Introduction
Let me begin with a discipleship question: will we trust and obey Jesus in the real decisions of everyday life? Christ forms us through truth received, repentance practiced, and obedience lived out.
Main Points
Grace and Justification
we're going to look today at the story of the tower of babel which was a moment in human history that really did happen it's a historical thing that god did to take people that were united and cause confusion and division so we're scratching our heads because those are things that god typically does not bless or condone but here we are this morning hopefully finding some insight into the intentions of god's then of god then and into the lesson that we can draw from it now so we're gonna read uh the first nine verses of genesis chapter 11. and honestly i over the course of this last year i've thought of this story so many times because i really believe that it has something to say to us as a people group as a generation and as a world today and so may we find the truth in god's word not just as students of the bible to know the history of god but also to learn how god uses certain human nature moments that are revealed in these stories that really have something to say to us now so enough of my babbling no pun intended let us read the first nine verses or so of this story in the bible it says in genesis chapter 11 verse 1 now the whole earth had one language and one speech and it came to pass as they journeyed from the east that they found a plane in the land of shinar and they dwelt there then they said to one another come let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly they had brick for stone and they had asphalt for mortar and they said come let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top is in the heavens let us make a name for ourselves lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth but the lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built so we'll stop at about the halfway point of this story just to point out a few things the uh the uh point in the story in the book of genesis now we are post flood we looked at that last week we are now watching the earth be repopulated we have now a group of people that have come to the plains which as tom pointed out during our wednesday midweek service which was really the detailed deep dive of all of what we're doing in genesis and they come to what is considered modern-day iraq and they are traveling from the east into the west and you almost get a picture that they have come to a very similar region as god's initial planting of a garden in eden they have potentially returned to this place that god had set aside for man and woman to dwell of course post flood it's totally wiped out they come to a plane and they reason within themselves to build up to build a tower and a city that would reach the heavens and as we've read so far it doesn't strike us as anything greatly immoral or dangerous or evil and yet we see the response of god it says in verse 4 that he says come or verse 5 the lord says come to the city to the tower to see the sons of men and what they had built so the lord in the way that the bible offers bits of irony from time to time although god of course being all seen and all-knowing doesn't need to physically come down but we get a picture that in all of their efforts to build up to the heavens the lord has to come visit them he still has to come down they're nowhere near the heights of god's glory and god's presence so the lord's come the lord comes down and this is what he says and the lord says indeed the people are one and they all have one language and this is what they begin to do now nothing they propose to do will be withheld from them so come let us go down and they're confused their language that they may not understand one another's speech so the lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth and they ceased building the city therefore it is named is called babel because there the lord confused the language of all of the earth and from there the lord scattered them abroad over the face of the earth the lord in his visitation sees what the unification of the people of earth is got their intent and their heart is to design a city and a tower that would reach the heavens and his response to that is wow they are one language they are one people and look what they are capable of look what they could do with all of the human ingenuity and the efforts to use technology the brick and mortar to build up and to make a city and in response to them doing that the lord said is not good and he breaks them up he breaks them up by language and by land to cause confusion and division amongst people so what is going on let us process these questions that hopefully you're thinking why does the lord cause division by language and land amongst the people especially as you consider what he says in response to their efforts to build he says because they have language there's nothing that they propose to do that will be withheld from them in other words god is saying when humanity unites like this they can achieve great things and you may read that and think why would god be opposed to the human efforts to achieve great things and we've got to do a little bit of a survey of history in these things in fact we can survey all the way back to genesis chapter three when humans ingenuity really begins to take shape and i want you to think about this in the unfolding of history in the more recent sense as well and here's what we know about humanity up until this point in the bible is that they have disobeyed god in accepting the knowledge of good and evil which means that human ingenuity and unity can achieve great things in two directions and we see that don't we see that in the unfolding of the history of man that's given us to us in the first 11 chapters of genesis there is a inclination to do good and an inclination to do evil and one of the primary messages in the beginning of this book is to say humanity bends towards evil and i want you to think about all of the ways that we study history in the way that this is true and it helps us understand why god would put an end to the unification of human ingenuity and thought it is because as much as we wish as much as we desire to read that when we come together we will achieve great things in the name of good human history tells us that good always is overtaken by evil we have from the very beginning of the unfolding of the genealogies the first family adam and eve have cain and abel and we studied that whole passage of scripture and cain who offers a bad offering kills his brother who offers the good offering that evil has overcome good in that sense and it's only another generation be before we see the unfolding of more of the human nature come out which leads us eventually to genesis chapter six because we have cain who killed seven then we have lamech who killed 70 times seven and humanity unravels towards evil and that's why we look at genesis 6 last week and say god intervened then to destroy the evil from the face of the earth and we also consider our modern day ingenuity last week tom unfolded the scriptures before us and said isn't it true that man is capable of great buildings we're capable of building up we're capable of technology that would confound the minds of humanity a hundred years ago and with that technology we have done great things to move man forward have we not one small step for man one giant leap for mankind we put a man on the moon we take that for granted that is an amazing feat of human ingenuity that when you look at the stars in the skies and you see the moon fixed in the sky we have walked it we have seen it we send things into space we communicate through the radio waves in the atmosphere that we can't see and we've cracked so many codes and yet with every technology that we have ever found what happens we learn how to fly and then we learn how to drop bombs we learn how to communicate and then we learn how to manipulate and we live in a culture and in a world that is marked with history of human ingenuity and war and that is how you study history and when you think about what makes money today there is a term in the world that is a reality called the min the military industrial complex there is great money in the never ending wars of humanity that just never goes away there will always be a military defense budget and there will always be a next strategy for how we can protect ourselves and keep the other guys out and whatever technology we have it seems to bend towards evil and so when we think about what god is doing in these moments we have to look beyond the inclination that we all wish was true that if we all bound to if we all could unite together we would do good for humanity and then you just follow the money and it's we spend way more money on weapons of warfare than we do on symphonies in art don't we which is so sad because we are capable of greatness and yet we bend towards evil let me share a parable that was written about the tower of babel but in a in a daily devotional type of book it says this once upon a time there were two countries at war with each other and in order to make peace after many years of conflict they decided to build a bridge across the ocean but because they never learned each other's language properly they never agreed on the details so that the two halves of the bridge they started to build never actually met so to this day the bridge extends far into the ocean from both sides and simply ends halfway miles apart in the wrong direction from their actual meeting point and the war between these two countries continues to this day because what god has done to in some ways confound us even now is he has given humanity a great problem of communication and isn't it true when we think about what we see in human nature then and god's remedy to keep us from using power and technology for evil he has caused confusion to limit our ability to actually create what the tower of babel was after and what was it after it said can we make a tower that would reach into the heavens there is a desire that is manifested in the heart of the builders of the tower of babel that tries to make a man made access to heaven without the glory of god on display and that is where we bring this up to our culture in all of the cycles of humanity that watch empires rise and empires crash that watch greatness on display only to watch the great fall that comes after human greatness and it's a lesson for all of us as we think about the problems and the paradigms of our world there is an attempt for humanity to reach for the heavens without reaching for god and it's not just a human problem on a global scale it is true of every single heart that lives in this sanctuary right now because when jesus talks about the pursuit of greatness and the pursuit of following him and his plan for your life he actually has a passage of scripture that kind of parallels the tower of babel he says of this on a personal level this is the pursuit of christ in your life today there is something that will come in the way of pursuing christ that can be equated to what's happening in the tower of babel in genesis chapter 11. look what it says in luke chapter 14 about the process of actually following christ for your life he says now great multitude luke 14 verse 25 went with him and he turned and said to them if anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother wife and children brothers and sisters yes his own life he cannot be my disciple jesus warning against personal pursuits of greatness and earthly attachments as he segues into a picture of discipleship that we should all be listening to right now he says and whoever does not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple for which of you intending to build a tower does not sit down first and count the cost whether he has enough to finish it lest he laid the foundation and is not able to finish it and all see him and begin to mock he says which of you he's not making this a global problem or a countrywide problem or a government problem he's saying this is a problem that exists and it's a blockade that will come up in your own life as a picture of what it means to actually know and follow god in the pursuit that you have for a relationship with him he said think about your life which of you would build a tower without finishing it through and of course for any of you who've lived in boise long enough tom mentioned it i'll mention it again because god gave the city of boise such a clear picture of tower building for those of you who were here in the turn of the century i was so excited when it came on the news i think i was in high school and it said boise is getting a the biggest building in idaho called the boise tower that's what they called this project it was going to be uh in 8th and main that little area downtown i believe the zions bank building is there now but i was so excited because towers do represent greatness and i was a kid growing up in boise in this valley when it was mostly farmland so for all of you who have moved here lately thank you i was so bored without you i'm so glad you decided to join our city and i wanted so desperately to be a city that people didn't just equate to potatoes so i was like we're getting a tower what happened we got a hole in the ground that's how far we got we got a hole in the ground and then the recession hit and it stayed there for like five years you'd walk by and you'd think somebody tried to build a tower and they did not finish it this is a warning for your life that there is something inside of the human nature that of course is manifested in a real historical way in the pursuit of the tower that would reach the heavens apart from god that lives in our hearts in our minds and our desires we all have something in us that tries to bring heaven to earth without actually glorifying god we do this in so many ways that we must be cautioned by in hoping something would somehow put the world to right in the in the generation that we live in the country that we live in the churches that we attend we just so desperately wish that it could just finally be solved and the lesson of the tower of babel is god will not allow paradise to be restored by human effort he will not allow heaven to come to earth unless he brings it so i think of some examples that we need to be cleansed of potentially repent of hopefully overcome so that we can be set apart for the message of the good news gospel that greatness is something that god will achieve for his namesake and his people if we do it his way but i caution you against the idea that the governments of this world will somehow figure out the great question of how we can finally cease the warfare and end the confusion and end the division that exists by land and language and this is a good lesson for us to think about because we live in a country that has put a lot of hopes and a lot of disappointment in the idea that the government will somehow give us what we need or save us there's really two extremes of this that you'll find in all of the political pursuits one is that somehow we could create perfect unity equality and equity across the governmental lines and they'll this we can somehow bring it into earth oftentimes this is called socialism or communism or some sort of earthly utopia that you can achieve through man-made unity and ingenuity there's a book that actually tom has referenced a couple times in our wednesday study called the brothers karamazov and there's a great scene in this as they were considering this in the 19th century when this is really on the forefront of many people's thought where they give a warning about the government's ingenuity to bring equality equity in paradise apart from god and he actually equates it to the tower of babel look what he says for socialism is not merely the labor question it is before all things the atheistic question the question of the form taken by atheism today the question of the tower of babel built without god not to mount to heaven from earth but to set up heaven on earth the idea of a utopia where you remove the any higher power and you trust in the human ideals to bring out paradise on earth and it won't happen for those of you again old enough to remember i said this first service where most of our college kids go and they were like who is belinda carlisle i'm so grateful to get old enough to say things that young people don't understand belinda carlisle was the lead singer of the greatest all-female rock group of all time the go-go's which i loved as a kid and she sang the song uh ooh baby do you know what life's worth they say heaven is a place on earth which is essentially like listen heaven's full of love we can be full of love let's bring heaven to earth and as a kid that sounded good and now we realize that is never going to happen you will never fall so in love with a romantic partner you will never fall so in love with this the community or the neighborhood or the government that you find heaven on earth it won't happen god has made it part of the design of our current fallen state that we will never try again and we will we will try but we will never come so close to achieving human unity that we will think that we can get to the heavens it won't happen and so many of you are like okay cool i myself am not for socialism so let's preach democracy and like it's not democracy either unfortunately it's democracy is the band-aid it's not the cure it's great medicine it's the best medicine humanity has found for trying to usher in some sort of non-anarchy system but it will never be the final solution there will be no democratic country that looks like heaven on earth and many people get into the extremes they're like well if jesus was doing earthly ministry today he'd definitely be with us over here on the left side with socialism because he cared about the poor and he wanted everybody to be appreciated equally and loved and lifted up and others are like no jesus was full-on libertarian he wanted everybody to have the freedom of the spirit to decide and it's like why do the nations raise god laughs at all of these debates read the gospels jesus believed in a king he didn't believe in man-made solutions to the fall of man he believed that there would be a king and he preached the gospel of a kingdom where there's a perfect king and that's what we wait for we wait for the perfect monarchy it's actually a theocracy because god will be with his people and we will be with him and there will be an end to all suffering and he will reign with perfect justice and peace and mercy and love and that is what we wait for none of the divide will save us and so we say there will be no government tower that will be built to heaven and then we bring it to the human heart that exists now because every single one of us have a desire or an inclination and a temptation to do what we should never do to try to build in ways that we should never build and we can do it in all sorts of ways that seem really good we can do it in ways that god intended us to enjoy his blessing but if it becomes a tower that tries to reach to the heavens without the pursuit of god it will lead to confusion and destruction in good things i mean what we're doing right now is a beautiful thing in the sight of the lord with our hearts fully worshiping him and our ears attented to his word it is a good thing that we gather in this way and yet it can be babel it can be total confusion and chaos when a church gathers not to glorify god and not to proclaim the good news of his grace alone his power of redemption alone our total need to be made new by his spirit but we somehow preach a message of heaven on earth like you've come to the church that's figured it out and you've now you're now sitting under the teacher who has all wisdom and all understanding in the word and now you're here listening to the worship and this is the worship that is so good for your soul because it's in-house and we wrote it and you can trust that everything we're doing to build up this place is going to be so blessed because we did it and churches can fall into the trap of making it about a name a building a brand a program a service style a preference then all of these things are medicine for the cure of our fallen state and ultimately they're as good as the presence of god is alive and anything other than that they are dangerous and it's true of other good things your family what a blessing it is to be called into the ministry of a family and all of us are because we were all born of a woman and so we all have a family dynamic that god wants us to be blessed by and he wants us to grow in and by no means is this a message to say like don't love your family in fact i think just a couple of weeks ago we were like so often the family can be put on the back burner in pursuit of ministry and we have to be mindful of that but we also have to be mindful of god being put on the shelf in pursuit of family where we do so much to build up what we desire our family to look like and our kids to do and all the things that we want our marriage to be about and we can be so hyper focused on a good thing that we lose the great thing and that is the message of the tower of bible you will not experience heaven apart from the presence of god it doesn't matter if it's church or a family or if it's your career or the pursuit of money and all other sorts of things that in no way do i want to condemn any one of those categories unless they become a tower unless they become a foundation by which you build and you think that you are elevating and exalting unto heaven because of that thing and what we will learn from this lesson is that by god's grace he will not allow his glory to be confused with a tower made of mud bricks and mortars from man-made desire to reach the heavens and god says i have to stop it because it will never work and it will go the other direction it will cause more harm than good so praise god for the ways that sometimes as we think about one year ago today he puts a pause to the whole thing and i hope that you weren't hopeless in the course of the last year in the course of sometimes in your life going through the scattering sometimes in our lives the country that we were so excited to achieve greatness gets brought back down because it's never supposed to reach heaven and the church that we were so excited to be growing it gets brought back down because this building will not be in heaven and this style of gathering will be very different when the veil is lifted and the mirror that we see through very dimly right now will be the fullness of his glory and he will know and we will know him just as he knows us this is all a very limited picture of the glory of god and praise god that his glory will not be confused with towers so we find the grace of god in our scattering sometimes we find the grace of god in sometimes even the confusion of our differences and don't we have that my goodness humanity has a communications problem but let's just make it a little more acute we have a communications problem i mean so sorry for that reality and one of the internal conversations of the staff is we've got to get better at communicating i'm reading the babble and i'm like listen it's only so we only get so good husbands wives you all have a communication problem fathers to children and mothers to children teenagers you guys have a communication problem and here's why you need god you're not meant to perfectly unite without the perfect god as your uniter and so this is i hope some insight into the plans of god in a story that could be on first read somewhat confusing as to why god would stop us in our tracks and we look back on the course of human history in the course of church history in the course of our lives and there's times where god will break d
Conclusion
We return to the opening teaching: discipleship is not just information, it is transformation through faith and obedience to Jesus. If we receive His Word and walk it out, He will shape us into people who endure and bear fruit.
Lord Jesus, help me hear Your Word, obey it with faith, and grow as Your disciple. Amen.
Conclusion
We return to the opening teaching: discipleship is not just information, it is transformation through faith and obedience to Jesus. If we receive His Word and walk it out, He will shape us into people who endure and bear fruit.
Closing Prayer
Lord Jesus, help me hear Your Word, obey it with faith, and grow as Your disciple. Amen.