Babel

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

This morning at 523, I was sitting at my kitchen table, coffee, reviewing the sermon, and I hear what started out as a rumbling that soon was this massive crash.

And it's then I hear my daughter scream and yell.

And I go, I jump from the table, adrenaline, you know, rushing through my veins, fight or flight.

I'm in fight, baby.

I don't know what happened.

Maybe somebody broke into our house.

Maybe a very localized earthquake happened in my daughter's room.

I don't know what happened, but I have my fists clenched and I run into my daughter's room, open, you know, turn on the light, she's sitting up, and I turned to see that her closet shelves had collapsed.

I mean, it is they're like glass broken, um, clothes strewn everywhere, everything scattered.

It looks like a volcanic eruption out of the closet onto the floor.

As if the shelves said, we quit.

We're done.

We're we're done with this.

Now, the interesting part, I hung those shelves two years ago.

We all build things, don't we?

Some of us are building our careers.

Some of us are building relationships.

Maybe it's a dating relationship, maybe it's a marriage.

Some of us are building our families, our future.

Maybe it's your reputation, you're building your name, building your brand, building your image.

And sometimes, sometimes even without warning, it can all come crashing down.

Let me ask you, what are you building?

What if what feels like a collapse, here's where we want to go today, what if what feels like a collapse is actually a divine interruption?

What if one of God's greatest gift to you is something he didn't let happen?

We're in a series called The Dysfunctional Family of God.

We're journeying through the book of Genesis together.

Last week we left off with Noah and his family.

They exited the ark.

Uh, God gave a covenant, not just to Noah, but all of humanity, symboled by the rainbow in the sky, that he has relented of his destruction.

He's hung the bow, literally.

And then Genesis 10 is this weird chapter that we tend to kind of, you know, um skip over because it's a list of names.

It's called the Table of Nations.

It tells us how from one family we get every nation, every ethnicity on the planet, which is beautiful, by the way.

It's theologically rich that from one family is every nation, meaning that every nation, every ethnos, every ethnicity is all has their origin back.

We're all family.

We're all one family.

This was revolutionary in the ancient day, by the way, when your nation, your ethnicity was superior or better than others, and you would have a claim to the gods as a result.

We still make some of those claims, sadly, today.

That's Genesis 10, and then Genesis 11 begins to zoom in and tell us how this how this you know one family began to see this dispersion or scattering, but it came from something that was more difficult.

It's Genesis 11, it's about the Tower of Babel.

Maybe you're familiar with it.

Instead of humanity, God gave Noah and this uh family this call to fill the earth.

Instead, they began to come together out of fear.

Instead of living under God's name, they tried to make a name for themselves.

And it may be an ancient story, but what I've found is it's been such an incredibly uh powerful thing that God's been speaking to me personally.

Because we live in a world that is about obsession with achievement, our need to control outcomes.

And then we are confronted with a God of grace to interrupt us when we're headed the wrong way.

If you got your Bibles, would you open up to Genesis chapter 11?

Genesis 11 · chapter mention

If you got your notes, you can follow along there.

The sermon title today is, well, let's just say babble.

That's a fun word to say.

Go ahead and say that to your neighbor.

Babel.

Build your life.

Genesis 11:1 begins this way.

Genesis 11:1

Now the whole world had one language and one common speech.

As people moved eastward, say eastward.

We're gonna get to that.

That's important.

They found a plane in Shannar and settled that.

Shannar is uh ancient Mesopotamia.

Today it's modern-day Iraq.

It is uh the crescent of human civilization.

They said to each other, come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly.

This is actually a technological revolution, by the way.

Um like, really?

Bricks?

Yeah, really, it's amazing.

Uh they used bricks instead of stone and tar from 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.

Otherwise, we'll be scattered over the face of the whole earth.

So there is this conciliation, this trying to be one.

Um, and what we see is hints actually of power and corruption going back to Genesis 10, of this is not just kind of one big unified heart.

This is like we're uh pride and ambition.

So verse 5, but the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building.

The Lord said, If as one people speak in the same language, they begun to do this, then nothing they'll plan to do will be impossible for them.

Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.

So the Lord scattered them from there over all this earth, and they stopped building the city.

That is why it's called Babel, because the Lord confused the language of the whole world.

From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the earth.

What are you building?

And what if one of God's greatest gifts to you is something he didn't let happen?

Uh today I want to draw from the text just three ideas for us.

Uh, first is the myth of progress, then the illusion of control, and then we're gonna close with the mercy of divine disruption.

The myth of progress, the illusion of control, and then the mercy of divine disruption.

Let's begin with the myth of progress.

The myth of progress goes something like this every advancement always leads to a better future.

Every advancement always leads to a better future.

And with more education and technology, we can create our own utopian existence.

We can create our own Eden.

Now, we don't think of this as a technological revolution.

But when you lived in a day and age where what you built with was stones, now look at the difference between these.

This is, I mean, this is lovely shape, but it's odd shaped.

How do you begin to build a structure that's sturdy?

Well, it takes a lot of work, and there's only so high that you can build with it, and all of a sudden now you can create a brick that's symmetrical, that can bear lots of weight, and that you can build, and you can build not only strong things, you can build great things and big things, and you begin to see what's happening as a sense of safety and security comes along with our technology.

The myth of progress says every advancement leads to a better future, more education, more technology.

This is the way they said it.

Come, let us build for ourselves a city with a tower that reaches the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves.

Like this progressive vision, by the way, isn't a new thing.

We think it's like, wow, we have the internet.

Wow, we have AI.

Wow, we're able to solve all these problems.

We can create our own utopic world.

It's all about us.

We don't need anybody else, and certainly we don't need God.

It's as old as Babel.

It's as old as Babel.

And here's the way maybe we might see it or say it personally, because we go, like, okay, that's I understand where tech is going, but I don't know, Ryan.

That's not necessarily how I feel.

We it this is how it feels in our world.

If I achieve enough, then I'll be enough.

That's the myth of progress.

If I achieve enough, then I'll be enough.

If I just achieve enough at work, if I just make a name for myself, if I build my brand or my platform, if I get the right education, if I achieve enough, then I'll be enough.

Remember, I told you about this whole eastward perspective.

Um, this whole idea of eastward is a textual motif that the Bible, biblical authors use to speak of humanity moving away from Eden, away from God, away from flourishing.

You find it, Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden and they were sent eastward.

Cain, after killing his brother Abel, went east.

After the flood, the travelers moved east.

It is this picture, this indicator that the biblical authors use for us that tells us that when you see this eastward throughout the entire Hebrew or Old Testament scriptures, it's this descent away from God.

In fact, come let us build a city for ourselves.

Here we see the birth of secularism.

The idea that human beings can build meaning and identity apart from their creator.

Babel itself is an attempt to build a life apart from God.

Now, here's what it's important.

God is not anti-progress.

He is anti-pride.

He's not anti-progress.

Brick?

Awesome.

I don't know if he said awesome.

I really don't know if that's how he said it.

AI?

Honestly, it's a tool.

It's a tool.

It's how you use the tool, isn't it?

It's neutral.

And whose hands they're welded determines whether it's used for good or for ill.

God is not anti-progress, but he is anti-pride.

One definition of pride is a drive to build our identity and legacy apart from God.

The myth of progress, if I just achieve enough, then I'll be enough.

See, progress, by the way, without presence, ultimately leads to emptiness.

We buy into the myth of progress that it's somehow going to achieve this utopic world, that the American dream will finally fully satisfy your every longing and need, that if you just are able to retire young, if you're able to build up your net worth, if you're able to have this career, if you're able to have this person in your life or build this type of marriage or family, if I just get enough, progress without the presence of God leads to emptiness.

Thank you.

We can talk here, by the way.

And we can talk back.

Especially amens, those are good.

See, let me ask you this.

Come on.

What are you building that looks successful but feels empty?

Is there anything that you've been building right now that looks successful?

But it just feels empty.

And what the myth of progress does is like, well, you just didn't quite arrive.

You just didn't quite arrive.

If I just get over this, if I just move beyond this, if I just get more.

The myth of progress.

And then we come to the illusion of control.

Notice what they said.

The illusion of control.

We're gonna build this tower, we're gonna build this city, otherwise, otherwise, we'll be scattered over the face of the whole earth.

We're gonna do something to secure our destiny, our fate, our direction.

You know, there was this call on God of humanity to be fruitful and to fill the entire earth.

And yet, what that creates is that scattering, that sending.

Man, what you have to trust God, don't you?

And so they're like, you know what?

We can keep our own little world intact, we can control it.

I don't really care what God says, I this is what I want.

What was the tower?

This is ancient Mesopotamia.

It was a ziggurat.

A ziggurat is a large pyramid-like structure in ancient Mesopotamia designed to be a stairway to heaven.

It was a symbol of humanity's attempt to control the divine.

So they would build these, some 80 feet, others up to 200 feet in height.

Yeah, bricks were great.

You couldn't do that with stone.

And the structure would be built in such a way it would have that pyramid-like structure, but it didn't have anything inside.

You know, pyramids, they were chambers and whatnot.

This was, you know, this pyramid structure layered up, built up higher and higher and higher, and then there was this staircase.

Babylon, the name the city, Babylon literally means gate of the gods.

That were building a tower high enough.

In the ancient world, when they thought of heaven, uh, the the literal word is firmament, that it was actually firm.

They thought of this heavenly uh arena that was solid.

And so when they're building this tower, they're literally with the mindset of we're gonna reach or ascend heaven.

Scholars tell us there's maybe one of two reasonings for why this, uh why they're doing this.

One was to bring God down into their level so they can control him.

Don't we do that?

Isn't that some of the ways that we even pray go about our lives?

If I'm gonna do good at God, I'm gonna try to do these things so that you bless me or so that you do this.

I'm gonna, you know, maybe, well, we talked about giving.

I'm gonna give a little here so that you give me here.

We do that to bring heaven down to control him.

The other, and I kind of lean towards this one.

The other was that they were going to go up and try to take over heaven itself and dethrone God completely.

God, you have no right to say anything in my life.

You don't exist.

I want to do whatever I want to do.

So I'm either gonna bring God down into my terms to control him, or I'm gonna just ignore him and pretend like he doesn't exist.

Underneath this, by the way, is the belief, the illusion of control is if I could be God, then life would be good.

Because isn't it true?

Come on, be honest, we're in church.

That a lot of us think, most of us think we've all had a moment when we've thought, I know better than God.

I know better than God.

My plans are better than his.

If I could be God, then life would be good.

The illusion of control is if I could just control and then you fill in the blank, then I would be what?

Happy?

If I could just control the economy, if I could just control my boss, if I could just control my coworkers, if I could just control my parents, if I could just control my spouse, if I could just control my kids, if I could just control, you fill in the blank, then I would be secure, then I would be happy, then life would be good.

If I could just control everything, then everything would be okay.

And you know what's at the root of this?

Fear.

Fear.

Fear is often the root of our desire for control.

Notice they said this whole idea, right?

Otherwise we'll be scattered.

We tend to try to control things because we're afraid.

So we hold tightly.

I like how Mark Sayers says it.

He says, taking things into your own hands doesn't seize your destiny, it sabotages it.

How often have you had that experience where, you know, you had this sense of like, I really need to trust God with that, you know, job, or you know, and then you try to take things in that project into your own hands, and the minute you begin to like be so controlling, it falls apart.

How has it worked trying to control your spouse?

I remember um when I first experienced um not first, but one moment of like this idea of control and fear blended.

It stands out.

When my daughter was uh the oldest was firstborn, um, about six months in, she had some major health issues.

We couldn't figure it out.

Um, we're taking her to specialists.

It's so scary.

You have this precious little being that you had no idea that you had that kind of love.

It's like a chamber of your heart opened up that you didn't even know existed, the capacity to love that you didn't know was there.

And now this little being, six-month-old, is struggling, and then you're going to specialists, they're doing these tests, and then they're telling you that she needs a surgery, and you're like, what in the world?

And then you begin to have these conversations with God.

You maybe begin to bargain with him.

God, if you'll do this, then I'll do that.

Or you begin to rage at him.

And I did all of these.

I bargained and I raged and I yelled at him.

And I'm just like trying to, God, I just want to control.

I remember my friend friend Kirsten, she said it this way, I love this picture, it's always stuck with me.

Like when our hands are clenched like this, tightly, around whatever it is, God cannot fill it.

But the minute we begin to open them up, it invites him in to do what he does best.

I just wonder, what are you building?

What is your tower?

What is the thing that as you stepped in that you're holding so tightly, you're trying to seize control, you're holding it, and the thing is you think you know better, and maybe you're just bargaining with God, or maybe you're raging against him, but you're holding so tightly, and it isn't helping you.

It is hurting you, and it's hurting them.

It's sabotaging.

The myth of progress, the illusion of control.

By the way, you have far less control than you think you do.

COVID taught us that, didn't it?

Or less control of your time, circumstances, other people, God.

And then the mercy of divine disruption.

The mercy.

The mercy of divine disruption.

What is a divine disruption?

It is a holy interruption to prevent human self-destruction.

The mercy of divine disruption is simply this.

God loves you too much to let you succeed in something that will sabotage your soul.

Some of you just need to write that down.

God loves me too much to let me succeed in something that will sabotage my soul.

I like how it says, but the Lord came down to see.

We're gonna build this tower to the heavens.

We're gonna dethrone God.

We're gonna bring him down, and then like you know, God doesn't need to come down.

But the writer, the author tells us this just it's like tongue in cheek.

Like all the grandiosis, all the ability that you thought you had to ascend to the heavens, God had to come down just to see what was going on.

And so the Lord scattered them and stopped the building.

Now, back to Genesis 10, you'll see the founding of Babel or Babylon, uh, and it was founded by a ruthless, mighty warrior, a man named Nimrod.

We see, like, in this text, not just uh a city built on pride and self uh um selfishness, it's actually built uh by like scholars will tell us there's these inferences of not just corruption but domination and oppression.

The word Babel in Hebrew means to confuse, and it's an intentional wordplay on the Akkadian or Mesopotamian word for Babylon, which means gate of the gods.

And we see this picture of a society that is being dominated by a ruler that is corrupt and trying to assimilate and oppress others, this self-destruction, and God says, No, no, no, I'm not going to let that happen.

Sometimes God disrupts our plans not to punish us, but to protect us.

Certainly the discipline of God, and that's here in this text.

But it's not to punish you, it is to protect you.

It's not that he's withholding from good from you, but he's writing a better story.

It's not a setback, but a setup.

Not rejection, but a redirection.

You thought you had the dream job.

You thought you had the promotion.

You thought he was the one, she was the one, this was the time.

I like how C.S.

Lewis said it in his writings uh on the problem of pain.

He says, God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains.

It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

Sometimes God disrupts our plans not to punish us, but to protect us.

This is the mercy of divine disruption.

Let me give you just a few examples.

Uh, when I was 17, I was a junior in high school, going into my senior year of high school the summer before my senior year, uh, I had a plan.

I was a drummer.

I was supposed to drum for this um this summer camp.

In my mind, it was gonna be magical, amazing, you know.

I I I don't know where I got this in my head, but I imagined that I'd be drumming a couple times a day, which I love, and then I'd be sitting by the pool sipping iced tea.

I don't know where that picture came, but that was the picture in my head.

Uh certainly not what camp life is like, but it was gonna be magical, it was gonna be amazing, and because of some uh choices I made, I wasn't allowed to go uh spend the summer working as a drummer.

Instead, I spent the summer working for Fred La Joulier.

Fred owned a landscaping company, and I spent the summer doing landscaping.

Very different.

Often I would just get dropped off into the middle of a field with a few tools and uh, you know, have my lunch, and then uh whoever dropped me off would come back at the end of the day and pick me up.

It was tired, hot, dirty.

I remember one day, and I grew up as a pastor's kid, but at this time I really wasn't walking with Jesus.

Um day I'm in this field, and they gave me a lawnmower with the front that was cut out of it so the blade was exposed, and then a uh a weed whacker, and uh this huge field, and the whole day I was just to I was to just cut it all down, and the weeds and different things were growing up to about this high.

It's hot.

It was so hot, and I'm spending the day, and all I'm doing is I'm complaining to God.

Like, what in the world?

I'm here, I should be there, and I'm complaining to God.

And it was in that field in my summer before my senior year where God met me.

I had a life-changing encounter with Jesus.

He spoke to me personally and profoundly, and it redirected my entire life.

Man, I wouldn't change that summer working landscaping for anything.

Because it was that moment where my heart became alive to the gospel of what Jesus did for me.

It was a redirection I did not plan for.

I remember when I was in college and got married.

This is Moody, I was in studying to be a pastor, and uh just recently got married.

I was working as in worship uh at a church, a big church in Chicago.

And I had my dream job.

This dream job was it was in San Diego.

We were excited to get back to the West Coast.

Um, it was at this megachurch, God is doing incredible things.

There's thousands and thousands of college students showing up, and they were gonna hire me to be the college pastor and then to lead worship for their Sunday evening service.

They had 4,000 college students showing up on their Sunday evening services.

Like, this is my dream job in a dream location, and some of my best friends were there, and Jenny was pregnant with Ella at the time.

We go out there, we do the whole interview, and she's so wise, and she said, You know, Ryan, I think you would be good for this church, but I don't think this church would be good for you.

And turned down that job, and I was crushed.

I was crushed.

I remember meeting with my mentor, Dr.

Joe Stowe, and just pouring out my heart to him and where we're at, and then he gave me this picture, it was so helpful.

He said, you know, Ryan, like like imagine if you're in a hallway of a like a hotel, one of those long corridors, and you have this open door at the end, and you walk towards that open door, and then God closes that door, and that's what it felt like.

Like, why?

God, why come on?

And then you notice that there's another corridor that he had you for you to go down.

He's like, the interesting part is all the way back here, you can't see that corridor.

But as you walk this direction and you begin to move that direction, he closes that door because he has a new direction that from that vantage point you aren't able to see, but you get all the way down here, and now he's able to move you in the direction he intends for you to go.

I'm like, oh.

And then we ended up in Atlanta.

And oh, George is great, the people are amazing, but it's not our people place, like we're West Coast people.

It was a hard season, and it was a forming season.

It was one of those where God formed in us some things, and out of that season there was a conviction, gosh, God, you've called us to the church.

And one little what little time we have left, our hope and goal is how do we just help to make the bride of Christ just a little bit more beautiful?

And it was through those redirections and those confusion times, and that now we stand here and get to be a part of this, and I'm so grateful.

So grateful for the prayers that he didn't answer.

My mid-30s.

You ever just feel like a failure?

Yeah, me too.

None of you said yes, but I'm just gonna say I hope, I hope, I hope we're gonna be honest in church.

Um so John Mark Comer, Stephen Furtick, Judah Smith, you name it, uh, we're all about the same age.

I'm mid-30s, we launched this church.

And I'm looking around at these guys.

And I'm going, what in the world?

Like, isn't it interesting how selfish ambition bleeds nastily into ministry as well?

What in the world?

These guys don't even have like a uh like the spiritual pedigree.

I and then I was like, crap.

I used to joke that I'm the unfamous, poorest Ingram.

But it's not a joke, it's just true.

I remember somebody saying to me once, said, Ryan, you be concerned with the depth of your ministry, let God be concerned with the breadth of your ministry.

And I started to have a prayer.

God, don't let my calling outpace my character.

Don't let the gifting and the calling you've put on me outpace my character.

Because I don't want to be one of those stats that we see in the church.

You know, the interesting thing about the mercy of a divine disruption is we often can only see them in hindsight, can't we?

When I move, look back now in my mid-40s, I'm just like, God, thank you so much for not answering those prayers.

I am so grateful for the marriage that I have, the kids that I have as I watch them grow, and the joy of getting to be a pastor and in this community.

I am beyond grateful for it.

You saved me from myself, and I didn't even know it.

Here's why.

God is more committed to who you're becoming than what you're building.

God is far more committed to who you're becoming than what you're building.

What if?

What if the most loving thing God can do is to interrupt what you're building?

What if just sometimes the most loving thing God can do is not let it work?

Sometimes God lets shelves fall.

Not because he's cruel or unkind.

But he loves you too much to keep you to let you keep building something that can't hold your life.

As we close, I just want to leave that picture.

We've done it before.

What's your tower?

What are you building?

What are you holding tight to?

What are the things that if God disrupted, oh we're gonna sing a song, and as we do that, I want you to just maybe have your hands in your lap and just what is that and that visceral clinging of a hand?

And would you by faith in this moment just go, God, I'm going to open it up to you.

I'm gonna open it up to you, trusting that you are all good, all knowing, all-wise, all kind.

No good thing do you withhold from those who love you.

That you actually do work all things together for the good of those who love you, who are called according to your purpose.

That is true, and that scripture is in the middle of a lot of hard pain.

And so, God, would you give me eyes?

God, would you give me eyes?

God, would you give me eyes to see the mercy of your divine disruption?

Have your way in me.

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