All right, here we are back again with our Bible overview, and we're going to look specifically at Genesis 11 today, which is the account of the Tower of Babel, all right? It's a very important account, as you will see. All right, well, let's pray and we'll start. Father, we ask your blessing upon us now. As we take this telescopic view of your word, kind of a rapid walk through the Bible, we pray, Father, that particularly as we study this first book of the Bible, that you would show us just how important it is for us to begin properly and have a proper foundation for are handling properly the rest of scripture. We pray, Father, that you would help us as we consider this account of the Tower of Babel, which so often is viewed as myth or as just a children's Bible story, but it is extremely important and there is crucial doctrine here for us to grasp and understand. And so we ask your presence and with us and blessing upon us. We pray this in Christ's name, amen. All right, well, the flood is over then and starting at Verse 1 of chapter 9, and God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Now you want to remember that, all right? And fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens. Upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea, into your hand they're delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life that is its blood. And he goes on to say important things, right? To show the sanctity of life, of human life. And then he repeats it again in verse 7. and you be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it. And he goes on to establish his covenant and he promises especially as we looked before that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. So as I emphasized here, we see that God said, at least it's recorded for us twice here, that God's command to Noah and his sons is to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth, all right? And then again, we saw it down in verse seven, and you be fruitful and multiply. Increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it, all right? Now with that background, move on. Chapter 10 is an account, it's often called the Table of Nations, the Table of the Nations, and is an account of the descendants of Noah and his sons then. But we're gonna go on to chapter 11 where we have this account of the Tower of Babel. Verse one. Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. So at this time, now that's about to change here as you know, Tower of Babel. At this time after the flood, there appears to be some great changes that have happened here. This is one of them. Before the flood, everybody spoke the same language. There was only one language, all right? No need for translators of any kind, just one language. That's about to change. There was also that great change in regard to man's diet. God gave man the right to eat meat with the prohibition not to eat the blood. That probably I'm not sure, but that prohibition from eating the blood may have had to do with idolatry and how that sort of a thing is practiced in idolatry. I don't know for sure, but at any rate, great changes. There could easily have been, right? There could easily have been. great changes even in the climate. I mean, this thing, this flood killed everything and there was tremendous upheavals, you know, the fountains of the deep burst open and so on. So, could easily be that the topography of the earth was radically changed. big change in climate, all kinds of changes here. But still at this point, for a while anyway, there was still only one language, all right? Now, we go on here. As people migrated from the East, now, That kind of implies, doesn't it, that some period of time goes by between verses 1 and 2. We have no idea how long. But there's people, then, in the East. They'd already reproduced and migrated. God had told them to multiply, fill the earth, right? The earth is for man and man is to tame it then. But now you've got people migrating from the east, And they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. Now that is essentially Babylon, the location that would become Babylon. And they settled there. And they said to one another, come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly. Clay bricks, right? They had brick for stone and bitumen, some kind of tar, something 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. Now, being dispersed over the face of the whole earth was what God had commanded them to do. So this is a rebellion. This is a rebellion against God. Why a tower? What is that all about? Well, it's taught in the heavens. Let us make a name for ourselves. Basically, this is the same sin that Adam and Eve fell for. You shall be like gods, right? This is what man, in his sin, always craves. He wants to be God. He doesn't want God to be God. He wants to be God. And that's what this is all about. We're going to build ourselves a city and a tower. We're going to exalt ourselves. defiance of God. Now, as I said, we don't know how long there had to have been some considerable period of time from the time of Noah, when his sons got off the ark, until this thing at the Tower of Babel is happening. We don't know how long. Nevertheless, I think it's fairly safe to assume that oral tradition about the flood had been passed down. I mean, a flood that wiped out everybody except Noah and his sons, and everybody that's building this tower. Related, I mean they're descended from Noah, right? And they've got his DNA in him. They had to have known about the flood and the reason for the flood. Man sinned his rebellion against God. He had to know that there is a God, right? But this is what sin does. It always exalts man and it makes him a fool. So that's what's going on here. Let me just think about this now. Everybody, including you and me, is descended from Noah. Noah and his sons. I don't know how far back they can go with the DNA studies, but we've got some semblance of Noah's DNA in all of us. But you see, the problem is not solved. What was the problem that brought the flood on? Well, it was man's sin. He hated God. The earth was filled with violence, and God had had enough, and his judgment came then. And you would think, humanly speaking, you would think, well, if God could just wipe out all of the evil people, Even if there's only eight people left, right, whom Noah was a righteous man before God, that, okay, everything's going to be good from here on out. Not so, because the flood wiped out the sinners, but it didn't wash away the sin. And the sin is still in Noah and his family. The sin is still there. This is not, you know, if there was ever a time, if there was ever a time, you know, if somehow take our country, the United States, if somehow you could just remove all the bad people, right, then surely, you know, maybe everything would be good. Or let's say, let's say that you removed somehow or other, all right? Let's just purge the country of everybody that's not a Christian. And when I say Christian, let's say it just, it only leaves real, real genuine Christians. But then they reproduce, they have children. And what is going to be true of those children? They are going to be fallen. They're going to be born as sinners. Because you don't become one of God's people. You don't become a Christian by being born to Christian parents, right? That's not it. Each one has to be born again. Maybe this is something that God wants us all to learn from this then, that really salvation is of the Lord because here was a chance, another chance. I mean, the first one was really loaded in favor of Adam and Eve succeeding, right? But they didn't. Perfect environment. They didn't, and they were not, fallen, right? They were not sinners. They were created in a state of innocence. You couldn't have all of the thing loaded for success more than it was in Eden. And yet it didn't work. And so here it is again after the flood. And, you know, surely things are going to be good now. But they're not. In fact, as we're going to see with Noah, sin began to evidence itself very, very quickly. Well, that's what you have here then. Here we go again, another rebellion against God. And that's what this is, you know. You see their mindset here in verse four. Let's build ourselves, ourselves, let's us, we, let's us do this. We're going to build ourselves a city. Kind of reminds you of in Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar on the roof of his palace looking out over Babylon. Oh, isn't this marvelous, magnificent Babylon that I have built, right? Same kind of thing here. Let us build ourselves a city and a tower. And there's going to be a tower. There's going to be a skyscraper, right? With its top in the heavens. Now, they probably, would not be able to have built a building even as tall as the Empire State Building. After all, they're only building with clay, brick, and tar to stick it together, right? But, you know, back in ancient times, similar to the shape of the pyramids, They made, they built frequently what was called ziggurats. Ziggurats, they're kind of a pyramid shaped thing, right? They were temples and whatever. This thing probably would have been, you know, when we think of a tower, we think of something that's pretty narrow, like the leaning tower of Pisa, right? But this thing probably was very broad at the bottom. and then going up in steps. We don't know for sure, but probably something like that. But what are they doing? Well, basically, it's a kind of a in-your-face God. We're not going to scatter out. We're going to stay right here, and we're going to make a name for ourselves. That's what we're going to do. We may have talked about this before, but let us build ourselves a city. You know, there is in Scripture, and certainly in the history of man, I suppose what you would call it a theology of the metropolis, a theology of the city. It's not a good thing. Generally speaking, I think, now maybe you'd find some exceptions to this that I'm not thinking of, but I'm thinking that in the Bible, most always a city is not a good thing. Now, and even Jerusalem, the earthly Jerusalem was supposed to be the city of God, But before it's all said and done, the Lord is calling it Sodom, right? Because that's what it became. As Paul says in Galatians, it was the earthly Jerusalem. But we in Christ are of the the Jerusalem which is from above, okay? And he's talking about the new heavens and the new earth. But this business of the city, see, God said, I want you to spread out and fill the earth, all right? So do it. But they wanted to gather together and make a city, a metropolis for themselves. You know, in our own nation today, not denying that, you know, we live in a little rural community, there's plenty of sin here to go around, but nevertheless, you know, you read the news now and so forth, The cities are centers of sin, right? I mean, if you go to the city, if you want to find pockets of fortresses of sin, go to the city. That's where it is. I suppose it's just a matter of the more sinners that you get living together, the more likely it's gonna become a sinful place. So they get this idea in their heads, they're gonna build a city, and probably right in the middle of it, they're gonna put this tower. reaches into the heavens and, you know, everybody is gonna say, oh, look at how great, we're gonna make a name for ourselves. There it is. You know, I mean, I've even, kind of a side note here, but I've seen this kind of a thing in, well, you definitely see it. It can happen in local churches, right? You know? Come, let us build for ourselves a church with a tower reaching into the heavens. Let's make a name for ourselves, right? That's the idea when wickedness takes over even in a local church. Anyway, a city, there it is. Well, they don't wanna be dispersed over the face of the earth. They don't want God telling them to do that. They want to get together and have glory. And later on down here, well, actually, it's just a couple of verses down. So let's look at verse five. The Lord came down to see the city and the tower. which the children of man had built. So he let him go for a while. Okay. So this thing, there it is, the city and the tower. And the Lord said, behold, they are one people and they have all one language. This is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Now, Some people would think that's good, right? Wow, nothing will be impossible. Let's get together. We're gonna have this big city. We're gonna build skyscraper after skyscraper. We're gonna establish an economy that, you know, anything we set our minds to, we can do. That's the idea, you see. And what God means in verse 6 here, there are one people. This is only beginning what they'll do. Nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. And it's true, but here's the problem. Here's the problem. Everything that sinners propose to do is bad, all right? Basically, that's it. I mean, they're building this city in defiance of God. And what the Lord means here is, He needs to set some bounds on them so that there will be boundaries set up and limitations set upon the sin that they're able to do. That's what he's talking about here. All this evil, no evil that they propose will be impossible for them if they're all together, right? Now, and so he's gonna come down, you know the story, and confuses their language to separate them. Now, you know, we live in an era of, and you've probably heard the term of globalization. Globalization. That's been part of the big problem that our nation has faced, right? The leftists, you might call them the leftists, they have this philosophy of globalization. That's why they want to do away with borders. Everybody come in, mesh, nobody, no limitations, no nothing. The thing is insane, of course, but here's what it's all about. a one world kingdom, a one world order. Now these people, when you defy the Lord and walk in sin, you become a fool. And globalists become fools. They think in their mind that this is gonna be a good thing. Even though history always demonstrates what? Unless there's checks, restraints put upon man somebody with power seeking ultimate power is going to rise to power and they're not going to be righteous and good all right there it is just go down go right down the list one of the closest examples of a one world empire would have been the Roman Empire, right? And God and his sovereignty permitted that empire. It did bring some law and order for a time and so forth, but essentially it was a beast, an oppressive beast that oppressed and tried to stamp out Christ and his church. So anytime you see someone, some politician, some alleged pastor or minister, pushing and preaching this one world thing. Nobody should dominate just one world empire. What have you got? What you've got there is the spirit of the Antichrist. There is going to be a one world empire someday. We know that from the Bible. But it's not going to be Utopia. it's going to be the kingdom of the Antichrist, a one-world thing. And what we see here in Genesis 11, then, is we can definitively say that God is not pro-globalization. God intentionally divided people into the nations and the way that he he divided them was he confused their language. That was the beginning of all the languages then in the world. And you had to sort it out. It must have been chaos at first. Babel means confusion. And it was confused, all right. Come, let us go down there and confuse their language. So they may not understand one another's speech. And so they had to, you would naturally kind of shake out into your language groups people that you could understand. That must have been quite the event. And what happened? End of construction. That's so much for the Tower of Babel and the great city and so forth. So if they won't obey the Lord and disperse and fill the earth, the Lord will do it. Verse 8, so the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth. and they left off building the city. That was it. Therefore, its name was called Babel because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. It means confusion. And from there, the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth. Now there's, obviously, there's many practical lessons for us here, but I think one of the most important, especially in our day, when we've been seeing this leftist globalization business, to recognize it is globalization a one world borderless entity rather than separate nations. is not God's will. He absolutely forbids it. So, for instance, here's, and you can find examples of this, here's, man, think about this, okay, the United Nations, all right, the United Nations. Now, what's that all about? Well, a lot of it started, you know, with the League of Nations, Woodrow Wilson, to World War I and so forth. World War I was so terrible, and it was, that we've got to put an end to this. How are we going to put an end to this? Well, this needs to be the war that ends all wars. And what we need to do is we need to form a league, an alliance. Nations united together, we meet together and have this one purpose and so forth. Well, it hasn't worked, has it? Whenever you know, you pick up a paper or something and you read about, oh, the United Nations is going to take action here. And you think, yeah, there's nothing going to happen there, nothing good at all. But these are examples. Let's get the nations together. That's the idea. It is not God's will. It is not God's will. I can think of some more examples here in the church. This kind of thing, this idea of Tower of Babel, can not only come into the church in the sense of, let's have a really, really big church with thousands of people and big buildings and so on, but it also comes in when there's the idea of, you know, We could accomplish the Lord's work a lot better. We could convert this world a lot better if all of the local churches got together. And that's what happens, isn't it? They form denominations and so forth and they get together. Well, you know, the clearest example of that, come on, let's get the church from every nation together into one worldwide church. Well, what's that? That's Rome. That's a Roman Catholic Church. That's what it is. What has come out of the Roman Catholic Church? It's the same spirit of Babel. You know, look what we can build, look at our might, look at our pomp, and look at how glorious that we are, and so forth. Now this has become my personal opinion, not just my personal opinion, that Rome is an apostate, antichrist entity. that's a given, but that I don't believe that it is wise for local churches to band together into some big entity, some big denomination. I don't see a lot of good coming out of that. And so that's just a conclusion that I've come to myself over the years. I wouldn't seek for our church. We've done it before in history and it hasn't turned out good either time because each denomination, even though it looked good on paper and so on, it turned out that in both cases, sure enough, the wrong kind of people, arrogant men, had risen to the top and it was not godly. And so that's just, that's my opinion. I'm not saying that every church is in sin if it's part of a denomination or every denomination is evil. But I can tell you this, that's how Rome got started. Rome got started when the Bishop of Rome of the Church at Rome began to exalt himself, be exalted by others, everybody's getting together, and eventually what? You've got a Pope. false priesthood, false teaching, and all kinds of things. Well, anyway, so there's, you can see, there's lots of lessons to learn from Genesis chapter 11 and the Tower of Babel. That's reverse, one final thing. In Christ's kingdom, Babel is reversed, okay? I suspect what you're going to find in the new heavens and the new earth is one language, right? I think that's just kind of a logical conclusion, I think, that Babel will be completely... I also think that... The gift of tongues, now I know there's differing opinions on whether that gift or some of the other so-called signed gifts are still functional today and so forth, but that aside, I find it interesting that one of the gifts that happened on the day of Pentecost when the Lord's Spirit came upon his people. What were the crowds marveling at? Well, what they were marveling at is, hey, all of us are hearing these people speak in our own language. Now we don't, nobody knows the mechanics of that or exactly precise nature of what was happening, but I'd say the main, one of the main messages we want to see from that is that in Christ, in Christ, every part of the curse is lifted. And I think that the judgment at Babel was part of the curse and that in Christ's kingdom, that is reversed, because there won't be any need, right, to keep the people separated into different groups. We'll all be one then in Christ. So, well, we'll stop right there, and what we want to do next time, as we move into chapter 12, we're gonna meet a guy named Abram, who becomes, of course, Abraham, And we're gonna find out what a key significant figure he is and how God's promise made to Abraham is, has, that promise is all wrapped up. in how God saves us in Christ. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that one day all effects of sin and the fall will be reversed and gone, and we pray that that would happen. very soon. In the meantime, we pray that you would give us great wisdom, that we would not be deceived by the spirit of Antichrist, which is very active in this fallen world. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.