The City And Tower Of Babel - Loren Kropf

Maybe before I get too far, I will go back

to your revival meetings a little bit. Our revival meetings

are coming up here. I think it's the beginning of

next week. Not this week, but the next. So, you're

all welcome to come join us as it suits. Brother

Luke Benich is our speaker. Turn with me to Genesis

Genesis 11 · chapter mention

chapter 11. This morning we heard from... A couple people,

a few people, Brother Kevin brought out the lessons from

the life of Cain, and we're going to be rolling

history forward a little bit from the life of Cain.

And we also heard about the Pharisees and Jesus. As

I think about the connection with what I have to

share this morning, one of the things that comes to

my mind, and I've been thinking about this maybe a

little bit recently, is just the simple... fact that the

propensity of the human soul is pretty much the same

since the fall of man to right now. The propensity

of the human soul hasn't changed. We think we're facing

new problems today, and in a way we are. I

think our biggest problem is right in here, and it

just stays with us a lot. So we're going to

look at that and draw some lessons from Genesis 11.

And the more I study this, the more I realize that, well,

the more there is. And it's a little hard to

know where to start and stop. But I would like

to talk about the city and the tower of Babel.

And I'm going to say Babel. I'm sorry if that

offends or is a little chalkboard scratchish to anybody. But

that was actually the best I could come up with,

not Babel. And you have second grade teachers on my

side on that one. Because if you divide the word,

it should be a long A. All right. Anyway, there's

two ways of saying it. I'm going to stick with Babel.

Babel does flow off the tongue a little bit better,

and I'll mention later that maybe one of the reasons

we say it too is that Babel and Babylon are

the same place. So we could say Babylon here, which

is really interesting. I'll bring that out later. All right,

let's start reading a few passages before we get into

Genesis 11. I would like to stumble through chapter 10

a little bit, and there's some hard names in here.

I'll mangle them a bit, but I think you'll understand

why as we read it. But I want to point

out just a few things in chapter 10 to kind

of give us a bit of a background. Now, I

look at chapter 10, and then I look at chapter 11,

and I ask which one comes first. And I think...

There's a sense in which chapter 10 is explaining what happened,

and then chapter 11 backs up a little bit. That's

my opinion. You can look at that later if you'd like.

Let's look at the first part of chapter 10. Genesis

Genesis 10:1

chapter 10, verse 1. Now these are the generations of

the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Remember, these

people were on the ark. It just got off not

too long ago, I guess you could say. The sons

of Japheth. Gomer and Magog and Madai and Javan and

Tubal and Meshach and Tyrus and the sons of Gomer,

Ashkenaz and Riphath and Togarmah and the sons of Javan,

Elisha and Tarshish, Kittim and Dodanim. By these were the

isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands, every one

after his tongue, after their families in their nations. And

that verse 5 there is why I just said what

I did about chapter 11, maybe going back and explaining it.

why chapter 10 took place. Because it says they were

divided in their lands, every one after his tongue. Verse 6,

And the sons of Ham, Cush, and Mizrim, and Phut,

and Canaan, and the sons of Cush, Seba, and Havila,

and Sabta, and Ramah, and Sap, something, and the sons

of Ramah, Sheba, and Dedan, and Cush, begat Nimrod. And

he began, and we remember this about Nimrod, to be

a mighty one in the Lord, He was a mighty

hunter before the Lord. Wherefore, it is said, even as Nimrod,

the mighty hunter before the Lord. Now notice in verse

10 and 11, the connection here. And the beginning of

his kingdom, or Nimrod's kingdom, was Babel. And Erech, which

might be, by the way, the word Iraq, is related

to this word Erech right here. I found that interesting.

and Akkad and Kalna in the land of Shinar, which

is where Babel was. Out of that land went forth

Asher and builded Nineveh, which we know a story about

that one, and the city of Rehoboth and Calah. We'll

stop there, but I just thought I'd point that out

as kind of an interesting little history lesson or connection point.

All right. Genesis 11, verse 1, And the whole earth

Genesis 11:1

was of one language and of one speech. And it

came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that

they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and

they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to,

let us make brick, and burned them thoroughly. And they

had brick for stone, and slime they had for mortar.

And they said, Go to, let us build a city

and a tower, whose top may reach heaven. And let

us make a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon

the face of the whole earth. So the Lord scattered

them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth,

and they left off to build the city. Therefore is

the name of it called Babel, because the Lord did

there confound the language of all the earth, and from

thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face

of all the earth. I'd like to point out just

a few things about this, starting at verse 1, and

just kind of working our way through this a little bit,

maybe not totally in order, but Just a few things

that stand out to me before we get further. First

of all, their whole earth was one language. I'm not

exactly sure if this is what all the details are,

but it appears that they could at least have a

common language. If there weren't multiples, they at least could

all speak and understand each other. What language was that?

I think the answer is really clear. We don't know.

Some people would like to think Hebrew, but I don't

think we know. But surely Shem, Ham, Japheth, and his

father did speak the same language. So saying that the

tower here, the city and the tower that was being

built in Shinar, let's say it was 100 years, 200

years after the flood, they probably all spoke one language.

All right, they journeyed. They were on the move. Why

did they move? Again, the answer is maybe somewhat clear.

We don't know, right? It's just we might as well

leave it at that. But remember, the ark rested in

the mountains of Arat, and this was up from where

they ended up in this story. And maybe I'm getting

ahead of myself. I'm not sure. But from where it

was in this story, it would have been north, and

they moved south. And it says from the east here,

and people don't quite know why it says that. Anyway,

I'm not going to worry about it too much. but

they moved they came to the land of shinar which

again don't know exactly why but this land was probably

northwest of the persian gulf and if you if you

have your bibles maybe you could just turn to your

maps i don't know if you have a map in

the back but if you look at one of your

maps of um i thought about drawing but I'm not

a good artist, so I'll excuse myself. But if you look, actually,

those of you who are still in school, you probably

have studied. I remember, I think I did, or at

least when I was teaching, we talked about the Fertile Crescent.

That's where they moved to, I think. So if you

can find Babylon on a map, Persian Gulf is there,

and then northwest of there is Babylon. There's also Ur.

You might find... See, it seems like there's one I'm

not thinking of. But anyway, up north by the Caspian Sea,

closer to the Caspian Sea, you might find a label

that says Mount Ararat. So assuming that they didn't move

very far from that area, they would have come down

into that area, down south farther in the Tigris and

Euphrates River area. Possibly right where it's marked Babylon there. Now, anyway,

it's just interesting to get that in our heads a

little bit, where that is. Modern day, you can go

over there and probably see it if you'd like, but

save that for another time. All right, so, Shinar means,

the word Shinar means two rivers, according to one Bible dictionary.

at least. They found a place that they liked, so

they moved away from somewhere. They found a place that

they liked, and they were united by language, now common location,

and found a place that they desired. They saw opportunity.

They were able to make brick. And with brick, they

could make a tower and a city. And maybe a

lot of other things. And they desired not to be scattered.

They did not want to be scattered. Along with that,

they had the ability. You know, I could want to

build a tower, but my tower would get only so

high and it would start to fall over. But they

somehow had the ability to do this as well. Sometimes we... Well,

let me back up just a little bit. How tall

was this tower? They wanted it to reach unto the heavens.

I'm not sure how tall it was. I don't think

we know. It could have been really tall. The Jewish

book of Jubilees has a pretty astronomical number. I question

whether that's true. I don't know. Now, interestingly, I want

to point out just a little interest. I mentioned Babylon.

Where else in the Bible is Babylon mentioned? There's three

things that probably stand out. First of all is this story.

Secondly is in Daniel chapter 4 when Nebuchadnezzar said, Is

Daniel 4 · chapter mention

not this the great Babylon? Isn't that interesting how years later,

another king rose up in this area and did the

same thing these people did. And God had to miraculously

cut him down. It doesn't end there, though. If you

go to Revelation, there are six mentions of Babylon in

the book of Revelation. And I'll mention a few of those.

The last of those six times is in Revelation 18.

You all know what this says. Babylon will fall. Babylon

the great is fallen. Revelation 18, 9, and 10. The

kings of the earth... who lived deliciously with her, standing

afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas,

that great city Babylon, that mighty city, for in one

hour is thy judgment come. Verse 21, And a mighty

angel took up a stone like a great millstone and

cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall

that great city Babylon be thrown down and shall be

found no more at all. I find it interesting that

the Bible not really begins with Babel, but near the

beginning we see Babylon, and at the end Babylon is overthrown.

Probably there's a whole sermon on there, I'm not sure,

but I found that captivating. All right. This story also

encapsulates the Christian understanding of the origin of language. From

a secular perspective, it's almost funny how hard we have

tried to determine where language has come from, only to write,

if you look at Wikipedia, there are 50 pages and

over 20,000 words trying to figure out and describing the

origin of language. But you can read about the origin

of language in a lot shorter version in Genesis chapter 11. People,

Genesis 11 · chapter mention

in fact... back in the late 1800s, the topic itself

of the study of the origin of language, it was

considered unsuitable for serious study because it was so much,

I think, so much guesswork. And so for quite a

long time, maybe even unto the late 1900s, you weren't

really supposed to talk about it a whole lot because

what were you supposed to say there was not, you

can't go get fossils of languages, right? You can't, it's

a little hard to get something solid like a scientist

would want. So maybe that's part of the reason, but it's, yeah,

it's interesting again. So today we think a secular scientist, well,

it could have happened fast. You know, maybe language just

kind of exploded. And then some people are saying, no,

maybe it happens slow. Um, Anyway, you can read about

that more, I'm sure, if you would like. What were

the problems here in Genesis 11? What were the problems

that God was concerned about? Let's go over them. There's

three at least here. First of all, let us make

a name for ourselves. Let us not be scattered. And

then thirdly, they could do whatever they wanted. Verse 4 says,

Let us make a name for ourselves. The problem with

this was probably the same as King Nebuchadnezzar in a way.

He was interested, they were interested, I think, in simply

making a name not for God, but for themselves. And

this is interesting because, again, what are we, a couple

hundred years after the flood? Maybe a hundred? Not very long,

at least, likely. They should have known the story. I mean, Cain,

in our devotional this morning, he should have known. But

so quickly, the fallen human heart makes a name for ourselves,

does it not? I tend to get stuck a little

bit on the tower, but this passage brings out, there

was a city. Sometimes maybe you think of them somehow

living in this tower, but probably not. Maybe there were some,

but I think... I wouldn't be surprised if it was

a tower to a god. Some people maybe speculate it

could have been to try to get around if there

was a flood again. I kind of doubt that, but

I suppose it's a possibility. All right, making a name

for themselves. Secondly, they did not want to be scattered.

And I'd like if you could just page back with

me to Genesis chapter 9. I don't think I'm going to.

Genesis 9 · chapter mention

We might read some of this here. Chapter 9, verse 1.

What was God's command to them? God's command, and God

blessed Noah and his sons and said unto them, Be

fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. And the fear

of you and the dread of you shall be upon

every beast of the earth and upon every fowl of

the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth and

upon all the fishes of the sea. Into your hand

are they delivered. Delivered. Every moving thing that liveth shall

be meat for you, even as the green herb have

I given you all things. Let's go to verse 7.

And you be fruitful and multiply, bring forth abundantly in

the earth and multiply therein. This was a command of God.

I don't think he was just making a suggestion here.

We could read down through there, but let's go to verse...

Let's start with verse 17. And God said, verse 17,

chapter 9, God said unto Noah, This is the token

of the covenant which I have established between you, excuse me,

between me and all flesh that is upon the earth, referring,

I think, to the rainbow. And the sons of Noah

that went forth of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

And Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the

three sons of Noah, and of them was the whole

earth overspread. So this is the context. Maybe I should

have read this first, but this is why in Genesis

11 it starts to stand out when God told them

you need to spread over the earth, at least you

can infer that from here, and multiply and replenish and

have dominion over the fish of the sea even. And

then they say, no, we're going to build a city

and a tower. We don't want to be scattered and

we want to make a name for ourselves. You can

kind of see how that goes directly against what God

had told them to do. All right. They did not

want to be scattered. That was a problem. They wanted

to bunch up together and not do what God had

asked them to. All right. Thirdly, then, they could do

whatever they set their mind to do. In Genesis 8,

Genesis 8:21

verse 21, just backing up again, if you would flip

back over to that one as well. It is interesting

to note that God says, if you look in the

middle of that verse, he says, for the imagination of

man's heart is evil from his youth. What a disappointing creation.

A fallen creation. What happens... when you take a bunch

of people whose heart is evil from his youth and

you put them together in a city and a tower?

What's going to happen? It's not difficult to figure out.

It's just the same thing that happens today. And speaking

the same language... They are going to have an accumulation

of knowledge really quickly. Really quickly, an accumulation of knowledge.

What will fallen man do with an accumulation of knowledge?

What do you think they will do? Again, we know

the answer, I think. It's a little hard to... This

story here, in a sense, is descriptive. God doesn't, as

far as I know, in here, say, here are the

lessons you should learn, number one, two, and three, and four.

But the Bible does say that these stories are for

our admonition, for our learning. And so we want to

at least draw some parallels, some application to it without

going too overboard here. The first... one that I see

and not going to spend a lot of time on

here because it's a little bit of a stretch maybe

but I do see some a people group who was

unsettled and wanted something all right and rather than doing

what God wanted they scattered and I guess it gives

to me a bit of an application that an unsettled

person or spirit within me leads me to dangerous opportunities

It wasn't wrong for them to move. It wasn't wrong

for them to scatter. They were supposed to. But in

the wrong way, their unsettledness led them the wrong direction.

Probably because of pride. And that is the next thing

that I would point out, of course, is that rather

than discovering God, these people were set out to discover themselves.

rather than an opportunity to discover and to, I don't

know if dominate is the right word, but to dominate

God's creation, like he said, they instead said, I'm going

to do it my way. And maybe today it's just

an opportunity to make myself look good or an opportunity

to control or put others down or think too highly

of myself and so on. Aren't we building the same

sort of city Same sort of tower when I do that.

Rather than discovering God, they discovered how much they could do.

Rather than discovering how much God could do, I should say.

And instead probably even made a man-made God. Pride always

calls for the exclusion of God. As in our Sunday

school lesson, when those... Men's commandments take precedent over God's commandments.

It excludes God from that. And that's pride, basically. Whether

it's proud speech, proud culture, whatever it is, we're building

a tower. You, I, am building a tower, a city,

like they did, if I am proud. The big thing

that stands out to me, or the most captivating one maybe,

is the opportunity they had of knowledge and power. I

would like to just think about that a little bit.

One of the things that Genesis 11 mentions here is

that God is concerned, at least it appears, about nothing

being restrained from these people. Verse 6, he says, and

now nothing will be restrained from them. What did he mean? Now,

if you and I today would go to the same

location and start building a city in a tower, what

would happen? There would be people that would come out

and talk to us and say, what are you doing here, right?

Or let's say you would go to anywhere in the

United States and just start building a city in a

tower with, I don't know, 600 people, 1,000 people. You

would start getting some questions. The United States Army might

show up. National Guard or something. These people, if they

were the entire population, had none of that. There was

no one to stop them, nobody to point arrows at them,

throw rocks, guns, whatever they had. So who was going

to stop them? Well, there was one person left, and

that person was God, of course. But nobody else cared

if there was nobody else to care. Nothing human could

stop them. Now, again, if everyone spoke the same language,

what would happen? These people weren't dumb. They were probably smarter,

maybe smarter than you and I, not as genetically deteriorated, likely,

Living to be hundreds of years old, which maybe they

hadn't had the chance yet after the flood, but they

were probably reasonably, there were some older ones. You would

have an accumulation of knowledge happening really quickly. Everybody lives

to four or five hundred years old or so. Get

them all together in a city, you'd have all sorts

of knowledge accumulating. The rate of inventions and technological advancement

would happen really quickly. Now, I can't help but think

about where we are on this today. Just within the

last 100 years, 200 years, we've seen what appears to

be big advancements. At least we think they are. That

happens because of an accumulation of knowledge. You discover electricity,

then you figure out how to make a light bulb,

then you figure out how to make a computer, and

so on. If we lost the knowledge every generation, you

wouldn't have any of these things. At least, I don't

think you would. Within the last 20 years, we've had

the ability to put this knowledge in anybody's hands at

low cost. Do you think God's concerned about that at

all when fallen man does that? Do you think God's

concerned about his people who have that? God was concerned

here about nothing will be restrained from them. That's sobering

to me. I don't know what to do with it exactly,

but it's sobering. And I would just ask you to

consider that. Have I been careful with that accumulation of knowledge?

Has it made me proud? Has it made me desire

to do, well, I can do whatever. I kind of

get that feeling because if I can't figure something out,

I can look it up, right? And I can figure

it out and I don't have to pay somebody to

do it for me. I can figure it out, right?

I think we might be right where the people of

Babel were headed. Ripe for God to step in And

say that it's enough. Now I don't know how he's

going to do it. And I'm not. Not saying it's

all wrong. Whatever I'm talking about you can decide. Okay.

But I would just ask us to soberly consider this.

What we do see around us. Is the systems that

have been created. Have been created to fill. To feed

the flesh. fill the pockets of the rich, and distract

the human race into hell. That's largely what has happened. Now,

there have been a tremendous amount of good things as well,

and praise the Lord for that. But the fallen human

race will do that, and will continue to do that.

Let's not be a part of that. In a smaller way,

we can take a look if we as churches are

building cities and towers as well. Today we have a

plethora of books, magazines, podcasts, recordings, and other resources. Yet

the human heart remains problematic just as it was in

the previous generation. We have endless data and even scientific

studies to help me navigate my marriage and my family

life and my church life because they can study us

and see how we work. We have books intended for

specific problems like technology or pornography or relationship problems. You

can read a book and you can figure out how

to take care of it now. And I think there's

many good ones, but my question is for me, do

I sometimes build this city, this tower, that points to

people instead of God? Am I too quick? Am I

too quick? when there is a problem to pick up

a book rather than the book, are we not doing

the same thing as they did in the tower and

the city of Babel? Again, I am in favor of

reading books. I like to read books if I can

find time. And I've read marriage books as an example

of that. And some of those things are quite helpful.

But I have wondered... What if we dig into this

and what this has to say about marriage? Would we

be better off? If we dig into it more. And

I'm using marriage as an example. You could talk about

church life, family life, relationships, whatever. It could be a

lot of things. So many times, at least, and I

think the neat thing is, when we read those books,

many times I do think, well, the Bible does say that.

And that's great. But let's be careful not to create

a city and a tower in those things. I believe

that even though many of those things have good things

to say, sometimes we can feel a little pressured to

then live like they portray in those books. And we

actually don't want to. Just a thought. At the end

of the day, for my life, I want it to

be that nothing will replace sitting down with God and saying, Lord,

what will you have me to do? and letting him

shine the light, and take the time for that, actually

take the time for it, rather than expecting to get

answers on a podcast as I drive to my work

to make money. Not that all of that's bad, but

do I actually take the time to make a name

for God, rather than for myself, for someone else, and

to feed their pocketbook. One more thing yet, one more

lesson before we close. God overrides man's plans. That's another

interesting thing about this. As we look around us today,

we may say, wow, it looks like it's getting out

of control, and probably every generation before us has said that,

I'm not sure. But it's not getting out of control.

It really is not. And the reason that it's not

getting out of control is because God is in control.

And I know we can be fearful sometimes, but... God here,

he had the whole people group, and he simply came

up with a smart way and confused them all, and

he took care of it, just like that. And as

he intervened in man's wickedness with the flood, with the

city and tower of Babel, he has promised to, as

I point out, the city of Babylon, the figurative city

of Babylon, or if you want to make it literal,

it's up to you, but in Revelation, Babylon will be destroyed,

and I believe is being destroyed. through the work of Christ.

That is the God we serve. And so maybe I

would just twist this around a little bit, this story,

and say, for the Christian, this is an encouragement that

God is in control. Because when man does something, I

can say the Lamb will conquer. And you can read

Revelation for that. The Lamb is conquering, will conquer. No

matter the plans of mankind, the evil, whatever it is,

God will rule. As I was looking at this, just

in conclusion here, I think there's a lot of geography,

and maybe you all have heard from Brother Dan on

this already, but there's a lot of geography that would

be interesting to look at. There's also another interesting thing is,

just a little off the subject, but another thing that

caught my attention is how many languages did God confound

How many did he make from here? If you go

back to chapter 10, I didn't actually count, but some

people would say 70 was around how many families. I

think some scientists have traced languages back in a way

that does come around 70. And I don't like to

use that as proof of anything necessarily, but it's something

worth thinking about. Whatever the case, I even heard... heard

somebody say they traced the Germans and some other people, Europeans,

maybe back to one of these names in Genesis 10.

I'm not sure how they do that. But this is

our ancestors here that we just studied. And may we

not repeat these mistakes, but we do have the same

fallen heart without Christ. And I would just, again, challenge us,

as we have heard in our service this morning already,

in the devotional and Sunday school lessons, let God work

on my heart so I don't build those cities and

those towers. If he doesn't, I will. And if he does,

he can keep me faithful in that. May the Lord

bless you as you consider those lessons this morning. Let's

just bow our heads for prayer. Father, we thank you

for this day. Thank you for your love to us.

Thank you for these lessons that we've heard this morning

and Matthew and Genesis. Lord, I just ask that you

would give us humility before you, not to build our

own cities, our own towers, our own agendas, our own name,

but to glorify the name of Christ and him only.

We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.