I gave you a very simple outline for Genesis at its simplest, Genesis tells us about 4 big events and 4 key people.!

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1 Title: City of Babel Text: Genesis 11:1-9 Scripture to be Read in the Service: Acts 2:1-8 Scripture reading for this week: Genesis 12-14; Ezekiel 36, Psalm 23, John I think my life motto should be, It seemed like a good idea at the time. There have just been several occasions where that would fit. One of those was when I decided to take the stairs down from the Amarillo Club. Our church staff ate there once a year and its on the top floor of the tallest building in town. 31 stories. Its so flat in West Texas you can see miles from there. But one time, in a bout of foolishness, I agreed to race down the stairs with another church staff member. After about 10 flights, I realized that i really should have taken stock of my footwear that was no fun in wingtips. You may have seen this week that residents at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai may soon face taking the stairs as their daily reality there is a dispute over fees in the building, and the owner is threatening to shut down the elevators. What makes that threat extra serious is the fact that this is the tallest building in the world 160 storiestaking the stairs to get a muffin in the lobby might burn as many calories as a marathon Those who live in the private apartments at the Burj pay around $55,000 a year in rent and the extra fees add a cool $25,000. Its a high price to pay to make the claim that you live in the tallest building in the world. Over the last 150 years there has been something of an arms race to make that claim to the tallest tower. New York City claimed it for 87 years then Chicago with the Sears Tower for 30 years. Since then, that distinction has gone to Asia the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, the Taipei 101 in Taiwan; and then the Burj in Dubai. There are plans in the works now for a taller building, to be built in a remote field in Hunan, China and they plan to assemble it in 3 months Its a prefab building, with components made in a factory and then flown to the site. If it happens, it will be 220 stories high and house 30,000 people. Unreal. Well before the age of skyscrapers, the tallest buildings in the world were European Cathedrals. But going farther and farther back in history we find a groups of builders trying to reach the sky. So turn with me to Genesis 11. I gave you a very simple outline for Genesis at its simplest, Genesis tells us about 4 big events and 4 key people. The events: creation, fall, flood, Babel. So we come today to the 4th big event. The people: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. And what we ve seen in these first chapters of Genesis is a really sorry progression of sin. Adam and Eve misused their freedom and were kicked out of the garden. Cain murdered Abel.

2 Things degraded so far that we had the judgment of the flood. It said that every thought of their heart was only evil continually. And remember at the end of the flood, we saw that while humanity had not changed, God declared, in the covenant of the rainbow, to never again destroy the earth like that. The pain and sting of sin will be borne in another way. So for our scripture reading this week, I hope you read that next week s is on the back of the worship guide, we had chapter And chapter 10 describes the nations spreading tracing the line of humanity from Noah s sons. And then we come to chapter 11. Look at verse 1. Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words. It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another, Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly. And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. They said, Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth. The LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. The LORD said, Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another s speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth. -Genesis 11:1 9 I don t know about you, but at first glance this story is a real head-scratcher. It seems to raise more questions that it answers. When you sit down and read chapter 10 and 11, in 10 humanity is spreading to these different areas as different nations. And in 11 they re back together again as one. And they build a city and a tower in the middle. Seems innocent enough. But then God s perspective comes in. And some read this and see God as very insecure here like humanity is almost to God s level, so God needs to do something to kick the chair out from under them. It almost feels like the wizard of Oz, afraid that someone is about to rip back the curtain. We can take a strange impression of God from this story. And since God is threatened, he scrambles the language of humanity. If this passage was all we knew of God our theology would be very strange indeed. Now, what is clear that this is another story about sin and punishment. We ve seen several of these already in Genesis chapter 3, Adam and Eve, Chapter 4, Cain. Chapter 6, the flood. So we can see the pattern. But what exactly is the sin? Building a city? Building a tower? Pride? Idolatry?

3 Lots of questions here, so let s try to tackle this and see if we can draw close to what this might mean so that we can learn from their mistake and learn a little more about what God wants from us. When we try to fit this with chapter 10; chapter 11 may be moving back in time, looping back to this event before they spread out and are using different languages. And they gather at Shinar. And they hatch a plan. They become the first city planners. And they start making bricks. And its amazing how the technology described here stays the same. Our team going to Ethiopia next month is burning bricks and putting them together like this. Now I assume that the problem here isn t the construction technology they re using. But I think maybe verse 4 gives us some clues in their speech to themselves.. There is a rule of thumb in the Bible that when people talk to themselves it's generally a negative thing. (Whereas today it's totally normal. I have the best conversations with myself.) Jesus told stories about people doing self talk about needing bigger barns or this or that, and it's almost always in a negative example. And honestly, much of our self talk, going on in our heads isn't all that positive or fruitful anyway. So maybe that s part of it. When we re so busy talking to ourselves, or hatching our plans, or rehashing conversations in our heads I don t know about you, but I m much wittier when i replay my conversations than when the real thing is happening. But when we re talking to ourselves all the time, we re not seeking God. Many have pointed out the pronouns in their speech. Its all about us, we, and our. There is no thought of God or God s desires, but the language is all about us. and surely you know people who talk like this. They can one up any story you tell with their own exploits. They have a favorite subject and it is themselves So lots of self focus going on here. Maybe that s part of their problem. Our focus is supposed to be on loving God and loving other people. Not consuming all our resources and energy on ourselves. I think a big part of what s wrong with this picture is pride. They want to reach the heavens and make a name for themselves. Archaeology has discovered in the area of Babylon a certain type of tower that was built in these days. Its a pyramid-like structure called a ziggurat. Its a stairstepped pyramid it really looks more like the pyramids in Mexico than the ones in Egypt. And some people have noticed that these look a little like siege ramps like what an invading army would use to take a city. And some have seen this as an attempt to storm heaven to build a tower that will reach the Gods. This is like the sin of Adam and Eve all over again. Reaching and taking what is not for them. We want to be on the level with God And certainly this idea that they want to make a name for themselves that seems like a prideful act. They want to see their names in lights at the top of the tower. They want to memorialized in stone. To make a name. Our culture certainly has these tendencies where we see this idolatry of fame. Of attention. People desperately want their names trending on twitter. We see outrageous behavior by people to stay in the spotlight to keep their name on people s lips. And we all tend to want this in one form or another from time to time want this. Pride runs deep in us. I ve shared my favorite quote about pride from Alexsander Solzhenitsyn. Pride grows on

4 the human heart like lard on a pig. We are prideful people. We like the idea of making a name and that it would live on and on and on. (THE CURSE OF THE TALLEST BUILDING IN THE WORLD) And so if we re trying to hunt down what s wrong in this story, I think we re on the right track here. Pride; wanting to be on the level with the Creator denying that we are His creatures and rejected His ways. But let me give you one other idea for helping to unlock the dynamic of what happens with the tower and the builders and with the punishment. Part of the working of sin flows from the power gap between us and God. God is perfect and good and powerful; perfect in knowledge. God is infinite. And we are not. God is Holy, and we fall short. And a part of the brokenness from the fall is that we generally don t like that gap and we want to reduce it. And there are two ways to do that. We have the olympics going on. And I love the olympics. Just the dedication of the athletes to their craft. Its amazing to think of being the very best in the world at what you do. And these athletes have incredible natural talent, great coaching, intensive training all coming together. And think of a great olympic rivalry. Number 1 and number 2. And when there is that athlete who is better than you, what do you do? Option 1: strive to be better; climb higher, train harder. Redouble your efforts; and strive to close the gap, bit by bit, or inch by inch. Option 2: hire a goon to whack her in the knee with an iron bar. Do you remember that? Tanya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan. Incredible, that Harding saw that she wasn t going to win; so her ex-husband and her bodyguard, hired someone to break Kerrigan s leg. If you can t beat them, put them in a cast bring them down a few notches. As a society we love doing this;tearing people down. If we find someone on a pedestal we want to dig up the dirt; we tear down authorities. We poke holes in their background. If someone is striving to set a moral example; there is a feeding frenzy to pick their lives apart. Do you remember Hugh Hefner offering a $1,000,000 bounty to anyone who could prove Tim Tebow wasn t so righteous. Our culture wants to tear down. Its pitiful. But we do this on smaller levels, too. Isn t this at the heart of good gossip; spreading little nuggets of information that pull down others. Bring them down a notch or two. Maybe that s what this tower was about bringing down god. Historians and archaeologists who have studies their ziggurats in the ancient world have discovered a few things. They really weren t built with the idea of going up to heaven or climbing up to reach god. But instead they were built to entice the gods down. At the top was a room with a bed and a table set for the god. And then there was a stairway down and at the bottom, in the city, was a temple where people would bring sacrifices and the god would bless them. And so the idea of this tower was to entice the god to human level where they could do the business of exchanging a sacrifice for a blessing from the god.

5 So maybe the problem with the tower of babel wasn t so much climbing to get up equal with god, but that it represented a religious idea of bringing God down, so we can use and manipulate Him. Jim Denison has written recently about transactional religion. That s where we reduce our relationship to God to us doing something for God that obligates him to respond for us. If we offer the right sacrifice, say the right words, do the right song and dance, then God becomes a genie at our beck and call. We ve pulled God down from freedom and sovereignty and power to make God manageable and controllable. Or another way we pull God down is to make God in our image. This has been done through history. We make God like us just more so.the Greeks and Romans did this in their mythology. Their gods were just long-lived, super powerful versions of themselves. They were petty and backstabbing. They stole, cheated and lied. They were conniving and immoral. Its like a soap opera on a divine stage. Throughout history people have done this they cast Jesus or cast God in their own image. So for the philosophers, God was the great eternal philosopher. For the Nazis, God was the great aryan in the sky. And today we often see God cast as the God of success or the self-help guru. But once we pull God down and make him in our image there truly is nothing that we won t do. If we make God like us then why strive to be holy? If God is like us then what we want must be right. But that s the opposite of the Genesis order. We are made in God s image. And our lives are to be in His order. And whenever we make him in our image then we ve become the city of Babel. So what does God do? What s the punishment? God confused the language and God scattered. One of the greatest challenges to cross-cultural work is the language barrier. I was with two friends from church in southwest China, and, well, it was an emergency. And we found the bathroom; two doors; no pictograms just writing we didn t understand. And Jonathan had to pick one chance. Well, he was wrong. That s just how it goes. I have a friend, Enrique from Guadalajara, Mexico. And he came to the US for school. And the only english word he had for food when he came was hamburger. So everywhere he went, he would go up to the counter and say, hamburger. He didn t ever like hamburgers. But that was his only word. The pain of the confusion of language. And all of this as a result of the tower; and the pride, and the tearing down of God. This 4th big event of the opening chapters of Genesis is a commentary on the sorry state of humanity in relationship to the creator. And because that relationship is broken, all of our other relationships are damaged in misunderstanding and miscommunication and the rest. And the punishment, the scattering its not that God is insecure. But once humanity is forming god in our image; then there is nothing we won t do; nothing is to base or too violent or depraved. And so God, for our own benefit, confused and separates.

6 God has more for us than this. And God will not leave us in this state. What we ll see next week is the turning the start of God s plan for making things right. But let s jump ahead to God s ultimate answer. There is a little irony in the Babel story they re building a tower to heaven. But God still has to come down to even look at it. But the culmination of God s redemption plan is to come down again in the incarnation in Jesus Christ. And then earlier in the service we read Acts 2; where God comes down again in the giving of the Holy Spirit to us. And in that great event, when the spirit moves, we have a reversal of Babel from the confusion of languages and people not hearing one another or listening, in Acts 2 we have the spirit descending, and apostles preaching and this word: And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? -Acts 2:8 God s great goal is not that we would live corrupt lives, worshipping a genie god cast in our image. And God does not desire that we live scattered and confused. But God s desire is that we live in unity to His spirit; in obedience to our Lord Jesus Christ. That we would strive together to pursue the true holiness of God. And instead of making a name for ourselves, that we would honor God s great name. We have the privilege today to celebrate God s reconciling work through Jesus Christ as God restored us to be the people we were made to be. And through the Lord s Supper we remember and celebrate his sacrifice on our behalf. If you are a guest here today, the Lord s Supper as we practice it is for those who have accepted Jesus Christ as Lord. If you have done that