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 … . . .
Notice the arrogance here that came from the mouths of those who were building:
God's command, all the way back in Genesis 1, was for mankind "to be fruitful and multiply, and to replenish the earth, and subdue it." These people were in rebellion against that command. They wanted to stay put and combine their resources and to make a name for themselves as a mighty people. A name indicates distinctiveness. Sometimes it means pre-eminence. We say that somebody has a great name. It means they have a great reputation.
What we are looking at here—"Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven"—was very likely a slogan that they (the government, and primarily the leadership) were using in order to get the multitudes of people into building whatever the project happened to be. In this case it was the city.
Now what we see under construction here in Genesis 10 and 11 is the foundation of a system NOT built on trusting God, but attempting to find achievement and success through the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
A tower is normally a fortification, but symbolically, figuratively, there are two major pictures that the tower represents. The one is that it represents a place of safety and security, a stronghold, a symbol of strength that one can fall back upon or run to when things really get rough.
Figuratively, a tower is a place of safety, a place of refuge. They were building a tower in Babel.
The second aspect of a tower's symbolism has both far-more interesting possibilities, considering that in the end-time Babylon is to be a major player on the world scene, once again wielding power and capturing the people's imagination. This time it is not isolated to one small geographical location like the Babylon was in Nimrod's day, but it is a powerful worldwide system influencing the lives of people. The tower was what men were building, and thus it symbolically represents mankind's hope and dreams. It represents man's aspirations for his place in the creation.
Notice that the tower was to reach to heaven. That gives you an indication that these people were thinking BIG! Do you see what it is saying? Spiritually it is saying that they were going to invade the realm of God! They were thinking big in terms of how they were looking at themselves, and what they were going to accomplish. They were already thinking that they were deserving of the classification of one who could exist, live, and produce in heaven. What this does of course is it leads us to the spiritual source of the manner or matter of their anti-God thinking, because in Isaiah 14:12-14 we have the following stated:
The people were not so stupid as to plan on the tower literally reaching the place of God's throne, but the statement reveals the over-weening pride, the hubris regarding how important and how powerful they thought that they were. They took to themselves God-like authority to do as they pleased, but in reality they did not have the foggiest notion of the greatness of God's power, of His intelligence, of His character, and His plans for mankind. This leads me to think that God was not even being thought of here.
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.
Babylon symbolizes a dream of human civilization intended to be a permanent achievement of his independence and pride, of his inventiveness, cooperation, creativity, and utopian planning. This, you see, was going to be their place of refuge—their high tower.
So they decided to gather everybody together under one government. And so we find,
Now these people who are sitting in places of influence, understand that there does not seem to be any indication at all that anybody is going to have any hope of changing the direction of the way things are going unless they do it. So the solution is an old one, a world government exercising control over all nations; it is happening.
Any of you watching what is going on, you can see our liberties here in the United States being chipped away. What is the excuse? In almost every case, “Well, it’s for our benefit, so that we will be safer from the 'beasts' out on the streets.”
So, those who are in positions of political, economic, military, and educational power are moving the world in a direction that you know is going to end with one human being at the very top.
But, does a super government of men (who have the same nature as all other men), guarantee that life is going to be better simply because the government is bigger, and exercises more control than any other government did before them? Their reasoning is absolutely stupid. It is based entirely on the evil pride of those who are moving and manipulating things in that direction. These people simply think that they are better, and they know better how to do things better than others.
Now, since you cannot seem to take care of yourself, the way they would like you to take care, they are going to do it for you. And if you do not do it, then things that do not conform (shall I use the word, paradigm?) to the paradigm that they have in mind has to go. Christianity does not fit the paradigm because Christians answer to somebody greater than they, and Christians will not conform to their way. So, Christians are going to be very difficult to control unless they are dead; unless they are held captive somewhere.
So along with Christianity is going to be many of your personal freedoms as an American, along with the standard of living that you have been able to enjoy because of God's faithfulness in keeping His promises to Abraham, until finally you will not be able to buy, or sell, or hold a job, unless you conform to their “better” ideas.
It is clear in Genesis 11 that Babylon began as a city, under Nimrod, in the Tigris-Euphrates valley, in what is today Iraq. Nimrod is described as "a mighty hunter before the Lord." I spent some time going into detail, showing that one can stand before somebody as a friend or as an enemy, but the whole context showed that Nimrod was an enemy of God. Babylon was founded in rebellion against God. The original project ended when God scattered the people over all of the earth in confusion, by confounding their one language into many languages so that communication became impossible.
Although people scattered all the way around the earth from that one point, even in modern history books the Tigris-Euphrates valley is looked upon as "the cradle of civilization." This is because cultures everywhere show a common thread of origin from that area, whether they are Chinese, Indian, Japanese, or Inuit up there in Alaska. Not everybody scattered though, and those who remained became the foundation of the nation of Babylon.
The nation Babylon became the "Head of gold" in the prophecy of Daniel 2. This prophecy shows four successive world-ruling empires, with each empire dominating the other nations on earth as time progressed, and is to continue until Christ's return and the setting up of the Kingdom of God on earth.
As in the human body, the influence of the head is the greatest of all of the parts of the body. So in this prophecy's fulfillment, the head—representing Babylon and its way—carries through the other empires right up to Christ's return. Babylon thus becomes the Bible's code word indicating the anti-God system founded in rebellion by Nimrod that motivates every culture on earth.
I showed in that sermon that there is a progression concerning Babylon from (1) a city (2) to a nation, and then (3) to a very influential worldwide anti-God system, what in the New Testament is called "the cosmos" in Greek.
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.
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?
