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Lay down your sweet and weary head Night has fallen, you've come to journey's end From tent-toting patriarchs greeting promises from afar, to vagabonds and vagrants doomed to wander in a wasteland, God's people never saw final satisfaction in the journey. Traveling is tough going. We seek the promised land, the city with foundations, whose designer and builder is God, aiding you on towards the destination. Welcome to Journey's End. You've come to Journey's End. Hey, Tony, what year is it? Well, it's 2012, Doug. What movie did you see last night? 2012. Again. On your home video player? I think it was on Netflix. Why? Okay, so listen to this. This is related to 2012 and the Mayans, if you've seen that movie and know anything about the history. The Toltecs were the predecessors to the Mexican Aztecs and contemporaries with the Mayans, but the Mayans lived farther south. The Toltecs were in Mexico. Remember, we're in Mexico here. One of their ancient historians was a man named Now if you can say that three times fast, I would like to have you call us up and volunteer to do our show openings. Ixley Hoketil says that after the deluge, giants built a tower of great height to preserve them in the event of future floods. After this, their tongues became confused, and not understanding each other, they went to different parts of the world. Like the flood stories, we find traditions of the Tower of Babel stories spread throughout the world. It's striking that people continue to say that such stories are made-up nonsense when they come from diverse groups separated by oceans. Today we want to look, and continue to look, in our tour of the early parts of Genesis at the famous Tower of Babel. We want to ask why this story is in the Bible, what these people were doing, what happened, and how this matters to us. Good afternoon, I'm Doug Van Dorn, I'm the pastor of the Reformed Baptist Church of Northern Colorado, and Tony Jackson, pastor of Reformation Baptist Church, is my co-host, and you're listening to Journey's End, a radio program put on by our two churches. So Tony, that story is one of the myths that these native Mexican people have about the Tower of Babel. So we find the Tower of Babel story in Genesis chapter 11. Maybe we should start off by reading this passage. Yeah, that's a great idea. It is fascinating. We've talked about this before, how the story of Scripture is perverted by the devil and how Satan takes the true story of Scripture and perverts it. But we find that same story consistently told all over the world and in this case it's no different. This story is in many cultures in many different places in the world. But let's read it from scripture to get the true story about what really happened. And this is found in Genesis chapter 11. It says the whole earth had one language and the same words. As people migrated from the east they found a plain in the land of Shinar and they 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. And 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. Now remember that, that's a very important verse because it fits with something else that came before. lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city, and the tower, and the children, which the children of man had built. And the Lord said, Behold, they are one people, they have one language. This is only the beginning of what they will do, and nothing that they propose to do will be impossible for them. Let us go down and 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 there the Lord confused the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth. of all the earth. Now that's quite an interesting story, Doug. How does this story, first of all, fit into the book of Genesis? This story, Tower of Babel, comes right after the story of the flood that we've been looking at for about the past month in different ways. And it sets the stage for the coming and the calling of Abram, who we're gonna hopefully get to in the next program. So it's very early on in the story, but it's very important. put here intentionally for some significant reasons. Well what do you think the primary purpose of this story is? What is it explaining to us? I think it does a couple things. One is that it explains the origin of the nations and we could ask what nations might those be. In Genesis chapter 10, which is obviously right before chapter 11 here, it tells us about the descendants of the sons of Noah and it lists 70 different tribes or groups that are spread over the face of the earth. And so the Tower of Babel story explains how they got to be dispersed over the earth. Another reason that it is important is that it will end up setting the stage for something that happens later on in the New Testament, which we will look at when we come near the end of the program. The story also shows something we talked about in a previous show, and that is how God divided the nations later. We read about this in Deuteronomy chapter 32 and verse 8, how God divided the nations according to the number of the sons of God. And there's a sense that we've discussed that God gave the nations over, and that's exactly the language that Paul uses in Romans chapter 1, he gave them over to the worship of other gods as a punishment. So let's talk about what they were doing, why they were building this tower, and what the significance of the tower is. Yeah, so probably the first question is we should ask what is this tower? I mean I remember as a kid thinking as I was reading this, I had the image of the World Trade Centers in my mind because those were, you know, these just gigantic skyscrapers that were straight as could be, reaching up as high into the sky as they could. But that isn't really what they were doing. To them, to be high wasn't necessarily to get as high into the atmosphere, as if these primitive people actually thought that they might be able to literally build a building that could, you know, get them to the moon or higher, even to heaven itself. That's crazy. Nobody thought like that. Instead, the Tower of Babel is what is known in the ancient world as a ziggurat. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, a ziggurat is actually, well if we were to put it into English, a ziggurat is a religious mountain temple. You know, the ancient idea of mountains or high places being temples or places of worship. That is exactly what's being reflected. in the building of these ziggurats. Now you can go to Google and Google ziggurat, look at Google images and you'll see lots of examples of these ziggurats. They look a lot like pyramids. Most of the ancient ziggurats had steps leading up to the top. I don't know if you saw that Mel Gibson movie, Apocalypto, isn't that what it was called? But in that movie with the Mayans, you know, you could see those steps going up to the top, and you could see the religious ceremonies being conducted at the top. Of course, they were killing people and throwing their bodies down, but that's, to them, that was how they appeased the gods. And that's what's going on here, is that they're building this religious temple to essentially establish their own religion. Yeah, I don't know if you're aware of this, but there's a whole bunch of ziggurats that are still over in Iraq and Syria, and they actually have their names preserved on buildings. And so, listen to some of these names and what they tell us about this, because this is an objective way of thinking about a ziggurat. One is called the Temple of the Mountain Breeze. Another is called Temple of the Exalted Mountain. Another is called Temple of the Exalted Dwelling Place. or temple which links heaven and earth. That's really important. There's another one called the Temple of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth. And maybe one that is interesting for people that know the story of Jacob, one is called the Temple of the Stairway to Pure Heaven. You know what I'm talking about with the stairway there? Yeah, Led Zeppelin. Not quite the stairway to heaven, but close. Where did Zeppelin get that language from? Well, perhaps they got it from something like the ziggurat or even from the story of Jacob in Genesis chapter 32. Yeah, people wouldn't be necessarily familiar with this because if they're reading like the King James or something, it's called a ladder. But there was a night when Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, had a dream and he saw a ladder going up to heaven and he saw angels ascending and descending on this ladder. Well, some of the more modern translations translate that as stairway, which is better because really what Jacob saw wasn't some kind of a floating ladder in the sky. He saw something that would be like a ziggurat. So when we think about this language and we think about the ziggurat itself, what is it really telling us? I think it's telling us that mankind at the Tower of Babel are trying to do something like force interaction between heaven and earth. Now, that's an important concept. What do you think that means and what are they really trying to accomplish? Well, I think that they're trying to accomplish getting God or the gods to do their bidding. It's really a kind of a magic, I think, where, notice the language of the passengers, that they're trying to reach up to God in order to bring him down on their own. So it's not up to God's choice to come down by himself. at least in their minds. Of course, that's exactly what ends up happening. But they're trying to bring him down to do what they want him to do or what they want them to do. And really, they're reflecting something that I think we talked a little bit about in the Garden of Eden. If we remember, Eden is described as a mountain in Ezekiel. And it's a place where God dwelled and it's a place where these heavenly beings dwelled as well. So, it's quite natural for them to think that if they, you know, could emulate that place that they are no longer allowed to get on. Because remember the angels now guard the way to the Garden of Eden with a flaming sword. So humans aren't allowed to get back to that mountain. So the people are trying to go about reestablishing this link between heaven and earth themselves in their own way. So what you're saying Doug, if I understand you correctly, is that the people are trying to manufacture paradise. They're trying to get back to paradise on their own. Is that kind of what you're getting at here? Yeah, I think that's exactly right. In fact, you might even notice that where they went, they went to the plains in the land of Shinar, and they ended up building this place called Babel, and Babel becomes later Babylon, and remember what's one of the seven ancient wonders of the world? Do you remember what it was in Babylon? The Hanging Gardens. The Hanging Gardens, right. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. So it reminds us of the Garden of Eden. I read a book a couple of years ago called Jump Point. It was talking about the convergence of men or the coming together of mankind with the use of technology. Many of us think that technology is morally neutral. It isn't. Technology can be used for good. It can be used for evil. But this book talked about how, you know, in one sense, a good sense, that people are being brought together all over the world. They're being tethered together. with the internet and with cell phones and text messaging. People are being brought together as one unified race of people. And in the book, if I remember right, this author, who I don't believe was a Christian, made a comment, something to the effect of, you know, this is really almost getting us back to Babel, and that's a really good thing. Because it's going to be a great thing when mankind everywhere can contribute to the common benefit or the common good of mankind. So men haven't forgotten about this idea. The use of technology today is being viewed as a way to get us back to paradise. So this idea hasn't died, has it? Not at all. It reminds me of, you can go to Google and you'll see a page that's in Spanish. So you click on this page and it will say translate and if you click a button it turns the entire page from Spanish into English and actually pretty good English. What happened at the Tower of Babel that would remind me of that? Yeah, so they all spoke with one language and God identified the common language of the people as being the chief unifying factor that kept them together, that kept them unifying in in their own name, in the name of their gods, whatever they were trying to accomplish there, for the common purpose of unifying themselves against God, in unifying themselves for the purpose of making their unity the goal rather than the glory of God as their goal. And so God comes down and disperses them, but the way that he does that is by confusing their languages. If I can't talk to you, then we're not going to have much in common, right? Yeah, exactly. So let's think a little bit about what scripture does with the Tower of Babel and this theme of both nations and languages. And I think what we're going to find as we go through the scripture is that there is a great reversal going on. Just as we have seen in Genesis 3, verse 15, there's a great reversal of the curse. Well, this is a part of that story, isn't it? It is, Tony. And this is so, you know, every time I do this kind of stuff with people and help them to see the scripture, I mean, I get excited helping them understand that stories that they find even early on in Genesis are there in God's big picture as the one who wrote the entire Bible. They're there for a very specific purpose and they end up showing us Christ in ways that unify the history of the world in ways that are unthinkable to most people. It's just incredibly exciting to see this kind of stuff. So, to kind of begin this, I want to say that in the text itself, just in Genesis 11, there's a word play that's going on that a lot of people wouldn't know. Remember now, the context is the sons of Noah. One of the sons of Noah's name is Shem. The word Shem means name in Hebrew. It's the word name. So, Shem is the name. God makes a promise to this boy named Shem that basically, will the nations be blessed. His brother will end up going into his tent and they will have fellowship together and it's through Shem that the line of Abram is traced and of course Abram becomes the one who is the father of the Israelites and through whom the nations will be blessed and so on. Well in Genesis 11 it's the people who want to make a name, a Shem, for themselves. But God comes down and disperses them, basically saying, you aren't going to make a name for yourself, I am going to make a name for myself. Yeah, that's an amazing turn of events there in the text. Let us make a shem, let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. Now we want to look at what is this name that God ends up making for himself. And I think probably the best place that we can go to turn to this, and there's a lot of places in between, we'll look at some of them, but to Acts chapter 2. Acts chapter 2 is, of course, Acts is Luke's second book. His first book is the Gospel of Luke, and then Acts is really kind of the sequel. And Acts 2 is the story of Pentecost. There's some very interesting things that take place in this story. that are related to the Tower of Babel. So we should probably read that one as well. Okay, before we read this, I just want to mention briefly that in Acts chapter 2 with the story of Pentecost and the coming of these tongues as fire upon the apostles, you know a lot of people read this and they get caught up in the argument between whether or not there are still tongues today or not still tongues today. We as Reformed guys don't believe that these gifts continue on until now, but that's not the main point of this. The reason why we're bringing Acts 2 into this is because what we want you to see, no matter what you believe about tongues, is that this passage is really the key to understanding this great reversal. So if you read Genesis 11 together with Acts chapter 2, you'll see the continuity of the story. We mentioned this last week, why it's important to read our Bibles whole, didn't we Doug? Exactly, and that's what we're going to try and show again this week. Okay, so what does Acts 2 say and how does that fit into the story? Alright, so let me read it. When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. Now that's familiar to the reader of the Tower of Babel. And suddenly there came from heaven. That's familiar to the people when you were reading the story of the Tower of Babel. rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues of fire appeared to them, and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now, what were those other tongues that they were speaking in? Well, it goes and it tells us. Now, they were dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. So the tongues in this passage are clearly known tongues of other people from the nations. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear each of us in his own native tongue? Parthenians and Medes, Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus in Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya, belonging to Cyrene and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians. We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God." The word tongues there is the same Greek word that's translated for tongues in the story of the Tower of Babel. You have the nations here who are now in, of course, after Tower of Babel, there's many nations, but they're coming together as one. And now from one person's mouth, they're hearing, all of them are hearing him speak in their own language. And it's such an amazing thing that it continues to draw more and more and more and more of these people to this place where this event is taking place. You know, we don't have a lot of time left, Doug, to really delve into some of these other passages, but I think we need to just touch on a couple of the passages that come in between Genesis 11 and Acts 2 that tell us that this is exactly God's purpose. God prophesied and purposed for this to happen. It was God's intention all along to reverse the curse, wasn't it? It was, and so let's get at this by reading verse 12 and 13, or just verse 12 in Acts 2. And they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, what does this mean? Peter answers them by preaching them a sermon. What's the sermon about? He preaches a sermon about Christ, and that is exactly the answer to this question. Christ is the fulfillment of the reversal of the curse. He's the one who will bring many nations to himself, isn't he? Right, and so he begins by, in his case, he goes to the book of Joel and he starts off with these words, quoting from that book, "...and in the last days it shall be." That reminded you of a passage from, I think, Micah, which is also found in Isaiah chapter 2 that's very similar, "...in the last days." Yeah, in Micah chapter 4 and verse 1 it says, It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and it shall be lifted up above the hills, and people shall flow to it, and many nations shall come and say, Come, let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways, and that we may walk in his paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. That's amazing language because that takes us right back to the Tower of Babel and right back to Genesis with this mountain language. God says, no, you're not going to make a name for yourself with your mountain. I'm going to make a name for myself with Christ or through Christ on my mountain in the day of the Lord. And that's exactly what Micah is prophesying that happens in Acts chapter 2, isn't it? Yeah, Isaiah has the very same words for a while and then he goes off his own direction and he says, "...against all the lofty mountains, and against all the uplifted hills, against every high tower, and against every fortified wall, all the haughtiness of man shall be humbled, and the lofty pride of men shall be brought low, and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day." This idea that Christ is the mountain of God is found throughout the scripture. One of the places you can find it is in Daniel chapter 2 when there's this vision of this rock of course God is called the rock and Christ is called the rock and this rock ends up coming down and it ends up becoming a great mountain that shatters everything under its foot but as you just read in Isaiah and Micah the people end up flocking to the mountain to the house of God to Christ And that's exactly the way that Peter expresses this when he tells them about how they had just killed Jesus, put Him to death, but God raised Him from the dead according to the many prophecies of the Old Testament. And he concludes by telling them that now they have to believe in the one that God has sent, in His Son, the one to whom it was promised He will inherit the nations. We want to thank you for listening to our program. We hope that you're enjoying this as we're going through the book of Genesis and trying to make some connections for you with other parts of the Bible so that you can see that this is one story, one great story of God's plan and purposes in redemption. Thanks for listening and we look forward to being with you again next week. Journey's End is a production of the Reformed Baptist Churches serving the Front Range. Our show is dedicated to helping Christians think deeply about their faith and helping them understand that the destination is the purpose of the journey. At www.ColoradoReformation.com you will find an increasing number of helpful tools. We have local churches in the southern and northern metro areas to assist you in understanding both the journey and the journey's end. This leads to our people seeking to emulate our Savior through kindness and humility. We are rooted in the historic creeds of Christianity and our traditions arose out of the Protestant Reformation. We invite you to head to our website, www.coloradoreformation.com, for more information. That's www.coloradoreformation.com. We look forward to being with you again next week. Thanks for listening! That was a great show!
Babel On - The Tower and the Great Reversal
Did you think that tongues in Acts 2 came from heaven? Well of course they did.
But did you know that the tongues of Acts 2 are really the continuation of the story of the Tower of Babel?
What does the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 have to do with tongues in Acts 2? In this show we seek to explain this connection.
Sermon ID | 41512916540 |
Duration | 24:17 |
Date | |
Category | Radio Broadcast |
Bible Text | Acts 2; Genesis 11 |
Language | English |