MORNING MESSAGE: John Cline
Scripture: Genesis 11:1-32
Last Sunday, we read through Genesis 10, the much maligned (in some quarters) account of how people disbursed around the globe after the Ark with Noah and 7 other members of his family had landed on the mountains of Ararat in far eastern Turkey and then set off in all directions from there. In comparison, look at what modern scientists theorize. You will notice there are more similarities than differences.
Project modern scientist’s theory on the disbursement of people around the globe – www.facebook.com/reel/1219916062673786
In many ways, that video sounds like the biblical account of the migration of humans around the world, other than the timing and the location. It seems like mere speculation to me but what one chooses to believe reveals which system of explanation they trust more: modern scientific propositions or the ancient Bible’s assertion. Both teach that humans started in a definite location and then spread around the globe. The biggest obstacles to me in accepting what these scientists are putting forth is the lack of any archaeological findings of civilizations that were millions of years old. Besides which, if there have been millions of years of humans, where are the bones located that would support such a thing? Archaeology points to ancient civilizations being several thousands of years old, at the most, and each dug-up full skeleton supports that more recent time period.
In the Genesis 10 “Table of Nations” we preached through last time we read that Noah and Mrs. Noah’s (we aren’t told her name) had three sons and daughters-in-law, who had children and grandchildren, who had children and grandchildren, who had children and grandchildren, etc., who left the Ark and migrated both by foot and on boats around the globe, establishing nations and cities wherever they went. One of those descendants was a man named Nimrod. Among the nations and cities he started and established were Babylon and Nineveh, the future capital of Assyria, both centres of sin and wickedness according to the Bible, as well later enemies of Israel. With the nation of Babylon, we read that its most important city, Babel, was located on a plain in today’s Iraq, yesteryear’s Mesopotamia, in a spot known as “Shinar”.
Project map – https://www.biblecartoons.co.uk/maps/map-of-middle-east-showing-babel
The people who settled there were tremendously ingenious. We moderns question if they could have the means and ability to build high towers but as we learned a few weeks ago, there are mysterious, amazing structures and technological innovations left behind by from the time period prior to the Great Flood. Their existence causes me to not doubt the ability of the people to have built the Tower of Babel. Moving closer to our age, consider the incredibly detailed pieces of art that were crafted in the Renaissance period as well as the complex and phenomenal architecture involved in building the great cathedrals of Europe. Moderns have difficulty emulating it. In fact, humans have done away with beauty. An “artist” two years ago took a banana and taped it to a wall and sold it for $20,000. Another one has sold three pieces of “invisible” art that people have paid tens of thousands of dollars for, but there is nothing there! When we moved to Edmonton in 1993, I was not impressed with the square box, plain, unadorned buildings. And then, when people complained that they were being torn down, I was dumbfounded. I am so proud and happy that Edmonton has been putting up beautiful new buildings these past 20 years. By the way, my hometown of Calgary has got to be the ugliest city in Canada! Everything is the same colour of brown and beige, it seems. Creativity and beauty are totally lacking! Particularly compared to what used to be created and built! And all those earlier creations were done prior to the Industrial Revolution of 1760–1840 which changed our world from its agrarian base into an industrial and later a technological one. Did you know that the first modern skyscraper was Chicago’s 10-story Home Insurance Building built in 1885 which means that it took about 4,000 years from the time of the Tower of Babel to have the ingenuity to build tall structures. Now, now we have as normative structures far exceeding 100 stories in height, with the recent ones being built mostly in China or the mid-east (returning to the region of the Tower of Babel). My point is that human history as told by the Bible and confirmed by archaeology contains at least 3 periods where little progress happened but when it came, massive and beautiful structures were built. Now, concerning the Tower of Babel itself, what did it look like? Consider this Assyrian black stone dug up by archaeologists which depicts the Tower of Babel, showing a “stepped” tower and placing beside an Assyrian king.
Project Tower of Babel stele
The most significant aspect of this “Tower of Babel stele” is that it was not made by Israelites. It was not a Jewish attempt to substantiate a story in the Bible. The Assyrians would have had no interest in doing that! Instead, it was an illustrated attempt to tell of the Assyrians own history and thus the Tower of Bable stele is non-biblical evidence supporting the Biblical story. Ok, to Genesis 11:
Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise, we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” (Genesis 11:1-4)
Here is another representation of the Tower of Babel, a very famous painting done by the 16th century Dutch artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
Project painting of Tower of Babel – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel#/media/File:Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-The_Tower_of_Babel(Vienna)-_Google_Art_Project-_edited.jpg
Wikipedia, in an article written anonymously by a non-believer, says, ‘The Tower of Babel is an origin myth and parable in the Book of Genesis meant to explain the existence of different languages and cultures. According to the story, a united human race speaking a single language migrates to Shinar (Lower Mesopotamia), where they agree to build a great city with a tower that would reach the sky. YHWH, observing these efforts and remarking on humanity’s power in unity, confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other and scatters them around the world, leaving the city unfinished. Some modern scholars have associated the Tower of Babel with known historical structures and accounts, particularly from ancient Mesopotamia. The most widely attributed inspiration is Etemenanki, a ziggurat dedicated to the god Marduk in Babylon, which in Hebrew was called Babel.’
Even Wikipedia is intrigued by the Tower of Babel! Recently, the Iraqi government clued in to the lucrative tourist dollars that could come its way if they declared they had discovered the original Tower of Babel site, and that is what they have done. In fact, they are promoting it heavily. One can even see the decided-upon spot on google maps!
The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language, they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” So, the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth. (Genesis 11:5-9)
In passing, I will note the plurality-within-God reference where Elohim God (Elohim being a name for God which is plural, thus implying a plurality within the Godhead – Christians would say it is pointing to the Trinity) says, “Let us go down…” but, sticking to our focus for today, the Tower of Babel, I will refer to Pastor Dave Koop, writing on coastalchurch.org who penned a blog entitled, “A Higher Way: Learning from the Tower of Babel” in which he says: ‘In our world today social media platforms have provided individuals with unprecedented opportunities for self-promotion and to build a platform for their fame. The desire to be known, admired, and celebrated can lead people down a path that excludes God and His guidance. In the Bible’s account of the Tower of Babel, we find a powerful cautionary example about the dangers of seeking fame while ignoring God…even to thinking we have arrived at the place with our tower of learning that we don’t need God. But as the Tower of Babel shows, God will always step in when humankind tries to build a world that excludes Him. Those people wanted to build a society for their own name and to glorify humanity. They replaced God with a worship of themselves and the heavens…At the Tower of Babel the people made the mistake of thinking because they ruled God out of their plans that He did not exist or care…The people of Babylon, led by a man named Nimrod, sought to build a tower that would bring glory to themselves, an act of defiance against God’s will…God watched what was happening, and when it had gone too far, He stepped in and confused their language, leading to the dispersion of people and the abandonment of the tower’s construction…The tower and the city that Nimrod built represent the sin of pride—an attempt to gain security and significance apart from God. This is a universal struggle, as we often seek fame to validate our worth. However, the more important God is in our lives, the less important fame becomes…Humility before God is the key to being raised up. “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.” (James 4:10) It is so much better to have God lift us up than for us to lift ourselves up. Jesus taught that true blessedness comes from being “poor in spirit”, acknowledging our need for God. Our reliance on God, rather than our own achievements, is the antidote to the pride that fueled the Tower of Babel.’
Now, moving on to the second half of chapter 11, we come to what many believe is the actual driving force in chapters 1-11, that being God’s calling of Abraham which we will come to at the chapter’s end:
This is the account of Shem’s family line. Two years after the flood, when Shem was 100 years old, he became the father of Arphaxad. And after he became the father of Arphaxad, Shem lived 500 years and had other sons and daughters. When Arphaxad had lived 35 years, he became the father of Shelah. And after he became the father of Shelah, Arphaxad lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters. When Shelah had lived 30 years, he became the father of Eber. And after he became the father of Eber, Shelah lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters. When Eber had lived 34 years, he became the father of Peleg. And after he became the father of Peleg, Eber lived 430 years and had other sons and daughters. When Peleg had lived 30 years, he became the father of Reu. And after he became the father of Reu, Peleg lived 209 years and had other sons and daughters. (Genesis 11:10-19)
We need to pause here and point out that, despite his relative obscurity compared to other Biblical figures, Peleg is helpful in understanding the complete narrative of the Bible. Peleg’s name in Hebrew means “division”. Specifically, in 1 Chronicles 1:19, we read that in Peleg’s time, “the earth was divided”. Serious discussion around this verse has arisen as to whether or not the ‘division’ refers to a physical cataclysm that separated continents, or the division of languages, leading to the cultural and geographical spread of humanity. Most scholars favour the latter interpretation; thus, Peleg was alive at the time of the Tower of Babel (which is interesting in and of itself), and at the time in which the earth was divided up into different language groups and through migration. As a descendant of Noah, Peleg was in the covenantal line of Abraham, and the line of Jesus, the Messiah and is thus an important person to know about.
When Reu had lived 32 years, he became the father of Serug. And after he became the father of Serug, Reu lived 207 years and had other sons and daughters. When Serug had lived 30 years, he became the father of Nahor. And after he became the father of Nahor, Serug lived 200 years and had other sons and daughters. When Nahor had lived 29 years, he became the father of Terah. And after he became the father of Terah, Nahor lived 119 years and had other sons and daughters. After Terah had lived 70 years, he became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran. (Genesis 11:20-26)
We have arrived at the goal of Genesis 1-11, at the birth of Abram/Abraham, the father of the Israelites. Everything will slow down from now on in Genesis. Abram’s father was Terah, who as the patriarch of the family had probably learned of God’s calling upon Abram, and thus led the family to move to Canaan but, as we will read, father Terah died before his family could reach the Promised Land.
This is the account of Terah’s family line. Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. While his father Terah was still alive, Haran died in Ur of the Chaldeans, in the land of his birth. Abram & Nahor both married. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, & the name of Nahor’s wife was Milkah; she was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milkah and Iskah. Now Sarai was childless because she was not able to conceive. Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, & his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, & together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Harran, they settled there. Terah lived 205 years, & he died in Harran. (Genesis 11:27- 32)
Project map: https://bible-history.com/maps/abrahams-journeys
Now, you may have noticed that I did not spend any time on this Sunday’s Advent Candle theme of peace. That was intentional because the peace that comes through and in God began to fully take shape with Abraham.
“Know God, know peace. No God, no peace.”
Abraham knew God in a way that would impact the world, and because he knew God, Abraham knew peace. Well, we have run out of time for this Sunday, but we will get into that more next Sunday. Let’s pray…
