15 - The Tower Of Confusion 2010
Genesis...The Beginnings 2010 • Sermon • Submitted
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Beginnings
Part 15
“The Tower of Confusion”
We now reach the last of the 4 great events in the primeval history section of Genesis contained in the first 11 chapters.
We ended last time with Noah, his family, and all of the creatures on the ark disembarking and starting all over again. Noah is now a type of Second Adam. It is through his three sons—Shem, Ham, and Japheth—that the world will now be repopulated.
We also saw that Noah sinned by becoming drunk and bringing shame to himself. He was discovered lying naked in a cave, first by Ham. Ham immediately went out and broadcast the event to his brothers in a mocking, deriding attitude, bringing dishonor to his father.
On the other hand, Shem and Japheth walked into the cave backwards and cast a covering on to Noah (see Gen 9: 20-27). When he awoke, Noah prophesied a curse on Ham’s descendants—the Canaanites.
Noah saw all the coarseness and shamelessness of Ham being transmitted into the vileness and filthiness of the Canaanite tribes of a future day. These same tribes were later subdued by the descendants of Shem.
And he also pronounced blessing on the descendants of Shem and Japheth.
Shem, the father of the Semites or Jewish peoples, was indeed blessed. It would be the Jews through whom God would channel both His revelations and His redemption. It was from Shem’s line that Abraham (Gen 11:10-27) and his descendants, the Israelites, would come.
Japheth would be the empire builder. Japheth was the father of the Greeks, the Romans, the Persians, and the Indo-Teutonic (German) races. These are the peoples who, for millennia, have held the destiny of men in their hands.
Following the Great Flood, Noah lived another 350 years (9:28-29).
Genesis 10 is called the Table of Nations, and it tracks all the descendants of Noah’s three sons. The final verse in Chapter 10 reads,
“These were the families of the sons of Noah, according to their generations, in their nations; and from these the nations were divided on the earth after the flood.”—vs. 32
The word “divided” is translated from a Hebrew word meaning “disrupted”, emphasizing man’s disruption in judgment after the flood. The whole chapter emphasizes the completeness of man’s dispersal following the confusion of languages at the Tower of Babel.
Genesis 11 opens to a world of only one language. In other words, they had a cultural unity. They thought alike. They expressed themselves in identical terms. In language, at least, there was unity. Everyone understood the other, no matter where one went on the planet.
What we will see is that the root cause for the dispersal of the nations was the building of the tower of Babel. Apparently, this tower was the brainchild of a man named Nimrod.
Regretfully, most of what people think about Nimrod, Babel, and the great tower of Babel arise, not from the account given by divine inspiration, but from medieval folklore. We are told by many, based only on these myths and legends, that the walls of Babel were nine miles high.
People commonly pass over the account given in Scripture with little notice and learn nothing from it, simply because they mistakenly picture a huge tower reaching upward toward heaven, so high that men hoped to walk into heaven by climbing a brick tower.
Satan so easily blinds us to the warnings and teachings of the Word of God! Here are the facts:
The city of Babel (Babylon) was built by cursed Ham’s grandson, Nimrod, in an act of rebellion against God, as a fortress to protect unbelieving rebels from the wrath and judgment of God.
Genesis 10:8-10 "And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel…in the land of Shinar."
The name "Nimrod" means rebel, and a rebel he was.
Nimrod was the cursed son of a cursed son. Nimrod knew the curse of God upon Ham and Canaan. He knew the reason for the curse. He knew what Ham had done to Noah. But being the proud man he was, Nimrod dared sit himself up as the judge of God’s judgment.
Some important things to note about Nimrod:
Nimrod was a mighty rebel
He was a hunter, but not just a hunter of game. This man was a bloodthirsty man. He wanted all men to be put in subjection to him. And he was determined to make it happen, no matter who he had to kill or how many.
God had said through Noah, "The sons of Ham will serve Japheth and Shem." Nimrod said, "We’ll see about that!”
The Bible records, "He…began to be a mighty one in the earth…" Nimrod proceeded to take possession of the land of Shinar and all the peoples of the East.
When we read in verse 9 that "he was a mighty hunter before the Lord," the word "before" would be better translated "against." So Nimrod was a mighty hunter who was in every way “against” the Lord.
The beginning of this God hating rebel’s empire was Babel.
It had been at least 300 years since the flood. The terror of God’s judgment was forgotten. The people were of one language, doing great, impressive things. We are told that Nimrod made himself powerful. He was on his own campaign to promote himself above all else, even God.
The gospel of the need for blood sacrifice to cover sin that he had learned from his grandfather Noah, and through his godly father Shem, was held in contempt. The worship of God was scorned.
The sheer power of Nimrod’s eventual wealth, influence, following, and terror caused the whole world—except for God’s chosen remnant—to follow and unite with him.
The city of Babel, which Nimrod built, was more than a place of government—Babel was a religious refuge.
Today, we all associate the word "Babel" with confusion. That is what the name has come to mean because God turned the place into confusion. But the word "Babel" originally meant something far different.
Nimrod named the city Babel because Babel meant "the gate of God." Nimrod claimed to be building the “gateway to God,” not just the city itself, but he claimed to have his own method of approaching God.
Yet he was in reality worshipping himself and calling it the worship of God! The story of how it all came down is found in Genesis 11:2-4…
"As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."
Babel was a refuge of lies, a place in which men tried to shield themselves from the fulfillment of Noah’s prophecy to Ham and his descendants.
Babel, like all false religion, was built by a confederacy of rebels.
"They said one to another…"
Honest, faithful, believing men do not try to gain the approval or amass the strength of others in their worship of God. They just worship God, obeying his will and his word. But when rebels decide to undertake an evil deed, they need the reinforcement of other rebels. And so they all “said to one another,” talking amongst themselves the plan to build Babel and the Tower.
Babel, like all false religion, was a religious refuge built on man’s wisdom, not God’s command.
The followers of Nimrod had discovered a new way of building. They learned to make bricks and mix mortar. The bricks are a picture of their self-righteous works, held together by the mortar of their rebellious will. Every brick that was laid on top of another was an act of arrogance and rebellion.
Babel, the so-called “gate of God,” was the most splendid city and the most gorgeous temple the world had ever seen; but God held it in utter contempt; as did the descendants of Shem and Japheth, who continued to worship the Lord in spirit and in truth.
Like all false religion, the city and tower of Babel were built by men, for men, to protect them from the judgment of God. That is the meaning of verse 4.
"Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.’"
Obviously, the sons of Ham understood that the curse God had placed upon them meant the dispersion of their race through all the earth, and the subservience of their family to the descendants of Shem and Japheth.
They said, "No sir. We will stay right here and protect ourselves from God’s judgment by building a house and religion which he will have to approve of, by which the whole world will know our names forever!”
“There is no way we’re going to allow our descendants to serve the descendants of Shem and Japheth. We will never be in a slavery position to anyone!”
The tower “reaching to heaven” is, of course, not literal. It simply implied a very high, massive wall (see Deut. 1:28; 9:1), a fortress.
The idea behind it was—we will in our own strength and by our own efforts build our own path to heaven!
The religion of Babel was exactly the same as the religion that has become increasingly popular in our current generation. It is a repeat of Cain’s religion, the religion of the curse.
False religion says: I can get to God on my own terms. I will not approach Him His way. I will do it my way.
All false religion is man centered, flesh pleasing, based in free will and good works. It is religion by which man attempts to make himself acceptable to God on his own terms.
The dirty little secret is that the trap of false religion has always been God’s curse upon those who refuse to worship him on His terms.
2 Thess. 2:10-12 “They perish (the lost) because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.”
This “delusion” Paul mentions are the consequences of rejecting God’s grace and salvation.
This was the mark of Cain.
This is the mark of the beast.
This is the religion of our age.
In ancient Babylon, in the days of Nimrod, in defiance to the God of Noah, men said, "Let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name."
That is the creed of all false religion. The religion of Babylon is any religion which centers in man, depends upon man, and gives man a name of honor.
It doesn’t matter what name the religion wears; any religion that makes salvation dependent upon something man does, rather than what Christ has done, is the religion of Babylon.
Any religion that makes salvation something determined by the will of man rather than the will of God is the religion of Babylon.
The story ends with the sobering depiction of God’s judgment in vs. 5-9:
“But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."
8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel—because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.”
God divided mankind; He separated us into nations and tribes to contain our sinful ambitions.