Transcription
Now we come to another beginning. The beginning of secular power we would call it, in the city of Babel. Let us build for ourselves a city with a tower, with its head in the heavens. And let us make a name for ourselves. And the word for name is Shem. This is super interesting. John Lennox explains the Tower of Babel and all the implications that come with it. Absolutely amazing. Guys, make sure to watch till the end. I'm going to give my commentary all the way through. Let's get it.
Abram, the building of the great city. It is a fascinating genealogy because the genealogy of Shem is interrupted, of Noah is interrupted. And you get this little bit about um Nimrod, the founder of Babel, who's said to be the first mighty man on the earth, a powerful hunter. And again, we know relatively little about him. Josephus held that it was Nimrod who excited the people of Shenar to such an affront and contempt of God. He said he would be revenged on God if he should have a mind to drown the world again. And his idea was to build a city big enough that the flood, if it happened again, would never reached it. There's a very telling phrase. That's crazy. So Josephus, Jewish historian, I believe that's who he's talking about. His idea was that they were going to build a tower so high that no matter what they would be safe from the flood. That is wild. So that's major rebellion against God again. The beginning of his kingdom. Genesis starts with the words in the beginning. That's the beginning of spacetime, the universe. Now we come to another beginning, the beginning of secular power we would call it, in the city of Babel, which was a very advanced project.
There are hints earlier in Genesis about the beginnings of civilization. Cain, we're told, built a city called Enoch, and one of his descendants had a particularly talented family that developed agriculture, industry, music, and the arts. Wow. And these ancient people, as they migrated, say to one another, "Come, let us break bricks literally and burn them to a burning. Let us build for ourselves a city with a tower with its head in the heavens. And let us make a name for ourselves." And the word for name is Shem. This is all happening in the genealogy of Shem. Let us make a shem for ourselves. What does that mean? You say, "I'm here at this conference and I'm looking for meaning." Of course we are. What is your name? What do you mean? That's crazy because Shem, Ham, and Japheth were the sons of Noah. They wanted to make Shem the greatest name of all. Oh, wow. That is sly, my guy. The search for meaning is one of the most motivational searches that humanity knows, and we start with it. Let us make a name for ourselves. But somehow they were discontent, and this is making a name through the use of advanced sophisticated human technology. We're right into the 21st century.
Of course, Harvey Cox, in his landmark book, The Secular City, written in '65, says, "In our day, the secular metropolis stands as both the pattern of our life together and the symbol of our view of the world." And Leon Cass said, "Babel is a new idea in Genesis. It's a redefining of what humanity means. And this is what the city does." Now that is a topic for you to work out in your workshops. The secular city, death in the city. As Francis Schaefer once said, what is the city and what is its significance? Because, of course, a vast proportion of the earth now is living in cities, aren't they? Oh, and big towers. Have you noticed how the nations are competing to build the biggest thing into the sky they can? Fascinating, isn't it? Mhm.
Philip Noble, writing in the American, "The most primal motivation for skyscraper construction is to stake a claim, to mark the land, to show how your power can change the world both physically and psychologically. Nothing says I am master of the universe more clearly than the erection of a tall building." And if it can be taller than all the rest, so much the better. Before the Petronas Towers, no one knew where Kuala Lumpur was. Skyscrapers are made to make space. They yep. When you have so many people in so many buildings, you run out of space from the sides, but you can always build up to make money. But they are also built to make a point. They are built to all. And when we do get our true mile-high tower in 2030 or sooner, one thing is certain. Behind the financing, behind the army of workers, the engineers, the architects, there will stand a giant ego, personal, corporate, or national, but still requiring its likeness to be etched in the clouds. And the ideology of the modern skyscraper is the ideology of ancient Babylon: identity, technological achievement, prowess, pushing out the boundaries, flaunting wealth and power, reaching for the sky, grasping at immortality. And the tower of Ziggurat and Babylon was called Etemenanki, the house of the foundation of heaven and earth. Wow. It's so so essentially, the world has never changed. People have never changed, and we're all fallen people wanting to glorify ourselves like always. Link the city with the cosmos at the level of rational investigation in plotting the stars, trying to predict the seasons, but then in trying to reach the heavens and to control its powers. Do you recognize this as motivation? The irony is that later in scripture we read that the only thing in Babylon that reached to heaven was its sins. Oh, the ancient tower reached up towards heaven. But Genesis has a beautifully ironic comment. God had to come down to see what they were building. That's not bad, is it? Get roasted. Tower of Babel. You're so small. He couldn't see from heaven. John Lennox has the best sense of humor. It didn't reach very high. God had to come down. There was an unbridgeable gap between God and their achievement. And we need to communicate that, ladies and gentlemen, because the higher the skyscrapers go up, they think the less space is left for God because they feel that God resides in the gap between the height of the skyscraper and the dimension of heaven. Wow.
And God commented in a chilling way on their capacity: Nothing will be impossible to them. What does that mean? Does it mean that the project is feasible, but God will not allow it to happen? Well, at least we can see what God does. He doesn't destroy the city. He breaks its language down. Wow. Now, language plays a vital part in Genesis. By his word, God created. God said to them, by his word he defines morality and relationship, and now God does something that confuses their language because language creates unity and commonality. Here's the phone. And let me tell you, coming from someone who is around a lot of Spanish-speaking people, it's difficult to really understand and get to know someone if you can't speak their language. You don't know. You don't know their personality. You don't understand things that they're saying. It's very very but it's also very interesting to think about everyone being able to speak the same language. Imagine how much you could get done. Like I know like how hard it is if you literally don't have someone who can speak the same language with you. Super hard to get anything done. Now, because of the advances of technology, we're able to, you know, use ChatGPT and translators, but it's still a lot slower. But over time, I feel like people will try to bridge the gap again, and that's going to become dangerous. Of order and without common language, the common building project collapses, since, as we know in Europe, even the lack of common language causes all kinds of misunderstandings and frustrates the desire for control. Now, these are things we could develop right from now and stop at this. They're so important. The meaning of the city. Yeah. Because can it all be wrong? Many of you work in cities, and we owe the city to the development of the million iPhones that there are in this room and all the rest of it. We're grateful for the city. Well, let's, before I stop now this morning, get to the opposite side of this to get it into proportion.
The key statement is this: God speaks to a man called Abram and he says, "Leave your country and your kindred and I'll make a great nation off you." But then he says this, "I will make your name great. Shem. You're Shem, right? Dang. And this is it, isn't it? This is the message. It is actually something utterly fundamental because either I'm trying to make my own name great or I'm allowing God to make my name great. That is a word right there. Preach, brother. Either God will make your name great or you will try to make your name great, and it never works. Where do I generate significance? Is meaning something only we and we alone can create, as Babel thought? Abram's called to trust God for meaning. And inside any of us there can be a struggle, even in this conference. We see walking around at this conference what we imagine to be great names. You know so and so is a great name, you know. Well, that may be as it may, but we need to be careful with that kind of talk, don't we, because we can begin to feel insignificant. Yeah. And the pressure then is to compete. You listen to a group of powerful people talking, and you can see subtly behind the scenes a pecking order is being established. You ever notice that? No, you wouldn't notice that, would you? And people pushing. And because I'm searching for my significance and you're searching for your significance, my significance sometimes means that I push my tower a bit higher than yours. In fact, I can't even see yours. And you can't even see mine because you feel yours is higher than mine already. And that can lead to a lot of hurt and pain. Ladies and gentlemen, we need to be practical here. Yeah. If I mean that's the fall of insecurities and obviously pride, but insecurity as well, is I was worrying about how you amount to other people because you're so insecure. You try to push other people down to lift you up, and that never ever works. It's what Abram was saved from. It must be real. And if this is the heart of the diagnosis given in scripture, that Abram's coming out of this background, that is God is trying to get this background out of him. Wow. We may be sure that the way we build our lives and the way we search for our meaning is utterly central. It's a deep challenge, isn't it? Yeah. And you see if people say this is a negative attitude to the city, its culture, its agriculture, its infrastructure, its commerce, its financial systems, educational and all the rest of it. And my friends at IBM tell me we are now entering the age of the smart city. And it sounds utterly fascinating. What's wrong with that? And what is wrong with using your mind to develop these things? Absolutely nothing as far as I can see. Absolutely nothing. There's nothing wrong with using the mind and trusting God. There's everything wrong with trusting the mind and using God. Dang. And that makes the I always got to remember to ask God for direction and not try to do everything on my own. When things don't go well, then I ask God. No, it needs to be the other way around. So God forgive me. Practical difference.
Now, does God not like cities? Is that what the message is? Now listen carefully in case you misunderstand me. He hates it. God is very interested in cities. Just listen to this. Makes sense. Now this is something you don't learn in the Old Testament. But it's an analysis of Abram's motivation given in the New Testament. I'm going to read it to you. It's in Hebrews 11. For Abraham was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. Then he goes through the other patriarchs and says God is not ashamed to be called their God for he has prepared for them a city. God is absolutely for cities. Woo. But you'll notice, ladies and gentlemen, that the final book in the Bible has got two cities, won't you? Really? There's, believe it or not, mystery. Babylon, the grain, and there's the new Jerusalem. Yeah, that's no accident, of course, because in a sense, the Bible is a tale of two cities. I want to live in New Jerusalem. I don't know about you guys. And it's not a question of which city you live in. It's a question of which city you live for. Daniel lived in Babel, in Babylon. Abram left it. But the secret of Daniel's life was he lived for the city which is what? The foundations. And now we come near to what's going on here. Wow.
Do you notice that in the description of Babel, the interest is all in the foundations? There was a city and a tower. And we think so much of the tower we forget that it had foundations. Now, what do we mean by that? Do you mean the kind of bricks or stone or steel or plastic? No, of course not. In the ancient world, as in the contemporary world, cities stand for ideologies. We used to use it in the radio. We've stopped doing it. But when I was young, centuries ago, I used to hear the radio, and it used to go like this: Moscow says, and Washington has responded, and Paris does, and they use the capital city as a metaphor for the ideology of the city, the philosophy behind it. So what we've got to ask ourselves is what is the ideology that stands behind Babel? That is, what intellectual, moral, and spiritual foundations was it built on? That's the one side. And if God has prepared a city, yeah, what are its foundations? That's so good. Yeah. At the end of the day, the the city of Babel was built on pride and desire and making a name for themselves. Like that's completely against God. So what are we building our foundation on? Like you know the story of building your house on a rock versus building your house on on the sand, a firm foundation. Abraham looked for the city which had foundations. So Abraham, according to Hebrews, knew about the foundations, not simply about the city. But I want to suggest to you that the simple answer is the obvious one: that the first and biggest foundation that was totally missing in Babel was trusting God for the foundation of life and meaning and significance, and life's journey was a following God as God said, come and invited the man to leave that city on those foundations, not to give up the idea of a city, but to think around conceptually about a totally new kind of city, organized life, but organized around basic principles like that of trusting God. Amen. Guys, we need to all trust in God and not try to make a name for ourselves, but make make a name for Jesus, give glory and honor to God and not take away the things that belong to him. So amazing. So I encourage you all to trust in God today. If you never decided to follow Jesus, I encourage you to do that today. Put your faith and trust in him. In the description below, you will be able to click a link to help you to decide to follow Jesus for the first time. Do that today. Have an amazing day.