Well, we'll continue our sermon series in Genesis today. If you'll turn into your Bibles, we're going to look at Genesis chapter 11. I'm going to read verses 1 through 9. Genesis 11, verses 1 through 9. This is about the city of Babel and the Tower of Babel, more popularly known as the Tower of Babel, but it's built within the city of Babel. And we're going to read these nine verses. And the first half of the verses, you will notice is about man's exalting himself. It's man's trying to seek to mankind apart from God, trying to seek to make a name for himself. The second half is about what God thinks of that and how God comes down to humble and judge man. So the first half, you're going to see man seeking sinfully to make a name for himself and to to exalt himself, to build upward. as much as He can. He wants upward mobility. And then we're going to see in the second half the Lord God and what He thinks about that in that He comes down to judge and to humble and to scatter the proud in their thoughts. Let us stand for the reading of God's Word today. And this is the Lord's Word. I want to remind you of that. I want to remind you of how God is speaking to us through this word, and let's hear the Bible read. This is his inerrant and infallible word to us. 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, Let us make bricks. Some translations, the older translations translate it go or do, but it is come. 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 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, they are 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 their confused 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 there the Lord confused or mixed up the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth. Thus ends the reading of God's Word. Let's pray. Our Father, our God, thank you for your word. Thank you for your goodness in teaching us this day. We pray that we would hear from Christ. We pray that you would transform us by your spirit and help us to glorify Jesus in all that we do and say. We pray that you'd help your servant as I preach, as I minister, that there'd be clarity, that I would increase or no, that I would decrease and you would increase, that Jesus would be glorified. In your name we pray. Amen. You may be seated. And that must be a joke on me today that I say increase on the day I'm talking about making a name for oneself. You can laugh. I do. Last week, we looked in Chapter 10 and Chapter 10 was about the unity of the human race and Chapter 10 showed that we were all from one brotherhood, that we were all children of Noah. that Noah, after the ark, his three sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth came forth from the ark. And they were told to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And we talked very briefly about how chapter 10 is situated purposely before chapter 11. In some ways, you look at chapter 10 and you think, well, I think that I didn't really need to have that there. But this is God's inspired, inerrant word. And you want to ask, why is it there? And I think that the reason it's there, as I tried to show last week, was that God wanted to show us first the unity of the human race. And ultimately, we saw that the human race would be united again in the Lord Jesus Christ, that in the Lord Jesus, every tribe and people and nation and tongue would come to know Him and that that broken household of Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth would be one day reunited as the household of God. by faith in Jesus. But here we have the reason why the nations were scattered. Here we have in chapter 11 the actual curse of God upon mankind. And we're told more here about why the nations were dispersed. Now, you understand that originally it was God's will for the nations to be dispersed. We need to remember back from Genesis 128 that man and woman, Adam and Eve and all mankind were to be fruitful and multiply and they were to fill the earth. It was God's will for the earth to be filled with His children. When Noah and his family got off the ark in chapter 9 verse 1, we're told that the blessing of God, the command of God specifically for Noah and his sons was in chapter 9 verse 1, God blessed Noah and his sons and he said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. So again, they were to fill the earth and be made up of different tribes and nations. And so one thing we see right up front in chapter 11 of Babel is that the Lord's plans will always succeed. The Lord's plans will always succeed. contrary to whether or not man is obedient or not. And so the Lord's plans will succeed. Now, when we take a look at chapter 11, we see that it is split up. The passage is split up in chapter 11, verses 1 through 4, where man, mankind, the sons of Adam, the children of Adam, the children of mankind, are seeking to make a name for themselves. They're seeking to build a city. They're seeking to build a tower. They want to place a memorial for themselves. They want immortality. But they're doing it against God. They're disobeying God. They're not doing it with God's help. They're doing it on their own because self is the center rather than God. And so while they're trying to move up and they're trying to exalt themselves and they're trying to make a memorial for themselves, the memorial that will be remembered of them will be the memorial of verse 9. The memorial will be Babel. The memorial will be all mixed up. The memorial will be confused. So the first part of this passage is about man seeking upwardly and proudly to make a name for himself. The second part is verses five through nine and showing how God comes down to humble mankind. Now, three imperatives you see that tie together this passage I want to point out to you. The first is in verse three. 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 there is, in verse 4, they, the children of man, the children of Adam again, they say, Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its tops in the heavens and let us make a name for ourselves lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. And then the third come is a come that is Trinitarian in verse 7. It is the come of God. It's the come of discussion within the Trinity, if you will, between the persons of the Trinity, as we've seen the same kind of plurality in the inter-Trinitarian speech or discussion earlier in Genesis 1. So we have it here. Earlier in Genesis 1, it was, let us make man in our image. Here it is, come, let us go down. And there, confuse their language So they may not understand one another's speech. And so you have mankind here continuing to live even after the flood, even after judgment has come, even after the gospel has been preserved through Noah. You have mankind with his sinful proclivity to do evil, to do life apart from God, to trust in oneself and to build and make a name for oneself rather than trusting in God. And you have God showing what he thinks about this and what he will do about it when we try it. And so I want to consider first what man is trying to accomplish here. Verse three. The first thing we see are image bearers who are gifted by God. They're using ingenuity here. They live in a plane called Shinar and the plane after flood after the flood was full of certain deposits. It was sandy, it was muddy, and it had what we call asphalt, what's translated here, bitumen for mortar. But as even today, it's rich in resources and petroleum in this area. And so you have these image bearers who are using gifts of God to make brick. in order to build. But their building project is not for God. It is for themselves. And so you have this hubris. You have this pride of man. And yet at the same time, let's notice the ingenuity. In this area, there were not rocks or stones to be found to build towers. And so what did they do? They made bricks. They could make bricks so that they could build. So they could have a wide foundation and build up to the sky. They could put bricks together. They could burn them in the hot sun and then stick them together with asphalt. That's the kind of technological savvy that God has made man to have. They're doing things because they're image bearers and they're quite gifted. And the focus I want you to see is they are using their gifts. But their gifts are being used in disobedience to God. Because as I've made clear, as God has made clear in chapter 1 and in chapter 9, verse 1, the mission of mankind is to build for God. The mission of mankind is to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth. Go out that way with me. Go out from me with me. in order to fill the earth. And that was the mission of mankind. Here we have them building the tower for themselves. We're told that in verse 4. Notice that they're being technologically savvy. They're being smart and ingenuous. They're using ingenuity, I should say. Anyway, that's a word that has one little... Anyway, they are being, using their God-given talents. But look at what they're doing it for. And verse 4 tells us that more particularly of the hubris, the self-centeredness, the pride, the arrogance. Come let us make, or verse 4, 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 so This mission is an anti-God mission. This mission is a mission for self. And so they're building this for themselves. And even in the passage, you get the repetition of ourselves and us in order to get the feeling of this passage, in order to get the sense of it. In verse four, come, let us build for ourselves. Come, let us do this for ourselves. And we'll build a city and a tower with its tops to heaven. And let us make a name for ourselves. What's the city and the tower all about? There's a religious aspect to it, but I'm not going to talk so much about religious aspect as we think of worship. I'm going to talk more about today the aspect of this tower building of a different religious sense. That is, the way or the reason that they're building this city and tower is so that they can put their security in themselves. so they won't have to trust God, so that they will be secure in their lives. A city would keep out evil. A city would be armed together against any intruders. A city, a collective, would form a power where they could resist together against enemies. A city, a tower, would promise a security for watchfulness, around the territory, a tower, a safety, a security. All of these things they're doing in order to secure themselves and to seek an immortality apart from God. In other words, what they want to do, people of God, is they want to have security but not have to trust God. They want a name to be remembered. They want a memorial. They want to be remembered for what they've done. But they don't want to have to trust God for it. And much more pointedly, and they don't they don't want to give God the glory and the praise that they've been created to give him. And so they have misplaced ambition. Ambition. What is ambition? It's seeking power, it's seeking position, it's seeking security, it's seeking a name. Misplaced ambition is sinful ambition. There's nothing wrong with ambition. God's made us by nature ambitious people. We were made to be ambitious for God. We were made to be ambitious to seek first the kingdom, to seek God, to seek Christ. We were made ambitious to do his will and to be blessed. And so these folks not only have disobedience against God's command to fill the earth, they have a misplaced ambition for self. They have a misplaced ambition for self. Furthermore, they want to consolidate their power so that they are immortal. So that so that no one, no one could ever defeat them. This is a very anti-God mentality. You see, people have got, if chapter nine, after, the flood where Noah gets drunk. If that end of that chapter was another fall of man, this chapter here is another way of Cain. This is a retelling of Cain's story of going east and seeking to make a name for himself, of building a city, of seeking immortality, of seeking to be memorialized, of seeking to be remembered, but through disobedience to God, through a misplaced ambition. People go, what do you do when you're a gifted person? You're an image bearer with all the gifts in the world to be technologically savvy, to scoop up the mud and build something, because you're that kind of being. You're that kind of being. You're that kind of reflection of God that you can do things that seem impossible. And yet you scoop up the earth, you take the pencil, you begin to think, and sin comes right in on that with self-centered ambition to take your mind off God and to put your mind on yourself, on your own heart and say, take that thought, take that idea, take that dirt and use it for yourself. People remember you. You'll be memorialized. But what do you do when you have this giftedness that's been given by God that's mixed with evil ambition or misplaced ambition that's thwarting God's purposes, that's actually opposing God's purposes? And you mix it with fear. Oh, you've got a terrible, terrible combination. See, that's what's happening here is they have disobedience. mixed with misplaced ambition and fear. Notice, they not only want to make a name for themselves in verse four, they want to make that name so that they would not be dispersed over the face of the earth. We'll lose our identity corporately. We'll lose our power. We'll lose our ability corporately and as a people to oppress those who are weaker. They're fearful. They're fearful that what God has commanded would not be good for them. And so this disobedience is mixed with ambition, a misplaced ambition that leads to fear, the fear of loss, the fear of losing their security, the fear of losing their standing, the fear of losing that somebody else's name might be glorified. Somebody else. Might win this race. and this ambition causes great distortion and pride. And this is what we're being taught here. People by nature, blessed children of God, listen. We are these people by nature. We've been gifted, but we don't want to use our gifts and our service for God first. Be honest with God about that. Our ambitions misplace. We want so desperately to be in control. Give me power. Give me position. Don't make me trust God. Come on, be honest. And then it's mixed with a fear of loss. If you want to get to the heart of your problems, you think about where it is you fear loss. You fear losing your children, lose your position, lose your reputation, lose your influence, and you're getting on the thing that you call God functionally. Your fear of loss will awaken you to the reality that you are just like this. all mixed up without God. You and I were created to be ambitious for Jesus. We were created to be ambitious for God in His name. And God says I'll have no, nothing to do with this hubris, this pride. Nations that have tried this are gone. They are but dust today. We know of these towers in the ancient world. In the 20th century, archaeologists have found these towers that were called ziggurats or zigguratus. And they were buildings sometimes as wide as 350 feet wide. Children, that's big. That's wide. And as high as 350 feet into the sky and sometimes into the clouds. This was big and they're gone. They're gone. Civilizations, nations who sought to be secure in themselves, who sought to consolidate all their power to oppress the weak, they're gone. Where are the Babylonians today? Which Babel would become Babylon? Where are the Babylonians? Where are the Assyrians? Tell me. Where are the Akkadians? Where are the Sumerians? Where are the Persians? Where are they? Where are the Greeks? Where are the Romans? Tell me. In the 20th century alone, you saw this kind of folly and hubris. Men like Hitler and Mao and Stalin, who wanted to make a name for themselves, to build up kingdoms in order to have power, to consolidate in order to oppress and crush. the wheat to crush Christianity out of existence. People, God, whenever you have nations joining together for power, don't join them. They're seeking to eventually kill you. They consolidate power in the name of unbelief. We must be wise. America will go this way, too. It will be gone with all other temporal kingdoms. There is one kingdom that will endure forever and ever and ever. And his name, that king's name, is Jesus. And he's come so that we'd be delivered from our disobedience to sin. so that our ambitions would be placed in the right place, so that we, instead of fearing loss, would put our whole lives on His altar and give ourselves to Him in death, so that we could fear God and trust Him, and so that we live lives of humility and weakness and be meek and lowly and know that our names will be blessed in Jesus. Mankind's all mixed up. We will sacrifice whether as nations or people. Let's focus on people. Let's focus on this church. We will sacrifice our lives, our families, and even our walk with Jesus Christ because we fear loss. Because we haven't learned to love Jesus more than other people and other things. That we haven't learned that He has given His all for us on the cross to die for our sins, to purchase us, to redeem us, to be His glorious children, to live for Him. And we go on being tempted. I fear that loss. Lord Jesus, I just can't trust You here. And that loss shows you how much you're focused on yourself, that fear of loss. Jesus has come to say, trust me, I've given my life for you. I've died for you. I've come to make you a new people. I've come to put your ambition in the right place, to direct all your praise to God, to say not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to your name be the glory. To bow before this great king. And to become like him, by his grace. But people go, we struggle. This week. Can you imagine a minister struggling just because he wants to be remembered for a sermon? Can you imagine that? It's sick. And it's a sermon on Babel. I'm all mixed up without Jesus. You in your workplaces, the things you're willing to sacrifice, the commands of God you're willing to put aside to not face your idolatry, to not face that you might be living for someone other than Jesus. You'll go on with that idolatry because it secures your position. It secures your reputation. It secures your place. It secures your name. Stop it by God's grace. Stop it. You can get at what that is by your fear of loss. And you'll never lose Jesus. You'll never lose His kingdom. He's given Himself, so you'll never lose eternity. You'll never lose your memorial. His memorial is so much greater. He'll give you a name. He has given and granted you an eternal, immortal, memorial name that Isaiah 56 says is better than sons and daughters. Now that's real good. It's better than sons and daughters. It's a name that he gives that is a memorial. It's a monument to his grace, to his power, to his love in the Lord Jesus. But think about our disobedient. They're being disobedient to the very clear command that God says to fill the earth. Think about it. Where is it that you think that you have to lie? in order to keep a position or reputation and not trust God? Where is it you think you have to break the Lord's Day because you can't have enough faith to rest? Resting takes faith, people of God. But you think you have to keep building. And so you keep building. Where do you dishonor those in authority? Children? Adults? Where do you dishonor? Where do you break the commandments? in order to build your monument, your memorial for yourself, your security. We should know those things. Be aware of those things. Know the Lord Jesus Christ is always calling you to come to Him. He is the one who says, come, come to me. You'll find rest. Come to me. You're laboring, you're heavy laden because you're not trusting in me, Jesus says. Because If you're trusting in Me, My yoke is easy. My burden is light. Come, take My yoke and learn from Me. This is a promise. God promises peace all through the Scriptures that we might trust Him. He promises peace. He promises abundant joy in Jesus Christ for those who trust Him. And all you've got to do is just believe His Word. All you've got to do is just trust Him by God's grace. And when you see that you don't, ask Him. Say, Lord, I believe, but help my unbelief in this area. See, Jesus comes to rescue us from our sins so that we can live for him freely and that we can give the glory to him. And that we can praise his holy name. In verse five, we see what God thinks of this building project. This is satirical. There's iron, irony. And there's some more of what we've heard, the anthropomorphisms. It's where God is speaking or God is spoken of in a way that is understandable for us. For instance, come let us go down. God's everywhere present. He doesn't really have to come down, but That's speaking, so that we'll understand. And children, that's called anthropomorphism. You'll be tested on that later. Anthropomorphism, it's the way of showing a form of God in a way that we can understand as men. It's baby talk. It's like when we talk to babies or infants, and we say, goo-goo. That guy says, yes. We don't go around speaking that way to each other, but to children, we say, goo-goo. Yes, yes. At least I do. And Jesus speaks to us baby talk. That's anthropomorphism. And so here we're told that the Lord came down. And that's the satire. That's the humor here. That the Lord had to come down to see this pitiful, puny, building project of man. That's what we're to understand is the Lord, you know what he thinks of our self-centered building projects? He thinks they're pitiful. He thinks they're puny. And they're very small. That's what it is. The Lord came down to see this thing. Let's take a look at this great building. What's taking all their energies and times? Let's go look. Oh, this thing. Yeah, I can see it. It's like us going out in the backyard and trying to understand the kingdom of the grasshopper. Has a grasshopper's building project ever threatened you? An ant, maybe, when they get in with the cookies on the floor. But the point is, they're still ants. They're still grasshoppers comparatively. And that's what God sees of our building projects. We're like little grasshoppers out in the yard. We're like little ants. We're insignificant in our purposes and plans. They're very pitiful and they will come to nothing. As I said before, the nations of the world have passed. We're in a world that is described as passing away. And the only thing permanent is found in God in Christ. And so we're told that the Lord comes down and what does he do in verse seven? Well, the first thing he says, I should say, in verse six, he shows to us that in God's estimation, our building projects, our self-centered projects are puny. They're pitiful and they're doomed to failure. The second thing we notice here about God is that he says this is only the beginning in verse six of what they'll do. Nothing they propose. will now be impossible for them. So we see that the Lord sees that our building projects apart from Him are sinful and they're very dangerous. They're in need of repentance. And they're dangerous because first of all, they're disobedient to God's commands and plans. Secondly, because they're dangerous, because we build ourselves up for self in order to have power over other people. So they're pitiful in God's estimation of our plans. They're puny. They'll not last. They're also sinful and dangerous. And verse 7, they're going to come under judgment. Verse 7 says, come, let us go down and confuse their language. Let's babble their language. Let's all mix up their language so they may not understand one another's speech. And so the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth. And they left off building the city. The tower was left unguarded. The tower, the city was never finished. God's judgment came down upon the sinful men here. And he confuses their language. So Thursday, everyone had their orders and everyone was building their bricks and everyone was speaking to one another. And Friday morning comes or whatever day it was. And they came out and their tongues were twisted. They were all mixed up so that their hearts, the way that their hearts were mixed up in their living for God. So their tongues became mixed up as an outward manifestation of their inward confusion. And so you have the next day. They can't speak. They can't communicate. And so they're dispersed eventually all over the world. And what's the memorial? Verse nine. Its name was called Babel because there the Lord confused or he babbled the language of all the earth. And from there, the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth. This is the judgment of God that will come on all of the people who try to build a kingdom that is in competition to his. And people have got to understand that any kingdom that is not Christ's kingdom is in competition to the Lord's kingdom and the kingdom of His Anointed One. Now, you may be a citizen of it and very proud, and I'm thankful for that as well, but it is still not a kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. Only Christ's kingdom is the only kingdom. Only Christ's kingdom is the eternal kingdom. Only Christ's name will be remembered for all eternity. But what we have here is a picture of God's judgment upon the earth, a cursed memorial, a cursed name. And people have got this sets us up for something very important. The reason Babel is here and we have to remember the big picture. Is because if you remember what's coming in chapter 12 is a promise of God to Abraham and to all the people. and the promise of God to Abraham and all the people. Listen to this in chapter 12, verse 2. Abraham's called out of the nations. Abraham's called out from this dispersion. And God begins reuniting his people slowly through redemptive history. So he takes this one man, Abram, and he says in verse 2, I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and I will make your name great. So what we're being taught here is that those who are blessed, those who are remembered are those who God makes their name great. It's God who makes our names great. It's God who makes our names great. Now, people of God, you say Abraham and his seed, Abraham and his family, Abraham was going to have a great name. Was it because of Israel? Well, unfortunately, we find out later in the Apostle Paul's writing to the Romans in chapter 2 that Israel had blasphemed God's name among the Gentiles many times. And so how will we have a permanent memorial? How will we be blessed and be remembered through Abraham's son, the Lord Jesus? The promise here is that Abraham will be a great nation and he will be blessed and his name will be great so that he will be a blessing because of his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who would come in the fullness of the times. And his son, people of God, is the one who's been given the name above every name. His son has been given the name above every name. His son has been given the name that can heal us from all of our sins. who can rescue us from our self-centeredness and put our ambition and our focus on Christ as it should have been from the very beginning. Only Jesus can remove our sin. People of God, when you see yourself in this day-to-day, I want you to remember a cycle. I want you to see in the center of this picture self-centeredness. You. You and your pursuit for a name. A memorial for self. And then around it, I want you to see another greater circle. And at the top of that, in order to make your name greatest, how is that characterized according this passage? I want you to remember this. It's characterized by disobedience, by misplaced ambition, by a fear of loss and by folly, by foolishness. That's characteristic of a cursed existence in life. that your whole life is so self-centered, you'll know because there's disobedience to God, there's misplaced ambition, there's a fear of loss, and there is a pride. If Christ is at the center of your life, and this is what you should pursue, seeking first his kingdom because he first sought you. Jesus lost his name. He lost His reputation. He lost His position. He lost every security He had in order to redeem you by His precious blood. He lost that which was most precious, that we fear the most to lose, and that was He lost His life. But even greater than that, what He did for you, He lost the blessed presence of His Father that He had enjoyed for all eternity. His Father laid our sins upon Jesus. And he became an accursed thing. So that we might have his name, that we might live for him, that we might know the Father and be reconciled to the Father and might experience the blessedness of that joy and pleasures forevermore at God's right hand, that our memorial might be a memorial to Jesus. So how does your life look when Jesus is the center? Joyful obedience. a directed godly ambition, a fear of God more than a fear of anything else, and strength and weakness and humility. Jesus is central. This passage teaches us that there's obedience, there's joyful obedience to Jesus. There's a directed ambition, a godly ambition to make Him known, to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. There's a fear of God more than any fear of any loss. And I encourage you again, let me state that and I know I'm being repetitious. The teacher has the right sometimes. Exsinuate that fear of loss for you. Where do you fear loss? Reputation, position, security, on and on. Where do you fear? That is getting close. Finding out. Functionally, who you serve. Because in Jesus, when he's central, there's a trust and it grows over time. Faith grows as we learn to trust in people, God. You start now, whether you have a weak faith or a strong faith, you start now saying, Lord Jesus, I believe. Help my unbelief. And I fear loss, Lord Jesus, in this area. And that is dangerous for me. Another way of asking the fear of loss is asking, what do you love the most? It is what you love the most. Treasure it as a gift of God, but fear it. Fear it, because you can very easily replace Jesus. as the thing you live for, or the person you live for. With Jesus at the center, God's name is exalted. And we live humbly, seeking to do His will. And that's what we want. People of God, that's what we want. This church is a building project of God. Jesus himself was a building project. The stone that the builders rejected has become a stumbling block to unbelievers, but the very cornerstone, foundation to God's temple that connects heaven and earth. Jesus is that temple. Destroy this temple, he says, and in three days I'll raise it again. In the glorious resurrection, he raised God's tower. He raised God's temple in his flesh, in his body. And he reunited heaven and earth. And on Pentecost, what happens? But they're united together as one people, no longer divided by tongue and tribe and people and nation to become one minded. One-purposed people to make the gospel known, to make the good news known, to say, I am part of God's tower and His building project. I am going to live forever. And I, my name will always be remembered because Jesus has remembered my name. So rejoice, people of God. Rejoice that your names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life. You will be remembered. You are remembered. He came to live and die for you. He came to make you his own and to build you up as a holy temple in the Lord. And the beautiful city of God will come down one day out of the clouds from heaven and come down to earth, a city whose architect and builder is God himself, a city we could never in a million years build. Jesus. is building it for us. Rejoice that your names are written in heaven. But remember what Jesus said. It's easy to get excited about seeing Jesus in your life. I'm excited I saw demons cast out. And I saw more attendance this Sunday at the church. Oh, I saw myself get more of a victory over this sin. Jesus says, be careful. I saw a blessing that God gave me. I saw a gift that was more enhanced. And Jesus says, be careful. Thank God. But rejoice not in those things primarily. Rejoice that your name is written in heaven. Jesus, he's the name we live for. Let us pray. Our Father, our God, thank you for Jesus. Thank you that his name will live on. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom. His dominion will never end. We thank you, O Father, that as this present age passes away, you would help us not to put our hope in our puny, pitiful tower projects. That you'd help us right now to repent. There are different tower building projects going on here right now that are forsaking your commandments. They're not living the way they should. And we pray, Lord, that You'd help the hearts of Your people. We pray that You'd draw them near Yourself. We pray that You'd show them that they've got a misplaced ambition. And they'd put that on seeking first the Kingdom and doing what God says by faith. That we'd seek You every day in the morning to find the faith that we need. To trust You. To fear You and not fear loss. For we will never lose Jesus. And Lord, help us. Help us, Lord God, to be humble, to know that you do indeed judge the proud, but give grace to the humble. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.