Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / June 19, 2022 | RETOLD - The Tower of Babel

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June 19, 2022 | RETOLD - The Tower of Babel · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: So the message this morning is the abridged version of the message.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: And when we get to the end, you're gonna be like, that was the abridged version.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um the uh there are just sometimes topics that come up, passages that have so much more information than I can fit in, than any of us can fit in.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so if any of you listen to the podcast, that is where we sort of give the rest of the information or fun facts or interesting things.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so this week's podcast will be quite long.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um but we are continuing our series called Retold, and uh through this series we are looking at these stories that if we grew up in a Christian home, we probably heard them when we are growing up, as our parents lovingly and graciously and by God's design brought us in and up through God's Word.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but as a part of learning those stories as a child, sometimes we didn't get the full context, the full meaning behind it, uh, so that we could more simply understand God's will.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: But it's important for us as adults as we grow in our relationship with Christ that we see that these stories that we were maybe taught as a child have a much deeper meaning behind them, a much greater story.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: And especially in our narrative today, we'll see that it ties into this really grand, um, sort of overarching narrative that is happening throughout all of Scripture that interestingly is tied in very closely to our story last week with Noah's Ark.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: But our story this morning, it's kind of like this uh this bust here.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um last month, a woman in Texas uh revealed that she had bought this bust for$35 at a goodwill.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it turns out that it is a 2,000-year-old marble bust uh from Rome that was owned by the king, uh King Ludwig I of Bavaria, and then was in a uh museum in Germany and was stolen from the Nazis during World War II and brought back to America, and then it found its way into a goodwill.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this amazing history behind this bust is kind of like our story in that there are certain things in the Bible that we overlook because we don't always have the eye for it or to see what God is telling us through his story.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, sometimes it's because we are not particularly well-versed in stories about the Bible, but sometimes it's because we just want to skip over it anyway.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: This morning, our story it involves a tower, but on either side of the story are two genealogies or lists of names of descendants.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I've heard your emails.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: You said, Connor, we need more genealogies, and so this is this is your sermon.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: But if we believe that all of God's word is inspired and that all of God's word is profitable for teaching, correcting, rebuking, and training in righteousness, then even the genealogies have something to bring into our story, and today they have a very specific role that they are playing in bringing out the Tower of Babel narrative.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the Tower of Babel, it does stand alone.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting in that one of uh the popular children's stories runs so close to Noah's Ark because they are related to each other.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: They um our narrative this morning is going to pick up where we left off last week.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but if you weren't here with us last week, I'll sort of help us along because I want to review where we're coming from so that we know where we're going.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: See, in Genesis 9, we see that Noah has gotten out of the ark.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And in Genesis 9, we also see that Noah is presented as what we would call like the second Adam.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: He is given the same instructions in the same situation as Adam was in the Garden of Eden.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Be fruitful and multiply, take this garden, subdue the earth with the plants and the animals, and uh you are supposed to basically carry on and be righteous, be my people.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: I've made a name for you.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Noah shows himself, though he was a very righteous man, he shows that he is not ultimately the savior that we've been hunting for since Genesis 3 and the fall of mankind, where right, Satan convinced Adam and Eve that they should eat of the fruit of the garden, and God promised that a savior would ultimately come.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so, narratively, which is what we're looking at, we're saying if we've been reading the story, we should be looking and finding basically this early battle between the righteous versus the unrighteous.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Talked about that last week, and we're gonna see it again this morning.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: But Noah is in his garden, and Noah makes a lot of wine and drinks a lot of that wine and gets naked.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that's embarrassing for anybody, um, but it is particularly embarrassing for Noah and has a lot more to do with uh the culture that they were in at the time, that he uncovered himself, uh, and that his people could see that, and what that meant for him, sort of as the leader of the family, and more importantly, though, how that was a paralleling Adam's sin in the garden.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Both of them were in a garden, both of them sinned through fruit, and both of them acquitted themselves as being outside of the Savior's promise, or rather not being the savior that God was looking for.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, we see also at the end of Genesis 9, and the part that brings us into the Tower of Babel, is Noah had three sons, three sons who are going to play a really critical role in our understanding of the Tower of Babel.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: They were Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Shem, Ham, and Japheth responded to their father's sin in different ways.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Ham basically made a gag out of it.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: He went and told his brothers, and he was like, Man, look at dad.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he's doing this stuff.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um Shem and Japheth, though, showed themselves to be righteous and understanding the situation, not thinking that their father's sin was something to be paraded around, but rather they covered up Noah.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: After that happens, we get this sort of statement from Noah that could read as a very angry rebuke, but is actually a prophecy that is coming from him.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Genesis 9, verses 24 through 27.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: When Noah awoke from his drinking and learned what his youngest son had done to him, he said, Canaan is cursed, he will be the lowest of slaves to his brothers.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: He also said, Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, let Canaan be Shem's slave.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Let God extend to Japheth, let Japheth dwell in the tents of Shem, let Canaan be Shem's slave.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And what's interesting about this, and the reason that we need to understand it, is that he's cursing Ham, but he's cursing the descendants of Ham, who are not really in any way a force yet or a part of the story.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Canaan is one of Ham's sons, and yet that is the one who Noah curses.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yet, if we know the rest of the Bible or familiar with it, we see that what is happening is from Noah's three sons, whereas beforehand Adam and Eve's three sons populated the whole earth.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Noah's three sons have now been given the same directive.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And we're seeing history repeating itself.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: God's people, who he said were evil even from youth, and every part about their thoughts were evil.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: We're seeing that that continues on here.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: We hoped after the flood it would not be the case, but actually people are just as bad as they always have been, and they are continuing to find ways to rebel against God.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we go into Genesis 10, which is where our narrative begins this morning, we're going to see our first genealogy.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it's going to sort of pick up from this point.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to follow Shem, Ham, and Japheth and their descendants.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: We see Genesis 10.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is the first verse, and then the 32nd, the last verse in Genesis 10.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: There'll be a couple slides where I have these ellipses, and if you see those, it's because I'm skipping some verses, both for you and for me.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: So when we get to the beginning of Genesis 10, which is often called the Table of Nations, it says, These are the family records of Noah's sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: They also had sons after the flood.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: These are the clans of Noah's sons according to their family records and their nations.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: The nations on earth spread out from these after the flood.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're going to see here in Genesis 10 the descendants of these three individuals, and they are listed out of order from birth.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: They are listed according to their importance.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: So Shem is the one that is recognized as being righteous, which is very important for what we're discussing.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Ham, who is recognized as unrighteous and his descendants, one of which is Canaan, will be uh typified by his sort of familiarity with sin and um procl proclivity for it.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then we got Japheth.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: And poor, poor Japheth, poor Japheth is sort of pushed on the outside of the narrative and is not mentioned much in the story.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Shem and Ham are the main characters.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now, how many of you have a relative in your family who is big into genealogy?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah, yeah.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us have that like one person who took it upon themselves to know everything possible about the family.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: So in my family, that was my great-grandmother.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And my great-grandmother uh lovingly traced uh a part of my family all the way back to when we had gone to Europe and then even a little bit past that.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: And as a child, my favorite question for my grandma was, Grandma, who's famous that we're related to?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like, am I a king, maybe?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like some big knight or something like that.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: And she lovingly would say, Well, you are related to the man who sold butter to George Washington's half-brother.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: True, true royalty.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: So now when my grandma would lovingly let me know that, what she was also doing is she was connecting the dots very quickly to what I wanted to know.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: She wasn't saying, well, it was your mother's and then your father's and then, you know, and then your grandfather's and great-grandfather.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we didn't trace all the way back to the 1700s.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: We skipped.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's what's happening in Genesis 10.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: It is not supposed to be read like a literal historical document, or rather, a rigorous historical document.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: It is literal, but not rigorous.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean is that you're gonna see, unlike other genealogies in the Bible, one we'll even look at later today, there's no um years presented.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's no um, it doesn't go generation after generation.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And furthermore, it's not just the names of people.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: There are nations that are presented here, there are countries, there are cities, and what it's doing is the writer of Genesis, Moses later on, is speaking to a group of people who would be familiar with the individuals that are going to be presented.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so what he's doing is he's saying, okay, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, their descendants, this is what they look like now.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: These are the people, this is where they've landed, this is what they're doing, so that they can draw these ties backwards.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to see from that that basically the righteous line of Shem has continued to be righteous.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Ham's descendants, Canaan, have continued to be unrighteous, and Japheth is not really part of the story.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, when it comes to Ham, uh, if you were with us when we looked at the book of Leviticus, you know, in Leviticus 18 and 19, this comes up again, it comes up a lot of places in Scripture, but we actually looked at that verse in Genesis 9 to describe sort of this battle that's emerging between the righteous and the unrighteous and how God is moving beyond the individual stage that he has been and into the national stage.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: See, really what the Tower of Babel is doing is it is setting up the nation of Israel, but we'll get to that in a moment.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Right now we see that uh Genesis 10, the table of nations, it's going to sort of hit the high points.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: And first we get to the one that has the smallest amount of screen time, Japheth.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Japheth's sons from these descendants, the peoples of the coasts and islands spread out into their lands, according to their clans and their nations, each with its own language.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: See, this is going to be a fairly consistent language that's used, that they spread out.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: They're according to their own people and their nations, and they all have their own language.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Also important for later on.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Japheth, um, operating probably as the middle child here, for all of you middle children who feel the angst, um, find solace in Japheth because he got the coasts and the islands.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody else got the desert, he got Bora Borah.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, Japheth, though, this is sort of where he exits our story.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Then we go to the next most important, Ham.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Unrighteous Ham.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Stay with me.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Ham's sons, Cush, Mizraim put in Canaan.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Cush fathered Nimrod, who began to be powerful in the land.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: His kingdom started with Babylon, Uruk, Akkad, and Kalna, and the land of Shannar.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: From that land he went to Assyria and built Nineveh.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Mizraim, another son, fathered the people of Khazlah.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: The Philistines came from them.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a really good example of the Philistines don't exist at this point.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's for an audience in the future so that they can understand, be like, oh, the Philistines, the one that like David was fighting with and had to get out of the promised land.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Ah, they come from Mizraim.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Canaan fathered the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Gergeshites, the Hivites, and then a whole other list of people that become like the heavy hitters in the Old Testament.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty much everyone that Israel fights with in the Old Testament is listed here.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: The Canaanite border went from Sidon going toward Gerar as far as Gaza and going toward Sodom and Gomorrah, something that will just come up here in a couple chapters in Genesis.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when all of these things come about, you should, some of these words should be, you know, sort of perking up your ears as you say, okay, well, there's individuals, right?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like Nimrod is one that will ultimately found Babylon, the city that we were in three and four weeks ago with the book of Daniel, that's sort of typified, even in Revelation, as a place of rebellion that is ultimately put down.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: Nimrod is the one who founds it.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then we've got some individual, or rather, some peoples that fight against Israel, like the Philistines and the Amorites.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then we've got cities.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: We've got Sodom and Gomorrah, and then Nineveh, the location that we'll hit on later in another retold lesson when we do Jonah and the whale.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: So all of these things, you're saying, okay, the unrighteousness is continuing.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Everything that they are doing is furthering and running away from God.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so the expectation is that there will be someone who stands up against them, the righteous.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so we get to Shem's descendants.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Righteous Shem.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Shem, Japheth's older brother, Ham's not even included, even though Shim is also Ham's older brother.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: He also had sons.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Shim was the father of all the sons of Eber.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Eber had two sons.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: One was named Peleg, for during his days the earth was divided.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: His brother was named Jochton.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: All these were Jochtan's sons.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: These are Shim's sons by their clans, according to their languages, in their lands and in their nations.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is the last slide for the genealogy we're looking at before the Tower of Babel, but it's the most important.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason why is something interesting happens here that has been unusual in the previous verses as they were describing descendants.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: We see that here Shem is tied very specifically to this individual individual named Eber.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: We find out later from one of the literal genealogies, the rigorous ones rather, that he is his great-grandfather.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's kind of interesting.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Of all the descendants, we see that Shem is highlighted as being the great-grandfather of this guy named Eber.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: And Eber had two sons, Peleg and Jochtin.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: What is interesting, though, as well, is that at the end of Genesis 10, we see that only one of those two sons being Joctan, his descendants are explained.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Peleg is sort of thrown off.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: He's not mentioned again.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Even though he is presented as being a highlighted person because he is one of the sons of Eber, we don't hear about him.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: We just see Joctan's sons listed, and that's what finishes out Genesis 10.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, all of these things are coming together, and what's odd is that you're saying, well, Shem, the righteous line is supposed to be going through him.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: These are the good guys.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: Where are they at?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because up to this point we're not seeing, and to the readers of Genesis later on, they're like, the bad guys are still here.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: We're seeing that God is stretching a sort of a thread across these stories.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to find that Jocton and Peleg had very different family trees, very different destinies.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: And Jockton's story, as it finishes out Genesis 10, his descendants are going to be recognized by the Tower of Babel incident.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to be associated with it.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: Peleg will come up later.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: So we get to the Tower of Babel.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Genesis 11, verses 1 through 4.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: The whole earth had the same language and vocabulary.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: As people traveled east, they found a valley in the land of Shannar and settled there.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: They said to each other, Come, let's make oven-fired bricks.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: They used brick for stone and asphalt for mortar.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, Come, let's build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Let's make a name for ourselves.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, we will be scattered throughout the earth.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you were, if I had asked you before our message began this morning, how long you think the Tower of Babel's story is, you probably would have said it was longer than it actually is in Genesis.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's only nine verses.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: The entire Tower of Babel narrative is nine verses.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yet they are filled, they are replete with detail that tells us about God and the situation that was happening in the city of Babel.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, first of all, uh the whole earth had the same language and vocabulary.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Wait, hold on.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: I thought all of Genesis 10 was people were spreading out and they all had their own languages.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: You're right.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: What's happening here is that this is clearly presented as an indicator that the Tower of Babel story, whether you want to call it in the timeline or chronology, happened before Genesis 10.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: So the Tower of Babel did not happen after everybody spread out on the earth.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see that that is the result of the Tower of Babel.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: So the Tower of Babel is shortly after Noah's Ark.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: So the fact that it's presented after the genealogy and after these descendants of Eber and Jochtin means that they are tied.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: That should be one of our clues here.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing that comes up in the following sentence is it says they traveled east.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Your Bibles might say that they migrated from the east.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's not right.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Literally, it says that they migrated to the east.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: To make a long story short, the reason why there's some debate about this has to do with where archaeologists place Mount Error at and where Noah's Ark landed and where they think Babel is at.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: But even setting that aside, the language, first of all, says literally that they traveled east.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: But second, this type of phrase is something that we have already seen and will continue to see when the Bible is describing those who are leaving God's presence and seeking their own God or making themselves their own God.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: Adam and Eve, they were sent east out of the Garden of Eden.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: We see that the Tower of Babel's narrative is presented by a group of people who are traveling east, and then they are going to do something that does not reflect well on them.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then you look even later on, just a couple chapters later, with Abraham and Lot.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: Lot separates from Abraham and heads east to Sodom and Gomorrah.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so, again, narratively, we're like, okay, something bad is going to happen, and these individuals are going to be characterized by their rebellion against God, which we see at the end of this passage.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Let's make a name for ourselves, is what they say.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: Let's make a name for ourselves.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: It might not seem like a big phrase, but that it's a really big deal for a couple of reasons.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Part of it is because we understand where they're going, and so we know that their intentions are not pure.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: The land of Shinnar is one, is a location that was just associated with Canaan.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: We know that they are about to found the city of Babel, which is, depending on who you ask, either the beginnings of the city of Babylon or the first city in the nation of Babylon, either way, does not end up well.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so we see that their intentions are leading to a place that is not good.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: But we don't even have to go that far.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: These people who are associated with God, they're supposed to be the righteous.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: They say, let's make a name for ourselves.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Wait, aren't you supposed to be God's people?
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't He the one that has defined you and made you and saved you?
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't He the one that has preserved you and rescued you?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: What do you mean you need to make your own name?
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: You are supposed to be Yahweh's.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: He's made a covenant with you.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so that statement, in and of itself, is also setting Off alarm bells.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like, let's make a name for ourselves.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: What do you mean?
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: But then the last part there, and the one that frankly is the most tragic, shows the depth of their rebellion, and it has to go a little bit deeper into the text.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: This phrase here is a play on words.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: See, the name Shem literally means name.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: So the name Shem in its language literally means name.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so the idea is that God's righteous people are going through the line of those that are of his name, Shem, and then some of Shem's descendants are rebelling against God's plan and saying, let us make a Shem for ourselves, let us make our own name.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: They want their own identity separate from God.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: That is what you need to take away from it.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: They're saying, What God has characterized us as, we do not want that.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: We do not want his plan.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: We do not want his will.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: We do not want to follow his designs for our lives.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: We are seeking goodness and we are seeking authority outside of his will.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that is what they are doing.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so they build this tower.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: That is what they say in their hubris.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, we can build a tower that will reach the heavens.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's what they're saying here.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: With its top in the sky, they don't just want to make a skyscraper.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: They are saying that they can build something that will reach up to God's heavenly throne.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: And in an ancient context that was represented by a tall building, but make no mistake, their intentions are very sinful here.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: So we see that the Tower of Babel, now the thing which has identified this story, they build it.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: They begin to build it.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: They use these bricks.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: And over time, different artists' renditions have come about of what the Tower of Babel looked like.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is, I'm going to struggle with these names.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: Peter Bruegel the Elder in 1563 sort of builds it, a lot like what you would sort of expect a medieval European to do.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: It looks like turrets and towers and castles with sort of crinolated tops.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: You see, just 30 years later, Lucas Van Valkenburge.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: If any of you in your genealogies are related to the Valkenborches, let me know so I can say it correctly.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: But they're building this cylindrical tower.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: And when we think of a tower, that's probably what we think of.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: We think of something that is sort of slender and very tall.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: But what is almost a unanimous opinion about the Tower of Babel, which is pretty impressive when you're talking about Bible scholars, is that this was most likely the very first ziggurat that was ever built.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is the great ziggurat of Ur.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: You can see it today if you want to go to Ur.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it might be hard for you to see, but there are these little windows in the tower.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can't see them from where you are, that sort of reinforces the point of how small they are.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: These zygorats were gigantic.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the idea is that they were building up this structure so that they could reach the throne of God.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason why this is a really big deal and why it's important to think about it instead of just this sort of like cute little tower is that this ziggurat held deep meaning in the Near East, and I mean continues to this day, but these structures here were not as much temples as they were supposed to represent the mountains that were not in their landscape where the gods resided.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: So in ancient history, I mean, ancient history, but also biblical narrative, God is at the top of Mount Sinai in the book of Exodus.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: He plants his city Zion at the top of, or Jerusalem at the top of a mountain.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is not foreign, but other nations are now copying this, and they are placing their false gods, they're saying their idols, really the demons that they are worshiping, are living on these mountains, except there are no mountains in the desert where they are, and so they're creating these artificial man-made mountains.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the sinister intention that we need to see behind the Tower of Babel, is that it was not just let's build a big tower, but it was truly let us not only rebel against God, make a name for ourselves, but we are going to construct something where we are worshiping a God other than the God of our fathers who has rescued us, and we are giving them and worshiping them all of our attention.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: It is not just striking out on their own, it is a full-on rebellion against the king of the universe.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is what you can picture that they were doing.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as the second half of the Tower of Babel was, uh the narrative comes about, it says, Then the Lord came down to look over the city and the tower that the humans were building.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't just a tower, it was a city surrounding it, which is also what we find in archaeology.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord said, If they have begun to do this as one people, all having the same language, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: Come, let's go down there and confuse their language so that they will not understand one another's speech.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: So from there the Lord scattered them throughout the earth, and they stopped building the city.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore it is called Babel, for there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: Babel means confuse.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: And from there the Lord scattered them throughout the earth.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is, I mean, we're gonna walk through this, but this is the end of our narrative.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is where the Tower of Babel story finishes.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, and what is absolutely supposed to be an ironic statement, the Lord has to come down to visit the tower that the Babylonians or whatever were trying to build up to reach his kingdom.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: So sort of expressing the folly and vanity of their building project.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, we can reach heaven.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: And God's like, okay, I'll come down and visit.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um we also see that God, this is his motivation for what he's about to do.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is motivation for his action.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Is he says, if they have begun to do this as one people, because at this point, remember, they all have the same language.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: They're not far removed from the ark.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: There's the righteous and the unrighteous that are living here, but they are all participating in this, which is tragic for our story.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so if they have begun to do this as one people, all having the same language, God says, I'm going to remove that because I'm concerned that they will be able to accomplish anything.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let's let's back up a step.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is not that the God of all creation is concerned about a couple hundred feet of bricks.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is not that God is concerned that if everybody like gangs up together, that they'll be able to take him down.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: What we actually see here is God acting in his mercy to protect them by destroying their rebellion.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'll talk about that in a moment.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: But we see that the way he accomplishes this is by scattering them throughout the earth.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: He's going to then disperse them among the nations.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Very interesting as some people think about how ziggurats have popped up in all ancient civilizations as a sort of unifying archaeological landmark.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and they don't know how the people in the Aztecs in Mexico got it from the ancient Near East.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Anyhow, so um this is what God is going to do so that their rebellion is not able to come to fruition.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: And what I want you to see here is from the story of Babel, how God once more is acting in his mercy to show his love for his people.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because what he is doing is destroying any ability that they have to continue to rebel against him in such a dramatic fashion.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: See, God desires to have a relationship with his people.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: He wants them to be called after his name, to make a good name for themselves as people of his covenant.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so what he is doing is he's like, I see every intention of your heart is evil from the beginning, and I don't want you to be able to continue to make these kinds of mistakes.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so I am going to end your rebellion so that you might return to me.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: We see this later on in the story of Israel.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: They get hundreds of years of prophecy about what is going to happen if they don't turn back to God.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: And eventually God says, Okay, I'm going to destroy your kingdom here, because you have not listened to me.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the intention behind it that we read over and over and over and over again from the prophets is so that they might return to him.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: That three and four weeks ago, when we're in the nation of Babylon, in the city of Babylon, and Israel and Judah are exiled over there, God says, I did this so that you might return to me, because you were not listening when you continued in your sin back in the promised land.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: So God, here we see one of the first instances where he destroys the rebellion of the people so that they might follow him.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: But we also understand that what God is doing is something he continues to this day.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: See, we see in Romans 1, therefore God delivered them over in the desires of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served what has been created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: This sounds like the Tower of Babel.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: This sounds like our world today.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: They exchanged the truth of God for a lie.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: They worship the created rather than the creator.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: And because of that, because they have gone their own way, they are seeking goodness and they are seeking authority outside of God's presence.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: God says, You are you are worshiping yourselves.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, along the way, you are also worshiping false gods, but at the same time, you have just made an idol of yourselves.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: You have made this huge structure that you think can reach the heavens.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: In your hubris, you have said that I can strike out on my own against the righteous God, I can make a name for myself, and I will be my own ruler.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: God says, that is so foolish.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: And what we see in Romans 1 here and there are other verses, what God is doing is he's holding his people back.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a little child that wants to go and attack something, and you're like, no, no, no, hold back.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna go and do that thing.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna hurt, it's not gonna work for you, it's not gonna go the way you want it to.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: But eventually, God says, Okay, if you're going to continue to rebel, if you're going to continue to seek against my will, if you're going to continue to say that you hate me and you don't care for me, I will let you go and chase after the thing that you think is going to satisfy you.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what he does here in Romans.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: He delivers them over in the desires of their hearts to sexual impurity, and they get to then experience what happens when they pursue that.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: If their bodies were degraded amongst themselves.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the only example, it's just one example.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: In the Tower of Babel, what happens is God finally allows them, and we see as the narrative continues, and the righteous and the unrighteous go forth, that God says, Okay, I want you to be with me, but if you're going to continue to rebel, I will let you do it.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: And they call themselves the Philistines and the Canaanites and the Amorites and the Jebuzites, and they inhabit the lands of Nineveh and Sodom and Gomorrah.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: And they continue to try and make a name for themselves.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: But the story of Babel is finished, yet there is one sort of thread that we have to pick up on as we close out our narrative this morning.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because as I know everybody was thinking, they were saying, What about Peleg?
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: What about Peleg?
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: That brother that didn't get his time in the sun.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: What about him?
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: Here for you.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: As we wrap up the Tower of Babel sequence, which remember is placed here intentionally, even though chronologically it's out of order.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's placed here because it's proving a point.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: We see this nar this point being continued, and that Genesis 11 finishes out with a rigorous genealogy.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean is the dates are included, no generation is skipped.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: The intention behind this is to draw a direct line from one person to another so that there can be no confusion about where they were coming from.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is not nations, these are all people.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: We skipped over some, but these are the family records of Shim.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, I thought we already went through this.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, as it continues on, Shelah lived 30 years and fathered Eber.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we remember Eber.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: After he fathered Eber, Shala lived 403 years and fathered other sons and daughters.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: Eber lived 34 years and fathered Peleg.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: Here he is.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: After he fathered Terah, Nahor lived 119 years and fathered other sons and daughters.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: Terah lived 70 years and fathered Abram.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: Abraham, right?
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: So let's pull this together, okay?
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is the little skeleton key that ties everything.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: Genesis 10 is the table of nations.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: It is the story about all of God's people that are going to be main characters for the rest of the Old Testament and even a little bit into the New Testament, okay?
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: But Israel and all of its neighbors are highlighted there.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of Genesis 10, we see that righteous Seth is given credit for all of his great-grandsons' kids, which shows rather than being some sort of like, you know, dynasty thing, it is that the righteous line is continuing through this particular descendant, Eber.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: Eber has two sons.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: Eber, which by the way, is where they got the word Hebrew from, is the father of the Hebrews.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: His two sons are Jochtan and Peleg.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: And we see that Joctan's descendants are given a lot of attention at the end of chapter 10 before we go into the Tower of Babel, because they are not where the righteous one is going to come from.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: They are characterized by Babel.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: And furthermore, even Shem's descendants, the ones that were supposed to be righteous, were the ones that were making Babel.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: But then we see at the end of Genesis 11 that Peleg's line is, if you will, resurrected, is brought back up.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: And where he got no attention at the end of 10, he gets all the attention at the end of 11.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it is a very specific journey from Shem that they draw all the way to Abram.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: And Abram, we don't have time to get into it this morning, but Genesis 12, as you keep going on, is where God brings it, calls Abraham out of the land of Ur, which the ziggurat that we saw, that is Ur, right?
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: He calls Abram out of that land, out of the midst of rebellion, and he brings his people and he makes them his own nation, and he says, I will give you a name, right?
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: Calling back, hearkening to the Tower of Babel, saying, We'll make a name for ourselves.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: God says, I will give you a name, your name's Abraham.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then we get the father of Israel, and the story and the narrative of Israel continues.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: So all of these things are happening because of the Tower of Babel.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yet our story this morning is about Babel.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so I want us to just sort of sit on that just a few more moments here, because though the grand narrative is beautiful and amazing, how God sort of knits and weaves these things together, still the story of Babel, the Tower of Babel, is our retold story.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what we need to learn from.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: We need to learn from the example that was made of Babel.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: And there are three things that we can learn from it, or rather, three phases of rebellion, which that's what Babel was.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was a group of people saying, We don't want to be with you, God.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: We want to do our own thing.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to seek goodness and we're going to seek authority outside of your presence, and we can do it better than you can.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: But there were three phases to this rebellion.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: The first is that the rebellion was just developing.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is where we see, let's make a name for ourselves.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: Let's build a tower that'll reach the sky.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Before the first brick was ever fired in Babel, it was an idea in the heart of mankind that they were going to rebel against God.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: And every, as we sort of walk through these three phases of rebellion, you're going to see that some of them you connect with more than others.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: This one involves all of us.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is the reason we have all fallen short of the glory of God at the very least, because at least I recognize all three forms of rebellion.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, rebellion is developing in the hearts of mankind.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: These are the questions where we say, now, why is God doing this in my life?
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe I know a little bit better than God.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe my path is the path that I should go down.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: What do you mean I'm supposed to be righteous?
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: I know where goodness is found.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to have a king or a lord over me.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't really care about, yeah, I believe there's a higher power, but he doesn't have any call on my life.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is where rebellion sort of is birthed.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: And through our sin and through our satisfaction that comes with fulfilling our fleshly and sin natures, we get emboldened in this rebellion.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: We see it continuing, and the thing that becomes an idea then becomes a tower.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: What was developing in our hearts then becomes something that needs to get destroyed.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: And see, this is the next level.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: The Tower of Babel, you might think this is the end.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's not.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is the second.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: See, the Tower of Babel was God's mercy, that he destroyed what was going on so that his people might be able to recognize their folly, how truly mistaken they were.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: He says, What you're chasing after is never going to come about.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: You think you can find purpose outside of my will, but you can't.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not just about finding happiness, it's about finding and walking within the will of God that we should have had from the Garden of Eden, where we find true meaning behind our lives.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about comfort, it's not about possessions, it's not about living an easy life.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: It is about being the people of God's name, being those who have made a covenant with him.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so as we desire to walk after our Lord, we have to recognize, though, that our rebellion, sometimes in his mercy, is destroyed.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I know for some of you, I was talking with a brother after the first service who was like, I recognized that.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: That was the lowest point of my life.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: He was like, I've been sober now for years, but I was an addict.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that was when God got a hold of my heart.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: The problem, though, is that some of us don't recognize this.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: Either because the destruction hasn't happened yet, and we are sort of blithely moving forward in our rebellion with a large and undue amount of confidence, the kind of confidence that says, I can build a brick tower that reaches the heavens.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: That sort of confidence is ultimately going to be crushed.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's just God desires for us to see it before he has to crush it for us.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: Before we have to experience, as Roman 1 says, Romans 1, the folly of our decisions and the consequences of our sin.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, you will realize eventually that this is not the way you want to go.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I pray that you realize, I pray that you find this out before it has to happen.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so, like Israel, we are informed and we can make a decision to turn back to God, or we can continue forward in our rebellion when he says, Okay, you're going into exile.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, you've chosen this.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: And because I love you and because I want you to return to me, you're going to experience something really, really hard that you've brought about upon yourself.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: The third place, though, is the last one, the third point of rebellion for those who have not turned back after their their sort of world came crashing down or it was revealed to them the truth.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: The third one is that they're delivered into their rebellion.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is where the Tower of Babel ends on a sad note, right?
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: What they do is not good, and where they go is bad.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: That city is ultimately going to become the epicenter of rebellion for God's entire kingdom.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so we see that they continued on in the rebellion.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: What God does, we're probably familiar with this word delivered, is something that we can find through Jesus Christ, that we might be delivered from our sin into salvation, that we can be forgiven of the mistakes that we have made and find peace with God.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: But God also delivers in another way when we ask Him for it unendingly, is that He said, we say, Lord, I hate you.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to be a part of your kingdom.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: I want to make a name for myself.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to do what you've called me to do.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even believe in you.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want anything to do with you.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: I hate what you are doing in my life.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: And after a while, God, who has been holding us back, says, Okay, run in that lane.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: See where it takes you.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to get to the end of your rope and you're going to realize that it is not satisfying.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: It is not fulfilling.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: You do not find goodness, and being your own ruler is a recipe for disaster.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: God says, I've tried to tell you these things.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: And there's no other way that you're going to realize them, I guess, unless you just experience them for yourself.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: He delivers us over into rebellion.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: And the saddest part about this entire thing is there are some people who continue in their rebellion forever.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: And they ultimately get what they have desired all along, which is separation from God.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: And there are people who have made a decision.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Decision, no matter all of the warnings and mercies and love of God, who have said, I still reject Jesus Christ and I desire an eternity of separation from God.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: They are to be pitied among all other people.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: However, the truth for us is that from the righteous line, Jesus Christ comes.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: From Ol Peleg comes Jesus.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: And we see that no matter where we are in this rebellion, no matter whether it's in our heart, whether we are building our own tower right now, whether it's been destroyed, or whether God has just let us have the rebellion we've already desired, no matter where we are in that path, there is not a single place that you can go that is outside of the mercy of Jesus Christ.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's not a single thing that you can do.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: There is not a collection of things that you can do that take you outside of his mercy and grace.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if we think that you have done something that is so dramatic that Jesus can't forgive you for it, that his death was not sufficient for it, then you have a misunderstanding of what his death on the cross accomplished.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was the perfect son dying for the sinful world, the world that is constantly building towers of Babel onto themselves.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: So my prayer is here we close out.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: My prayer is that, first of all, you would consider where you are in your rebellion against God.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because all of us are somewhere.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe some of us have gone through a couple cycles of this.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe some of us recognize a specific spot.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: But that you would see that we've all rebelled against God and are all in need of his mercy that is offered through Christ.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: And second, that you would understand that no matter where you are, you can find that mercy, you can return to God, and nobody is too far gone.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: God is bigger than you.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: He has to come down for the tower that you're building.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go ahead and pray.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, Lord, I thank you for stories like the Tower of Babel.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: God, I thank you that in your mercy, sometimes you destroy our towers.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: You destroy the little huts that we're building, the brick towers where we think, Lord, we're doing our own thing.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: We think we know what's best.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we think our path is the right path and we're wrong.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: Father, I pray by the power of your spirit that you would help us to recognize areas in our life where we are rebelling against you, especially those areas for many of us, God, who have known you for a long time, but still wrestle within our hearts for our inner desire to go against you in your kingdom.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: Father, I pray that you would reveal these things to us, that we might tamp them out.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because, God, being in your presence is where we will truly find your glory.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: God, I also pray and thank you for Jesus Christ that anybody who does not know him and who finds themselves in rebellion, they would accept the mercy that comes through the cross, that they would see that you desire for them to have it, no matter what they've done, and that Father, you will gladly give it as a free gift if they would just call you Lord in return.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: God, we thank you for all of these things.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: We thank you for your story that you are crafting throughout the entire Bible that points us back to Jesus Christ.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we pray, Lord, in every instance of our lives, you would point us back to Him as well.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you guys.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great week.