Babel

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0:00 All right, we've been going through the stories in Genesis. Partnerships are life Genesis, and we haven't enough to be before Lent to go through some of the major storms. But one of the other reasons that's been occurring to me as I've been going through the stories is how many of them we make into such children's stories. They're like perfect little children's stories, you know? They're like the Asian, flawed,

0:30 how about all different languages. But part of the reason I think we make them children's stories is because they're kind of hard to pick stories. And so it's easier to make them more fabled than the rest of scripture. And I think without telling anybody what to think about it, I like exploring them a little bit more deeply to understand what might we learn about God and his stories. What's that state? Is it the sign we want to believe in that is more than fabled?

1:04 Why might they be incorporating this for scripture? And definitely this one in Genesis chapter 11, something like that this morning. But before we start on that, we're going to pass this around. This is because we started praying for each other, but we're cursed and we can pray for each other. And so there's something about while we're all gathered together, praying out loud, this kind of guy. So we pass this around. And if you have a prayer request that is more and false,

1:35 all of us praying out loud about it together, you can put that on here as much information as you're comfortable with and the things that you come up with and worship and pray through those. If it prompts you for a prior prayer concern, you can drop it in the offering box and someone will pray for that in contact with you during the great time. So I'm going to pass it for a moment. I'll start with you, Bob. So if you want, you can look at Genesis chapter 11.

2:05 But we should probably start at Genesis chapter 9 just because we change. And it kind of picks this up where we left off with the flood. Genesis chapter 9. Remember what happens here in Moses is probably after Sinai

2:35 and before he gets buried, right, he gets to go up on the mountain and look at the promise saying he doesn't get to go in. But there's about 14 years there where they're wandering the desert basically waiting for a generation to die. And Moses keeps going into this tent of meetings, talking with gals and men who teach another man face to face. And he's talking so much like he's the exterior, all over the flesh off of his face. And in that period, it's when he's driving the Torah, Genesis chapter's Leviticus numbers will do to drown in you. And that's 40 years longer than in the desert.

3:05 And then of course, they make copies and preserve it. They lose its time. They find it again in closets. It goes through different iterations. It's written in a couple of different various ancient Hebrew and then some Arabic Aramaic kind of map up in parts of it. It's an ancient book, right? It's one of the oldest distinct history books we have and different from some other religious documents like they did through the Hanukkah, the Baba Bhagita. It tells the story that we could understand and enter into.

3:37 It has some chronology to it, even though it's not in place of utah. It's not a chronology of history of the world. It's not a science book. It's a story of something that God has been up to within people since the beginning of time, through God and into the final end. And so when we look at the story of Genesis, we know we're not necessarily going to read the story of creation. We're not getting a person without Moses' bear of creation. But it's how many times Satan was down and God was communicating to Moses

4:07 and what Moses needs to know, what Israel needs to know, about how the world came to be. And when we get to the story of creation and several generations, and then we get to the story of the flood, and we talk a little bit about how last week, how so many different civilizations have a story of the flood, and of course they would. It's the whole earth of flood, that it would be stories passed down among our people. And this story is Babel of similar. It's so kind of monumental that you can understand how it would have been

4:39 preserved and still cold from one generation to the next. According to the practice of teaching literacy to all their children so that not everyone could read or write, it's much easier to remember long-form stories and tell them over and over and over again. You can imagine there's a version, as they're moving around in the desert, of the tower of Babel, before 8 of them called their forefathers, that exists kind of in the ether of the Israelites. And the cleanest story that exists in the ether

5:12 and God's conversations with Moses, who moves from the flood and within a few generations, it's a matter of like being right down the generations, that go from Noah and his kids, who were on the boat and made it through till we get to the Bible. And if you read, before we go by into Babylon 11, I did want you to look at number chapter 9, because there's one little phrase there

5:43 that I think is deeper. Remember that when God creates the world out of its own imagination, out of the nothing, the earth's free force, and he imagines that water will be different from air and plants, will be different from animals, and sky will be different from earth, and you make all these distinctions and bring them out of the nothing, it's decent into existence and then forms humanity out of death of the earth and breathes the original death of life in them, then he sets them up in the garden and says, what?

6:15 Be fruitful and multifilive. Fill the earth and subdivide it. He says, this earth is for you. Go out and fill it up in the existence of the God. Take rightful responsibility and tenure for the creation of our giving you. You were made to go fill the earth and subdue it. Right? And of course, in the office of the Mount of Garden, we want to preserve the opportunity of life that is not fallen forever.

6:47 Within a matter of generations, all the times we are harder to leave all the time, to flood the earth and start living with no understanding. And in Genesis chapter 9, we'll walk out and go on to our ground then, and right at the beginning, and God left no end in His terms and said to them, well, you see it? Everybody read it? Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth. Same. One of the things that will surprise you if you drink the Genesis and pay attention

7:20 is the incredible pitfalls of God with Heaven. He made the whole earth in order to give His humanity, and there's courage He's holding out on you, that there's something that He hasn't given them. And yet in that point, when He only had a few, He didn't wipe them out and start over. He thought, I'm going to correct here. I'm going to rescue people.

7:50 And He promised to rescue them at the very beginning. And then when in a couple of generations, all the times in their heart are all over all the times, He wipes them out, and He does wipe them out completely. He says, I can court-smart here. Same thing in it. We'll fill the earth and come through it. This is what it means to be humanity in the created world. Go out and live. Fill the earth and subdue it. Carry the image of God out in the face. Rule over and subdue it.

8:20 We tell no in this payment. Don't go through no attendance. Capitol 11 is where we want to be this morning. Next day, this morning. Now the whole earth had one manhood and same word. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plane in the land of Sinar and settled there, and they said to another, that it's meant brick and done and thoroughly,

8:50 and they had brick for stone and gift them in for mortar. And then they said, so let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens. And let's make a moon for ourselves. Let's be dispersed over the face of the whole earth and the Lord came up. I like it. It says that they were on the move and they found a really great spot. The plane in Sinar. I love when there are like place names in Genesis.

9:24 Years ago, I talked for several weeks about one of my favorite little places, the Kaysenacpella. We'll get there. But they have all these little places. Even Mount Tainai, Mount Ora, the Mount Harnall. And then they have the feeders of Lebanon. The people are migrating from the east, and they find this place, the plane that the people are. And they're like, this is kind of it.

9:55 This is it. Let's be here. We have been migrating from the east, all these places. Some people speculate there's like the few first side search historians talked about the section a little bit, and he's speculate that there was fear of blood. And maybe that's why they build this big pool tower. So they're going to bounce blood. They can run the tower and survive as well. They've got to try to flood the earth again.

10:28 But there's this notion that it's like we don't migrate anymore. This is the place we are the people. Let's be strong in the moment and the place. And I had always heard that the kids' stories version of this for me was that they somehow, I don't know if anybody told me explicitly, but this is all the way I thought, that they wanted to figure out how to get to heaven on their own.

11:00 If they were going to build this tower up into heaven, and then I don't know. So heaven were a place in the clouds where if you've got the spiral high enough, you find the clouds, you've stained it on something like that was what was in my head. They wanted to build this tower to heaven. And I don't know if that's really it. I read this again and it says, so they have the bidding in and the mortar.

11:30 And they said, come, build us up the city and the tower with the top in the heaven. I don't think it's really that they thought that they could find heaven by building a tower really high. A little more careful now. But the challenge is the next quad. Let's build with the top in the heaven. And let us make a move for ourselves. Let's be beat first over the face of the whole earth.

12:04 Let's see. Let's build a name for ourselves. That would be, let's be the first. Because the whole point of them was to be dispersed over the whole earth. That was the whole point. God made all the animals floating, swimming, peening in the ground and walking upon the earth and flying in the air.

12:42 But the culmination of creation, the crown of creation, the pinnacle was let me make humanity in our image. Let's take some special time and care to create image plans who will still be earth and some do it. Who will walk around and back there as the chapter 9, he reminds Noah's family, you know, still the earth is to do it.

13:16 He also said, now all the animals will be afraid of you. They'll run through you. And I give you, he said, I give you all the animals for food if you need them. Right? He's resetting the order. Humanity is intended to be the image bearer of God out into creation. Not the creator image.

13:54 Into a world that needs it. This is a little bit interesting. I've thought about this before. If you put the garden, you have it all set up. You've got the first one. Even before they figured God told the other, and they tried to be God themselves.

14:27 And Paul, even before they Paul, they're there to work with God and to do it. It seems interesting to me that he's making a whole garden and he does it like a self-perpetual man. Like, you know, like when we got our first album, our son was touring to the earth's island here the night about when we got into our house, we bought the first house.

14:59 He had lived a lot of places by then, right in the night. We bought a house, and it didn't seem like that. But he tells us a little bit stuff, you know, sign and mortgage, but it didn't make you feel particularly old or anything to own how those are excited. And then when we moved in, the person in the midst of doing some construction to the kitchen, when we bought it, it didn't have an oven. And it was one of the others, you know, where you have the great stove top here and the oven on the side, and it broke in.

15:31 So we had to go find another one. And, you know, we're like 27, 28, and we have grown that budget. We'll stay around the budget. And so we went to Southeast Steel and said, hey guys, we're the people that have been sitting in the toilet. And we put the oven into the hole in the cabinet and I'm standing there and I'm like opening and closing the oven and realizing what an old downer.

16:06 But somebody had to have an oven and my responsibility to spend my $500 on this oven, up and down, opening and closing it. And the thing that made me think of it was like we got, we spent following down to the air, because we got the one that wasn't South Steel. Because I thought, this is actually South Steel, right? This is hot inside. They're really hot. And you got to see all the stuff out of it. So that's the one that wasn't South Steel. It's interesting to me that God makes autumn and Eve, he's got the garden of his dreams.

16:37 And the garden needs someone to work with. Like that's a great focus fall down in their mouths and the corn drips off the top or whatever. You know what I mean? But they have to do the work. And so a generation's later outside of the garden, past the flood, the call is the same. It's like humanity on the plain of thin art is the image bearer of God in a world that needs it.

17:09 And humanity continues to say, I'm not using the bearer of God. I'm not pointing you to someone else. I don't need a spur or a spur or pointing to someone pointing to me. I decide. I will gain my future. I accomplish the work. I provide for myself. I protect myself.

17:40 I contain love enough for those around me. I contain mercy enough for those around me. All anger from me is righteous. All am in it. They stand on the plain of thin art. Go, good news. We have arrived. Build a tower. Let them know we're here. Let something happen and we get to first. And they forget how great we are.

18:11 There's a song, one of the songs that God created humanity. Just a little load, right? You are phenomenal. I mean, the people on the plain of thin art probably were phenomenal. I was talking somewhere about how lately exercise has almost a spiritual component to it for me.

18:46 The melding of skirt, gown, physicality, because I'm so amazed at a body that I get. And later I've been thinking about the physicality of the resurrection of the dead. That we were intended to be body and soul, flesh and spirit together. You have unique ideas, not the residents. You have a positive to love and create and forgive and provide.

19:19 You are pretty phenomenal. It's understandable that you would be mistaken from time to time. That maybe, maybe you don't need a gun. Maybe, maybe you can handle it. Maybe, maybe the moment that you're in is the best.

19:51 It will get maybe free right here. Maybe, arrest the power of the stop, the movement. Freeze the moment. And try your best accomplishment. Right in there, both descendants of Noah, moving east, across the plain of thin art.

20:21 And you know what? This is it. Put God's hat on for a second. I just for the sake of the story of Genesis, but God's hat on for a second. What? Right? What kind of blind arrogance

20:57 from this created being to suggest or suppose that they have any group what comes next or what came forth. As though they can predict the future, as though they know what's going on in places where they are not coming off. As though they have capacity to create and contain the sins of life.

21:28 What? To assume that they don't need the God who just a few generations go save them and a few generations before that thought of the idea of life at all. So that's why this phrase, I really just want to remember, I'll talk about the Hebrews professor I had before, read lessons, such a cool guy, a super energetic home. We would have the Hebrew class in the morning, and he's a little bit smaller than me,

21:59 and it was a big class that everybody had to take Hebrew, and he would really like to preach, because he'd talk really loud, you know, and he would get through this syntax, it's not a lot of syntax in Hebrews, the meat of Hebrew is all the go-kon, just remembering all the go-kon, what's off these three letter root words, and so how fast should she go through the vocabulary? And it's sticky because she would, before he came to Hebrew, he had run for five miles and then read the original text for an hour,

22:30 and then worked on its commentary of Job, and then he'd come to class, it's like loaded for bed, he'd been thinking about it all morning already, you know, and then by the time he was in the vocabulary, he'd been telling you all the places that were to curse, and so I remember the image of him going on vocabulary, even more than the vocabulary word, right? And there was one vocabulary word in the story of Babel, where he's talking about God and his functions merge, coming down, and he's like, there's a context in this story of Babel where I remember he did this,

23:01 because when he's causing this word of Babel, where God is like, God's like, coming down all the way, and I just just see, he's like, it's almost silly, so when they describe what God is doing, in order to drive home in a story, Moses in a desert pass the story in the ether from the famous, to remember this one thing, you are phenomenal. Build powers, cultivate similar things, to however big or capable you get, your God is larger.

23:34 However impressed you are, or unimpressed you are, with your accomplishments, with your capacity, with your capability, with your excuse, with your potential, no matter how much of the manner you are with the people who love you, oppressed you are with the people who don't, no matter how big your conception of yourself is, or anything else, or anything else than you. I am bigger than you.

24:07 Comes down all the way down, looks at the tower of these insolent, ignorant, prideful. Think they don't need it. Give them another shot. That's a little, little courts ground.

24:38 It's like these folks will be bothered when they remember that they are in affairs, not in immigrants, but in those. When their job is to fill the earth into do, when they realize they are living in a world that needs them, but if they are going to be who they were created to be, they are going to need a connection to me. I have got to mess them up. I have got to mess them up.

25:08 I have got to mess them up. I have got to think about the attitude that says, let's just park here for a minute. Now, remember all the folks who remember David, he's so excited, he's like, Paul Terres, he's expanded to zero larger than ever before. He's like, hey, I'm going to build your big house, man. And God's like, David, I do not need it, Paul. Okay? I thought of that. Remember when they, when they become a nation,

25:39 and they're like, give us a king. We need a king. We want a king, just like everyone else in the emblem of the statue. We need to take these like dudes. You guys do not need a king. Remember when Jesus takes his drink, load his friends up on the mound. He loads up Transc

26:09 There is a whole world happening that needs us. Come on, we're going back down. And then when he, after the resurrection, when he calls his close friend to the hill of Galilee, and gets the book, all very harmonized, you give it to me. Therefore, as you come and go about, for a moment, carry my hand with you. Don't forget to put everything I have with the man to do. And don't call the name of Father, Son, of Holy Spirit,

26:40 because you'll be coming and going all throughout the world. You all are phenomenal. Not by accident, by the image regarding you. And it is important to remember that what makes you phenomenal is the image of God. That the God who made you, made you phenomenal. Your creativity, your generosity, your mercy,

27:10 in the shadow of his, not something unique to you. You carry the image of the ultimate provider, the ultimate benefactor, the ultimate creator, and the world needs to be reminded. You all are phenomenal, and the world needs you. That's what I take from God. That we are phenomenal, because we are phenomenal. And he leaves us phenomenal people in the world,

27:44 world needs. We pray that we can be people who get it, who leave our little planes and towers and go out into the world, and we are just young. Hey Lord, thank you for placing your image in us, and commiting your eyes out into the world. Think of what that means, how we can bear your image, fill earth and to do it in the places and the patterns

28:18 and the opportunities that you give to each other. We also need to use the same for this day.