Good evening. How are you guys? All right, let's pray and then we'll get started.
Dear God. I pray that you'd bless this service tonight, Lord, bless this time of worship that we have together. I pray that we would focus on our devotion for you, and that that would come out through whatever we choose to do, to sing, to clap, to pray. is your name.
We thank you, Jesus, and your name we pray. Amen. To shed your blood, I'm gonna live like my shame is gone.
I won't be shackled to the way I was. I'm gonna live like my chains are gone, gone. Now my sin is dead and gone, and I sing hallelujah. What, done, is risen and is done and I sing hallelujah Praise is a weapon and will overcome So I'm gonna shout like the battle's won Fall back devil cause your time is up I'm gonna live like a stone is gone, gone Now my sin is dead and gone And I sing hallelujah God, God He is risen and is gone And I sing hallelujah How great the power of the blood, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh This is the guy from the sun, yeah, yeah, yeah When it's day gone and pain and prison and it's done and I small Thank you. You came for criminals and every Pharisee.
You came for hypocrites, even one like me. You carried sin and shame, the guilt of every man, the weight of all I've done, nailed into your hand. Oh, your love bled for me Oh, your blood in crimson stream Though your death is hell to me A cross meant to kill is my victory guitar solo Your amazing grace, I've seen and tasted it, it's running through my veins, I can't escape its grip, and you my soul is safe.
You cover everything Oh, your love bled for me Oh, your blood in crimson streams Oh, your name is hell's defeat Who takes away our sin, who takes away our sin? The Holy Lamb of God makes us alive. again, makes us alive again.
Behold, the Lamb of God takes away our sin. Who takes away our sins The Holy Lamb of God Makes us alive again Makes us alive again Oh, your love Led for me Oh, your love In crimson streams Though your death Is hell's defeat Today is my victory Pray with me. Dear God, I pray that as we open your word tonight, Lord, and as we go through Genesis, that you would speak to us through your story, through your creation. I pray that we would remember everything that you've done for us and how far we've gone. We love you, Lord, and we pray that you would soften our hearts and quiet our minds.
And in Jesus'name we pray. Amen. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And then, he made us. Abraham!
The sacrifice... for my boy, my boy, my boy... Good evening everyone, how are you doing this week?
Is this a golf tournament? What is this? Don't clap at me like this.
Sorry about that. I don't know. Thank you, I guess. I hope you're having a great week.
Glad you're here with us. One quick announcement before we get into our study this evening. We announced this on Sunday. Here in a couple weeks... September 11th, that's a Wednesday night.
We're not going to be having service here, but we're still going to be having something here. Our friends over at the Freedom Coalition are going to be hosting a town hall meeting dealing with local issues, and we've got some special guests coming. Sheriff Chad B. Bianco, and the district attorney for the whole county of Riverside is going to be here sharing on relevant things to all of us. And I think it'll be worth your time.
So please make note of that, and we will not be doing our regular Wednesday service here then. Just please make note of that, and we'll announce it as we get closer to that as well. But if you got your Bibles, turn to the book of Genesis.
We're going to be continuing our study there through the first book in the Bible, the book of beginnings, the book that tells us the beginning of really beginning. everything, the story of everything, the story of the universe. Where did the universe come from? It's covered here in the book of Genesis, the human story, as we especially have been tracking the story from Genesis chapter 3 all the way now into Genesis chapter 11. We're almost through this section on human history until the book then begins to focus for the rest of the 30-some chapters on the Hebrew story. We also mentioned here before that the book of Genesis breaks down of these four different events and stories of four different people.
We're again, right in chapter 11, right near the end of the events before the focus becomes Israel, Abraham, the Hebrews, the Jews. But we're not quite there yet. We're looking at the formation, the Bible's view of the world still and why the world is the way that it is. You ever look around and wonder why things are the way that they are?
I thought that when I went to Georgia a few months ago. ago. I grew up in western Colorado where everything's laid out on a grid.
Everything's very simple in all the streets. At least I kind of grew up on the western border area. And in my county, leading up into the Rocky Mountains, there was a way of mapping out the area. And the people who built the area were brilliant.
They're like, we're just going to draw lines. And we're just going to count. From the Utah border into the mountains, where's it going to count?
One mile, two mile, three mile, four mile. This is street one, this is street two, this is street three. And then they did the opposite with letters, A, B, C, D. And so you could just basically grid yourself out.
Where's your house? I'm at 2nd and Z Street. And you knew right where that was. You never got lost.
I was in Georgia a couple weeks ago, a couple months ago now, and I was lost the entire time. I do not know how human existence thrives there before Google. Google, Google, how do I get to the spot? Siri, help me out here. I have no idea.
As you look around at the world around you, do you ever have that kind of feeling, that kind of question? Like, why are things the way they are? Why do, why am I the way that I am?
You ever have enough maturity to self-reflect on yourself that way? Like, why am I the way that I am? Why do I speak the language that I speak? Why do I have the culture that I have?
Well, some of us know that, you know, back to a certain point, but the point of the book of Genesis here is to tell us the story. of everything. And it should matter to you and me because it really mattered to the people that originally got this book.
As we've gone through the book here of Genesis, we've noticed that since chapter 5, there's been a trajectory to the story of the book of Genesis. And again, this roadmap's got to be... be in your head, otherwise you're in Georgia and you get lost. What is this all about? Why are we talking about this?
Why are we talking about a tower tonight? Why are we talking about a bunch of water last week and all that kind of stuff? Well, because there's a point to what the author is trying to do here. He's trying to carry his audience from the creation of everything, the beginning of human history, down to their history.
If we recognize that. This whole story makes sense as the author Moses writing in the midst of the Exodus event is telling the people that are marching through the desert with him who they are and where they're going. Who are these people that we're interacting with? Who are these tribes that we're at war with? Who are these people that are helping us out?
Where did they come from? That's what the book of Genesis tries to answer. We saw that last week in chapter 10 as there is this genealogy of nations from the flood event where all the nations are destroyed and you start over with Noah and his family to the nations that surrounded the story of the people of Israel in the time of Moses.
That's in Genesis chapter 10. Well now we're going to get into chapter 11 and we have another one of those parenthetical stops in the midst of this genealogical march. From Adam to Abraham there's two big events. You have the flood in Genesis 6, 7, 8, and 9. And then you got this short little story. It's only nine verses about a town out in the desert somewhere.
and a big old building. And it's important to remember that again, because if we don't track with that story and fit these stories into that timeline, the fact that the author is trying to get through this timeline, we're going to again make these little simple mistakes that we don't need to make. And we'll see another one of those here as we begin chapter 11. So if you've got your Bible, make sure to go there to chapter 11 as we see another instance where God interjects himself into human history.
We saw that back in... the flood event as God brings catastrophe upon the human race. But now here in chapter 11, he brings confusion, which maybe seems odd to us. Because doesn't the Bible say, you remember 1 Corinthians 14, God is not a God of confusion.
Well, then why in the world would God bring confusion here in Genesis chapter 11? Ever thought about that? Why am I the way that I am?
Why is the world the way it is? Why is the Bible the way that it is? I thought God wasn't a God of confusion, but here he's causing confusion.
Well, over here in 1 Corinthians, Paul's talking about the church. In the church, church is not supposed to be chaotic. It's supposed to be orderly. because God's not a God of confusion in the church. Here in Genesis, you have a totally different story, a totally different period of history where God is enacting judgment upon people who are disobeying him.
And his judgment, instead of flooding them or raining fire down from them, as we're going to see later in the book here, he just throws a little confusion in their midst. I've asked this question before, is that fair? Think through the different stories that we've seen in the book of Genesis already. Adam and Eve have one command, don't eat this fruit.
And God judges them. Was that fair? Then you have Cain, he murders his brother and God judges him, curses him, puts a mark on his head, or something like that, and says you're going to be a wanderer in exile the rest of your life. Was that fair?
Later, you have a whole generation of people that completely hate God. Their hearts are full of wickedness. The violence and perversion of their generation is so sick that God says, I'm done with this. And so he destroys them all with a giant flood.
Was that fair? Now we're going to see a totally different situation where, again, people are in the midst of disobeying God, and God decides not to flood them, not to curse them, but to confuse them. Friends, I don't know why God does everything that he does, and you aren't going to find that out either.
But it's important for us to know what happened. It's important for us to recognize that we're not God, and we don't know why all these things happen the way that they happen. You know, it's probably a good thing, because I'm a very confused person, and you probably are too.
So take a look at there at Genesis chapter 11, as we see the story of a place called Babel. Maybe you're familiar with this story, maybe you're not, but we're going to read through it real quick and then ask a question, does it matter? Why are you even bothering with this story? Does it matter at all? Look at this.
story right here in Genesis chapter 11 verse 1. Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there and said to one another, let us come and make bricks and burn them thoroughly, cook them. And they made bricks of stone and had bitumen for mortar. And they said, come, let us build for ourselves a city and a tower with its tops in the heavens.
And let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed on the face of the whole earth. Now the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men had built. And the Lord said, Behold, they are one people and have one language. And this is only the beginning of what they will do, and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. So come, let us go down and confuse their language so that they may not understand one another.
And so the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore the place was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the earth, and from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth. And a pretty short story, but a pretty amazing story.
And question number one, both for Genesis chapter 10 and Genesis chapter 11, is this. Does it matter? Well, obviously we think it matters if we're Christians and we're reading the Bible, because it's in the Bible.
Practically, do these old stories in the book of Genesis matter? Well, I want to say yes for a couple of reasons. I just want you to kind of think through this.
First off, it matters because of history. It mattered to the people that this was being written to. As you read the rest of your Bible, and hopefully you have that chart.
If you don't, make sure to get that from me. As you read through the rest of the Bible, there's a world in which that is happening. And the book of Genesis is explaining that world.
When the Israelites come into the land of Canaan in the book of Joshua, they run into all kinds of people, most of whom appear in the book of Genesis. The Amorites, the Jebusites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, and others. Where did they come from? Or are they just making this stuff up?
Well, there's actually a history to it. You'll find it here in the book of Genesis. And if it mattered to those people in that timeline, and they matter to us because they're part of the story that brings us to Jesus, and he's part of my story, then this should matter.
It also should matter for us just basically as human beings. If this really happened, I want to know that it really happened. I really want to understand what happened there.
So practically, historically, this event here does matter. It also matters when it comes to the issue of language. Why are things the way that they are? Why do we have the mass amount of languages in the world today? I just saw a study.
They estimate that there's 6,800 languages in the world. That does not include dialects. 6,800 languages of which you can have hundreds of different dialects off those.
I went to Uganda when I was 17, and the average person that I ran into could speak 7 to 10 languages. Most of those were dialects off of Lugandan or Swahili or something, but they're different languages. How does that happen?
If what we read in Genesis 6, 7, 8, 9 is true, 10, that... All the earth is destroyed, and then you start over with this one family unit that all get off the boat at the same time. Shouldn't there all be one language? Shouldn't there all be one culture?
Shouldn't there be much more similarity amongst how people look and how we behave? Well, maybe not so much for us 6,000-something years later, but what about when this was written? This was only written maybe 1,000 years after these events supposedly happened. You don't think anyone ever had that thought? Like, why are we so divided from each other?
Why are there all these different people if the flood account is true? Why are there all these different languages? Well, this is the explanation for why all those differences. And then I think really important for... you and me today is the issue of race.
In our culture today, the issue of race and racism is constantly talked about. And the question is, how do we deal with racism? How do we end racism? That's a major political issue.
social issue, personal issue for a lot of us? Well, the Christian answer is we end racism by thinking biblically about race. The Bible says we're all one race.
We're all one family, and the differences between us are not differences of race. They're differences of time. They're differences of language.
They're differences of distance between us. Well, why does that matter? Well, we've seen it over and over and over again here in the pages of Genesis. God created them in His image.
And just because we look different doesn't mean we are different, doesn't mean we are of greater or lesser value. The Bible's view of humanity is all are made in the image of God, male and female. You're all human.
You all have value, not because I say so or because the government says so, but because God says so. And to violate the image of God in another person, in God's sight, is wrong. wrong. No matter what stage of development or skin tone or language or culture, they are made in the image of God and they have value because God says so, not because I say so, not because I think so or because I appreciate them or because I like them or because they look like me.
God says you all have value. That's the Bible's answer to the issue of race. So does this issue matter? I think it really does. And this is one of the pieces to the human story that allows us to address these particular issues.
issues. So remember, last week we'll look at chapter 10 as the author Moses describes the beginning of many of the nations that were around Israel in the time of Genesis, Exodus, and a couple of books there early in your Bible. These different nations like Egypt, nations like Elam, that's over in what we would call today Iran. These nations that will appear later in the book.
The Amorites are mentioned here in Genesis chapter 10 that appear again in Genesis chapter 15. Where do they come from? Who are these people? That's what this early part of the book answers.
Well, here in Genesis 11, we're coming off of another book-ending statement. We've talked about this before, and we've seen this multiple times through the book of Genesis. You have the statement, these are the generations. This is the story of these different things, these different steps of history.
Creation, Adam, Noah, the descendants of Noah coming off the ark, the descendants of Shem, ultimately leading down to a guy named Terah, and then his son Abraham. There's a track to this. There's a story along. The series taking you somewhere through the book of Genesis. It's not just a bunch of random information that doesn't matter.
All of this matters because it's telling a story. And Genesis chapter 10 ends with one of these bookend statements about the sons of Noah and where... All the people of the earth came from, and we saw the importance of that last week, later in the Bible, in the book of Acts, where Paul, preaching in the country of Greece, as a Jew from Israel, says, the God who made the heavens and the earth created all of us from one man.
We are all part of the human race. We're all part of the human family. Why would Paul, as a first-century Jew, bother traveling hundreds of miles away to a different culture, to different people? They don't look like him. They don't sound like him.
Why would he care about them? Because he has a biblical worldview. Those people matter because they're made in the image of God. Jesus died to save people like that, not just people that look like me. And so he's there preaching to them.
Well, here is the beginning of that story. But it pauses there at the end of chapter 10 with that bookend statement, which is meant to be a pause as you read the story, where once again we have to pause in the genealogy and step into the details of this genealogy. This is not necessarily sequential. So chapter 11. makes a statement that we looked at last week.
Remember last week we talked about the different nations and they all had their own languages? Well now we have Genesis chapter 11 verse 1 and it says this, the whole earth had one language and the same words. Well which is true? Did they have a bunch of languages or one? Depends which part of the story you're reading, right?
Just because it happened first doesn't mean this happened first, does it? If you got the view of the story here, the genealogy in chapter 10 telling a story, and then he paused in chapter 11 stepping back into part of that story in chapter 10, it's not a contradiction. It's like saying, you know, America has a lot of history.
Let me tell you a piece of it. Basically what he does here. At this point, we want to focus on these couple words right here.
Now, the whole earth had one language. We're going to talk a little bit about language tonight. Language is one of the most fascinating things, I think, in the world.
Like, some of you are all into music. Like, Julian's all into music. I can't get music.
But languages have always fascinated me. And here you have a place where sometimes people, because of a simple misunderstanding of language, start throwing bombshells at you as a Christian or at the Bible. For example, right here. How in the world, I'm not kidding, I've heard this from people.
How can the planet have a language? It says the whole earth had one language. Dirt doesn't have a language.
I'm not kidding. I've had people say that. I think it's pretty obvious that's not what it's saying. But the argument goes like this. That word world, the word earth there, ha-eres, is the exact same word that's used 2,506 times in the Old Testament.
And the first time you see it is, oh yeah, in Genesis 1, verse 1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. It's the exact same word. Well, one of the amazing things about language is the ability to communicate different things with the same word. Here's one place where people looking for a problem with the Bible will find in something as simple as that. There will be other issues we'll talk about as well, but I want you to think about words.
As God's going to end up confusing a bunch of words, have you ever thought about words? What word is that? Oh, good. Is that the word lead or the word lead?
Yes, the answer is yes. Thank you. The answer is yes. Context will tell you which it is, right?
Is that the word lead, as in the material, the metal, lead? Or is that the word lead, as in the action? Or, as in the title?
Anyone here a lead at work? Anyone ever led themselves down a bad road? Yeah?
This one word can have different meanings, but it's the same word. Yeah. But words have meaning depending on their context.
They also have meaning just... There's a phrase you need to be aware of, semantic domain. Has anyone ever heard the word semantic? Usually that's kind of used negatively, like, oh, you're just using semantics. We're just...
I actually heard about that as I was watching stuff on the national convention going on in Chicago. A reporter was going back with this person and finally said, we're just arguing over semantics. The word semantics refers to the... The semantic domain refers to the range of words, the range of meanings of words. Certain words have big ranges of meanings.
Can you think of one? What's a word that can be used a lot of different ways? Trunk?
Piece? Maybe think of a biblical word. In the Gospel of John, the Gospel of John starts with this phrase.
In the beginning was the Word. It's a Greek word, logos, or logos. That Greek word can be used so many different ways.
It's almost to the point of, like, irritating. If you're able to study the New Testament language, the word logos, we usually translate it as word, can mean a word, it can mean a thought, it can mean conversation, it can mean philosophy, it can mean to talk, it can use all kinds of different ways, generally around the idea of communicating. It's just a big word, but then there's other words that basically have one meaning.
Volcano? Are there multiple uses for the word? I don't know. Someone help me out with volcano.
Some words have very small semantic domains. Other words have really big ones. Here we have a word, the whole earth, that has a certain semantic domain. And while someone might come along and say something, and childish about how the earth has one language. Obviously that refers to the people of the earth.
People have language, dirt does not. You can see that in the very next sentence where it says, as the people migrated from the east they found a plain in the land of Shinar. That word land there is the exact same word.
The whole earth, the land of Shinar. It's the exact same word. You have two different meanings, though.
All the people of the earth have a language, but then you have the land of Shinar, not even like the whole world, but just a piece of it. Words have a semantic domain. They have a range of meaning, and the context is what allows you to determine what that is. Words matter.
The ability to communicate matters. And here God's going to mess with that. How much, how crazy would your life be if you couldn't communicate with people around you?
If words suddenly don't have meaning, words like him and her and it and they. One of our friends here has, as a kid in the local school district, involved with mock court trials, like training to get into law and stuff, and recently had a mock trial where they had to use preferred pronouns. And apparently they did a fantastic job working through all that. But can you imagine being a lawyer, a judge, having to deal with people constantly on a daily basis and not being able to use language? And in fact, having to change your language to every person who comes through the door?
That's what's being pushed in our society. Words don't have meanings. Words mean what I think they mean.
Is that just selfish? You all are going to use language that I demand of you. There's a reason humanity doesn't function that way.
Because words have to have meaning. If we're going to communicate with one another, words have to have understandable meaning, and you don't have the right to simply change them however you feel at a particular moment. Well, here are simple words. The whole earth had one language and the same words.
As people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. Well, where is this place? Where is this happening? What's the geographical context of this? Well, today, you might recognize the world like this.
This red area here is an area that historically has been referred to as the Fertile Crescent. As you think of the Middle East, it's a lot like California, Southern California. There's a lot of desert over there. And there's only a certain range of area that's really...
What's the word? Areable? Irritable?
Irrigatable? Farmable? Farm? Farmland?
Words have meaning. Words are important. There's only a certain part of that part of the world that's really good to live in. Let's say it that way.
Somewhere near water really helps when you're in the desert. And so you have this crescent that goes through the Middle East. It's called the Fertile Crescent.
Well, in what today we would call the country of Iraq, you have where we believe is the land of Shinar, southern Iraq area there, southern part of what would also be called Mesopotamia. These are names that are going to be important because they're going to come up later in the book of Genesis. There's going to be armies coming from these areas.
Abraham is from a place called Ur, which is in the southern part of the plain of Shinar. what today we might call Kuwait. Anyone ever been to Kuwait? No veterans here?
Okay, just wondering. I don't know why. I've always been fascinated with the country of Kuwait. Well, there in Shinar, you have a place that today we know as Babylon, where we think...
is the ancient location of the place that we see here in the story called babel now why is that well certain geological issues but in particular because the land of shinar seems to be connected to the nation the later nation the later empire of Babylon. Here's an example of in Daniel chapter 1, where King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, comes to destroy the nation of Israel. And it says there that he, in destroying Israel, takes back with him captives and vessels, different articles, gold and silver and stuff, from the temple in Israel back to the land of Shinar, to the house of his God.
and placed the vessels in the treasury of his God. In the land of Shinar, he's the king of Babylon. So it seems to be a connection there that we see just a couple times through the pages of Scripture.
And it seems to be a linguistic connection as well we'll talk about here in a second. But what happens here? Well, we have the text here. These people come together. They all have one language, and as they migrate from the east, they find this place and decide to stay there.
You find a nice place, probably between two rivers. It's probably a good place to stay. I have never understood why people built Las Vegas.
I have never understood why people started building Phoenix, Arizona. without air conditioning too. It's a pretty new thing.
These people were smarter. We think people in the old days were dumb. They weren't dumb.
They were smart. Between two rivers, they find this place, this flat plain. They say, we're going to stay right here.
Good plan. And they say, let's make for ourselves. bricks to build a city there. It even mentions the kind of material that they have there.
We talked about this in the flood account. Did the flood story really happen? Well, we certainly think that Moses thought it happened because of the details he gives.
Here we have another one of those stories that people say that didn't really happen. That's a fairy tale that he just told to kind of communicate a moral truth. Well, you have a lot of details given, where it was, the materials that are being used, the plans and everything. Verse 4, So there's the motivation.
There's the reason that these people... People stop and plant a city in this place. Now, God's not opposed to you living in a city.
And I know you all think that you live in the country here in San Jacinto, California. You don't. This is a city.
I spent the last 10 years in a town of 5,000. I grew up in a town of 1,500 in Colorado, a little cow town called Parachute. It's bigger than that now.
But this is not the country, people. This is a city. God's not opposed to cities.
These people stop and build a city, but the reason that they build it ends up becoming the issue. What are the two reasons that they give here? Number one, let us make a name for ourselves. Remember Genesis chapter 9?
Noah's got the run of the whole house. The world is his playground. There's no one there to tell him what to do.
He gets off that boat in Genesis chapter, at the end of chapter 8. What's the first thing he does? He builds an altar and makes a sacrifice to God, and God blessed him for that. Noah expressed gratitude, gratefulness, and sacrificed something that would have been valuable to him, food.
In a whole new world where he doesn't know what the next meal is going to be, he offers that to God and God blesses him for it. The people here at this location aren't thinking about God, they're thinking about themselves. We are going to make a place that's going to be good for us.
It's going to make a name for us. It's going to make me impressive so that people talk about us. When we're long and dead, you know, people forgot about those old people. What's their names?
Oh, Adam, Enoch, Methuselah. Who cares about those people? We're going to do something to make people remember us, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. There's two issues here. that leads to God causing this confusion.
The first is this, arrogance, pride. You might use the word selfishness. Think through your own life.
How many of the times that you have sinned, did it really just boil down to arrogance, pride, or selfishness? Maybe you stole something. Well, the act of stealing was wrong, but the act of being selfish really came before the stealing. I care more about my gratification than I care about that person that's losing something. More than that person that sacrificed for that thing.
More than the harm I'm going to do them, I care more about me. That's selfishness. That's arrogance. That's pride.
Maybe you said something harsh to someone. You insulted them. You belittled them. Well, that was bad, but the arrogance of thinking, I'm more important than that person, was arrogance and pride and selfishness. Then you have just straight-up disobedience.
We're going to stay here. We're going to build a city to impress us so that we are not dispersed. Well, if you remember back earlier in the book of Genesis, when God first created Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, what did He bless them with?
Now, we have one negative command. Don't eat from this one tree over here. But there's a number of positive commands as well.
Eat whatever you want other than that one tree. Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth. Have kids.
Have families. We see that command, a blessing. reissued to Noah after the flood.
God destroys the world, starts over with Noah, and as part of God's response to that sacrifice that Noah makes, God blesses him twice by saying this, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. In the same conversation, God says it twice, and you, it's actually a plural you, you all, Noah, sons, families, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it. Have kids.
have families, fill the earth, enjoy this world that I made for you. These people say no. Yeah, God, you told me to do this. You blessed me with this, but I know better.
That never turns out well. Another value that we have in this part of the story is this, that we see that God loves human flourishing. God loves his creation. God loves his creatures. But God loves humanity in a very unique way.
Not only does God bless the human race by saying, be fruitful and multiply, he says, that to the animals and plants and other things as well. But then he says to Adam in Genesis chapter 1, have dominion over the earth. Care for the earth. Take care of the earth. Be the stewards of the earth.
Have the position of authority, but take care of it as you fill it. God puts Adam in the garden to tend the garden, not to burn it down, not to pillage it, but to take care of it, to value what God created. And what do we see in our day today?
Yeah, there's those who abuse the earth, but more than that, there's those that abuse each other. God didn't destroy the world with a flood because someone cut down a tree. If you look there in Genesis chapter 6, it's because they were cutting down each other.
Because people made in the image of God were violating the image of God in other people. And we're diminishing human flourishing. We're insulting the image of God.
We're violating the value that God had placed in other people. God loves human flourishing. God loves children.
God loves family. Those are good things. I'm sure you see, as I see in our society, a world that really has come to hate those things.
to hate the idea of a quote-unquote traditional family, of the concept of a mother and a father, of marriage. Marriage is just whatever I think it is. God loves human flourishing, and God provides the boundaries in which that happens.
We saw that in Genesis 1, saw it in Genesis 2. I've seen it several times since then. God creates them male and female. And for this reason, we saw in Genesis 2, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife. The two will become one flesh. Start a new family.
Start having kids so that humans flourish. Well, here you have people. Not perverting sexuality as we saw some in Genesis chapter 6, but simply refusing to do what God said.
God said be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, and they say, no, we're staying right here. Was that so bad? Was it really so bad to say, God, you want me to move out of state, but I'm going to stay in state?
Or was it really that bad that Adam bit a piece of fruit? Yes, it was. Thank you. Maybe you've had someone ask you the question, how could God be fair and good and just, punishing people for eternity for sins that they just commit temporally?
No matter how bad someone is, they can't possibly be so bad that God would punish them for eternity. Ever heard that argument? Well, could a piece of fruit be really so bad that God would curse the human race and the planet and curse Adam's work for the rest of his life and kick him out of his home?
It's not necessarily what you do, but who you sin against that matters. Adam just ate a piece of fruit. Eating the fruit wasn't the problem. It was disobeying God that was the problem.
These people just stayed home. That wasn't the problem. The problem was they disobeyed God in doing it.
And there were consequences far bigger than they could have ever imagined. I may not think that's fair, but you know what? I'm not God.
And again, that's a very good thing for you because I'm not smart enough to be God. So God sees this and has this response. This is in verse 5. And so the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of man, literally the children of Adam, had built.
And the Lord said, Behold, they are one people and they have one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do, and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. So now let us come and confuse their language so that they will not understand. one another. Now you and I might really appreciate the issue of language today. I realize that many of us kind of have a multicultural, multilingual family situation.
I'm married into one. My wife's family is from Romania, and it gets really interesting. I say that positively. It gets really interesting.
Not only because I, as a red-blooded American speaking only English, end up at a family dinner with my Romanian relatives, but some of them have cast the net even wider. And we've got people from Mexico in the family, we've got people from El Salvador in the family, we've got people from all over. And when you put them all together, family gatherings become really interesting.
For example, I'm going to show you a couple of examples. I now have a word in my vocabulary that I didn't have 12 years ago before I met my wife. And when we get together and we have chicken noodle soup, I'll ask you all, what do you call the wet stuff in chicken noodle soup?
Broth. I call it broth. I don't call it broth anymore.
I call it zyama. because that's the Romanian word for broth, ziama. My parents don't use the word ziama, but now I do because of the connection with my wife and the language of Romania. Well, here God shows up and says, they have one language, they are one people, and because of their disobedience, I'm going to confuse that so that they do not understand one another. How did he do that?
You ever wonder about that? I was actually watching a video, I think it was two days ago, from a non-Christian guy mocking the Bible over this particular story because, supposedly, the modern research contradicts what many people assume happened in this particular story. Most people assume that when God did this, you have the original language, the proto-language. In Christian circles, we call it the Adamic language. Most of us have assumed, I certainly did as a young man, that when God confused the languages, he just kind of made different versions of that same language.
Maybe you've heard that situation. I found that it's not just Christians who believe that, though. Secularists tend to believe this model of language as well for totally different reasons, but this actually came up in the video.
As they were mocking Christianity for the assumption of this model, they began to assume this very same model because if you assume that humanity evolved out of one location, then language evolved at that same location so all languages have to somehow be related to the original language. Well, supposedly, and I've seen this both from Christian sources, non-Christian sources, multiple different... venues, the modern ability to communicate with people have allowed us to research language to the point of tracing back human language to the point where we think we know, ish, that there was not one human language, but multiple proto-languages.
Now, for a secularist, that becomes a problem, because if humanity evolved out of one location, there should be one proto-language, one source for human language from which we can kind of trace the family tree. Instead of a model like this, what there seems to be is a model that's more like this, which... Actually, it makes a lot of sense if what the Bible says here in Genesis 11 is actually true. Now, I might assume that God just made a version of the same language here at the Tower of Babel incident, but that's not necessarily the case.
Instead, what we think today with the issue of languages is that these various languages trace back to multiple, some people say three, some people say seven, proto-languages. Well, how can that be? Either... You have humanity evolving out of different locations in different languages, unrelated to one another, or you have God interjecting himself into history, taking it from one language to multiple languages that apparently were different enough to drive people away from one another.
Not all language differences drive people away. You ever notice that? My father-in-law is from Romania and was able to come to America back in the 80s. And he told me when he left Romania, he had to spend three months in Italy.
It took him only a few weeks to begin to be able to converse with the Italians, because Romanian is a sister language to Italian. It's one of the romantic languages, along with Spanish and French. It's close enough that...
they could communicate. Well, the situation here, the languages are so different, so stark, that the people very quickly abandon their homes, leave this place that they plan to stay, and flee from each other. Apparently, these were very different languages, which is exactly what God wanted, right?
Well, how did that work? I don't know. Is it amazing what God has done in creating the massive network of languages that we have today?
It is really amazing. I'll tell you another story about my father-in-law. I was in Alaska one day, standing on the river fishing, and I had my father-in-law next to me.
He's Romanian and speaks English. Next to him was a guy from France who spoke French and a little bit of Italian. And so my father-in-law, who can stumble his way kind of through Italian, is talking to the French guy in Italian.
The French guy is standing next to a guy. I'm not kidding. This is a true story.
This happened in Soldaten, Alaska, on the riverbank of the Kenai River. Standing next to him is a guy from Switzerland who speaks no English, no Italian, no Romanian, but he speaks French and German. I'm not kidding.
Standing next to him is a guy from Germany who only speaks German. And so for about two hours, we're sitting there fishing together, and we're actually able to communicate back and forth through this chain, me in English, to my father-in-law who speaks, he could stumble through kind of like Italian, Romanian, over here to this guy who can speak French, Italian, over to the guy who speaks French and German, over to the German guy, and then back. back and forth. And so we could talk for a couple hours back and forth. It was terrible.
We didn't end up saying anything to each other, but we tried back and forth. How do you say fish in German? I get down the line back and forth.
Language is amazing, but not all languages are related, we think. I certainly don't claim to be an expert on that, but whichever model it is, I don't know. I don't really need to know. It simply says God confused their languages, and it accomplished what God wanted to accomplish. These people, verse 8, so the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth, and they left off building their city.
God wins. I don't know exactly how he did it. I don't know what the model was. You know what?
I don't know how God works things in my own life, let alone their lives. The point is that God wins. And these people who thought they knew better, thought that they were so big, turned out they really weren't all that. You know, the book of Proverbs says that pride comes before the fall.
Arrogance comes before being humbled. If you haven't experienced that in your own life, you probably will. There's a warning here.
Just obey God. God tells you how He wants you to live in His world, and when you start stepping out of that, sin has consequences. I don't know what it'll be. But sin has consequences. A couple other things to note here.
When God says, let us come down and confuse their languages, did you notice that there? It's a phrase that we've seen before in the book of Genesis. We saw this back in Genesis 1 when God created humanity. He used the same language, and we didn't dwell on it much at that point, but I want you to highlight it again because this is the last time we're really going to see it and highlight it in a particular way. In Genesis 1, God says, let us make man in our image, in our likeness.
Who's he talking to? Well, a couple of options there. Either, this is what's called a use of language, this is called a plural, a majestic plural, kind of like when the Queen of England says, we are not amused.
It's a majestic plural, we are not amused. Some people say that's what it is. Unitarians and others will say that's all it is.
It doesn't mean anything else. Well, maybe. It could also be that God's referring to someone else who's there with him. Most people, various people will say, well, God's referring to angels. God's talking to Angel Michael and the Angel Gabriel and the others and saying, let us make man in our image.
Problem is, every single time that it talks about the image of God in humans and people, It's just God. It's nothing about angels. There's nothing anywhere. Not in Genesis chapter 1, not over in Genesis chapter 9, not in Deuteronomy chapter 4, not in Isaiah 45. It's only God who makes humanity, not angels.
Angels are not involved in that. Yes, there are various quote-unquote Christian groups that say God and Michael made people, organized the earth, various things. No, the Bible says... God created man, created him in his image.
This is something God does. So what does it mean that God says, let us make man our image? And now over here, we see this statement, let us go down and confuse their language.
Who is helping God do that? Did he have a bunch of little angels, little angel minions running around, little yellow guys with big glasses? Thank you, Patrick.
I got one good laugh out of that one. No, certainly not. Does God need angels to help him out? No.
Does God need to speak majestically of himself? No, but he kind of does sometimes. Instead, what I think, and maybe some of you do as well, is that this is, let's back this up for a second, is that this is an early hint at something that will be revealed much later in the story.
Remember back in Genesis 3, God said, says to Eve, as he's like cursing her, your seed, one of your descendants, will crush the head of this one who deceived you. That's a hint at a later part in the story. It's a hint about Jesus. What I believe this is, both in Genesis 1 and over here in Genesis chapter 11, is a hint at what will later be revealed about God.
God reveals himself in the person of Jesus, in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, in the Gospels, and in the book of Acts. We come to find out that the God that we worship is much bigger than we thought he was. And we have statements like this from Jesus, where Jesus, on the earth, the night before he dies, prays to the Father and says this, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.
If Jesus was just a man, as some people say, if he was just a prophet, as some people say, how could he say those words? He couldn't. It would be untrue and it would be blasphemy.
blasphemous. So what does this mean? I think it means that Jesus was there in the beginning when God created everything.
The book of John says that Jesus did create everything. So who is the us who made man in our image, and who is the us who goes down and confuses the language? The New Testament reels the us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
So that we can have statements like this. How can Jesus have fellowship with the Father before the world existed? Well, because he was there.
And these are two people. who the Bible identifies both as God. The Spirit, another person who interacts with, glorifies, talks to the other two.
In John chapter 14, Jesus says, the Father loved me before the creation of the world. You have relationship between these three persons. One of the first times that I was speaking as a youth pastor, I had this young man who was very thoughtful but very confused.
He made the statement when I asked the question, why did God make us? Why did God make us? make humanity? Very confidently, and I was proud of him for the assertion, but he said because God was lonely.
God created humanity because God was lonely. No, he wasn't. Before the world existed, Father, Son, and Spirit are in fellowship, sharing glory with one another, loving one another.
The fact that you and I know what love is is based upon the interactions of the persons of God. before the world even existed. And here's one of the places where we have a hint of it here in Genesis chapter 11. Let us go down and confuse their language. I certainly think this is one of those early hints.
All through the Old Testament, there's these little hints once in a while, like where Yahweh, we'll see later in the book of Genesis, rains down fire from Yahweh. Or later in the book of Isaiah, where Yahweh God is talking, but then says, Yahweh sent me. and his spirit. Little hints along the way until finally, later in the story, the truth is revealed. Well, they say here, verse 8, sorry, verse 9, therefore, God confuses the languages and he dispersed the people over the face of the earth.
Then verse 9, therefore, that place is called Babel because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. The word Babel... there, probably better pronounced Babel, whatever my wife says.
We argue back and forth on this because, again, she's Romanian. She's wonderful. But the word Bab-el literally means the gateway to God.
God. But it's a word that comes to be synonymous or used for a word confusion. Now, it says there that the place was called Babel because there the Lord confused their languages.
The word confusion there is the word balel. Babel, balel. It sounds similar.
We see this happen multiple times through the book of Genesis and actually into many of the other books of the Old Testament. A name of a person or a place is mentioned because of an event that happened there. You get names like Shiloh.
and Bethel and other places where something happened and so the place is named after that event. Here's one of the places where we see that. A word that sounds like another word that comes to be used for that word.
Language is fascinating, isn't it? When I was a kid, I grew up in western Colorado in a small town, 1,500 people. Grew up around cows and deer and that kind of stuff. And there was a word that we used for things that we liked.
We used the word cool when I was a kid. Maybe you did too. I remember coming out here to Hemet, California to see my cousins.
We did this often growing up because my family was from here. But I remember coming here one time, I was about eight, nine years old, and my cousin started using this word that I did not know. Sweet. Sweet, man.
That's so sweet. That's so sweet. I didn't know what that meant.
We speak the same language, but we're not using the same language here. I started thinking about that this week. How many different words do we have for, I would say, cool? Cool, sweet, wicked, rad, stellar, awesome, sick, bad, bad. Language is fascinating.
Well, here you have a word, Babel. Not as an English word, Babel, but Babel, which literally means the gateway to God. Remember they wanted to build the tower to reach into the heavens?
It becomes a word synonymous with confusion, but it's picked up by a later group of people called the Babylonians, who are called the Babylonians because they're from a place called Babliu. Babylon, which is on your map today. It's over there on the right side, over there in Babylonia.
Now, why do I mention that here in closing? Because this is an important part of the story as we continue. There's going to be different people coming from Babylon. The whole book of Isaiah.
kind of hinges on a group of people from Babylon showing up in Israel. The whole book of Daniel starts with a story of a guy from Babylon coming and conquering Israel to take people away to Babylon. Where did this place come from? What is the origination of this particular place? It ends up becoming really important.
Even in the book of 1 Peter, the word Babylon is used to refer, I think, to the city of Rome, but I could be wrong about that. Even in the book of Revelation, Babylon comes up. Genesis to Revelation, there's this thread.
What is this place? What is it meant to communicate? A place of confusion, a place of disobedience, a place of judgment.
This idea is carried all through the pages of the Bible, but it begins right here. And if we don't understand that, we're going to miss the point of the story, the point of the biblical story. We're going to misunderstand the world into which this was happening.
And if we do that, we're not going to understand statements like this. In Galatians chapter 4, the Apostle Paul says this, And when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman. When the time was right, when God was ready, God sent his Son.
Well, if we don't understand where languages came from, we don't understand that the world into which God sent his son, Jesus, had a particular language. It was called Greek. It's the language of the New Testament.
It's a language that unified the world and allowed the Bible, allowed the message of Jesus to go out. It's one of the few times in history... where an area like that had a single language.
It didn't happen very often in history, but it happened at the right time when a guy named Jesus showed up. The world was divided and separated for many thousands of years until the right time. suddenly this language barrier which had been there for so long was suddenly removed for a brief period that allowed the gospel to go out and then it disappeared at the right time Jesus showed up is God a God of confusion?
no he's not, he's a God with a purpose and we see it even in the use of language would you pray with me? thank you so much for the opportunity we have to look at what you've provided to us part of our story story of who we are are and where we came from, why there's these differences between people, and what really those differences mean. Yes, there are differences between us, but we are family.
We all come from a single source, a source that really finds its beginning in you. And you tell us how we out of you one another, the value that we find in one another. And though we live in a very confused world, and maybe we ourselves may be very confused people, we recognize that you are not. Though I may not understand what you're doing in history, we see in stories like this your hand working through it, your hand orchestrating the events of history to bring things at the right time to where you want them to be. Father, I don't know why you have me alive right now.
I don't know why you have my friends here at this place right now. But we trust that you are working your purpose in us. Father, may we not be disobedient as these people were here. May we not be arrogant towards you, but rather grateful and thankful as Noah was.
And may we receive your blessing because of that. So often we say, God bless America. Should he?
So often we ask you to bless us. Should you? The truth of the matter is that you very often should not, and yet you over and over again show your grace. Even as you showed to these people here, you destroyed the world just a few generations before, but now here you extend grace. and build an amazing world.
Father, may we appreciate what you give us. May we appreciate this world that we have, and may we appreciate that you are working something, even if we don't understand it. May we have the grace to trust you through it.
In Jesus'name, amen. Julie? The pieces seem to shatter, to gather off the floor And all that seems to matter, is that I don't feel you anymore I don't feel you anymore Need a reason to sing I need a reason to sing I need to know that you're still holding the whole world in your hands I need a reason to sing When I'm overcome by fear, I hate everything I know.
If this waiting lasts forever I'm afraid I might let go I'm afraid I might let go Need a reason to sing It's an all and you're still holding the whole world in your hands. I need a reason to sing Oh yeah, yeah There'll be a victory If you sing it over me now This is the melody, you've seen it all for midnight, yeah, oh There'll be a victory, for you'll see they're all for me now, yeah Oh Lord, this is the melody, for you'll see they're all for me now I need a reason to sing I need a reason to sing I need to know that you're still more The whole world in your hands And that is the reason to sing. Would you pray with me?
Dear God, I pray that you would watch over us tonight, Lord, as we go home, as we get rest. God, I pray that you would bring us here next week to learn more about you, that you would bring us here on Sunday mornings as well. well, God, that we would continue reading your word at home, that we would just be fully devoted to you, fully given over to your purpose for us.
We thank you for all that you've done. We thank you for sacrificing your son for us and that we have your word in our hands. We love you and we thank you. And in Jesus name we pray. Amen.