In the Beginning: A Futile or Flourishing Future? (Genesis 11:1-9)

Hello, friends.

This is Pastor Creighton.

Thank you for tuning in to Newsong Church's Sermon Podcast.

At Newsong Church, we want to see Jesus lifted high in Port Perry, Ontario, as we worship, grow, and serve.

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Our first lesson this morning is from the Old Testament, the book of Genesis, chapter 11, verses 1 to 9.

Genesis 11:1–9

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.

And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.

And they said to one another, Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.

And they had brick for stone and bitch for mortar.

And then they said, Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.

And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of man had built.

And the Lord said, Behold, there are only one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do.

And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.

So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth.

And they left off building the city.

Therefore its name was called Babel, because the Lord confused the language of all the earth.

And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

The word of the Lord.

Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens.

And let us make a name for ourselves.

Let's pray.

Lord God, your mercy endures forever.

We invite you, Lord Holy Spirit, to illumine the illumine our hearts, to open the eyes of our hearts, and to behold once again your radiant glory.

And give us grace, Lord, that we may truly receive it, truly share in it.

Give us that glimpse, Lord Jesus, once again of yourself in all your radiance.

We pray, Lord, speak to us through these scriptures.

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Well, this summer's blockbuster film that has everyone talking is undoubtedly about a controversial American product which no doubt changed the world.

A fashionable 20th-century icon with a global following, who's working through the deep existential questions of human nature.

Oddly enough, I'm not talking about the Barbie movie.

I am talking about Oppenheimer, which chronicles the life of theoretical physicist and so-called father of the atomic bomb J.

Robert Oppenheimer.

Now, just as a disclaimer, Oppenheimer is not what you'd consider a family-friendly movie.

So if you do go and see it, if you choose to go and see it, just bear that in mind.

Now, in the movie, when Oppenheimer is recruited to lead the Manhattan Project, which is the secret American effort to build an atomic weapon during the Second World War, Oppenheimer is at first invigorated and ambitious.

Not only does he believe that such a bomb will bring a swift end to this war, saving millions of American and allied lives, he believes that such a device of unfathomable power may prove to be the ultimate deterrent and end all war, full stop.

This bomb will be Oppenheimer's, all of humankind's most glorious achievement, and with it, humankind can secure our prosperous future.

And yet, even if you go into the film like me, knowing very little about J.

Robert Oppenheimer, you do go knowing already something about where the story is going to go and how things are going to end.

Two atomic bombs will be dropped on Japan.

The nuclear age will be forever inaugurated, and the world will now live with the existential angst of imminent annihilation.

And what we now know on this side of the 20th century is what Oppenheimer comes to find out for himself.

Humanity's greatest technological achievement, the object of hope that we thought could usher in a new age of peace, cooperation, and human flourishing, has proven futile.

So today we conclude our journey through the first eleven chapters of Genesis, in which we discover God's design for human flourishing, vibrant, thriving, and abundant life.

That's what God's purposed us for.

God, we've seen, has made us male and female in his image, to enjoy perfect friendship with him and with one another, and to join him in the work of cultivating creation.

In other words, our greatest glory by design is discovered in who God is and nowhere else, because it's his image that we bear.

But we also discover that life on this side of Eden is not everything it's supposed to be.

Our first parents choose self-exaltation, self-glorification over trust in their creator.

And ever since, death, disorder, and destruction has marred and corrupted God's good creation, glorying in themselves, in their own ambition to be like God on their terms, has resulted not in our first parents flourishing, but in utter futility.

Genesis wants us to pay attention because we all glory in something.

We all of us have someone or something of ultimate value, the greatest source of our purpose, pride, or pleasure.

That's what we glory in.

We cannot not glory in something.

We are, by design, creatures that glorify and glory in what is of ultimate importance to us.

Is that clear?

Okay, because it's been really unclear to me, even right into the beginning of this service, trying to think, how am I going to articulate this?

And then it hits me as we're singing this song.

I will build my life upon your love.

It is a firm foundation.

I will put my trust in you alone, and I will not be shaken.

Okay, have a look at those lyrics in your bulletin.

And imagine deleting those words, your love, and just putting a blank space in there.

I will build my life upon blank.

It is a firm foundation.

I will put my trust in blank alone, and I will not be shaken.

We all of us have something that fills that blank, don't we?

Sometimes we like to know we think what that thing is.

But then sometimes if we're honest ourselves, we know what really fills in that blank.

Whatever fills in that blank, what we build our life on, our firm foundation, where we put our trust, what we trust will not leave us shaken.

That is what we glory in.

So the question in Genesis, especially here in Genesis 11, is this will the thing that I glory in lead to futility or to my flourishing?

Let's turn to Genesis 11 together.

If you have your order of service, your Bible, I encourage you to open up there with me.

Genesis 11, verse 1.

Genesis 11:1

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.

And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.

So, in the first two verses, our passage peers back into primordial history and sees a time where humanity isn't yet divided by the barrier of different languages.

Noah and his family have once again been fruitful and multiplied and filled the earth, and now humanity is united, having this one language and one common purpose.

So this means human beings can communicate and they can cooperate universally, which is good because communication and cooperation as such are not what displeases God and what follows.

So go ahead and learn a language on Duolingo.

It's not going to provoke the wrath of God.

But what displeases God is the goal that this one language humanity has set for itself.

The goal towards which humanity is communicating and cooperating.

The goal that pits our own self-determination against God's good design for us.

So what's humanity's goal here?

Verse 3.

And they, humanity, human beings, said to one another, Come, let us make bricks, let's burn them thoroughly.

And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar, and they said, Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower, with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.

So here's the goal.

We're going to build a city and a tower.

But it's what this city and what this tower represents that's so crucial for us to catch Nusan.

This city and this tower is humanity's greatest technological achievement and a monument to our own self-glorification.

This city and this tower bear witness to our self-styled independence and self-sufficiency apart from God.

This city and this tower declares to the whole world humanity has no need of God to achieve our flourishing on our own terms.

We're going to make a name for ourselves.

Thank you very much.

So notice that this is no ordinary tower.

Its top is built higher than any other structure, reaching into the heavens, the place where it's understood that God Himself dwells in his manifest glory.

So, yes, these folks were thinking maybe more spatially than we're inclined to.

They understood the skies themselves as closely linked with God's own dwelling.

Now, likely this tower is what's called a ziggurat, which looks less like a skyscraper, which is how I always imagined the Tower of Babel, and more like a massive leveled structure.

Think more like a Mayan temple, you know, on a massive scale.

And at the very top you would have this sacred space where it's understood that the divine would take up residence.

We've arrived on his porch, and now we're inviting him to move in, so to speak.

So perhaps we could say that having completed the tower in the builder's imagination, they had not only reached God's doorstep, but had now confined him to the living quarters that they themselves had provided for him.

And they had done so all on their own, independently and self-sufficiently.

Bishop and scholar David Atkinson writes that our human sin is that we fail to recognize that God is God, and we try both individually and corporately to take God's place.

This tower is built to reach for and to grasp at God's glory for ourselves.

If we can reach the very heights of heavens in which God dwells, is there nothing we can't achieve?

And if there's nothing we can't achieve, doesn't that make us as powerful as God Himself?

Isn't that the ultimate name we could make for ourselves?

Through our own achievements, we could be the name above every other name.

Ours can be the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.

Amen.

This city and this tower are the epitome of self-glorification.

The Babel Project, as one commentator puts it, is all about human independence and self-sufficiency apart from God.

Fallen humanity, once barred from re-entering the garden by an angelic guard in Genesis 3, now believes that in Genesis 11, it can elevate itself back into this divine realm.

But here's the question: Will this attempt, this self-glorification, lead to flourishing or futility?

See, no matter how great the builders believe themselves to be, or how great they believe their achievement to be, God's word makes it clear God is greater still.

Verse 5.

The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built.

And the Lord said, Behold, they are one people, and they all have one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do, and nothing they propose to do will be impossible for them.

Come, let us go down and confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.

So verse five is one of my favorite examples of irony in all of Scripture.

As tall as our self-glorifying tower is, reaching, as the builders imagine, right into heaven itself, God still has to come down to see it.

That doesn't mean that God was absent during the tower's construction, or that he's surprised to see what humanity's been up to while he's been on break.

God is never absent from his creation because all creation itself subsists in God.

In him we live and we move and we have our being, we read in Acts 17.

So rather, the author of Genesis wants us, the readers, to understand that no matter how great or glorious we believe our self-sufficient achievements are, God is still infinitely greater yet.

He has to come down.

The builders have foolishly mistaken God's infinite glory for their own creaturely finitude.

If we want to meet with God, we cannot expect to work our way up to Him.

He must come down to us.

And the fact that humanity must rely on God's gracious condescension, his coming down to our level, is crucial for us to understand why God does what he does next.

God says to himself, This is only the beginning of what they will do.

Nothing they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

So is God threatened by humanity's achievement here?

Of course he's not.

What God does envision is a future in which human beings, human beings created to flourish as image-bearers that share perfect friendship with God, human beings will continually refuse to accept God's coming down to us because we prefer our own independent and self-sufficient efforts to reach Him and grasp at His glory.

So, verse 7, God confuses their language, replacing one language with many.

Now, this is the answer to many ancients' question where did all these languages come from?

But it's also an act of severe mercy.

God causes the Babel project to come to a screeching halt, so that there might be a limit to humanity's inclination towards their own self-glorification.

Verse 8.

So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of the whole world, and they left off building the city.

Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the Hebrew word here is Balal, which sounds like Babel.

He ballaled the language of all the people, and from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of the whole earth.

We all glory in something.

The question is, will it lead to futility or flourishing?

Here in Genesis 11, we see the ultimate symbol of humanity's attempt to glory in ourselves, in our achievements, in our independence, in our self-sufficiency.

And we're warned that if we incline ourselves away from God, then what we think will be our greatest glory will wind up in futility.

And it's been that way ever since, hasn't it?

Whenever human beings take a moment to glory in themselves and in our achievements, it seems that a moment later we're filled with a greater anxiety and fear than we had to begin with.

Humanity's attempt to be as God on our terms has not only exposed our culture, pardon me, has only exposed our culture, creaturely vulnerabilities all the more.

Whether it's brick or mortar, whether it's an atomic bomb, or whether, as in our day, it's an artificial intelligence algorithm, we are only left all the more fearful and anxious than we were to begin with.

What's true for humanity is true for us as individual human beings, isn't it?

If we're honest with ourselves, I suspect we can all identify a self-glorification project that is uniquely our own.

We all have a way to fill in that blank.

It's a way in which we work towards our an ultimate purpose, pride or pleasure, something that secures our prosperous future.

We too can ask ourselves: will the thing that I glory in lead to my flourishing or ultimately to futility?

The tower builders believed they could achieve their heavenly aspirations all on their own.

But God knew that we could never hope to reach heaven on our own with our own bricks and mortar and achievements.

We cannot hope to grasp at God's glory for ourselves.

God's glory must come down to us, and we must humble ourselves in order to receive it.

And this is the good news.

Arise, shine, for your light has come, announces the prophet Isaiah, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.

See, at first reading Isaiah 60, our second lesson today, sounds like it's talking about the Jews returning from exile in Babylon, which itself derives its name from Babel.

In a way, it is talking about the Jewish return from exile, but you probably notice that it very quickly goes well beyond anything we're familiar with in the world as we know it today.

Violence will no more be heard in your land.

What's that about?

When has that ever been true of human history?

What Isaiah sees here is the end of history, its goal, the outcome of the flourishing for which God designed us.

This, what Isaiah sees, is the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, where God dwells in glory with his people forever.

This is the kingdom come.

This is where the friendship we were designed to share with God has been completely, perfectly restored.

Pastor Tim Keller rightly says that Isaiah 60 shows us the promises of Genesis fulfilled and the curses and breakdowns of Genesis reversed.

This is not a city of self-glorification that leads to futility.

This is a city in which God shares with us his glory to our flourishing.

This is a city built on the foundation of God's love, where we will not be shaken.

In Genesis 11, we see a city and a tower built with brick and mortar, the product of humanity's cooperation, their hard work, their technical expertise.

And in Isaiah 60, we see much the same.

All the earth brings their gifts in the heavenly city, the abundance of the seas, wealth, and camels, cattle, gold.

All of these things are involve humanity's cooperation and hard work and technical expertise.

All of these things are being brought into the heavenly city.

Work is not abolished in the age to come.

It's directed towards its proper goal, not to our self-glorification, but to the glory of God in which He in which He was pleased that we have a share.

The Lord will be your everlasting light were promised.

Your God will be your glory.

This is a city in which human beings don't insist on their own self-styled independence and self-sufficiency, but instead joyfully entrust themselves to the care and will of their gracious Creator, the Holy One of Israel, who has made you beautiful.

This is an eternity of flourishing, in which the former things, death and disorder and destruction, shall be remembered no more or even come to mind, where we will be glad and rejoice forever in that which the Lord creates.

The God whose image we were created to bear will dwell with us his people forever, and he will be our glory, our greatest purpose, pride and pleasure to our abundant flourishing.

So when Jesus, at the beginning of his ministry, quotes from Isaiah chapter 61, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, and concludes this by saying, Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing, he's signaling to God's people that he is the one through whom God will fulfill his promises given through Isaiah and reverse the curse of Genesis by putting the curse of death to death upon the cross and in rising again to share with us the glory of his eternal resurrection life.

Isaiah 61 · chapter mention

It is in Jesus and only in Jesus that we can come face to face with the very glory of God, which causes human beings to flourish forever.

Christ in you, the hope of glory.

So, friends, Genesis 11 challenges us to consider an important question.

What towers are we inclined to build for ourselves?

How is it that we're inclined to make a name for ourselves?

Maybe it's not an atomic bomb.

I hope it's not.

We'll talk about that after service.

No, I don't think it's an atomic bomb, but perhaps we know in our hearts what we trust in to secure our prosperous future.

The question Genesis 11 challenges us to consider is this Is the blank that I trust in securing my flourishing, or will it lead to futility?

But this is the good news of Jesus.

When we deconstruct our towers of self-glorification, we can discover our true and greatest glory, the source of our flourishing, our purpose and greatest pleasure.

We can discover Jesus Himself.

I am His creation, the Maker's masterpiece, and all that He designs will be done in me.

It's only in discovering the glory of God in Christ for ourselves that we can discover God's design for our flourishing.

Where our hearts can finally move from the futility of come, let us build for ourselves a city and a tower and let us make a name for ourselves.

We can move from that futility to the flourishing of come.

Let us go to the city where the Lord's glory shines upon us, where we shall see his glory, and we shall be made radiant.

To him belongs the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

We worship a generous God who calls us to follow him in giving willfully, cheerfully, and sacrificially.

Newsong Church's mission and ministry is one hundred percent funded by the generous gifts of those worshiping and journeying with us.

If you'd like to offer a gift towards Newsong's ministry, please visit Newsongportperry.ca slash giving for more information on how to do that.

May God bless you and keep you today and every day.