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 … . . .
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.
God here prophesied of the awesome potential of the powers that He has given to man. Let us reflect just briefly on how mankind from this point in time has used his powers. Has our approach improved at all since Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden? Did Cain improve it? Did Nimrod improve it? Was it improved in Egypt? Assyria? Babylon? Medo-Persia? Rome? How about Israel?
God gives man a spirit and he turns right around to use it to control other peoples' destiny through violence and death. That hardly seems to me that it is in the image of God.
God is not cutting down the forest. God is not the one who strips the ground of all of its nutrients and creates a desert. God did not cause the lifestyle that has brought the curse of AIDS on people. God would not bring about the unsanitary conditions that prove fertile for the development of cholera.
Man has had a great deal to do with all of these things in the use of his great intellect. It is an awesome power that man has been given. We need to look at this, really bring it up-to-date, back in the book of Daniel. We are tearing down the forests of the world at a prodigiously rapid rate. We are fouling the rivers, the lakes, the sea, and the air with the sewage of our culture. And we are befouling the minds of man through things like television.
God has not caused any of those things.
Again, go back in time to Adam. I think that you will have to agree that from Adam up until the time of the early 1800s, maybe 1850, things pretty well went along without change. People were riding horses and donkeys. And horses and carriages were pulling them.
We went from the steam engine, to the internal combustion engine, to the jet engine, to the rocket engine. Now we can explore space. Is Genesis 11:6 coming true—that "nothing would be withheld from man"?
We have had a tremendous explosion of knowledge but mankind has consistently used the powers God gave us to conquer and destroy. And we can create tools to further increase our power to exploit and rape the environment and other people even more.
It is the misuse of the very powers that lift us into God's image that is at the very root of mankind's problems.
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.
The thought here is that man being united and having started out like this—in, actuality, such a very huge leap in technology and architecture to begin with, would lead to other very large advances in other areas of technology. Soon they would begin doing whatever they thought up. Whatever man's mind could conceive, they would be able to do. All of their brains were on one frequency, and they could communicate their ideas without any hindrances.
And God says, "It's not time yet. I don't want this to be able to happen for another five thousand years or so." And we are just getting, now, to the place where we can do that once again. That is, where we have used technology to overcome the barriers of language. You can communicate in computer languages now days. You do not even need speech.
The Lord saw. The Lord came down personally. The wording is such that it indicates that He had heard reports and decided to investigate Himself. Are you beginning to see something develop here? Does God use the same general methods that human beings do to gather information? He most certainly does.
