have learned they are capable of far more and far greater things as a group than they are as individuals.
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This is also true for all sin and wickedness.
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A group is capable of doing far more evil and committing far greater crimes than all the individuals on their own.
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We saw this with Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia.
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Today, we see this in the organized crime movement, the mafia, the Colombian drug lords, and we see it with someone like Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic.
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I repeat, a group is capable of doing far more evil and committing far greater crimes than all individuals on their own.
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End quote.
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I like that quote because he makes a point.
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When people come together in mass, particularly in their disobedience to God, it is amazing what they can accomplish.
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We've seen it in our nation just this past weekend.
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Turn our stomachs, if we understand scripture, of what a group of people can force upon a nation to watch.
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As we see the judgment of God unfolding on our nation, people say, do you think this is going to cause the judgment of God? No, Romans one tells us this is the judgment of God.
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And it's because there are people out there who have unified in mass to bring rebellion against the word of God.
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And it's amazing what they can do.
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Verse seven, God says, come, let us go down and they're confuse their language so that they may understand, may not understand one another speech.
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There's a little semi reference here to the Trinity when he says, let us go down.
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This is similar to the chapter one of Genesis, where he says, let us make man in our image that we would call the divine plural or the royal plural, the monarchist, the plural of sovereign.
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God referencing himself as us.
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God separated man simply by breaching his communication.
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This is a judgment that has spread and is still effect in the world today.
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This is why everyone, when you call somewhere, have to dial one, because there's a language barrier.
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It's judgment from God.
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It's the cause of the division so that man will be forced to separate and fill the earth, thus spreading the glory throughout.
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It's impossible to be all together when there's no way to communicate with one another.
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So God brings about what he commanded in the first place.
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This is another thing about God's sovereignty.
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When God commands us to do something and we seek disobedience and God wants it done, he gets it done.
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If you don't believe that, ask Jonah when you get to heaven.
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The Jonah will say to you, if God wants it done, he's going to get it done.
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Even if he's got to orchestrate the first submarine ride to get it done, he's going to get it done.
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And God had commanded fill the earth.
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They said, no, we're going to stay here.
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We're going to make a monument to ourselves.
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We're going to thumb our nose at you.
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And God said, no, you ain't because I'm going to take away your language.
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You ain't going to be able to talk to one another.
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And you're going to have to separate because I am God and you are not.
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And that's what happened.
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The language barrier caused separation and the people all went in different directions.
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And now we see a world filled with people and there are people in every tribe, tongue and nation who exalt the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And thus we see the fulfillment of the glory of God being expanded all over the world.
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Now, I want to make a quick point before I draw this to a closing, a lot more to say.
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I probably just need to hasten to the end here, but I want to make a quick point.
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This judgment, this judgment was temporarily lifted one time in history.
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You know that this judgment was temporarily lifted one time in history.
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We're thinking about that day that Peter preached at Pentecost.
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What does it say happened? It says, and they spoke and each man heard the gospel in his own language.
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You know, they always talk about being the miracle of the tongues, you call it the miracle of the ears.
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They heard it in their own language.
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The Bible does talk about speaking with other tongues.
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But in this particular instance, it's referencing the hearing that each man, though they all spoke with different languages and different dialects.
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When Peter proclaimed the gospel at that moment, every person, that veil of division that God had brought upon man at the Tower of Babel was lifted.
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And everyone heard the gospel.
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We see a temporary lifting of this judgment for the proclamation of the word of God and beloved.
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I believe when we enter into glory, we will see the final instance where that revelation or that judgment rather will be lifted and there will be no division in languages.
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There will be no division among us.
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But until then, the division will stand because it keeps us from ever being able to unify as a people fully and completely against the cause of Christ.
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The judgment of the separation in languages keeps the world from unifying against the cause of Christ.
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And that's an important thing.
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Now, let us finalize with an application.
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What can we learn from the people of Babel? What can we learn from the story? First, we need to learn this.
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The commands of God must not be taken lightly.
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We are responsible to submit to the will of God.
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We do not have the right to look at God and say to his word, I know better, my will be done.
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That's what the people did, and God showed them he knows better.
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Our attitude should always be, thy will be done.
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Secondly, we see the danger of pride.
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The danger of wanting to erect monuments to ourselves, to wanting to see our names put on things, to wanting to see ourselves exalted in God, not.
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It is a dangerous thing.
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Pride is at the forefront of many great falls.
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We must be a people.
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We must be a people who are willing to set aside our pride and submit to the will of God.
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And, you know, sometimes that's hard.
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Sometimes it's hard to put away what I want and seek what God wants, because sometimes what I see in scripture is not necessarily what I, in my flesh, desire.
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But the command of scripture is to put aside those things and seek after God.
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If we reject God's commands because of pride, our fall will be imminent, whether it is as a church, whether it is as a family or whether it is as an individual.
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If we set aside the commands of God for our sinful pride, we will fall.
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We must submit in all areas.
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To the will of God, our father and our God, we thank you for this opportunity to study this important Old Testament situation, the story.
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Which has so many implications for our life today.
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I pray, God, that you would open our hearts to submit to you the way you ought to be submitted to.
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That you would place within us a desire to follow you in everything that we do.
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And Lord God, if there are people here who have come here today who have not heard the gospel of Jesus Christ, have not heard about their sinful rebellion and have not heard that the only name by which we can be saved is through the matchless name of Jesus Christ.
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I pray oh Lord that they have heard that message and that you would use that to change hearts and redeem lives.
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We thank you for this opportunity to be in your house.
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We ask you to glorify yourself now in our time of benediction.
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In Jesus name we pray.