Setting the stage

Good morning. We're going to be proceeding here into Genesis chapter 11, and that's not quite the right snapshot. That's a little better. We'll have to let that do. Okay. Genesis chapter 11, we want to make the point, has two themes, okay? And Courtney read the first theme for us here in the first nine verses, so two themes. First verses there, I have verses 1 through 11, it should be 1 through 9, are centered on the Tower of Babel and the confusion of languages.

This is parallel to Genesis chapter 10. In other words, Genesis chapter 10 presented the genealogy. This is an event that is parallel with it and one of the ways we know that is because the genealogy in chapter 10 had mentioned Nimrod who would lead this building of the Tower of Babel and Peleg, who would be the one whose birth and life would be the timing of the Tower of Babel. Genesis chapter 11, in the rest of the verses there, goes through the genealogy of Shem, starting with his line in chapter 10, and that takes us all the way to Abram, who's later called Abraham, who will be the central figure. Now, we're now touching on chapter 11, verses The, excuse me, chapters 12 through 25, all those chapters, essentially just a little more than what we've been covering so far, will center on the person of Abraham and God's interaction with him.

And so we're kind of at the brink, at the doorway, if you will, of a major turning point and a major section. One of the things we've taken note of, and you have on slide two on your handout there, is that these first nine verses are a chiasm. And as we've explained before, a chiasm is a mirror image in writing. That's not quite so clear. Let's do that. A mirror image in writing. And that means that there's a kind of a sequence going to a reflection point and then working away out of that same sequence.

And so you have here in this chiasm that you have on slide two there, you have it starting with all the earth had one language. And by the way, a number of linguistics experts have concluded a very similar thing, that the whole earth had one language initially. And so it starts off making that point. And then it ends up with all these languages being confused.

And if you're confused, well, that's part of what we're looking at here. Okay. Settled there was the next point that comes out in verse 2. And then as the languages are confused, they go from there, etc. And the focal point, the turning point in this chiasm is, and the Lord came down. Notice that the first half is everything that man did from that middle point to the last part is all about what God did.

Now, where did this take place? As Courtney read for us, it was the land of Shinar. And just so we know where that is, that's southern Iraq and northern Kuwait. In that area, that would be the area where the Tower of Babel was built. Some archaeologists at the Associates for Biblical Research have actually identified what they believe is the Tower of Babel at the base of it.

But we'll take a look. There are actually a number of different places that have similar kinds of towers and we'll look at that as we proceed. Why don't we look at the Tower of Babel as just another building project? There are some good reasons for it. On the surface of it, you just say, well, they're just building something. What's wrong with that? And in truth, yes, they were just building something. But there's a reason.

The problem was that mankind was told to fill the earth. And as I told you before, I'd said that I'd be willing to do that myself, but Nancy's not up to it. So at any rate, the thing that we have here is filling the earth was the mandate. What they were doing was instead of going out and filling the earth, it was instead a matter of concentrating in this one location.

We saw this one spot on the map that is now southern Iraq. and northern Kuwait, and essentially they're all staying congregated in one place instead of following what the Lord had laid out, and that's to fill the earth. Additionally, what they had done is to establish human goals over God's directives.

That's a key point. The first one is to reach heaven by human efforts. They were going to build this up into the heavens. They were going to reach heaven by human efforts. It's human efforts to reach heaven and to reach God rather than what God had in mind. To make a name for who? For human beings. Instead of glorifying the name of the Lord and calling upon the name of the Lord, instead to make a name for human beings. Let's make a name for ourselves. Let's make ourselves famous. It is to avoid scattering and filling the earth as the Lord had directed them.

A key point here is empowerment. Now this is a word that's become prominent, that and the family of words, empowerment, empower, empowered, those have all become pretty prominent words in our culture today. They wanted to empower themselves. Let's do this ourselves. Let's give ourselves the power to pull this off. Empowerment and its related words are certainly in vogue today in our culture. We've got all sorts of empowerment programs, everything from books and DVDs and meetings to go to and retreats. Empowerment is most certainly a word on people's tongues and in people's ears.

But what did the Lord have in mind? What the Lord has in mind for us is that the empowerment be from Him. He seeks that we as believers might be motivated by God's grace and mercy to be empowered by the Spirit for everything that He has called for us to do. Not self-empowerment or not empowered by another human being, but empowered by the Lord Himself.

Now who is this us? We see that in verse 7 here. The early chapters of Genesis, we saw it in the very first chapter, the early chapters of Genesis use us and our, in the plural, when talking about communications between the Father and Son, the Holy Spirit. And this is now the third instance of it.

The plural pronouns are assume the Trinity, communication between the members of deity. And the way we state that, at least attempt to put it simply, is three personal beings, one essence. That's the Trinity. Three personal beings, one essence. Now, we're not used to thinking about that. If you looked at me and you thought, well, there's three personal beings and one essence, that would probably be a little scary. So this is something we're not accustomed to dealing with. We're used to dealing with people where there's one person, one essence.

God, however, Scripture lays out real clearly, is three personal beings, one essence. So there's communication between them, and that's what's reflected here in this passage. So now another question comes up. Why did God have to go down to see what was happening here? Well, I think there's a few reasons for that. One is it was a Hebrew figure of speech.

There was a term called anthropomorphism, so you don't have to memorize that. Anthropomorphism is where we speak in human terms. God had scripture often times written in human terms so that we would understand it. Not so much that God is limited in those human terms. Let me give a for instance. If we read in scripture about the hand of God.

Well, God doesn't have one of these things. And I'm glad his work is a whole lot better than the way my hand works. But God doesn't have one of these. What is he doing? He's having the authors of scripture write with an anthropomorphism. Writing in a human kind of way so that we'll understand. If God lends his ear or listens to us, it doesn't mean that God has an ear. It is speaking in a human way so that we understand it. And that's a part of what's happening here.

Here, by the way, would be the place on the globe where this little tiny, little tiny tower would have been built. You could not have seen it. It was so small. So the next part is God had to go down to see it. Well, okay. That would be one of the implications. The tower was certainly not reaching up into the heavens. Not really. And it was small enough not to be a global feature. The tower would be from space invisible. So its magnitude was not as impressive as people thought.

Here is, for instance, where we have a tower and the term that's used basically out of the way the Assyrians describe it is ziggurat. And that's a ziggurat, not a zigret. It's a ziggurat. to Ziggurat and you can tell this is the one that was in Ur of the Chaldees where Abraham was called from by God. We'll read about that shortly as we read along in Genesis.

And what's interesting is there are a number of these throughout the Middle East and in fact other places throughout the world. that have been found. It seems what was done at the Tower of Babel was reproduced as the various people went their different ways, even with different languages. They continued to rebuild the Tower of Babel. Even in the Americas, archaeologists have found similar kinds of towers and platforms.

An interesting thing as they find writings for each of these, a couple of points to make here, and that is that they would name the towers. And the towers would be, you know, stair steps to heaven and names like that. They looked upon them as structures that would take them to heaven. And the other thing is, and I think it fits in with where it says, you know, let us go down. the towers were built with the idea that it would make it easier for the gods, or the pagan god, to come down to earth. And so what we see here reflected in Genesis 11 was God says, yeah, we'll go down there, but we're not coming down for what you have in mind.

So anyway, there are a number of these throughout the Middle East and elsewhere around the earth. Now, we have here Deja Vu again and again. Why do we say that? We say that because this Tower of Babel was not the end of mankind's efforts to exalt man and or humanity. One of the things that you will find in our own time and culture, efforts to exalt man and humanity continue. They go on just the same.

And one way in which that kept reoccurring is through the empire and people of Babylon. Babylon is a name that is recognizable as being of the same root. Babel means to confound or confuse. Baalel is the root there behind it. And the empire of Babylon continued on much of the same, we're going to build it. It's not only if you build it they will come, it's if you build it they will stay.

And that's exactly what the Babylonians did. Here is an artist's depiction of the Ishtar Gate in Babylon. And a colorful gate that was sort of a main ceremonial entry into the city of Babylon. That actually has been restored, compliments of Saddam Hussein, to its original color and structure. And so is there still even now.

During the coming tribulation period, Babylon will rise once again, just before its final global collapse. Revelation chapter 17 and 18 lay out how that's to take place. So Babylon keeps coming back. Here's kind of stepping through the sequence here on a timeline.

We have Babel, which occurred several thousand years BC. And then you have the Old Babylonian Empire, and Hammurabi was perhaps the apex of that empire, and Hammurabi's code there is shown in the illustration. Next you have the Neo-Babylonian Empire. This is the one that is written about, for example, in the Book of Daniel in the first five chapters.

And here we are, here just after the year 2000, and so you are here. The one that is upcoming now is the Tribulation Period Babylonian Empire. So there will actually be a restoration of this Babylonian Empire with the exaltation of man, of a we will do it kind of theme. And so it's yet to occur again, perhaps as soon as starting today, if the Lord were to take us home. The Tower of Babel account is pivotal, as we'll see here, is pivotal for a number of different reasons.

And one, it shows that God is indeed personal. God is personal and He does interact with His creation. Eastern religion and Eastern philosophy lays out God as non-personal. God in Eastern religion and philosophy is a non-personal being. He is not ultimately a personal being. Scripture lays out here, yes, God is a personal being.

He did lay out that people should go and fill the earth. He does communicate with people as We'll see especially as we proceed through the book of Genesis and we see how God communicates personally with Abraham. It shows that rebellion will ultimately be judged by God. All rebellion ultimately will be judged by God. It also shows God's mercy.

Remember we studied just not too many weeks ago how God promised never again to flood the earth. Remember that? A couple Sundays back? Never again would he flood the earth. Never again would he wipe out all living things on the earth with a flood. So what did he do here? He made a global judgment that was bloodless. No loss of life.

And yet everybody is impacted. Everybody is impacted by this judgment with languages. There were even foreign languages in Israel's history later on that were signs of judgment. And God used foreign languages to communicate judgment to the Jews. So what we see at the Tower of Babel, which was a place where languages were a sign of judgment, that's going to continue and continues on through the Old and into the New Testament even. The Tower of Babel account is pivotal because it shows that human accomplishment and fame are fleeting and frail.

People who have been at the top of empires and the top of nations have passed and gone. What people pulled together that seems great and grand eventually disappears. There is no everlasting human-based empire. nobody will ultimately and forever gain control. Every human being on this planet will pass from it. There is no ultimate human and humanistic victory.

So why else was the Tower of Babel important? Well, there's some other reasons. It explains the origins of various human languages and dialects. How did all these languages get here, okay? Now, you probably cannot read the lettering on that chart. And if you can't read it, I have good news for you. That's okay, because we're going to do this with it. The points here, it says that on this chart and this statistics as of a couple years ago, 6,912 languages, so close to 7,000 languages is the latest figure. That's a lot. That's a lot. Anybody here know all of those? It's a bunch, isn't it?

Secondly, almost a third of those have a written form of the language connected with it. That means two-thirds, in round numbers, two-thirds have no written language connected with it. Isn't that amazing? Two-thirds of those numbers of languages have no written language connected with it. 516, and by the way that number is increasing, is nearly extinct. One of the things I've been reading lately, Aramaic, which was the language that was spoken among the apostles, there are still a very few people that speak it, but it may disappear within the next decade. It may disappear.

It explains the origin of ethnic groups of different kinds. As I, you know, about every two months, my mind just kind of goes different directions. About every two months, I think of how cool it would be to have a Spanish language service here at Holly Hills, you know? I mean, that would be really cool. And I start to think about it and I say, Vern, you're nuts, okay? There's no way I have time for that. Okay, so we won't do that, at least not right away.

But the origins of various ethnic groups, and I say ethnic groups because it certainly leans toward the idea of race, but in fact scripture is not racist. Scripture is not racist. One of the ways we point that out is the passage we looked at just this last week, and you have on page two of your handout here. Acts 17, 24-27, particularly in verse 26. This God who himself gives life to all people, he made from one man, Adam, every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth. God made from one man, Adam.

There is no elevation or anything of the sort, no breaking out into the different races with putting some greater value on one over another. Scripture is not racist. As a matter of fact, it says, all we like sheep have gone astray. The Lord has laid the iniquity of each one of us, regardless of our ethnic background, upon Christ.

So why else was the Tower of Babel important? It demonstrates the propensity of human beings to seek purpose, life, and significance apart from God. God said, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Scatter and spread throughout the earth. Fill it. Go all the different places.

And yet, what do we find here? Human beings say, yeah, but I've got an idea. Yes, but there's this project. Yeah, but we can make a name for ourselves. Yeah, but we can reach heaven on our own. We can pull this off. We can do it! Right? No. It's seeking life apart from the Lord. Human beings have that propensity. And so as scripture continues to lay out, out of Isaiah 53, all of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way. Or as Romans puts it, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. The human propensity is demonstrated here.

No rebellion against God will ultimately stand, none. Even in us as believers, if we find some area of rebellion in our lives, will it ultimately stand? No. No. Even as believers, what's the process that God has said will ultimately prevail? We will be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. No rebellion will ultimately stand.

The Tower of Babel incident parallels with Chapter 10, and the parallel points we pointed out last week are in the names of Nimrod, who led the building and rebellion, and Peleg, whose time of his birth and life timed the building of the Tower of Babel. And so he's the name given to the time when that took place.

Now, you have on page three of your handout, something that looks like this, okay? All right, this little chart. And what we're going to do is deal with that in two parts, okay? And one of the things we'll do is we'll start with the part, the genealogy that is on the left-hand side, okay? All right. So that part. But one of the things we're going to do is we're going to snip Vern in half. Alright, snip it like this, and just use half of Verne.

Now, so you have on this top part here, here is Shem, and Shem, of course, is the third son of Noah. He is the one that is the line, as we'll see, that carries down to Abraham. We have our term today, you ever hear about somebody being anti-Semitic? That word Semitic comes from the name Shem.

The next name down on the list is Arpaxad, and you'll notice that it's spelled a couple of different ways. Both ways are fine. It's a transliteration, in other words, a carrying over into English of different spellings, so you might recognize that. I don't have too much to say from Sheila. Probably he got really mad if you called him Sheila. But aside from that, I don't have much to say.

Eber is thought to be, not certain, is thought to be the source of the name Hebrew. Hebrew meaning in reference to Israel and that name Hebrew continues from the Old Testament all the way into the New. Paul says in Philippians, I'm the Hebrew of the Hebrews. And so there's that. Peleg was the one whose birth and life marked the dividing of the nations by God confusing the languages. So his birth and life are a time marker to identify when this took place.

On the second part, we have Riu. That's an unusual name. Serug is the next one. I have nothing to tell you, so I'll just serug my shoulders on that one. Here's Nahor. Nahor, you'll notice the name shows up twice. This was Abraham's grandfather. And Terah, he was terrible. Anyway, so there's Terah. The one thing I would note, there's a little correction there. Terah says Abraham, Nahor, and Ham should be Haram. So that's a correction there on that block under Terah.

Now, for Abraham, one of the things we're going to find is he starts off being called Abram, who in detail is the father of height, or sometimes just called exalted father. And his name, as we proceed through the book of Genesis, will be changed to Abraham, father of a multitude. This is based on God's promises to him. And his brother was Nehor, which is the namesake for their grandfather.

And then the next one here with Haran, and I have that correction noted there from Ham there under the Terah, Haran. And Haran is the father of Lot who will head off to the promised land with Abraham. Now one of the things you'll notice as you look at these is these people are all intermarried. And it's one of those redneck joke kind of deals where you go to a family reunion to find a life partner. So anyway, that's... I'm partly joking and partly not. Anyway, all right. So that's the deal with these guys here.

There is a supplement available because, you know, we just can't handle having you go without supplements. There's a one-page supplement giving historical evidence for some of these last names, Sarug and Nahor and Tara. Those names are all names that come out of the ancient Middle East. And so there's confirmation for those names. And in some cases, even for the specific people, at least by implication. So feel free to take advantage of that handout. All right, back to the third page on your handout here. We're going to take a look at this side of it, okay? This other part. So I have to lay down for that one.

All right? And in this one here, what it does is it shows Shem and Arpachshad and Shelah and Eber and all those names. It just shows them with those in bar chart form in parallel. And what you see is that there was a common period of time For each of those men, and so all of those names at one point or another, all of those people lived at the same time. Isn't that interesting?

There's at least some period of overlap for each of them. And the one we would point out, of course, is Peleg, who was the one who was the personality that gave the timing of the Tower of Babel incident. Now, one of the other things we point out is that longevity began to drop after the time of the flood. So if you look at these ages, you start seeing them on a declining trend here, pretty substantially after the time of the flood.

Now, one of the things we mentioned here is that as we go through these verses, that in the end, what does it do? It takes us to this person of Abram or Abraham. Key point here, as we look to the time ahead in the book of Genesis, we've got the first 11 chapters now that we've covered, and now we're going to step into chapter 12 next week, and that's going to be the beginning of the time with Abraham. Here is as many chapters and a little bit more as we have already covered, are now going to be focused on this person of Abraham. Amazing. And now I'd like to have you repeat with me, because we've got them on a timeline, the eight words that outline the book of Genesis. Okay? Are you ready? Creation, Fall, Flood, Nations, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. Okay? Alright? So Abraham is the next key point here and it means with this that we're covered the first four of the eight, and we're now ready to step into Abraham.

So this takes us to a doorway, okay? Takes us right to the doorway, the doorway of the life of Abraham. We're going to be stepping through in the chapters to come this life of Abraham, and we're going to proceed through the Lord's dealings with him and his dealings with other people.

And we'll see how that works out here. There's going to be some tremendous variation that's going to come out of this. But beyond that, there's something else that's going to come up with Abraham. And I'll be taking a note of it. God is going to make clear in Abraham's life that he's dealing with Abraham entirely by grace. By grace. Previously we've seen instances where God has been merciful and gracious, but God is going to make a covenant with Abraham that is gracious all the way.

We're going to see God's character revealed as we proceed through these chapters. We're going to see that God is faithful. You know that God made promises to Abraham that we're going to study next week? That he's still in the process of fulfilling? God is unfathomably faithful from a human standpoint. God is faithful. God is gracious. God is merciful.

And we're going to see all that come out as we step into these chapters ahead of us. And it will be wonderful because the Lord is wonderful. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for what you've laid out here in front of us. We see the connection from the very first human being that you created, Adam, and so this person, Abraham, through whom each one of us in this room are blessed. And we thank you, Lord, how you have done that, all by grace and all by faith. And we just entrust the days of this next week into your hands and look forward to your revealing rich and deep truths for us. In Jesus' name, Amen.