Why did God confuse the world's languages? In Genesis 11:1-9, humanity unites to build a tower to the heavens — and God scatters them by confusing their language. Dr. Toby Holt explains what really happened at Babel. God had told mankind to spread out and fill the earth, but the people gathered to build a city and tower "to make a name for ourselves" — pride and rebellion. God came down, confused their language, and scattered them, accomplishing His will despite their defiance. Babel is reversed at Pentecost, where God used many languages to unite people into His church.

Questions this study answers:

1. Why did the tower anger God? Because it was proud rebellion — building "up" to make a name for themselves instead of spreading out as God commanded.

2. Why did God confuse their language? To stop their united rebellion and scatter them across the earth, accomplishing His purpose despite their resistance.

3. How does Babel connect to Pentecost? At Babel God divided languages to scatter; at Pentecost He used many languages to gather people into His church. "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves…" — Genesis 11:4 (NKJV)

Dr. Toby Holt is President of New Geneva Theological Seminary, and his sermons have been downloaded more than 1.9 million times on SermonAudio. Find more verse-by-verse Bible teaching at newgeneva.org; support this ministry at newgeneva.org/give.

In Genesis 11, God told the people to go outward, to be fruitful, and to multiply across the globe.

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However, Noah's descendants went upward instead.

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They built a tower in a place called Babel.

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In today's study, we'll consider their rebellion and God's response.

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The world is a very big place.

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even if you dedicated your entire life to traveling this earth and to seeing everything you could see

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you could not see it all you would not encounter every city every place every feature or every

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nation now some of the things in this world are awesome there's other places no one wants to go

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about 15 years ago i had an opportunity to go up and do some preaching in alaska but in order to

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get there i took a ferry up towards british columbia and then i drove overnight through

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the Yukon Territory to get into the eastern side of Alaska. Now, to me, that sounded like a great

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idea. In reality, it was a terrible idea. Driving through the Yukon, I've never been in a place that

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felt that isolated. Going through the middle of the night, driving through the Yukon, if I had

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stopped and laid down and went to sleep in the middle of the road, there was not another car

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the entirety of my drive. With that said, whether you're talking about the Bahamas or Gulfport or

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the Yukon or everything in between, there's some commonality, and the commonality is this. God made

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it, and he made it for a purpose. And that purpose is that we should fill it. You see, God's number

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one objective for the created realm is that the people he placed within it would spread across it.

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And that's not conjecture. Just pick up the Bible, go to Genesis 1, and you'll see it right there.

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God formed Adam. He formed Eve. He put them in the middle of the garden. Then what did he tell

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them to do? Just sit there and twiddle their thumbs? Is that what he told them? No, he told

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them this. He says, go, go and take dominion. It's yours. Run wild, be free, have a good time, don't

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eat from that tree, but all the rest of this, it's yours. Name the creatures, be fruitful and multiply,

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fill it. Specifically, we see this mandate in Genesis 1. Be fruitful and multiply, fill the

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earth, subdue the earth, have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and over

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every living thing upon it. Now, a few chapters later, get to Genesis 9, not that far into the

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book, God repeats himself. He repeats himself to Noah. He says this to Noah. He says, be fruitful

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and multiply. Fill the earth, and the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of

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the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move on the earth, and all the fish of the sea.

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They are given into your hand. They are given by the creator to you, the created who are made in

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my image. Now, theologians look at this and they say that this mandate is something we call the

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dominion mandate. Dominion is to take charge of. And scripture repeatedly says that God's intention

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for mankind is to take charge over that which he has made. He has granted, given, entrusted us to

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do that. Now, there's responsibilities that come with that. We're to take care of that which he

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has made, not to abuse that which he has made, but to take care of it. Nevertheless, we have dominion.

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We have authority over that which he has created.

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And as we have authority over that which he has created,

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he has given us a mandate to fill it, to go from one end to the other.

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Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth.

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Now, we find very shortly thereafter, in all the chapters,

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in all the books across the scope of the rest of the Bible,

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especially as we get into the New Testament,

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we see that he augments that dominion mandate with something we call a cultural mandate.

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He not only says, be fruitful, multiply, and go everywhere.

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He also says, take my word, everywhere you go.

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Matthew 28, the Great Commission, the most obvious one of these.

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All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth, Jesus says to his disciples.

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Go, go therefore and make disciples of all the nations,

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baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

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So God repeatedly tells his people, tells people just like us, including us, to go, to go out into

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the world, to fill it, be fruitful, multiply, and as we do so, he says, take the gospel, take my word,

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take my will, and teach it to those that you meet there. Now, what if, what if we said, you know,

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I don't think so. What if God says, hey, this is really important, I want you to go do it,

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And our response was, meh, meh, that's not really us.

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In fact, the rest of the world, I don't care about so much.

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I've really no interest in going to these far-flung places, let alone planting flag there.

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That's not me. That's not us corporately.

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What if that was our approach?

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Well, that was the approach of the people that we see here in Genesis 11.

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These people have been given a dominion mandate.

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They've been told to fill the globe, and they said, no.

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They said, we're good.

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We're going to stay right here.

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We're not going to be scattered.

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We're going to hang out right here.

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We're not that interested in going and fulfilling all the things that God had told Noah,

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who was very possibly alive during this time.

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He lived for 350 years after the flood.

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The events of the Tower of Babel occurred somewhere between 100 and 400 years after the floods.

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So even if he wasn't alive, at the very least, they had first-count witness of what God had told Noah,

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and God told Noah to go do this, and they said no.

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Now, they didn't say no because they lacked ambition.

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They weren't lazy.

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They did not say no because they lacked ambition.

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The problem was that their ambition was twisted.

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God said go outward.

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They say we're going upward.

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You see this?

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In this text, God will say go outward, and they'll say, no, no, no, no, no.

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We're going upwards.

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if we're going to plant a flag anywhere, it's going to be in your territory. You start to wonder

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why he came down to deal with them. It has to do with the nature of their ambition. All right,

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let's just dive in and see all this. Now, let's look at verses one through two, and then we'll

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work our way through the text. Verses one and two. Now, the whole earth had one language,

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one speech. And it came to pass as they journeyed from the east that they found a plain in the land

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of Shinar, and they dwelt there. In 1952, the author John Steinbeck wrote his magnum opus.

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I didn't care for it too much, but it was called East of Eden. Now, what was that all about? Well,

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the book itself, you can pick it up and figure it out. It's a book about these families who have

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sinful ambitions, and they live in, I think it's Salina Valley in California, and they're growing,

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and I don't know. I didn't care much for the book, but the title fascinated me. The title

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east of Eden is taken from scripture. The title east of Eden is taken from scripture, specifically

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it's taken from Genesis 4, I believe. Cain kills his brother, and where does he go? Well, he goes

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off to the east. It's this picture of going off into the sinful horizon. With that said, Cain had

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gone east of Eden, and in the generations that followed Cain, the sins of Cain continued to

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stain the progeny of Cain and everyone else, to the point you get to the flood. That flood is

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described in the very chapters that precede today's reading. Now, in time, the flood ended,

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and Genesis 8 and 9, the flood's over. Noah and his family are all that's left, if you remember

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that story. Noah and his family are all that's left, and so they vacate the ark. They leave the

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ark. Does anyone know where the ark is theoretically supposed to be? What nation it is to this day

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supposed to be in? Turkey. Okay. That's the most frequent guess. Mount Ararat, I think, is the name

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of the mountain in Turkey. I don't know if it's there or not, but that theoretically is where it

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has landed. With that said, irrespective of where it's at, let me ask you a question. If you were

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Noah's grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and you heard these tales of this flood that wiped out all

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of mankind, where would you want to settle down at? You're Noah's great-grandchildren, and you hear

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the stories of this flood, how terrifying it was, and it wiped everyone off the globe. Now, as you're

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looking around, where do you want to reside? Where do you want to live? Well, you probably want to

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stay up. You probably want to live up on the mountains. And for a great period of time, that's

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exactly what they did. They stayed up in the mountains. The Jewish historian Josephus, he said

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that they wanted to stay there, but in time they were persuaded to move down to the plains. He

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writes this, he says, Noah's family eventually traveled from the mountains to the plains and

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fix their habitation there, and persuaded others who were greatly afraid of the lower grounds on

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account of the flood, and who were loath to come down from the higher places to follow their

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examples. So for a period of time, the progeny directly related to Noah said, we're good,

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we're good, we're going to hang out up here where we are safe. We don't want to, you know, die from

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a flood again. Now, the fact they even had that as a fear suggests a lack of faith, because what

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had God told Noah? He says, this isn't going to happen again. This isn't going to happen again.

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See the rainbow? That's a sign to you, a sign of preservation, a covenant of preservation I'm

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making with you. This is not going to happen again. And yet the people were a little anxious

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about that. So they stayed in the mountains for a period of time until they come down.

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They come down to an area that's called the Plains of Shinar here in verses one and two.

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So what do they do? They come down from the mountains to the plains. What do they do next?

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Let's look at verses three and four. Then they said to one another, come, let us, look for those

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words, let us, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, they had

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asphalt for mortar. And they said, come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top is in

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the heavens. Let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face

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of the earth. You know what these two verses prove? You can take the people out of the mountains,

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but you couldn't take the mountains out of the people. How do we know that? Well, what did they

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do? They come down from the mountains. They're in the plains. They look around. What is the first

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thing they do? They say, you know what? I think we're going to need to build a mountain, a man-made

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mountain. Let's build a tower. Let's build something. Let's get some elevation. You know,

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that's our background. That's where we come from. We come from the mountains. Let's build

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a mountain here if we're going to dwell here let's build a mountain so that's what they do

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they build a city of course it's not a real mountain but they build a city and they build

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a tower it's called a ziggurat is what it's referred to as ziggurat it's kind of this

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pyramidal structure has winding steps along it all the way as high as they can conceivably go

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so that's what they begin to do verses three and four they get started they immediately begin to

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build this man-made mountain again there could be a lot of reasons why we don't know all the reasons

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But we know that among those reasons, what we see in verse 4 is not only the fear of being wiped out in a flood,

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but also we see in verse 4 that they wanted to make a name for ourselves.

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You see, they build this man-made mountain, this ziggurat, gives them some elevation.

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Maybe they feel a bit safer.

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But in verse 4, their motivations are expanded upon.

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Verse 4, come let us make ourselves a city and a tower whose top is in the heavens.

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Let us make a name for ourselves.

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that's the first motivation the second one is lest we be scattered across the face of the earth

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let's stop and ask about this make a name for ourself thing i mean there wasn't that many

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nations on the face of the earth who are they trying to impress would be my first question

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what was making a name for themselves well as near as we can tell these people these individuals this

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ragtag group they had an ego they had an ego see they remembered the flood but they didn't really

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really remember or reflect upon the god who brought the flood they had an ego and so they

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look around they say you know we're gonna do something we're gonna do something strong we're

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gonna make a name for ourselves we're gonna build the city and we're gonna build this tower

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now that has been especially in years of antiquity the stumbling stone for many kings leaders and

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nations think egypt i had a chance to go there as some of you know just a few months ago cairo is

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an interesting city. And off there to the west of Cairo, you see these pyramids. Now, why were the

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pyramids built? Well, like anything, there's probably a complex answer. But the short answer

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is that those pharaohs and those leaders of the age, they wanted to build something that would

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make a name for themselves. Not only for the people, they didn't care too much about the people,

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but specifically for themselves. Let us make a name for ourselves. That was the argument of pharaohs.

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When they built the pyramids, the sphinxes, and the expanded canals,

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it was building projects intended to point glory back at themselves.

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They wanted to be remembered.

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These vain Egyptian leaders, remember me, was their mantra.

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Now that same approach existed throughout really almost every civilization in antiquity.

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If you go into Christ's day, it's the same deal.

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In Christ's day, one of the wicked, most despicable guys in Christ's day was a guy named Herod.

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Now, we remember Herod for being this villain of Scripture,

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but what we might forget is that he was a master builder.

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He was a master builder.

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He built all sorts of stuff.

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From Masada, he built various fortresses, castles.

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He did the restoration of the temple itself.

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There's a reason why we refer to that temple of Christ's age as the Herodian temple

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because Herod, of all people, had contributed significantly

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to the engineering, the architecture, and the ingredients

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in order to rebuild and to restore it.

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King Herod desired to have a footprint, a legacy written in stone.

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In reality, his legacy is written in blood.

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But he desired this legacy written in stone,

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where people could point back and remember, remember this one.

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I'll give you one last example.

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And this is a very specific example to today's text.

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You remember King Nebuchadnezzar?

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King Nebuchadnezzar.

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What kingdom was he king of?

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Babylon. Interesting.

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So King Nebuchadnezzar is the king of Babylon,

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And he has built all sorts of amazing things.

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And one day he's out in the garden admiring all the things that he had built.

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He's walking around his palaces.

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He's looking out the horizon.

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He's seeing his building projects.

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He's seeing all of this stuff.

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And this is what he says.

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This is what he says to himself in the book of Daniel.

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He says, is not this great Babylon that I have built for a royal dwelling by my mighty power

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and for the honor of my majesty.

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Whether he knew it or not,

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King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon was saying the exact same thing

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that the people said in Genesis 11 in Babel when they made the tower.

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Let us make a name for ourselves.

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See, all that God has made, well, phooey on that.

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We're going to make a name for ourselves by building something right here.

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And we will build it in such a way that it will reach up into the heavens itself.

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King Nebuchadnezzar, he had the same pride, the same ego.

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that others had. And he says, this was built by me for me. And the irony there, as you see in the

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book of Daniel, is that while the words were still in his mouth, what happened? God struck him. While

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the words were still coming off his lips, God struck this individual. He became like a beast

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of the field until such time as he looked up and was enabled to recognize that there's but one king

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him, but one God. With that said, throughout Scripture, we just looked at a few examples here,

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but throughout Scripture, there are those who use building projects to advance their ego and their

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pride, and that's what we see in Genesis 11. Their motivation, among other things, is to make a name

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for themselves. That's a sin that we see committed over the centuries in virtually every nation on

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the globe. Now, the second motivation you see in verse 4, not only did they want to make a name

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for themselves, but they say, hey, if we do this and we make it grand enough and awesome enough

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and tall enough and the walls are thick enough and the like, then we don't have to go anywhere

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and we won't be scattered across the face of the earth. Now, why were the people worried about that

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outcome? Well, here's the thing. I think they knew that God intended for them to go across the face

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of the earth. And because either they didn't like those areas or they were scared of those areas or

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any other of the number of reasons, they said no. I think they knew the dominion mandate. Again,

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there's a very significant chance that Noah was alive during this age. Or at the very least,

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he had spoken to those who were alive during this age. I think they knew the dominion mandate.

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I think this is specifically a way to frustrate God's purposes for them. Whatever the case,

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let's see how God responds. Let's look at verses five through seven. Verse five,

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but the Lord came down. The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men

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had built. And the Lord said, indeed, the people are one, and they have one language, and this is

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what they begin to do. Now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. Come,

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let us go down there and confuse the language that they may not understand one another's speech.

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You know, one chapter earlier, if you had flipped back to chapter 10, there's a genealogies,

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and sometimes the genealogies, you know, you stare at the names, you can't pronounce half of them,

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and you don't know who they are, but sometimes there's names that stand out. In Genesis 10,

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there's a name that stands out. There was a king, there was a leader, there was a man, and his name

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was Nimrod. Now, what do we know about Nimrod, other than he had just a terrible name? What do

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we know about Nimrod? Well, Genesis 10 gives us some answers. In Genesis 10, in this genealogy,

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it says this, Nimrod, boy, I can't get over that name. Nimrod was a mighty one on the earth. He

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was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Therefore it's said, like Nimrod, the mighty hunter before

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the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom, listen to this, the beginning of his kingdom was Babel.

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The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Achad, and Kalna, and the land of Shinar. It would

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appear that Nimrod was the king of Babel at the time in which they constructed this city and this

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tower. At the very least, he was a contributor. He was, if not the one who had the idea to build

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the tower, he was one of the ones who supported the idea to build the tower to reach into heavens,

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to make a name for himself, for ourselves corporately back in verse four. Well, in verse

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seven, God says, all right, all right, it's time. Let us go down and see what's going on there. Now,

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of course, God knew what's going on here, but this language helps express the thinking. Let's go down

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and check this out. Now, from that statement of verse 7, there's two important takeaways I don't

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want to skip past. The first is this, the Trinitarian aspect of what he just said. Think

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about it. You have God, right? God's in heaven looking down at the people of Babel. What does

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he say? I think I'll go down. I think I'll go down and check this out. Is that what he says?

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No, he says this, let us go down. This is akin to what he said back in Genesis 1. Let us make man

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in our own image. You know, people argue and they say, well, the word trinity isn't in the Bible,

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therefore it's not a thing. Dear heavens, I don't need the word trinity to understand the trinity,

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or at least to see the trinity here. Let us, three persons, one God, let us go down and see

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what's going on. So that's one takeaway we get from verse 7. The second takeaway is this.

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At this point, the tower, this point, the tower, it was either completed or nearly completed.

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But no matter how high it had gotten, no matter how high it got,

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notice that God says, I'm going to have to go down in order to see it.

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No matter how high this tower had gotten, God says, let us go down to check it out.

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You see, the apex of anything man can do is still well beneath what God has done.

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The apex of our accomplishments, and here in the 21st century, we think we're pretty awesome.

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I mean, look, we're inventing AI.

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We're inventing something with the ability to wipe ourselves out.

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We've got all this technology.

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We've got all these things, nuclear vessels.

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We've got all this different stuff going on.

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How impressive we are.

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Well, God would say the same thing that he would say to the people in Babel.

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Let us go down and see what's going on in New York or Chicago or Gulfport.

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Let us go down.

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You could have built a tower to Mars here in Genesis 11.

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You could have built a tower that reached into the cosmos, and it wouldn't change God's answer.

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let us go down. Whatever mankind has done is still beneath me, no matter how grand it might get.

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This is the concept of God's transcendence. He transcends everyone and everything. God transcends.

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Let us go down. And when he gets down, he says, I'm going to take action. Let's look at that

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action now as we see verses eight and nine. Verse eight. So then the Lord scattered them abroad

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from there over the face of all the earth. Interesting, because that's what he told them

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to do from the get-go. So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth,

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and they ceased building the city. Therefore, its name is called Babel, because there the Lord

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confused the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face

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of all the earth.

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You know, a few moments ago I read from Genesis 9.

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I read about this dominion mandate that we talked about.

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This dominion mandate he gave to Adam and he gave to Noah.

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Let me just repeat it just so we can relate it to verses 8 and 9.

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Back in Genesis 1 and Genesis 9, God says,

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Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth.

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And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth,

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every bird of the air, all that move on the earth and the fish of the sea.

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They are given into your hand.

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So God's mandate to his people, not that much earlier than the text we're looking at in Genesis 11,

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his mandate is go.

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Go, go, go.

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Go east, go west, go north, go south.

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Go everywhere and fill it.

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And as you fill it, take dominion over it.

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And as you take dominion over it, plant the flag for my kingdom where you go.

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So this is the instructions.

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God gave it to Adam, he gave it to Noah.

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Jesus gave it in the Great Commission in Matthew 28.

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But we've established that these people, these people in Genesis 11, they said no dice.

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They said, not for us.

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They had no interest in this.

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But notice here in verse 8 and 9 that their lack of obedience wasn't going to stop it from happening.

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Their lack of obedience was not going to stop it from happening.

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In the same way, God's will for you is not frustrated by a rejection of it.

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God's will and desire for you is not going to be frustrated by your sins

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and even your inclination and even your action to turn and run

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from the things he would have you do.

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You doubt that? Ask Jonah.

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Ask Jonah if you can just avoid or run away or reject God's will

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as if you can frustrate his purposes from happening,

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as if God's sitting there running his hands together going,

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Oh no, Jonah didn't do what I wanted him to do.

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Phooey, what to do? What to do next?

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He didn't have that reaction to Jonah and he didn't have that reaction to these people.

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You're not going to frustrate God's will for you in any way, shape, or form.

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And because that's true, what is the safest thing for you to do?

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The safest thing for you to do is to seek out the will of God

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and swim within the stream of its channels.

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God's will isn't this mystery like you could never know it.

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Old books written to give us some pictures to what he would have us do.

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Our tendency is to reject what he has said or to say it applies to someone else.

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And when we do that, we're like the fish that says,

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think I'm going to swim upstream. God's will goes that way, I'll go this way. Now some of us, if not

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all of us, know that sensation, knows what that feels like to swim against the stream of God's

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will. How did that turn out for you? If a fish does it, if a fish does it, if a fish tries to go

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uphill, what's going to happen? Well, A, it's going to get tired out. B, it's just going to get bloodied

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and bruised against the rocks. Many of us, if not most of us, in fact all of us, probably have some

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experience where we have been beaten up against the rocks all around us because of our lack of

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desire or enthusiasm to swim within the stream of God's will for us. You're not going to frustrate

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God's purposes for you no matter how hard you try. It's far wiser, far safer to stay within the

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channels of what he would have for you. With that said, we see in this case that to verse 8, they

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said, I think we're going to stay right here. And God says, no. He scattered them abroad over all

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the face of the earth. His will would be fulfilled either by their complicity and their willingness

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to partake or against their will. He would do it. And in this case, he says, I will do it by a very

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simple but very effective means of discipline. I'll change the language of the people within the

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city. And so that's what he does. He says, I will change the language. He confused the language.

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this was simple but effective. And as a result, those building the tower could not understand

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each other, and they could not complete that which they desired to do. If the people were

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going to resist God, then he would compel them to fulfill his mandate by confusing their language,

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and that's where we get the word babble from, even all these centuries later. All right,

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before we wrap up, let me share one final observation that helps us to make sense

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of this passage, of why it's included in Scripture and why it's worth lingering upon.

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In the Bible, there are events, there are circumstances that occur within Scripture,

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especially within one book or one testament of Scripture, that you will later see are bookended

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in another book or testament of Scripture. In other words, there's events that might have

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occurred centuries and centuries and centuries ago, there were signs and shadows or types of some

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later fulfillment. Or at the very least, there are things in times past that, though you might not

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know what it is, are responded to and answered and addressed centuries later. This is one of these

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cases. The story of the Tower of Babel is a bookend. This is the first end. Where's the second

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one whoever said pentecost gold star gold star absolutely pentecost what chapter is pentecost in

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acts 2 gold star over here in acts 2 you have pentecost if you remember pentecost god's people

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are gathered together what happens god comes down god comes down in the form of the holy spirit but

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he does something different with them than what he did in babel specifically this is what we read

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In Acts chapter 2, when the day of Pentecost had come, they were all with one accord in one place.

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And suddenly, suddenly there came a sound from heaven as a rushing mighty wind,

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and it filled the whole house in which they were sitting.

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Then there appeared to them divided tongues as of fire, and one sat upon each of them.

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And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

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And there, there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven.

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And when the sound occurred, the multitude came together.

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They were confused because everyone heard.

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Everyone heard each other speak in his own language.

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Then they were all amazed, and they marveled.

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Acts 2 represents a complete reversal of Genesis 11.

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This is the bookend.

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This is the bookend to the chapter we've already studied this morning.

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Acts 2 represents a complete reversal of Genesis 11.

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In Acts 2, people of disparate languages could now come together and understand one another miraculously.

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Because God had acted, much as he did all those centuries earlier.

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God had acted, but the only difference was now,

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now people who couldn't previously understand each other could on the occasion of Pentecost.

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Now why?

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We've already talked a little bit why God dealt with the people in Genesis 11 and the way he did.

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Why did he do this in Acts 2?

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Why did he take those who couldn't previously understand each other

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and put them together, and now they could understand one another?

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Well, here's the thing.

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You have to consider what each group was building.

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In Genesis 11, they were building something.

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They were building a tower to go up into the heavens.

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They were building something to make a name for themselves.

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They were building something that represented a giant middle finger in the plains of Shinar.

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They were building something that was a monument of rejection and rebellion.

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They were building something, and God frustrated their building.

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In Acts 2, they're building something also.

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In Acts 2, they're building a spiritual construct

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that we call the church.

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And in order to enable that development,

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because it was made for his glory,

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God came down and allowed them

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to hear, to speak, and to understand one another.

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Because the nature of their efforts

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had his glory in view.

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Both groups were building something.

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The people in Acts 2 were building something that was the antithesis of the Tower of Babel.

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They were building a spiritual temple to God's glory, not a ziggurat of rebellion in the high plains.

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In the final analysis, we can come away with this lesson.

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The spiritual construct that you and I are part of, the spiritual construct of what we call the church,

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endures to this day, long after Babel and all the things like it have been turned to dust.

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The spiritual construct we call the church endures to this day, long after Babel and all her copies

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were turned to dust. It'll be no different in the days, weeks, months, years, centuries to come.

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Rebels, rebels are scattered. Church endures. Let's pray.