Within View, Pt. 1
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Have you noticed how quickly a group of people can unite around the wrong idea? Suddenly something that should have never gotten off the ground feels unstoppable. Pastor Nick Gatzke takes us back to the Tower of Babel where an entire civilization came together to make a name for themselves. What could go wrong?
We’ve called the series Beyond Repair, and if you have been with us for any amount of time, you’ve seen sort of the big arc of this beginning of the Bible as God creating the world in perfection, displaying many aspects of his creative and glorious character, creating humankind in his very own image as perfect beings as well. But when sin entered the world, everything began to change. Sin as a choice by Adam and Eve to rebel against God, to question his goodness and his godness. And as a result, we saw in Genesis chapter four that this sin was much more destructive than they ever conceived it would be. The destruction was profound, in fact, and in chapter five we saw that the result of this sin was actually death. And we see person after person, generation after generation dying. Death reigned on the earth as a result or a consequence of this sin. And by chapter six, sin had taken its hold in the human condition, and there was all-out rebellion against God, so much so that he judged the entire world, flooded the earth to purify it, to cleanse it, saving only Noah and his family to start over again. The most profound difficulty in human existence is corruption of the human race by sin.
Sin is one of those things that we take all too casually. It’s sort of like that snake, you know, that friend that you had in high school that thought it was cool to buy a pet snake. And he played with the snake and he bragged about the snake and he took pictures of the snake and then one day the snake bit him. Sin is like that drug that you dabble in and you say, it’s not a big deal, it’s not gonna be harmful, it’s not gonna affect anybody but me. But you fast forward down the line and the consequences are devastating. You know, a scorpion once asked a beaver if the beaver would give him a ride on his back across the river and the beaver said, are you insane?
When I take you across the river, you will sting me in the back and I’m gonna drown. To which the scorpion laughed and replied, oh, come on now, why would I sting you? If I stung you, then we would both sink to the bottom and die. Use logic. That’s illogical for you to think that. And so the beaver thought about it a minute and he said, yeah, I guess you’re right. Hop a board and away we’ll go. And as the beaver was swimming across the river, sure enough, they were halfway across when the scorpion gave him a big old sting right in the middle of the back. And as the beaver and the scorpion were both sinking to the bottom of the river, the beaver looked at him and said, why would you do such a wicked, wicked thing? You yourself said it was illogical to do this. To which the scorpion sighed.
Logic has nothing to do with it. It’s just my nature. Sin, whether logical in its conception or illogical in its outcome, its very nature is death and destruction. And that is why we’ve been going through Genesis 1 through 11 over the last number of weeks together, because I want you to understand this very, very important reality that the most destructive thing in this life is sin. You have a lot of problems. I have a lot of problems, but our biggest problem is the same, and that is we have been captured by sin. And when we begin to understand that reality as one of the key framework pieces for our human existence, then we have motivation to rightly try to avoid sin in our life. And we have motivation to rightly seek another remedy, a remedy that we cannot provide on our own. And that leads us to today’s passage.
Turn with me to Genesis 10 and 11, will you? Genesis 10 and 11 is the concluding section of this series. Remember where we’ve been? Noah and his sons get off the boat. God tells them to be fruitful, multiply, and to fill the earth. And that’s exactly what they do. Genesis 10, we’re not going to read the whole thing, but this gives us what is often referred to as the table of nations. Chapter 11 points us to one specific story that we’ll focus on at the Tower of Babel. And then chapter 12, or the second half of chapter 11, revisits one of those nations, one line within the table of nations with a specific point attached to it. If we were to divide this up into four parts, we would say the first part of this text today is that God spreads the people throughout the nations and he chooses to use one nation specifically to display his purposes.
Look with me at chapter 10. We’ll read just a couple of verses of it. It says, “These are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Sons were born to them after the flood. The sons of Japheth were Gomer and Magog and Madai and Javan and Tubal and Meshech and Tiras.” Go down to verse six. “The sons of Ham were Cush and Egypt and Put and Canaan.” Down to verse 21. “Shem also the father of all the children of Eber, the elder brother of Japheth, children were born. The sons of Shem, Elam, Asshur, Arphaxad, Lud and Aram.” And down to verse 32. “These are the clans of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies and their nations. And from these nations spread abroad the earth after the flood.”
This list serves not simply as a genealogy to give a historical account of the people of the earth, but there’s something more significant attached to it. If you were to count up all the names or clans in chapter 10, you would find 70 names in this list. And there are 70 names there, not by accident, but to display something, because the number 70 in the Bible is often a number of completion. We see this in other places. We see that there are 70 descendants of Jacob in Exodus chapter one, that there are 70 elders of Israel in Exodus 24, and that Jesus himself sends out 70 disciples in Luke chapter 10. It’s clear that some people are missing from this list.
But that’s okay, it’s not meant to be a strict historical account. It’s meant to show 70 of them to display the point that God had completed his work. He had repopulated the earth, the nations had spread, and this was all a form of his blessing after the flood. Judgment was terrible, but blessing was worldwide as a result. Secondly, we see in this section of Genesis, in chapter 11, verses 10 and on, that the line of Shem is given again in maybe even a little more detailed account. Now it might strike you, if you were just reading through this, that why is Shem and his line talked about in chapter 10 verse 21 and then again in chapter 11 verse 10? Did he think that we forgot already? No, it’s listed there for a purpose. And the purpose is to show that God is going to use this line, this people, the line of Shem, which would ultimately become known as the Semites, to display his power, his character, and his glory to all the world.
He would make promises to this people. He would not allow human history to experience him in some sort of random, disconnected variety of events, but that he would use a people and he would use their history to display to all people how God himself works in the world and just who he is. He would make promises to them called covenants. He would keep those covenants as time went on. He would judge their sin and he would call them back to repentance and faithfulness to himself. He would lead them, he would guide them, he would be near to them. This line of people, the line of Shem, would ultimately be known as the people of Israel and from them would come Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, Moses, Joshua, King David, King Solomon, and from this line of people, his son, his very own son, Jesus would be born.
This is where a genealogy can actually be encouraging to us. Because when you ever feel like life is out of control, like things are just way too much to handle right now. We all feel that way sometimes. Some of us feel that way this morning. But a genealogy like this shows us that the God of heaven in all of his majesty and power and all of the different things that he has going on at one time has a detailed account of human history. He knows all of the people and all of their intricate details, and that means he knows yours. And that you are not alone. That he cares for you. That he’s enacting his purposes even through your life. And so you can respond to him in trust and obedience whether life is easy or whether life is difficult.
And so we see post-flood that the people spread, God blessed the world, and his response is to command these nations to grow and to spread, they did just that. A new humanity was forming, but this new humanity would not be free from the struggles of old humanity. As their desires increased, their distortion increased, and their sin did as well. So look with me at chapter 11, will you?
Genesis chapter 11, starting at verse one, says this. “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 bitumen for mortar. Then they said, come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens. 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, they are one people. 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.
In pride, the people came back together to build this tower at Babel. And we see a number of different facets of this very short story, but there are specific offenses I wanna highlight for you. Pride, rebellion, and humanizing God. Pride. Pride is deceptive in its nature, isn’t it? You rarely become a prideful person overnight. Pride is one of those things that happens piece by piece, decision by decision, thought by thought. It doesn’t flood into your existence in a single day or even a week. You become a prideful person over time. And it happens when you overly delight in your own accomplishments and you think of yourself more highly than you ought to. You minimize or you deny your shortcomings. You maximize your successes and you are deceived. You become deceived in thinking that you are something greater than you really are.
A man was once asked why he always talked to himself. And his response was an illustration of pride. He said, well, this is the way that it is. I like to talk with intelligent people. And I like to hear intelligent people talk. So I talk to myself.
A woman was struggling with pride and the sin was so powerful in her life and she could not let it go. And so she called her pastor and she said, “Pastor, I need to meet with you.” And so they met together and she came into the pastor’s office and she said, “I have this besetting sin in my life that I can’t break free from. It’s the sin of pride.” And he said, “Well, how so?” To which she replied, “Every time I come to church, I look around and I see all of the other women in the church and I know that I am more beautiful than every single one of them. And I can’t come to church without this dominating my thoughts. Tell me, pastor, how can I break free from this sin?”
The pastor thought about it for a moment, and he said, Mary, that’s not a sin, that’s just a mistake. We see the offense of pride, it’s deceitful in its nature, it can overtake us, and it’s listed here in verse four, look at it with me. “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.” So great were these people in their own eyes that they wanted to be recognized and remembered. They wanted to be known not only throughout the land, but throughout history.
I can think of no greater contemporary example of desire to be known and remembered than the international soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo. Cristiano Ronaldo is known in the soccer community to be one of the greatest players of his generation, and he knows it. And it’s on display for everyone to see. When his teammates do not play to his liking, he publicly shows his displeasure. If his coach is not coaching the way that he desires, he lets him have it. If his girlfriend does not do his bidding, he just goes and finds another one. Pride oozes from this man. In December 2013, news outlets around the world announced that in his hometown of Madeira, Portugal, which is an island off the coast of Portugal, Cristiano Ronaldo was opening a museum dedicated to his favorite subject, Cristiano Ronaldo. The museum dedicated to himself features photographs, video, awards, shoes, soccer balls, everything you’d want to see on a Saturday afternoon. Outside the museum, Ronaldo had a statue of himself erected with a plaque underneath it that boldly proclaims the greatest football player in the world.
Pride, oozing from the man. Of course, this museum has room, vacant space in it for the awards that he assumes that he will be given down the road. Pride happens when you think more highly of yourself than you ought to. But let’s bring it a little closer to home, shall we? I mean, I would imagine that most of you have no desire to have a museum after yourself, but I imagine that many of us struggle with ways in which we promote ourself. How do you promote yourself? What do you think about your own gifts, skills, and abilities, maybe in a way that are more highly given than you ought to? What ways are you striving to be remembered?
Not in a healthy fashion, but even in an unhealthy one. Maybe you find pride in your skills, maybe you find pride in your looks, maybe you find pride in your family, or maybe you find pride in your success. Some of us are good at masking our pride, but in the quiet moments, in the recesses of our own mind, we know those areas in which we think we are better than those around us. Those areas in which we think that we know more or deserve more. Those areas that we struggle with pride. But you need to know. You’ve heard it said before, and I believe it to be true, that pride is the root of all of our sin. And God feels very specifically about this sin. Proverbs 8:13 says, “The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech, I hate,” says the Lord.
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** This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy, but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.
