Sermon Tone Analysis

Announcements

?

Reading: Genesis 11:1-9

Prayer

This morning, we are considering a second god of the age.

We looked last week at the god we all struggle with - the god of self.

How often we allow self to dictate what we do, how we think, and who we are!

We saw Jesus’ answer to self-worship - we we deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him, we are freed from tyranny to our sinful natures.

This week, we’ll consider a second human god, but not the individual.

This week, we focus on the collective - humanity.

The ideology of humanism is tough to pin down - on commentator compares it to nailing jello to a wall!

I think, however, there are a couple of core tenants we can identify that can help us grapple with what humanism teaches.

Tenants of Humanism

We Are Our Standard

This is the core of humanism - that everything depends on man.

A philosopher from the mid 5th century B.C. named Protagoras first made the statement that “man is the measure of all things.”

He was arguing that the way that men interpret truth was through the lens of their own knowledge and experiences.

Others have taken the statement further, however, to mean that everything is dependent on man, including truth.

Thus, men make truth to be true rather than truth being something objective beyond man.

This is how humanists see truth - truth depends on the individual, and is subject to change.

But there is also a collective value to truth - the collection of individuals within a society shape truth within that community.

So then, man is the measure of truth.

The story of the tower of Babel paints a picture of humanism at its core - men determine the “greater good” is to assemble a tower reaching to heaven.

They settle in Shinar, on a beautiful plain that seems like a perfect place to live and build.

They coordinate their activities - making and kiln-drying bricks, building a city and tower.

They seek the common benefit, “mak[ing] a name for ourselves...” (v.

4).

For the people at Babel, everything revolves around their communal desires, their collective efforts, their corporate ambitions.

Man is the measure - the standard by which everything is to be judged.

We Are Basically Good

At the core of this belief is a second tenant - that people are basically good.

Humanists will affirm that people are capable of doing good or evil, but that evil is always a result of something “wrong” or “amiss.”

Humanists, whether “religious” or “secular” as they define themselves, all hold some form of belief than man is naturally good or can be educated and trained to be good.

The Secular Humanist Declaration in 1981 states that “secular humanism places trust in human intelligence rather than in divine guidance.”

With enough intelligence, people will make decisions that are moral and good for the collective.

We can be our own salvation, without the need for God.

People on their own are good enough - they just need to be guided properly.

You see this inherent in the Babel narrative.

Verse one tells us that the entire world had one language and the same words.

There’s a wordplay going on - everybody is in agreement.

But there’s more than that - we have here a picture of all people on this Shinar plain looking out for the “common good.”

This is a people who agree together on what is “right” and are working in concert with one another to make it happen.

That sounds good, doesn’t it?

It almost makes me want to start singing a song like “We are the world, we are the children” or “If I could teach the world to see in perfect harmony...”

Almost.

Notice how they act with one mind - same language and same words (1), they all are migrating to the same place (plain in the land of Shinar - 2), have the same work (making bricks - 3) with the same purpose (building a city and tower - 4) and with the same goal (making a name for themselves - 4) and the same underlying fear (being made to disperse over the face of the earth - 4).

They believe in one another so much that they are all bought in.

They are their own saviors - they have no need of God whatsoever.

We Don’t Need God

And that’s the third tenant.

We don’t need God - we’re good enough on our own.

The Second Humanist Declaration of 1973 puts it bluntly, “no deity will save us; we must save ourselves.”

That’s humanism in a nutshell - the belief that it’s all up to us, and that we (with enough training and proper access to goods, etc.) will be the heroes we need.

God is obsolete - we’re too advanced to need him anymore.

Babel makes this obvious.

But to see why, look back at Genesis 1:29:

The very first command God gives his newly-created humanity was to make babies and spread out all over the place!

“Be fruitful and multiply” is a command to populate the earth.

Any world view that emphasizes depopulation - that there are just too many people around and that we must stop multiplying - is antithetical to God and his Word.

But the second part of that command, “fill the earth and subdue it” gets to the greater design for humanity.

God wants humans to share in his dominion over the world.

He has given us, as men and women, a prime place in administering his reign.

Just as governments have various agents and individuals who administer the rule of law, so God has his own administration here on this rocky planet third from our sun: US! Paul said it this way:

But the men at Babel wanted nothing to do with God’s plan.

His instructions were to fill the earth and subdue it - to spread out and to administer his reign over the globe.

But what do they do?

They settled together.

They abandoned his design.

They rejected his identification for them, and all in the name of not fulfilling his command.

Humanism seems right.

Everyone with one speech and one heart, working on one task with one purpose and one goal - that seems perfect.

But it was not God’s goal, not God’s purpose, not God’s task, not God’s heart, not God’s words.

So it is that humanism fails.

Every.

Time.

How Do We Reject Humanism?

So how do we reject the false god of humanity?

I believe the answers are also found at Babel.

Look again at verse 4:

Look at verse 5:

A while back, I referred to a form of poetic structure called a chiasm.

Chiasm is when there are layers to the story or poetry, and the core layer holds the main point.

The center of the Oreo is the cream - the best part.

Verse 5 is the cream of the Oreo of the story of Babel in Genesis 11.

Do you see the irony?

Men wanted to build the tower “with its top in the heavens” (4).

But God still had to come down to get to it.

Man’s best attempt to get to God is far, far short.

God always has to come down to us - we can never ascend to him.

There’s another sign of man’s shortcomings in this verse.

God comes down “to see the city and the tower.”

The word used here has the idea of inspection - to look at carefully to understand or to reveal the flaws within.

When man makes his best attempts to impress God, God sees right through.

He isn’t duped.

He isn’t distracted.

He discerns clearly.

Notice a third shortcoming in this same verse: who does the building?

Not men: children of man.

It’s subtle, but that’s an insult to these would-be gods.

They are not even called men, but children.

Just yesterday, I heard an interview with one of the military officials of the U.S. talking about the situation between Ukraine and Russia.

This individual referred to President Biden and President Zelensky, but then he said “Mr.