Genesis 11:1-9
Man’s continued rebellion and God’s gracious response to restrain rebellion
NOTE: JUST A REMINDER, THAT THE BELOW ARE NOTES NOT A FULL MANUSCRPT OF WHAT WILL BE SAID. SO, USE THEM ACCORDINGLY. YOU MAY LISTEN ALONG WITH THE RECORDING WHEN IT IS POSTED AFTER THE SERMON.
Genesis is loaded with answers to why we are the way we are, and how we got to where we are, and it is loaded with theological and. therefore, practical insight.
Our task is to mine it out and apply it.
Fathers, I want to encourage you to proactively grow in this effort. Let’s strive to pass on a theologically sound legacy.
The discipline of theology is the Chief of all disciplines that must inform all others.
We are all theologians. The question is whether we are good ones or sloppy ones.
Theology is always happening. How we think on God determines how we live, and it affected the Babylonians in our passage today.
We are either making decisions as imitators of God (Ephesians 5:1) or we are making decisions divorced from the knowledge and imitation of God, which is an applied theology, practical atheism.
What do we see? What does it mean?
10:9; 11:1-4 – Mankind in inclined to a rebellious heart that distorts the knowledge of God.
The rebellious heart is the Babylonian heart.
Nimrod, Ham’s grandson, whose name means rebellion, founds the kingdom of Babylon that will continue the rebellion we see unfolding in Genesis.
Babylon is viewed throughout the whole of Scripture as the antithesis of godliness (Judah is carried captive to Babylon, Revelation 18 refers to the city of the Antichrist’s rebellion as “Babylon”.)
What do we learn about the rebellious heart?
- The rebellious heart distorts the knowledge of God. 11:4a
The Babylonians were theologians, and their false doctrine led to their practice of temple building.
The Babylonians were famed for their temples called “ziggurats”.
They viewed their foundations as being laid in the underworld and their tops reaching into the heavens.
Babel has multiple meanings, and one is “gate of god”, and with their temples reaching tall heights, Babylon considered itself closer to “god” than anywhere else on earth.
These temples sought to provide a place for the “gods” to eat, sleep and receive their worship lest they pay the people back with some catastrophe.
The problem? Their theology was demonically false, codified at the tree when Adam and Eve were deceived by this demonic doctrine that they can be “gods”.
So, these false “gods”/idols are projections of people with superhero status assigned to them.
They are amazingly human, and therefore their worship reflects human needs.
- The rebellious heart seeks its own fame. 11:4b
- The rebellious heart seeks to push back against God’s purpose. 11:4c
See Genesis 1:26-28.
Application:
- Don’t be surprised by man’s tendency to distort the knowledge of God by reading onto God our own selves.
- Don’t be surprised by man’s tendency to ignore sound theology and indiscriminately embrace terrible theology.
- Don’t be shocked at man’s tendency to rebel against God’s word.
- KNOW THIS: Theology affects practice whether you are aware of it or not.
- Pursue theological soundness and accuracy.
11:1-9 – God mocks the Babylonian’s false teaching.
Genesis 11:1-9 is a satire of man’s attempts to be “god” and thus make “gods” in their own image and then trying to placate them by reaching into their realm.
REMEMBER THE AUDIENCE: Moses wants his people to not be have their doctrine trashed by Babylonian theology.
Babylon was famed for its temple tower or ziggurat, whose foundations were in the underworld and whose top was in the heavens. No, says Genesis, so far from reaching heaven, Babel’s tower could hardly be seen from there—the Lord had to come down to see it (5). Babel (also)[1]means ‘gate of god’, and Babylon considered itself closer to god than anywhere else on earth. It regarded itself as the religious, intellectual and cultural capital of the ancient world, the showpiece of human civilization. ‘Rubbish’ says v 9, Babel does not mean ‘gate of god’ but ‘confusion’ or ‘folly’, and far from human wisdom, Babylon’s ruined ziggurat, shows human impotence before the judgment of God. Put in modern terms the building of the city and tower may be seen as a human bid for self-achieved security on the basis of technological progress. ‘Man proposes, but God disposes.[2]
- God came down not because he didn’t know, but to mock their false teaching.
The God of the bible is the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful Creator who has determined the beginning from the end. He’s not “open” to alternative endings in which the enemy wins, maybe.
Moses is, in essence, trash talking the false notion that man can reach and manipulate God.
In essence, it’s like Moses saying, “You think your temple reaches God? It’s so inadequate God had to come down just to see it.”
They are like, “Our tower reaches the gods.” God is on his hands and knees to get a close look, and he’s like, “Aww, that’s cute…and tiny.”
Psalms 2:1-4 (ESV) Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,
3 “Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”
4 He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the Lord holds them in derision.
Application:
- God’s mocking of and sarcasm toward false teaching is to instruct his people on the folly of bad doctrine not a license for his people to mock or be sarcastic toward others who are not in truth.
- 2 Timothy 2:24-26 sets the tone our engagement.
2 Timothy 2:24-26 (ESV) And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, 25 correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, 26 and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.
11:6-9 To restrain the propensity for evilthat will come from bad teaching, to exalt his fameand see that his purposes are accomplished, God confuses the languages and scatters the people into nations.
God accomplishes his purpose in filling the earth by confusing language and causing nations to move throughout the earth. 11:7-9
- Linguistic and cultural barriers are constant reminders of the curse of sin and man’s
man’s rebellion against God.
- Linguistic and cultural barriers also remind us of the mammoth task of the Great
Commission.
- Linguistic and cultural barriers also define for us “mission” versus “ministry”.
Application:
- The fall and man’s rebellion will not stop God’s purposes. His is not “open” to alternative endings!
God will repair in salvation what he scattered due to sin. Zephaniah 3:9-11; Acts 2:6-21
- What God scatters he will bring back together with the powerful gospel of the kingdom rule and salvation of Jesus Christ.
Colossians 1:13-20 (ESV) He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
The Preeminence of Christ
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
- We can confidently engage the world with the gospel of the kingdom.
[1]Parenthesis mine.
[2]Gordon J. Wenham, “Genesis,” in New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition, ed. D. A. Carson et al., 4th ed. (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994), 69.
Theology in the Dirt 