God's Promises for the World Prevail

Main idea: Obey it or fight it, God’s glorious mission for the world will continue.

1. Seek the covering of sinner’s shame.
2. Take your part in God’s mandate in the world.
3. Don’t stop to make a name for yourself.

• Automated Transcription

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  well, let me also add my welcome and good morning, faith, Bible family, and if you're visiting friends, we're so glad. I would love to meet you, and I see other people visiting us this morning. All right, let's stand for the reading of God's Word. We're in Genesis chapter nine, and we're going to cover a bigger section in Genesis. Otherwise we'll be in Genesis till I die maybe. I mean, it's a big book. We're gonna we're gonna hit the highlights of verse 10 in the sermon. So I'm gonna read the end of chapter nine, the beginning of chapter 11. The theme of all of it is God is on. God is carrying out his his plan to fill the earth. There's another flood in this passage, but it's not a flood of destruction. It's a flood of people filling the earth and representing God in the earth. I'm going to give a pause at verse 26 about the blessing, because it's not what you would expect. It's blessing the Lord for his work. And then we're going to unpack a really fascinating set of passages. Genesis nine, verse 18. The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem Ham and Japheth Ham was the father of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the people of the whole earth were dispersed. Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent and ham. The father of Canaan saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders and walked backwards and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned backward, and they did not see their father's nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said, Cursed be Canaan a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers? And he also said, Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant. After the flood, Noah lived 350 years. All the days of Noah were 950 years, and he died. Chapter 11, verse one, now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, Come, Let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone and bite human for mortar. And they said, Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens. Let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of man had built, and the Lord said, behold, they are one people. They have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do, and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them come. Let us go down and confuse their 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. This is the word of the Lord, our God. We see your sovereign work. We see the sin of man continued, just as you said it would, from the passage we looked at last week, and yet, so does your grace and mercy go forward. And this day we just heard five different languages speaking your word, you are fulfilling your promise in our midst, through us, through the generations that have gone before us, and you'll call us to fulfill your mission on into the future, continue to empower us to do that. We see sin and the sadness and its consequences. Help us be warned. We see pride, something that lurks and creeps in every one of us, and I pray that You would help us be in awe and humble ourselves before you and your mission and purpose for us, Lord Jesus, we we desperately need you. We need you for the covering of our shame, the forgiveness of our sin. We need you and your Spirit to empower us to live holy. Help us be attentive to this word. I think of of people from 52 different churches were here with us this week. It doesn't make our name great that there were that many. It makes your name great that people want to glorify You. Help them. Help all of those members just like us here with energy, with eagerness, hear Your word, apply it to our hearts and glorify You. Christ's name, Amen. You may be seated. You could see it as I prayed this very moment, God has people from every political country, virtually every political country, believing and proclaiming the gospel. It's It's astounding to think about this morning. We had those scriptures read in five different languages just right here on our stage. And what does it mean? In light of Genesis, nine through 11, God is keeping His covenant promise to Noah to us, God is keeping his promise to Japheth and Shem. And what should stand out to us is this that God keeps these promises despite shameful sins, even though shameful sins receive their consequences. He is keeping his promises despite the collective pride that seems to well up in humanity. We are remembering last week when we looked at 821 God made a promise, a covenant, with Noah and his family. He gave a sign the rainbow, despite the reality that the intention of man's heart is evil. From his youth Genesis, 821, God's sovereign design, God's steadfast promises, God's just rule and His grace speed forward in the world despite the sinfulness of man. God is doing this whether we obey it or fight it. I mean, if you notice the spread there, Japheth and Shem do some okay things, they're it. Noah falls into sin. The nations fall into sin, and God is going forward. I called our attention to verse 26 where there is a blessing from Noah. It's a surprise, because you'd expect him to bless Shem and Japheth, but he says, Bless the Lord. Blessed be the Lord. This, this work of honoring Noah was actually a work of God, produced in Shem and Japheth and God is rejoicing. What is it to bless God? What is it to bless God? In one sense, you could say it's to praise him, it's to honor him, but the actual word for blessing is the idea of, let him be happy, let him be joyful. Let him be joyful in his work and in His glory, and let him be joyful in the praises of His people. Noah prophesies, Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, because God's ultimate mission is his joy and his praise as he makes a people for Himself from every tribe and tongue and nation. This week, we just finished our biblical counseling conference, which was on mental health. There's a mental health crisis. Greg Giffords talks about the need to renew our mind. We often are putting everything in the brain when it's really the mind, the internal man that is being transformed. But there's a lot of talk about mental health. One in five people suffer from some kind of mental health crisis, according to our secular researchers. So how does a passage like this and mental health go together? Well, I'm gonna try. I'm gonna try to do this. It comes from a link from some reading that Lynn and I did on conversations the six conversations. It's a helpful book on reading or on building relationships and having good conversations. And the Christian gal who wrote the book has done some secular research on mental health, and she had this really. Interesting thing, secular researchers are finding that people who have awe,
  
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  who find awe in things outside themselves, are humbler and happier. They're they're humbler, and they're happier. Now let's link these together. God wants your happiness. He made you to be happy in Him and in His work. You can rejoice in him as he makes things, as he redeems things you can be happy about that, but he has made you to be happy in him and people who have awe, who recognize there is much that is bigger themselves than themselves are happier and healthier people. Interesting observation. This is, here are three chapters for awe, despite the sin of man, God continues his promise, and 1000s of years later, he continues to bring the Gospel to every tribe and tongue and nation, and you can find your happiness in it by obeying His command and mission. The big idea. We write it this way because it's kind of how I summarize it in my head. What's going on in these three chapters, obey it or fight it. Obey it or fight it. God's glorious mission for the world will continue. You could obey it something like we see Japheth and Shem do in honoring Noah and dealing with his sin problem. You could fight it like Babel be driven off anyway. So the question is, do you want to be happy in it? Do you want the happiness that God has given for you in himself and participating it, in it by Faith is going to be the key God is carrying out his mission. One of the things we have to get out on the table right up front is that Noah is like us, but not like us. He is like us, and that he is human, prone to human failings. He is not like us in that he is a prophet. And before we step in and we get into the nitty gritty about what's going on there, I just, I just want to say right up front, if you lived 950 years on the earth, and the only thing you were guilty of was getting drunk and taking off your clothes in your tent and falling and passing out. You'd probably think you got off easy if you lived 950 years, the list for you might be longer than this. Noah is painfully human, and yet the one who announces a pretty important promise for the future of the earth. Before we jump into some specific applications these sections, let's just make sure we got the bigger context God made Adam and Eve. Chapter One, he gave them a mandate, Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it. They are to rule over it as God's representatives. Chapter Two, they are to, they were to rely on God's rules alone. Don't eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Don't make your own rules for how to live. They fail. They sin, and as a result of their sin, they find themselves naked and ashamed. God makes a promise to them to one day deal with their sin by sending one who is going to destroy the works of the devil, who is going to ultimately be the offering of sin. God offered for sin on our behalf, God kills an animal, clothes Adam and Eve. The world starts to populate, but every thought and intention of man is evil. So God floods the earth. After the flood, man's heart hasn't changed. God sets forth a covenant promise. If you weren't here with us last week, we see that the creation mandate is still moving forward. God is going to bless it, and he's given a sign in the sky, a rainbow, to say that God will uphold the Earth. Faith while he fulfills his mission. This is where we step in today. God is going to keep his promise. The point of the rainbow is that God is going to keep his promise of mercy and grace to sinners until he finishes his task, until he gathers all his people, men and women from every tribe and tongue and nation,
  
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  here's the question for us, how are we participating in this glorious mission? There's three potential sermons right out of these sections. One is the missionary enterprise that we're in the middle of. God wants to reach the nations. He dispersed the nations. He created the nations. He wants to reach the nations. How are we going to participate in it? There is another one about, how are we going to deal with the problem of sin in the world, our own potential failings and the need for a covering for our own sin. There's another one about pride, About Us resisting God in his in his mission for us. What is the cure for all of these? It is going to be awe in God's sovereign power and greatness, God's faithfulness to his promise that is eventually going to leave us lead us to Christ. Now, before we jump into very specific things in these three sections, I want you to understand how this is framed, and just remember this metaphor, God flooded the earth to destroy it. Now, God is going to flood the earth to display his glory. He flooded the earth to destroy it. Now he's going to flood it with people. And you can see this in this idea of dispersed or spread or populated. It happens three times in these chapters, verse, 19, 919, these three were the sons of Noah, and from these people, the whole earth were dispersed. They were populated and they filled. This is the origin of all the nations. Verse, 3210 32 these are the clans of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies and their nations. And from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood, even after the pride of man at the Tower of Babel, 11 nine. From there, the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth, despite Noah's sin, ham, sin, Canaan, sin, the nation, sin at Babel, God continues to be faithful to his promise and merciful and gracious to the nations, to bless those who by faith, obey Him. What do we do as our part? Three parts, seek the covering of sinners shame. We're going to see Japheth and Shem do that. We're going to participate in God's mission for the nations. We're going to see how we keep doing that. We take our part in that mandate for the world, and we don't stop to make a name for ourselves. We deal with our pride. So let's take a look at these. These three sections kind of link them all together. The first thing that we see is this really, which feels like an uncomfortable situation with Noah, in which Shem and Japheth did the honoring thing and they covered their father's shame. It's going to be an indication of the kind of response that we have with the shame and guilt of people in the world. Verse 20 says, Noah began to be a man of the soil. He planted a vineyard. So he got off the ark, sent all the animals out, found a vine, developed a vineyard. Verse 21 he drank of the wine and became drunk and laid uncovered in his tent. Despite Noah's previous faithfulness to God, he was a man who walked with God. He was a man who walked with God in the face of rejection from the world, he was still susceptible to sin. We would all expect better. He's 600 he should know what alcohol does. You're not 600 and you should know what alcohol does. But he's still susceptible. He got drunk, we uncovered. He lost a sense of shame. He made it possible for one of his sons to see him exposed. And while it's disappointing, there's nothing here that has happened that God hasn't predicted would happen back in 821, man's heart is completely changed, still susceptible to sin. God didn't make a covenant with Noah, just I'm so grateful this. He didn't, he didn't send Jesus to save you, knowing you would never sin again once you trusted him. Can you. Imagine how bad it would be for us if our salvation was was was conditioned on our future perfect obedience. No he had made a promise. He didn't imagine Noah would never sin, but knowing Noah and everyone else would sin, Noah sin. He became drunk. He laid uncovered in his tent. The drunkenness took away. His inhibitions, took off his clothes. He passed out naked. That would have been bad enough, just in his own tent. Ham happens to walk in somehow. We don't know what happened, but ham, the father of Canaan. Notice, the father of Canaan is mentioned both in 18 and 22 there's a there's a marker here. Canaan is going to be important. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. Why is Canaan mentioned here Israel, who's reading this, or hearing Moses read it, is being charged to go into Canaan to destroy the country. What is the nature of these people? Adulterous and immoral and mocking the people of God. It's the nature of Canaan. Think they're linked together. Noah is like us. He's human, not like us. He's a prophet. And there is a set of shared traits in families, set of shared traits and families. I was thinking to my shared traits with my father. When my dad started to drink, I can I can never remember a time that he became a happy drunk. I inherit a lot from my father, the brooding ability, the ability to brood. When my dad started to drink, my mom would count beers and say, we have to have dinner on the table by three, otherwise dinner won't be very, very happy when I tell you, if I drank, we would need to have dinner on the table by three, by three beers, because it might not be very happy. There's a brooding tendency. That's what alcohol does. It removes your inhibitions. You might have different tendencies. Some of you might not. Might need to be the center of the world. Some of you might want to be something else. But this was, this was his problem. He Noah lost his inhibition about his shame and his nakedness and something about that excited ham now, now follow this. There is no 12 year old on the planet, and after that that wants to think about Mom and Dad without clothes. None. There is an internal sense of cover that always please. I don't want to know anything else. I know there are 12 children. I don't want to talk about how 12 children happen. Every child on the planet has an internal sense of cover that shame. Ham did not ham, as far as we can tell, took the garment, took it outside. The reason why I'd say that is because Joseph and Joseph Japheth and Shem took the garment. That's literally how it is. Put it on their shoulders to go cover him. There's something bad enough about Noah and exponentially worse about ham and almost certainly about Canaan Ian.
  
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  It's the heart of certain kinds of sin, especially immoral and idolatrous sin, that wants to broadcast it, perhaps, to make the person feel better themselves about committing it. It's how it looks as the rest of the story unfolds. Remember, this is the origin story of Canaan. Sodom and Gomorrah are part of Canaan sexual sin is part of the whole Canaanite way of life. I
  
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  him, broadcasts his father's shame. Shem and Japheth cover. It says they took a garment more literally the garment, laid it on both their shoulders, walked backward and covered the. Nakedness of their father, being sure to not look. They wanted to honor their father. Their father was a great man, a godly man, resisting temptation and walking with God for hundreds of years. Yes, he was a sinner. He fell into failing, and it was serious enough. Serious enough. You imagine when the alcohol wore off and Noah came to his senses, and he thought about the reaction of his sons. I mean, he's going to have to deal with his own sin before God. We don't have any any reason to think that he still doesn't walk with the Lord. He had fallen into sin, he wakes up he's going to have to deal with his own consequences before the Lord, and he realizes that one of my sons broadcast my shame, and two of My sons sought to cover my shame. Hurt, angry. We see this role as a Prophet that he has. I know it's uncomfortable when we read Genesis, you're saying, How can Noah sin and still act as a prophet and curse? This is going to be true. With Abraham, with Isaac, with Jacob, you're going to find that all of God's leaders, until Jesus, are sinful and flawed. God has only those kind to work with. So you will see them flawed and sinner and yet called by God for a purpose. Noah's only words are recorded, recorded here. No awoke for his wine and he knew what his youngest son had done to him. He said, Cursed be Canaan. What is a curse? Curse is the announcement of a punishment, a public display of shame for a sin. Cursed be Canaan. Why Canaan? It's not super clear, but I would say three things. We've added one in add one in that we just talked about Ham's the youngest son who Dishonored him. Quite possible that God is looking at ham saying your youngest is going to shame you too. Second, sinful events are shared in families, unless God intervenes, we jump to the the 10 Commandments, sins are visited on the fathers and sons to the third generation, not because the third generation had committed the same sins, because the third generation is sinful like the first. That's very likely going on here. What is certainly true is that, looking down the line, the Canaanites are going to be among the most idolatrous and immoral of any people that Israel is going to have to deal with a constant a constant thorn, a constant temptation for Israel, A curse. It's going to dog them for 700 years. He says, a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers? The history of Canaan would show that the peoples of Canaan were subjects from Egypt cush put these are nations around they were, they were subjects and slaves to the Babylonians. At times, they were some of the people that were overrun by marauding empires or expanding empires over and over, throughout history. Some look at this have looked at it in the past and said, Well, this is why it's okay to make black people slaves. This is this, if you want to know where people have justified it from the Bible, they think it's here, although it's not here, because it's Canaan, who are going to be the servants. And they were never black. They lived in Israel. It's not what this is saying at all. It's saying there is, there's, there's going to be servants here, and Canaanites would eventually become loggers and stone cutters for Israel, as forced labor. Canaan has a curse. We're going to see why God had set the course that he had to drive out the nation of the Canaanites when Israel came into the promised land. Verse 26 it turns cursed be Canaan. He says, Blessed be the Lord. This is the surprise. Cursed be Canaan's a surprise. It should be cursed be ham you'd think this. Be blessed, be Shem and Japheth. But no, it's Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, and that's because Shem and Japheth have no happiness, have no joy, have no blessing, have no ability, unless they are attached by faith to Yahweh. Yahweh is the one to be blessed because Yahweh is the one who produces obedience and faith in His people. Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem. Let Canaan be his servant. He does bless Shem. He does bless Japheth. Verse 27 May God enlarge Japheth and let him dwell in the tents of Shem. Let Canaan be his servants. Nations from the west often invaded and enslaved, and so we see that. But here are some things that stand out about this. There's no record that the nations who flooded the earth to the west and the north, or the nations who flooded the earth from the east out of the shemites ever dwelled together? This is a long, long coming, long coming promise. When will Japheth and Shem dwell together under Yahweh in faith, through the coming of Christ, through the transformation of Jews who became missionaries to the world, to the one day where the descendants of Israel in faith, the descendants of nations in faith, will dwell together. We have a promise here about a great day that's still not finished. There are a
  
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  lot of things we could say, You're never too old to fall prey to drunkenness. Are you aware of your weakness with alcohol or any other substance? We could say that. We could say that the private moments in your home may be more difficult to resist sin than the public ones where you resist the world's temptations. How are you at home? We could say that that's legitimate. But here's where I want to focus. This, what did Japheth and Shem do with their father's sin? They sought to cover it, not just not slander. Slander, gossip is what Ham had done. Promote it, mock it, justifying his own perhaps. Note Shem and Japheth wanted the honor of their father. They wanted the shame of their father to be covered. Garments are important in Genesis, God killed an animal or two, created clothing for Adam and Eve and dressed them and covered their nakedness. Shem and Japheth give us a parable of mankind's role in bringing a covering to the world. It's not a garment. It's Jesus Christ, who is the one who is stripped naked, beaten, crucified on a cross, bearing the wrath of God the mocking of humanity, dying on our behalf, shedding His blood, and by that blood, providing forgiveness and righteousness. What we do today isn't just being discreet about someone we know and love and their sin problems. That's good. What we do today is bring the gospel of Jesus Christ, in which you don't get into heaven unless you're dressed with Christ's righteousness. Garments are going to be a theme throughout the Bible. What's your role in the world? As the world has multiplied, your first role in the world is dealing with sin and shame, bringing the Gospel to those who need it, not mocking it, not fomenting it, not excusing it, but calling people to repentance, applying the gospel of Christ so that they can be covered. Jesus covers us with His righteousness. When I see someone's sin, I should want to cover it with Jesus righteousness too. Second, you want to take part in God's mandate. Take part in God's mandate in the world. If we look at chapter 10, I'd love to unpack this if I did on. Pack it. We'd have four more sermons. So that's what you get to do in your growth group. Have fun unpacking this. Let me give you three big pictures. It's about the spread of the nations. Picture number one is the sons of Japheth that start in verse two, they spread west to the seas. If you're an Israelite ready to cross into the promised land. You have conquered the promised land, and you want to know who you relate to in the world. The sons of Japheth went west into the ocean and around the Mediterranean Sea. They went outside of that to the Atlantic Ocean, establishing Tarshish. They went into the north, into Europe, Japheth heights. If you're European, you're Japheth height. If you're Mediterranean, you're a Japheth Ian, all those spread there. Second section is the ham, the sons of Ham section notice just one piece of it, verse eight, Cush, Father, Nimrod. He was the first on Earth to be a mighty man. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Therefore, it is said like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the Lord, which is a word picture, a euphemism for a warrior emperor. He's a warrior emperor. When does babble happen that we're going to get to in chapter 11? It happens here. So the Table of Nations, that's what this is called, so that the Israelites would know all the nations that they relate to surrounding them. This table right in the middle verse eight, Nimrod becomes the first great emperor, and he founds his kingdom was Babel Eric Akkad kalmah In the land of Shinar. From that land he went into Assyria and built Nineveh, rehobothir, Kala and resin between Nineveh and Kala, that is the great city. He was the first empire builder, and it happens in the middle here. We're going to get a little aside or sidebar in chapter 11. One other thing that you should notice, the line of Shem is listed last, although he's the oldest, because this is the climax of the story, the seed of Christ is carried through the line of Shem. More specifically, it's carried through the line of Eber. Verse 25 to Eber were born two sons. Eber is the is the name where Hebrews come from. So Hebrews come from Eber. The name of one was Peleg, for in the days of his of the Earth was divided, and his brother's name was joktan. So about the same time that Babel happens, Peleg is born. The world is divided. The flood happens, the flood of humanity, the ends of the earth. Let's help you put together one thing to do with this today, as we think about our theme, Israel was called in the promised land to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation in Exodus 19, five through six, they had a role by their worship, by their lives, by their obedience, to be a living display of the grace of God and life. And so they were called to be missionaries in reverse, come and see Yahweh and His grace. What about us? Many people see Acts chapter two after Jesus' resurrection as Babel in reverse. 120 disciples on the day of Pentecost were gathered together praying for the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was poured out, and these 120 people spoken languages they had never learned to Jews who had come from all these nations in this list to worship in Jerusalem, they were to go home and announce the gospel. Where did we fit in today? Every Christian is to keep bringing the Gospel to the world around them as as churches. We keep bringing sending missionaries to the world. We go ourselves. You go, or you send, you go, or you finance, you go, or you pray. We're all in that. That's all of our responsibility. That responsibility was set in Genesis nine, Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth. Rule over it. It was set for us in Genesis nine, we saw God do it. In Genesis 10, God will do it over you or through you. We're going to get the over you in a second. He's going to do it over you steam roller or through you. And a blessing. Remember, missions is not a problem to overcome, it's God's plan for. His glory. The fact that there are language groups in the nations that don't yet have a have the gospel is not a problem to overcome. It's God's plan for His glory. So we continue on in that process. What do we have to resist? Number three, don't stop to make a name for yourself. Don't stop to make a name for yourself. Genesis nine gave us the mandate over the whole world. Genesis nine, it seemed like ham was going to threaten it, but ham did not. God is going to enlarge Japheth. He is going to bless Shem. We watch the nations spread in chapter 10, we take back. We take a step back into the middle of chapter 10 with the story of Babel. Don't stop to make a name for yourselves. That's how it summarizes. If this is a mission Sunday, which it is, don't stop to make a name for yourself. God calls his people to make his name and glory known in the world, not our own. God charged the nations with multiplying, and he empowered them to do it. But like Adam and Eve in the garden, guess what happens? They get resisted. God gets resisted.
  
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  Verse one says, Now the whole earth had one language and the same words, growth group. This week, you're going to read chapter 10, and you're going to find verse 31 which said that there were clans, languages, lands and nations, all kinds of different ones. I don't understand. There's one nation, the clans have nations. What's going on? Two things could be happening. One is the summary at the end of chapter 10 is that, after them. Languages were confused. There were the different length, there were different peoples with different languages. But I more likely think that languages aren't a curse. Languages are an opportunity for God's glory. What happened in chapter in chapter 11, verse one, is that there was a trade language that everybody shared, and there are trade languages. We understand the concept. If you're living in North and East Africa, Swahili is a trade language, many different languages, one common one to communicate if you're Chinese, Mandarin is now the trade language. Although there are a variety of other Chinese languages, all countries have this, this thing where there are multiple languages, there was a trade language. Today, the trade language around the world is mostly English, which makes life really easy when you travel overseas. But they were all using this language as people migrated from the East. They came and the families grew after they got off the ark, they found a plane in the land of Shinar. Settled there, modern Iraq, and they said to one another, follow this. Let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly. They they decided to provide for themselves. First step of pride is self sufficiency. Let us make bricks. Burn them thoroughly. It's not the activity of building things that's the issue. Follow on, why we can add it together. They had brick for stone, bitumen for mortar. Then they said, Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves. They decided to provide for themselves. If they were to spread God, would have provided for them. But they also decided to build a city, a tower with its top in the heavens. And all of the ancient Near East understood that the gods lived in the mountains. We're going to make our own mountain. We are going to be our own God, and the other gods have to sit in the circle with us, including the Creator God of heaven and earth. We are one of the Council of the gods. Now we will stand on our own. This is the collective sin that's just like the couple's sin in the garden. In the garden, the only prohibition was to not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which meant you don't make up your own rules for how to live. You follow my rules. Here we are going to stand on our own. We're going to build ourselves a city and a tower with its top of the heavens. We're going to make it tall enough that we are going to be among the gods. We will be our own gods. We will make a name for ourselves. We are set here to become famous in and of ourself, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. The whole point here was we are not going we know God mandated it. We know God built us for it. We are not going to do it. It was human pride. Nimrod i. We add. Go back to 1010. Built Babel, the first emperor, just like emperors do seek to resist God's plan, make their own names great, and this tower, this man made mountain for them to dwell in, they thought might even be high enough that another flood couldn't wash it away. We will have our own renowned we will be famous on our own.
  
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  They stopped to make a name for themselves. It's a simple way to put it. Friend, are are you praying for financing or going in God's mission for you and the world? That's our participation. We pray, we give our money, we go. One of those things needs to keep happening. Keep happening. Does it mean you need to sell your house, break your lease and go maybe,
  
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  remember, there's a lot of going that needs to happen here in Spokane to the nations, but the going to the World to reach these nations is a foremost priority for Jesus, the the mission statement from the church, a loving community making disciples of Jesus Christ comes from the greater command to go to all the nations making disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that I've commanded. Lo I will be with you always, to the end of the age, we're to go to the nations. That's That's our DNA as a church we participate in that what we have to do is resisting making a name for ourselves. I How does that happen in the church? One is we. We easily think we are the church that has all of things going on. We have to resist the kinds of thinking that we're the only place where the Bible is really taught. We're the only place where God's work is really happening. We're the only place we have to resist that kind of pride that is common to man. We have to resist the kind of pride that is self Kingdom building. We have to keep giving ourselves away as a church. We have to keep sending and sacrificing for the name of Christ. You as a family. I could think of how much internal wrestling is. I've toyed with the little art and art projects. And I did one of these art festivals downtown, and I sold my artwork. Like it's a heady thing, like I want you to buy my stuff, because I would like the money, and I would like you to think I'm pretty cool. And I would also like to show the beauty of the Lord. Which one is it? It's all of it, the beauty of the Lord, and I'm pretty great. It is a complicated thing. I want to I want a promotion for the beauty of the Lord and my influence. I wouldn't mind extra money, and I wouldn't mind being respected like which is it? It's Yes, just admit it you are a mixed motive person.
  
  48:36
  Confess it to the Lord. Make sure you know what God's called you to do and make sure whatever is tempting to make a name for yourself constantly gets beaten out like an old rug. Every time I start to get proud, God takes a particular pride issue of me, and he just, he just holds me up like a rug and just goes, bam, bam, bam, bam, thank you, Lord, much lighter. Now don't stop to make a name for yourself. Interestingly, it just feels like humor here, but I don't think it's funny. The Lord came down to see the city and the tower. We're going to make a great big tower. We're going to dwell on the top of the mountains, and God will join our council. And God goes, I mean, I suppose I could get down there. I find it humorous. Honestly, God didn't find it humorous, but we do have God came down, most likely personal, but you can't escape whatever they tried. God had to come down to look at it. The Lord came down to see the city. And the tower with the with the children of man had built, the Lord personally comes down, and he is deeply concerned, deeply concerned, isn't he says, Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this own is only the beginning of what they will do. Nothing they propose to do now will be impossible for them. What does he mean that he couldn't stop anything they did? No, he doesn't mean that. What he means is the same thing that he meant when he stationed cherubim, flaming, sordid angels outside the Garden of Eden to not allow Adam and Eve and The Offspring back into the tree of life. Live separated from God forever. We can't let that happen. So they sent confusion. The US, let us go down, Father, Son and Spirit. They deliberate. They come down. They send confusion. So they can't readily work together. So it'd be labor. I am reminded that gene is the best example. I would have used somebody in check anyway, but Jean is here. People in check, just the average person in check won't respect you until you have no accent. It's pretty close to right, isn't it? Like you have to have no accent in check before you're respected. That's going to be a long time before people accept Christians who are from another country. That's effect of this curse. It's difficult. That's why we sell send Micah and Janelle to Nepal so that they can do language preparation. They can get ready for other language translations. This is hard work. Now. This is the Lord dispersed them over the face of over the face of all the earth. They left off the building, 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 the earth. The flood did happen. The image bearers did go, but they went not with God's blessing, but under God's driving confusion, under his curse. What's incumbent on us don't stop to make a name for yourself. It's not the purpose of your promotion, it's not the purpose of what you get skilled at in school. It's not the purpose, it's not the purpose of making your name great. It's the purpose of being an instrument to be used by God to bring the gospel to the world. You've got to notice the intentions of the sinful heart rallying together to resist God. That is a temptation, to find others to rally with, to resist God, stopping and seeking safety, security and comfort, instead of being fruitful, multiplying and filling the earth, that's a temptation. I want to be safe. I want to be secure. I'm getting old. I deserve a few privileges. I want some nice things. Nice things aren't necessarily sinful, but they can stop you from seeking the Lord's mission, seeking to make a name for self, city, family, country, can bring the confusion of God making anything great again will be bound for destruction, if it's not solely seeking to make God's name great. We are seeking to make God's name great. Making anything great again will be bound for destruction if it's not solely seeking to make God's name great. Where are you currently seeking to make your name great reverse? How are you using your skills, your experience, to point people to the holiness and grace of Christ? How are you using your skills and your position so that you can bring the great cover, the great forgiver, the great Redeemer, to a world that is exposed in its guilt and shame. We need to seek the nations to be covered by the atoning work of Christ and dressed in his righteousness and God has promised blessing and. Happiness as we do it, Father, thank you for what you have given us in this word. It is powerful. It's a lot for us as we absorb it. It's far away from us. I pray that you would take your word now in our discussions, in our groups, now in our application of these principles, help us be a people who finish this mandate by proclaiming the gospel. It's Christ's name. We pray. Amen.

Dan Jarms

Dr. Dan Jarms is teaching pastor and team leader at Faith Bible Church in Spokane Washington, as well as associate dean at The Master's Seminary in Spokane. He has been married for over 30 years to Linda, and has three adult children. He earned his B.A. in English at the Master’s College, B.Ed. at Eastern Washington University, M.Div and D.Min in Expository Preaching at The Master’s Seminary. His other interests include NCAA basketball, woodworking, and art.

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