I want you to turn to Genesis the 11th chapter, verses 1 through 9, and we are going to develop this theme throughout this sermon. But in Genesis 11 we find a very significant stage in the development of what God calls "Babylon." It says,
God felt so strongly about this brief nine page reporting of something that was occurring there that He directly, along with His Son, intervened to slow down its development. Now I say slow down because it is very evident from the book of Revelation and other places in the Bible as well, that He did not stop it entirely, but He did slow it down so that now we see in the 20th century that elements of it have continued to develop over the years regardless of what God did at that time.
But it was a serious thing to Him. A serious enough thing that He not only slowed it down, He scattered them. That gives you some indication. Here we are scattered, and when God scatters, it is a pretty good indication that He is highly displeased and there are some very serious sins involved as well. Now it says here that their reason for doing this was to make a name for themselves and not be spread abroad. They wanted to remain unified, they wanted to stay where they were.
As we heard yesterday from Harold [Way's] sermon that God does not destroy things that are good, but He is going to destroy Babylon. And here He intervened strongly enough to stop what they were doing for a goodly period of time, but it continued to develop. So we are looking at something here that is beginning to show all the elements of something that would be disastrous to God's purpose if it is allowed to continue.
Now, a name indicates distinctiveness and it can also indicate preeminence. Each and every one of you for the most part have different names. I do not know how many men I have run into here who have the name John. But our last names are different and we are distinctive from one another because there is a name that is different. And so our mail does not get the least mixed up because there is a distinctiveness here. So these people wanted a name, they wanted to be distinctive from something else.
This project was done in rebellion because they knew that they were supposed to scatter abroad. Their cry was, "Lest we be scattered abroad." They did not want to be scattered abroad. They wanted to unify because they were, by and large, of common minds and they did not want to get separated because many people make for strength.
We know the story of course, that Nimrod was really at the base, or the foundation or the head, however you want to look at this, and he was a mighty hunter against the Lord. He rallied the people around him because apparently there were certain dangers, physical dangers, involved in being scattered abroad. At least the story goes that he was going to protect them from the wild animals that were out there and that was part of his way of selling the idea, the concept. But this concentration of people, of a heavy population, he was going to use to be a despot against them and he would use them, really, as his means of increasing his power. So we can see that this project was done in rebellion because they knew that they were to spread abroad and fill the earth.
Now, there is more here than meets the eye at first glance because contained here is the lurking desire for empire and self-aggrandizement in the design of the leaders for themselves and slavery for the unnumbered people who are being used at this point. Now, these people had one purpose and they understood each other's minds. This was a major step in the building of something that could quickly become an incredibly evil system. And that is why God stepped in while it was yet small in order to forestall what we are seeing taking place in our day.
Here in Genesis 11:9, they were concentrating ambition and power by which they could bring about, even by God's admission, whatever they could think. We can really let our minds run on that … . . .
This maybe taking it a little bit before what we just read there in Chapter 10, because its says that Nimrod built Babel in Shinar. Evidently what we have here is a little bit of a flashback to show you that when people migrated eastward from where the ark had landed and where they had begun to settle, that they built this city in the land of Shinar.
What was it that God had said to Noah in Genesis 9:1? "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth." What they wanted to do was to build a tower in defiance of God, and build a city in which they could all gather so that they would not have to scatter themselves over the whole earth. Who was the one that they chose to lead this? Nimrod.
They chose Nimrod, who was against everything that God did, to thwart God's plan of scattering them abroad over the face of the whole earth. That was their choice. They could have chosen Shem, or Noah and Shem, depending on whether Noah was still alive at the time, because it was Noah's job, and Shem's after him, to fill the whole earth with the people. But instead they chose Cush and Nimrod because their platform was, "No. Let's stay in our own little cities and stay united and build house to house (let us say) and be here cheek by jowl, and not let God tell us what to do." Instead they chose to rebel against God. They chose self-determination.
What happened is that God said, "I'm going to do what I told you to do anyway," and He confused their language and scattered them abroad over the whole earth. But they chose. That was their choice, and their punishment was a scattering and an inability to understand one another. Confusion. That just fits the mold of what we saw there in Proverbs 29:2. If they had followed the righteous leader, they would have been happy, but instead they followed the scoundrel, the wicked, and what did they have but misery. Since then things have not gotten much better.
Babylon and its tower was to be a triumph of human reasoning. It was to be the picture of humanity's ability to control and to master its world. It was their vision of how things might be.
What this is of course is God repeating what they said amongst themselves so that we would understand something. He is giving us a clue. God is telling us that there was an inherent weakness in what they were doing.
Notice something that we probably would just pass right over and never think about because we are so familiar with what man does all around us. They were making this tower of brick, which was something that they had to manufacture. God provided stone for men to use. Stone of course would have required a lot of work. They would have had to mine them and trim them and cut them into size and shape. This is what God had Israel do when they built the Temple. The Temple was not made out of brick that men made. It was made out of stone that God made, which shows ultimately, figuratively, that that Temple is going to last as long as stone lasts. We are supposed to get the idea from this that it is going to last forever!
We are part of what God was symbolically representing in that Temple that He built out of stone. But man builds things out of his own inventive genius. There is a big difference between brick (man-made) and stone that God made out of granite, and will go on and on and on and seemingly never wear out.
What we are looking at here is an indication of human technology being used rather than the stones that God provided for man's use. Consider also that they were using bitumen for mortar. That is a fancy word for asphalt. It is not all that good for use as mortar, and again it indicates another flaw in their reasoning. What they were building, God is telling us in verse 3, was not going to last. God is eternal, and what God does has eternal ramification.
If they had done what God wanted them to do, then our history probably would have been somewhat different. But what happened was that mankind rebelled against this, and the result was the tower of Babel. They did not want to be put all over the earth. They wanted to stay together.
Then they wanted to make a name for themselves—meaning that they wanted all the glory to themselves. That is, to do something apart from God. They did not want to do it for God's name,which is interesting. Hold that thought in your mind. They wanted to do it for their own name, and glory.
God said, "I am going to confuse your language because you would not give Me the glory. And when I restore a pure language, I'm going to make sure that you use it to call upon My name." That is how He is going to restore that breach. And who knows what language that might be.
Notice the other reason: "That they may call on the name of the LORD, to serve Him with one accord." Unity—exactly the opposite of what happened with the tower of Babel. They were trying to make unity, to become united, through their own means—to give themselves the glory. And God said, "I'm going to give you a pure language, so that you can call upon My name and have the proper unity"—that serves God. And when God does something like that, it always works out for the best. Much better than man, whose "touch" tends to ruin everything.
From this we are going to branch off into two characteristics, two applications of that. The first one we have already gone into it a bit: In works they will deny Him. Because they do not believe Him, they will be disobedient. The second of those two is shown to us in Genesis 11. Before we even get out of the first eleven chapters where God is laying foundations, we find the second characteristic that grows out of the major one, and that major one is that they simply do not believe.
Here is a microcosm of how the world, as it was established by men in opposition to God, came to be the way it is. This chapter is inserted so that we will understand clearly that the world is in confusion. Not only is it disobedient, but to add calamity to things, it is also in confusion. When disbelief enters, disobedience and confusion are the fruits.
The world is in disbelief of God, and therefore it is in confusion. Here are two characteristics by which we can judge the questions posed at the beginning of this sermon. Let us briefly apply these two principles to those churches claiming to be Christian, but which we understand as being churches of this world: (1) Do they obey God? (2) Are they in confusion?
