The Roots of the Kingdom #16; A Place, a Name, and Unity.
Genesis 10:1-12:9 (read: 11:1-12:9)
‘Tell me, who are your people again?’
Its a question aimed at discovering if ‘your people’ and ‘their people’ have any ‘people’ in common. Inevitably in large sections of our denomination, with its predominantly Gaelic and Highland heritage, where surnames, MacLeod, Morrison, Mackenzie and MacDonald are most common, it takes a little time, but a connection between ‘your people’ and ‘their people’ is almost always established. How many times have I watched people discover a second cousin they didn’t know they had?
Now what I find intriguing is that those conversations bear testimony to the continuing vitality of an ancient tradition. What is happening is in effect the recital of a genealogy. It is identifying one’s self by one’s clan. It is a way of locating yourself in relation to the person speaking, by means of common friends and relatives.
And in Genesis chapter 10 and 11 we are confronted with the genealogies of Noah’s sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And part of the function of these genealogies is to locate the people who come later in the story within a preceding tradition. Just as the question, ‘who are your people?’, is designed to call forth a genealogy that will locate you in a certain culture and tradition, with common ancestors and friends, so too here, Moses is concerned to locate the story that is now about to unfold within a specific family tradition.
Basically these two chapters aim to bring us, by means of a genealogy, from the generation of Noah, whose story we have been studying in some detail over the past weeks, to the era of Abraham and his descendants. The genealogy serves as a kind of summary, a fast forward button on the remote control of the narrator, that enables him to link one part of his story to another that did not take place until considerably later. It roots the story of Abraham in what has come before.
And more than that, the genealogies in Genesis also serve as significant markers of a new era in the story about to begin. It’s not just a convenient way to skip a few generations of history; it is a kind of story teller’s tool to signal to us as we read that we are now on the brink of the next major turning point in the drama of God’s dealings with a fallen world. We are about to move from the story of the primeval peoples and the early emergence of the covenant line of promise to the flowering of that covenant line. We are about to move from what we might call the preamble, in Genesis 1-9, to the first chapter of redemptive history in the remainder of Genesis. We are about to enter the era of the Abrahamic covenant, and reading who Abraham’s people are helps unite the different aspects of the story.
And as Moses recounts the genealogies that serve to link what has gone before to the coming narrative about Abram, he pauses twice to tell us some fascinating details.
The first pause in the genealogy is in 10:8-12, where we have the account of Nimrod and his heirs, and the second is in 11:1-9, where we have the account of the building of the tower of Babel. And it seems almost certain that these two accounts are dealing with the same event. Nimrod is the leader of the pack as it were. He is the person who built Babel, and those who gathered at Shinar are the people who followed his lead.
Now what I want to do this evening is to spend the remainder of our time thinking together about the story of the city of Babel and it’s down fall in 11:1-9.
Notice with me the structure of the passage: there is an introduction emphasising the unity of the people in verse 1-2 with a parallel conclusion in verse 8-9 emphasising the division of the people. Then, in verse 3-4 there is an outline of the plan of the people to build, and in verses 6-7 there is the corresponding plan of God to confuse. And right at the heart of the story at verse 5 is the simple record of God’s visitation, “The LORD came down to see the city and the tower the men were building”
Verse 5 is the axis on which everything else pivots. On the one hand we have the plans of men and on the other the plans of God, and in the heart of it all we have the visitation of God to evaluate and judge human actions. Here is where our main attention ought to be. Here is the message of this passage. God evaluates human actions and judges accordingly. There is no escaping his evaluation of your actions and life. God is a God who comes to see what we do.
But what was so wrong with the city building of the inhabitants of Babel? What fault did God see in their actions?
Well, look at the text with me. Fundamentally the men of Babel dream about three things. They want a place, a name, and unity. Look at verse 4 “Come let us build ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens,( they were looking for a place) so that we may make a name for ourselves (they were looking for a name) and not be scattered over the face of the earth.( they were seeking to preserve their unity)”
First of all they wanted a place. Specifically they wanted a place to belong and a place to worship. They built a city and a tower. And this tower is not simply some tourist attraction built to draw a crowd and sustain he local economy. This is no ancient version of the Leaning Tower of Pizza or the Eiffel Tower. This has a different purpose.
Look at verse 4. It is a tower that will “reach to the heavens”. That is their desdcription of its function. And the phrase could be translated in a variety of ways. The tower could be designed to be in the heavens, beside the heavens or like the heavens. Possibly its berst to see some combination of these. Ancient ziggurats in Mesopotamia were built like man made mountains intended to represent the world, with its broad base in the underworld, and its narrow pinnacle in heaven. It has also been suggested that the pyramids of ancient Mesopotamia bore representations of heaven, perhaps in the form of a zodiac.
But either way the basic purpose of the tower was religious. It was not an ancient Eiffel Tower it was a Temple to false worship.
And then notice what they said about the goal of this temple tower. It has as its aim the making of a name for the populace. And again, that means more than just making a reputation for themselves; just as the tower is not an ancient tourist attraction, so making ‘a name for themselves’ is not about getting their tower into all the ancient Mesopotamian edition of the ‘Rough Guide’ tourist book.
Just as the temple has a religious function so making a name is a religious goal. Turn back for a moment to the Story of Noah and his blessing on his sons in chapter 9. There we have the first clue that making name is a religious aspiration.
In Genesis 9:25-27 Noah’s curse and blessings are all word games. They are plays on the names of his sons. The name ‘Canaan’ sounds like the word ‘to subdue’, and so Canaan is cursed with slavery. Japheth is blessed with a promise that he will expand his territory, and the name Japheth sounds like the word ‘to expand’. And what about Shem?
Well, look at what Noah says to him; “Blessed be the Lord, (blessed be Yahweh, Jehovah), the God of Shem!” For the first time in the whole chapter the proper name of God is used, not a title or word for God but his actual, personal name, Jehovah. And Shem’s name means, “the Name”. His name is a reference to the proper name of the covenant God. He is the one who will inherit the covenant blessing. He is the one who bears the Name. The Name of God has been put upon him. He has been brought under the saving refuge of the great Name which is above every Name. Shem is the son of the Name.
Now back to Genesis 11. Shem had received freely, as a gift of God’s grace, what the men of Babel sought to obtain by their building a city and a temple. They sought to acquire by their own ingenuity ‘a great name’. They didn’t want to come under the Name, they didn’t want to submit to the Lord. They wanted to make themselves into a Name. They were not content to have the covenant Name of God placed upon them in salvation. They were not content to be given a great name in redemption. They wanted to make a name for themselves. This is not just common-or-garden pride; this is the full blown ‘idolatry of self’ in action. They wanted to become divine.
Either you live under the name of God, either he gives us a name in his grace, or we try to make one for ourselves. That is the basic instinct of humanity. Calvin said that the human heart is an idol factory. And he was right. When we are not worshipping blocks of wood or stone or some myth we have dreamed up we are worshipping at the shrine of self.
We just don’t want God on his terms. We don’t want to live under the rule of God, hiding our names, as it were, under His. We don’t like the idea of being debtors, of being utterly incapable of self salvation. We much prefer to build a temple to bring heaven down, make it attainable, and get a name, obtain salvation, and find for ourselves the path to enlightenment.
And the third part of the Babel builder’s agenda is to avoid the scattering of humanity over all the earth. If you read through the previous chapter it is clear that the various peoples began to migrate rapidly throughout the ancient world. But the builders of Babel, it seems, wanted to stop them going beyond the reaches of its new born empire. They wanted control, and keeping everyone together, united and close by, would help that immensely. And so they built what was designed ot be a great rallying point for racial unity, a centre for a more tolerant religion that would unite all peoples and make the divine attainable.
But it was the plan of God from the first that humanity would ‘multiply and fill the earth’ (Genesis 1:28 and reaffirmed 9:1). It was God’s design that Japheth’s territory would expand and grow (Genesis 9:27). And God’s response was to come in judgement in verses 5-9 and he says, in effects, ‘this is only the beginning’ verse 6. ‘If I don’t stop this now there will be no holds barred. They will do anything’. And so God confused the language of humanity so that the various groups could not understand each other, “project Babel” had to be abandoned and the plan of God to spread human civilisation across the globe resumed.
Now at this point we need to pause to realise that human beings crave these three things. We carve a place to belong. We are looking for a city and a tower. We crave a name. We are seeking after the divine. We want unity. We tend to want togetherness and community but without any personal cost. And the quest for these three things has become increasingly urgent in our post modern culture. Rootless-ness, alienation, the need for God, loneliness, are all problems deeply felt by this generation. And people are constantly resorting to mechanisms and techniques, systems and religious methods, meditation and eastern philosophy, tower-building in other words, all in order to get what we know in the depths of our souls we really need.
But the story of Babel teaches us that we cannot get what we need anywhere. It is not available in the spirituality supermarkets of our generation. It has to come to us from above. It is a gift of heaven. A city: a place to belong; a name: connection with God; unity: part of a living community: all are precious commodities that cannot be created. They must be received.
And the reminder of the Biblical plot line is all about the grace of God in action to bring those realities to sinful human beings freely
In Genesis 12:1-9 we have the beginnings of the story of Abram. And notice that these three things are simply given to Abram. God promises to give Abraham a place: verse 1 go to the land I will show you…verse 7 To your offspring I will give this land.” Abram was given a name, “I will make your name great” verse 2, and there is a promise of unity among all the nations, “all people’s on earth will be blessed through you.”
The basic threefold desire of the human heart came to Abram as a gift of free grace from the hand of God. And the details of that gift become clearer and clearer as the story of the bible develops. God’s place promised to Abraham in the land of Canaan, became a reality when Israel escaped from Egypt in the exodus and conquered the land under Joshua. The land of promise found its centre in another city, not Babel, but its opposite, the city of Jerusalem, Zion, where there is another Temple, built this time according to God’s law.
This temple does not seek to make a name for Israel, like the Tower of Babel, but instead it becomes the place where God is pleased to make his own name dwell. The temple’s builder, Solomon, said, “My father David had it in his heart to build a temple for the Name of the LORD, the God of Israel. But the LORD said to my father David, “because it was in your heart to build a house for my Name, you did well….nevertheless you are not the one to build the temple, but your son- he is the one who will build the temple for my Name.”
In the fullness of time, the place of God’s Name, where sinners could come and know a sense of belonging and a connection with the Lord, became more specific still. Through faith in the one who is bears the Name above all Names, the one who took flesh and tabernacled among us, through faith in Jesus Christ every believer becomes a part of a new temple made without hands. Ephesians 2:19-22 reminds us that, “you are God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostle’s and prophets, with Christ as the chief cornerstone. In Him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit.” And at the last day the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, made now, not of bricks and mortar, but made of sinners saved by grace, will “come down out of heaven from God”.(Rev. 21:2) What a contrast to the temple city of the people of Babel!
Their temple sought to make a name for themselves, not to house the glorious presence and Name of God. Their temple centred on self, God’s temple prepared for the still greater arrival of His Name in the One whose Name is “wonderful counsellor, mighty God Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isa. 9:6) , who has the name above all names, at whose name every knee shall bow (Phil. 2:9). Their temple was mere bricks and bitumen, but God’s temple is made of lives transformed by saving grace. Their temple rose to heaven, but was left unfinished under God’s judgement. God’s temple city, comes down from heaven complete, under God’s blessing.
They sought a name for themselves, but Abram is given a great name for nothing. To David King of Israel many years later, God swore, in 2 Samuel 7:9, “ I will make your name great”. To Jesus Christ God granted the Name above every name, and in him we are given a new name, Revelation 2:17, and Jesus will acknowledge our names before his Father and his angels, Revelation 3:5.
They sought unity, by keeping all people focussed on the temple city they had built at Babel leading only to the judgement of their languages being divided. But in the prophecy of Zephaniah chapter 3:9 we are told of a day when God will, “purify the lips of the people’s that all of them may call on the name of the LORD and serve him shoulder to shoulder.” God plans to remove the divisions of the nations and gather all peoples to himself. And after Christ’s Resurrection, in Acts chapter 2 when the Spirit was poured out upon the church, the prophecy of Zephaniah began to be fulfilled. The gift of languages was granted to the disciples so that people from all over the world heard the gospel in their own native tongue. The division of nation from nation was being removed, through faith in Jesus Christ, unity was now possible; In Christ there is now neither Jew nor Greek but all are one. And in his glorious vision of the end of the age, John saw a vast congregation of worshippers, around the throne in the heavenly temple of God singing praises and they were gathered “from every nation, tribe, people and language.” (Rev. 7:9)
This is what we all seek: belonging, connections with God, community and unity. It cannot be found in the world of human accomplishment. It is not something to work for. These are not goals to be pursued and attained with appropriate blood sweat and tears. They are simply free gifts to be given away to beleivers in Jesus Christ.
Brothers and sisters, what a prize we have in Jesus! Everything we need is handed to sinners in Him. Free grace provides the realties that the deepest cravings of our hearts pursue. Look up and way to Jesus Christ. He stands at the centre of God’s plan for history. All the threads of salvation history lead inevitably to Christ. He is the key that unlocks the door to all that human beings have been looking for since Babel. It is all provided in Him.
Knowing Jesus better will make us more united. Barriers of language and culture will be overcome in the greater interest of demonstrating and enjoying the deep unity we now know in Christ. Knowing Christ will open the doors of Heaven and give us access to God. It will bring the Name of God down upon us in covenant love. It will fill our worship with new joy and greater delight. Knowing Jesus better will give to us the deep sense that we are where we belong, among the people of God, called and loved by the Father from all eternity, members of the kingdom of God, citizens of the new Jerusalem.
How well do you know Jesus? He alone is the alternative to Babel. We all want to build our own Tower, make our own name. But all of these are as doomed to emptiness and failure as Babel.
Those are our alternatives. Whatever does not lean on and rest in Christ in our lives, whatever does not depend wholly on Jesus for its vitality and power in our worship, is nothing more than Babel-building. May God grant that we learn to view the half finished monument to human achievement called Babel as a warning: Look to Christ in whom a city temple, a name, and unity are all freely given.
Amen