Rebellion

Amen. Over the years, we've been going as a church now for 21 years or so. And as we've experienced all of that, there's a lot of delights and a lot of amazing joys having been a part of it since the beginning. Get the privilege in that seat of seeing people's lives change, people who, some people have been here a long time, some people newly come, and you get to see what God's doing in their lives, and the church weds in, and they become a part of things and part of the story in amazing ways. That's the really like sweet part of ministry.

And then as part of a church life, there's kind of another part to it. And the other part is sometimes my wife and I will think back about people who, over the years, Who walked with us for a season? Who not just aren't walking with us? There's people who went to a different church, and that's fine, and maybe they moved away or what have you. But there also are people who walked really close with us who just aren't even walking with the Lord anymore.

and just kind of walked away from everything.

Okay. And those are the the parts where you sort of scratch your head and you try to figure out how did all that happen and how did that kind of go that way? It's never the one thing and before long you find people over the water fall and looking back up and you can't figure out how they got down there. There's something to be said. about keeping yourself sensitive.

Uh Being sort of aware when you think maybe you've shifted just a step. rather than sort of letting yourself slide and finding yourself eight, nine, ten steps away. and then trying to figure out how you got there. And so Tilling the soil of your heart on a daily basis and keeping short accounts with the Lord and staying connected with His people and keeping plugged into the Spirit and staying before His Word. Become pretty crucial pieces to being able to stay on track in a situation around us, in a life where most things are just kind of pulling us to get off track.

And if you take your foot off the gas, your car goes out of alignment in life pretty quickly. As you're leading your life. And so rebellion, while it feels harsh, like that's a strong word, like who here would find themselves in this space of just utter rebellion. Rebellion, right? I would just say to you before we begin this morning that some I I've seen people be exactly there.

And they didn't get there overnight. And they were here. And they just bent away. And it happened. And it happened quicker than you'd think.

And so today's message probably is a little bit about seeing people who you might think in the text go, man, that's crazy. We'd never get there. And just be careful. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians, careful that you stand lest you fall, because it it doesn't take a lot to start sliding, and the devil has a great way of pitching the the mountain so to speak so you just start sliding and you don't even really realize how far you've kind of gone. We read this scripture, and I just wanted to put it up for you.

It was our scripture reading. I was ready to be sought by those who did not ask for me. I was ready to be found by those who did not seek me. I said, Here I am, here I am, to a nation that was not called by my name. I spread out my hands all the day.

to a rebellious people who walk in a way that's not good. following their own devices. Even when you, if you do engage in that study with Mike, which would be great, and you read some of the great divorce, one of the things you'll kind of scratch your head as you see Lewis craft some of the language. of people who convince themselves that the best way is not the way of God. The best way is actually a way away from God.

And sometimes they do it in the name of religion, and sometimes they do it in the name of their own devices, they do it in the name of their own quests, their own self-fulfillment, self-actualization, all those things. Um I I this passage is uh very uh sort of Uh poignant. Because It gives this picture of a God who is saying, I'm here. I'm I'm available. I'm waiting.

I'm not going anywhere. And yet You just keep choosing your own way. You keep choosing your own way. You keep choosing your own way. And I am where I've always been, but you're not where you once were.

So if there's distance that exists, it's not because God has moved away, it's because something shifted with me and I'm kind of on adrift a little bit. Let's look at the text of Scripture together. I'm going to put a map up for you. As we read through this, and you can see up on the map, you'll see in blue the descendants of Japheth, and red, the descendants of Ham, and green, the descendants of Shem. The beginning in verse 1 of chapter 10, these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

Sons were born to them after the flood. The generations, remember the Toledote, this is the way the author of Genesis kind of maps this out, right? Again, the generations of, the generations of, and the whole book of Genesis is going to be on that structure, the generations of. And so genealogies become, in a way, important because they're both linking pieces between narratives. And sometimes they're introductions themselves of narratives.

In this case, when we get to Babel in chapter 11, 1 through 9, you should take Babel and you should place it back in the middle of this genealogy. It's not after the genealogy, okay? It's back in the context of the genealogy. And I'll identify where I think that probably is. Um this uh verse 2, the sons Of Japheth, Gomer, Magog, Medai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras, the sons of Gomer, Ashkenaz, Rephath, and Togomar.

Togarma, rather, the sons of Javan Elisha, Tarshish, Katim, Dodanim. Which might actually be Rho denim because of a scribal. peace, and that may link them to the island of Rhodes. From these the coastland people spread in their lands, each with his own language by their clans and their nations. And so one of the things we know is that by the end of the genealogies, it wouldn't say in their in his own language.

Right? if Babel was after. this. Because Babel is about the confusion of languages. Everybody goes out with their own languages.

And so Babel is set back in the genealogy. By the end, we've got people with their own languages. The coastland peoples, you can see up here, the descendants largely to the north and to the west, push out. Tarshish, I mean, that may well be the identification of what historically was called Tarshish going out to the southern coast of Spain. In any event, it's to the north and this Mediterranean area where the sons of Japheth had.

Sons of Ham. Verse 6. Cush, Egypt, Putin, Canaan.

Now remember, Canaan is the one who Noah cursed, right? Descendants of Canaan are the Canaanites. those in opposition to Israel.

Now one comment before we read down through the descendants of Canaan, and we'll make a little bit later on of one of those descendants. But when you read a genealogy Remember that the genealogy is not about being contemporaneous to the people in the genealogy. The genealogy is written with the people in mind who are receiving the genealogy and thinking back. And that means that the highlighted individuals that sort of stand out in the genealogy, and there are a number here, are highlighted because there's something about the situation of the recipients. that those individuals are significant for.

Okay. So the markers, the intentionality of it is significant, and we should let those people kind of stand out to us. a little bit, right? We should let them stand out to us because there's something that's happening. in the identification of those individuals that's relevant for the people receiving it.

So the nation of Israel going into Canaanite territories, obviously we're going to have a bit of an emphasis on the Canaanites in the genealogy.

So the sons of Cush, verse 7, Seba, Havilah. Sabta, Rama, Sabteka, the sons of Rama, Sheba, and Didan, Cush fathered Nimrod. And we'll talk a little bit about Nimrod in a moment. He was a real Nimrod. He was the first on earth to be a mighty, by the way, Nimrod, it's weird.

You ever wonder what's the etymology of he's a Nimrod to Nimrod back here? And I think it actually, I read about it this week, I think it actually goes back to Looney Tunes. in like the late thirties, I think it was, that they used it and it caught on him culturally to be a goofball. He he's a Nimrod. Uh he was uh the first on earth to be a mighty Man.

He was a mighty hunter before the Lord, therefore it said like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord. The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Ached, Kalnei, in the land of Shinar. From that land he went into Assyria and built Nineveh. Rehoboth-ur, Kala, and Rezin between Nineveh and Kala, that is the great city. Egypt fathered Ludim, Anamim, Lahabim, Naphtahim, Path-Rasim, Kaslohim, from whom the Philistines came in Kafdarim.

That's probably later on we learn that's the island of Crete. Canaan fathered Sidon, so it zeroes in on Canaan. His firstborn in Heth and the Jebusites. The Amorites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, the Arkites, the Siddites, the Arvadites, the Zemorites, the Hamathites afterward, the clans of the Canaanites dispersed and the territory of the Canaanites extended from Sidon in the direction of Gerar as far as Gaza, in the direction of Sodom, Gomorrah, Adma, Zaboim, as far as Lasha. These are the sons of Ham by their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations.

You can see, if you know anything about the geography of Israel and the identification of some of those people, the Jebusites settle around Jerusalem, for example. But you can kind of map all the way down to the south and Gaza, the territory of the Philistines, over to the east, Sodom and Gomorrah, the plains down below the Dead Sea. To Shem, also the father of all the children of Eber, the elder brother of Japheth, children were born.

So Shem's the elder brother of Japheth, but it identifies Eber.

Now you look down at verse 25 and you'll see that, or 24, you'll see Eber doesn't come until later.

So why does it identify Eber? Before that, Well, that clues us in. The text is trying to highlight Eber. Why would I identify Eber? Because it's from Eber that you get the Hebrews.

Okay. They're descending from Eber through one line of Eber, which is Peleg, and we learn that in chapter 11, because chapter 11, verse 10 and following is going to be a genealogy that focuses in on Shem's line, because the whole thing, starting here really, the whole thing is funneling down and chipping away to get to one person. Abraham.

So it's going to show how this thing funnels down under the line of shem. You've heard the word you ever heard the word Semitic? Right, Semitic peoples, that comes from Shem. Shem, the etymology goes back to the term Shem, the Semitic or Shemite. peoples So you have Mesopotamian Arabs, you have Arabs that go down to the southern Arabia and over, ultimately, we have Semitic peoples.

that form the Jews.

Okay. And so they're all descending from Shem. We have verse 22, the sons of Shem, Elam, Asher, Arpaksid, Lud, and Aram, the sons of Aram, Uz, Hul, Gether, and Mash, Arpaksid fathered Sheila, and Sheila fathered Eber. To Eber were born two sons. The name of one was Peleg, for in his day the earth was divided.

His brother's name was Joktan. Joktan fathered Almadad, Sheleph, Hazar, Mavith, Jerah, Hadoram, Uzzal, Diklah, Obel, Abimael, Sheba, Ophir, Havilah, and Jobab. And all these were the sons of Joktan. The territory in which they lived extended to Misha in the direction of Sephar, the hill country of the east. These are the sons of Shem by their clans and their languages, their lands and their nations.

These are the clans of the sons of Noah according to their genealogies in their nations. And from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood.

So, where would Babel fit in this dynamic?

So it looks like because of linguistic connections. Um The overall sense of what's happening in the passage that I'll read to you in a moment at Babel. that Nimrod is probably the leader. of what takes place in Babel. And the language around Peleg, for in his day the earth was divided, is probably a reference to the division of languages.

So it's likely that somewhere spaced in this genealogy, in the convergence from the Hamite line with Nimrod, And you have from Shem's line with Peleg, around that time frame as these peoples are out and about, you have the events of Babel that happened. Do not think in your minds, as it might be, you might be tempted to in reading through the narrative, that like the flood stopped. and everybody moved the direction together. And everyone on the earth was all around, and Babel happened with everyone on the earth. That's not the point of the passage.

The point isn't that everyone moved there. because you have it placed not at the very beginning, but you have it placed within. And it's important to note that the leader of it is coming from Ham. And you have the Canaanites with Ham, but Ham is the one, remember? who saw his father's nakedness and reveled in it.

And so there's a clear connection what's happening in Babel. with those from Hamite descent. Uh and they're identified with Nimrod. We'll see that more in just a moment. Go ahead and look with me in chapter 11, verse 1.

Now the whole earth had one language. in the same words and people and as people migrated from the East. They found a plain in the land of Shinnar and settled there.

So we don't know who all the people were, but we know that at least those who migrated from the East in this sense, it seems pretty clear, are going to be connected back up with Nimrod. Yeah. And they said to one another, Come. Let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly. and they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar, And they said, Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens.

And let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. And 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, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they'll do, and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down. And there confused 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.

It's a weird story. Like when you think about it and you read it. You're like, so God comes down and is like, hey, if all these guys put their heads together, nothing they do is going to be impossible. They build a tower and then they're sent out, and you kind of go, What in the world is happening in this? Story.

Um Let me show you uh image. This is an image of a ziggurat. It's restored, but the very top of it, if you can look on the very top, those are original stones. This is actually a ziggurat of Ur, or is famous because of where Abraham was called out of Ur.

So it's been restored on the bottom layers, right? But that top layer is still kind of showing you what it was. Um Don't think of uh w what what they're building is not so much that they're building this city that moves upward. That's not really what's happening. Ziggurat is likely what they were doing, or something similar to it.

Maybe uh an early form of it. But a ziggurat was a kind of ancient temple of the sorts. And they would build this up in this kind of pyramid-like fashion, right? And at the top, They would have a place where they would make sacrifices. in ancient Babylonian mythology.

And why would they make sacrifices at the very top?

Well, because the ziggurat Was conceived in the context of their ceremonial religion as the place, the apex, where the gods would come down. And would come down, and we already established that some of these through these ancient Babylonian myths that the gods are hungry and the sacrifices feed the gods, right? And so they're coming down, they're offering the sacrifice all the way up at the top, up at the apex, right? In Akkadian, Babel means gateway to the gods. In the Hebrew language, as you saw at the end of it, Babel, because of the use of the term, means confusion.

Okay. But in Akkadian, the ancient Mesopotamian language that was spoken from probably the third millennium BC up until the early portion of the first millennium BC. There was thought of the gateway to the gods. And so this idea of these Babylonian ziggurats is that this is where God comes, the gods come down, and the gods satiate themselves through the sacrifice. meet us.

It's a location. of worship.

So it's highly likely that this maybe it's not guaranteed, but it's probably likely this is kind of a a proto-concept of something that they're doing and they're building where they're in some way wanting not so much to meet the gods, but in some way where they think they're going to make a connection with God. They're going to cross the boundaries in the borders, so to speak. which is an important piece we'll come back to about the nature of human sin. Humans struggle with their own boundaries. You understand?

We don't like limitation. We're a collective people trying to figure out how to live as long as we can. how to extend our health as much as we can, How to engage in a whole worldwide globalistic project where we can, quote, advance ourselves in various ways. And there's something in us that resists boundaries, that resists limits, even though they've been foisted upon us from the very beginning. We don't want to do with those.

Babel is a lot about that. Babel in some ways is, as we've talked about here repeatedly, these stories from Genesis 1 to 11 historically true are established rhetorically in a literary genre-styled framework to show their archetypal status for the way that humans do everything from work to marriage to serving the Lord to rebelling against the Lord. And we see in Babel a kind of prototype of the nature of human rebellion.

So it's to that end that I want to talk about this. I read through it with you and instead of kind of Working through each section. I'm just going to give you five warnings that I think just map on to what's taking place. And there's, as I read it to you, you saw the language, right?

So come, let us, come, let us. And the come, let us there of the people is: we're going to, we got a project, we're going to build, build, build, we're going to go, and we're going to cross the boundary to the divine. And then God says, almost in a tongue-in-cheek way, come let us go down. And in the descent, what happens is in that descent is the destruction of the human enterprise. And there's a movement, kind of like the flood.

Where you have this building with the waters and the chaos, and it builds and builds and builds, but God remembers Noah, and then from that, God recedes the waters. And I told you it was like a chiastic structure. that moved. You have a similar structure here with what's happening in Genesis 11. There's a sense of we're building, we're building, we're building, and then there's a pivot and God comes down, sees it, observes, and responds, and does the very thing that they didn't want done.

They don't want dispersion. And he gives them dispersion. because of their rebellion. Five warnings. Here's the first.

Leadership foments rebellion.

So be discerning. Leadership. Fomats. Not all leadership.

Sometimes leadership. Foments righteousness. That's why the final exhortation is Be discerning. But be careful. The character of a leader matters an awful lot.

An awful lot.

So, you can't just bank on policies, you can't just bank on principles, you can't just bank on pragmatics, you can't just bank on vision, you can't just bank on strategy. You have to know something about Character. Character is really important because at the end, people, leaders. Get pressed. Stress comes, strain comes, voices come.

Competing interests emerge, temptation rises. What is it that maintains the quality of a leader? their character. their character. It's not that visions and policies and principles and strategies and pragmatics are neither here nor there and don't matter.

They do matter. but they matter only insofar as They're connected. to character.

So throughout, think of the history of the world over the last 150 years. We've seen what happens. in global scales. But leaders with poor character. We know what happens.

That experiment has happened again and again and again and again.

So when you go back to chapter 10 for a second and you look at verse 8. Cush fathered Nimrod. He was the fa he was the first on earth to be a mighty man. Shh.

Well, this is the language here, Gibor. is the word, and it's connecting us actually back to chapter 6, verse 4. the sons of God and the daughters of men. And it's not to say that he is biologically connected or anything like that, but there is a linguistic connection that's happening. And so I don't think By any stretch, that Nimrod is to be viewed as kind of a positive character.

He's to be viewed as one who is mighty in the sense of terrible, mighty in the sense of fearsome, mighty in the sense of the capacity to bring about a kind of horrific ending. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord does not mean that he was a hunter offering sacrifices to God. It's just a way of accentuating how mighty the individual was, that much like God notices the righteousness. of Noah So he notices. the power, prominence.

in unique capacity In this case, for a negative bent, of Nimrod. Yeah. Therefore it said, like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord.

So by the time you get down to the people receiving this, you got a little slogan, and this is kind of a little catchphrase.

Some guy is a tyrannical king. He's like Nimrod. Mighty hunter before the Lord. Like, so if you see somebody beginning to lead a totalitarian regime today, you might say, great, another Hitler. Right?

Everybody knows what you mean by that when that statement comes. You don't have to unpack.

Somebody goes, well, what do you mean when you say another Hitler? Like the audience is kind of attuned to what the term means. And so the audience here is attuned to like a Nimroda mighty hunter before the Lord. The beginning of his kingdom was, and this is important, I want you to note, two cities: Babel. Right?

So Babel becomes Babylon. He's going to settle in Shinnar, which is on what's called the alluvial plain, alluvial meaning like the sandy delta-like plain where the Tigris and the Euphrates are converging and running alongside each other for a while. And you have Babylon there, but it's not the only place that's mentioned here in that's connected to Nimrod. Babel, skip down to verse 11. From that land he went to Assyria and built Nineveh.

And then you have other places named Rehabbath-Ur, Kala, and Rezin between Nineveh and Kala. That is the great city. Remember when Jonah goes to Nineveh, or he's called to Nineveh? In Jonah 1.2, Nineveh is called the great city. In Jonah 3:2, it's called the great city.

In Jonah 3, 3, it's told that he's taking this three-day journey, it's like on day one of a three-day journey through Nineveh. Nineveh is the great city, meaning like if you go look up the population of Salt Lake today, it's about 200,000 people. It's actually not that big. But if you take the Salt Lake metro area, it's like 1.2 to 1.3 million people. Why?

Because cities like West Jordan and South Jordan and West Valley and Sandy and Draper and so forth are all included in that, right?

So, when there's this reference to the great city, it's probably including the whole kind of larger area, and you kind of pick it up here. And I actually think that's why Jonah, it was just commonly understood that Nineveh was referred to this way as this great city, Nineveh. And you have places like Rhoboth-Ur, and Kala, and others that are all a part of this kind of metropolis, if you will, at the time.

Now, Babel. And Nineveh symbolizing Assyria. Are the two great? enemies that oppress Israel through much of its history. They're the ones who take them and they take them away into exile.

So Nimrod becomes paradigmatic. Of those descendants of Ham, though he's not a direct descendant of Canaan, he's a descendant of Cush. but he becomes paradigmatic of those people who are the kind of people who are the enemies of God's people. who are over against what God wants done, who God operates through a different line, but through that line they rebel, and Nimrod is the one who's established as this leader who is going to ultimately lead what we see in 11, 1 through 9. His leadership foments.

Rebellion.

Now Israel bumps up against this themselves. Israel later in their history wants a king, remember? And so they select a big guy about 6'4. Stands head and shoulders above everybody. Saul, good-looking guy, and they vote him in.

That's who they want. And he ends up getting anointed. He's the one that the people want. He's the one that is anointed as king. Saul moves forward, and in chapter 15, Saul is told to utterly destroy.

a a band of Canaanites known as the Amalekites. And by utterly destroying, he's supposed to just do away with everything, do away with their kings, do away with their property, all of it. But he doesn't do that. He holds on to AGAG. He retains some property.

And he disobeys. And Samuel comes to him. And all I want you to do is just see the very first. Clause. Samuel says this to Saul.

for rebellion is as the sin of divination. I read that and I thought What does that mean? How is rebellion? as the sin of divination. God told you to do something.

You decided not to do it. You decided to do it your own way. Divination in the ancient world was the attempt to play God. Divination was the attempt to manipulate spiritual elements, therefore manipulate reality so that it would be actualized on your terms. And life would be just as you.

want it to be. This is the nature of rebellion. And it's, by the way, the danger. of a bad charactered leader. Because leaders have power.

And they can use their power to manipulate people. manipulate policies, manipulate strategies. manipulate media, manipulate all kinds of things so that you can see things a particular way to a particular end and with enough manipulation they can have their cake and eat it. Two. Saul is addressed by Samuel and told, Your rebellion It's it's like you're trying to manipulate reality.

And you're trying to foment something. Trying to get people on your side to do something in a particular way. The wall. actualize what you want, even though what you want Isn't what God wants? Isn't what God wants.

Nimrod is a prototype of that.

So leadership. Can be that way. Be careful who you follow. Be careful who you follow. Like make sure you're following people.

that have a good character. Humanism incubates rebellion.

So regard its limits. We need to say something about humanism and what it is first. At its core, humanism is the ethical philosophy of atheism. Yeah. So if you remove God, what's left?

What's left are evolved humans. And those humans. The thought is, can come together, and I've told you before and use the illustration of the old song from the 80s, We Are the World. Remember that? How we can make the world a better place.

If all of us just kind of put our heads together. we can figure this thing out. And if we get enough Michael Jackson's and Smokey Robinson's and Bruce Springsteen's together, we can all figure out how to turn this place into a better context. If we get enough scientists together. If we get enough technologists together If we get enough leaders together, if we get enough people who care about the humanities.

together. has changed over time. Back at the time of the Reformation, people would refer to Erasmus, the great intellectual, as a great humanist. You shouldn't think of them in terms of modern humanism. Back then, it kind of meant like somebody today who studies the humanities.

If you go and study the humanities, you study the history of ideas, philosophy, reason, physics, or not physics, I'm sorry, civics. things about the social apparatus and how we function as a society. There's nothing wrong with that per se. But once you get through the Enlightenment and you place within humans through the Enlightenment their own capacity for their own ability to arrive at their own revealed truth by their own lights, now the humanist enterprise becomes a wildly egocentric. work.

And so if your ego and my ego and this person's ego and this ego, we get together, we can, with our giftings, abilities, innovations, we can come together and we can make this world a better place.

Okay. So to that end, what happens in our present world?

Well, the most creative minds the the most uh intellectually gifted minds When God is vacated, come together and begin to think about things like transhumanism. How can we extend beyond the borders? of the finite limitations of humanity, And now begin to couple ourselves through technology to advance ourselves to an even greater degree. of a kind of blissful existence.

Now we're all suspicious where that will lead, right? And we're right to be suspicious of where that will lead, and why are we right? Because if in our minds we go back to Genesis 11, we're supposed to learn from Genesis 11 what happens when people come together and collectively decide that they want to transcend the natural boundaries of humanity. Babel is a warning. to present day transhumanists.

to be very careful. in the use of technology. Because it can spin to a place where not so much you can't control it, maybe, and I'm not going to get into all the YouTube mythologies that are available for us to that end. Here's the further danger is you won't be able to control yourself. You'll just want more.

And more? And more and more and more. And that's kind of where we're headed, is this desire to transcend our limits. Maybe you want to pay to be frozen in Arizona in a cryo chamber so that someday generations down they'll be able to maybe revive you, right? I don't think that's going to happen.

But If you're wealthy enough, maybe that's something you want. anyway. to get outside of human limitations because we feel something about it that we want to sort of cross. There's a couple, we have to kind of just step back for just a second, just kind of do a real basic theology of something. When you think about humans.

This is basic but led us up to where we are. You have humanity on one side created in the image of God, right? Genesis 1.27. On the other side, you have that same humanity through the fall, where even after. Judging them.

Even after seeing the language of in Genesis 6 that the inclinations of his heart were evil all the time. God loses the language of all the time, but he still in 8:21 says the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.

So he's still bent to direction. Both of these are true. It's one of the reasons why there really is innovation. There really is an amazement to the present pragmatics of technological society. But it's also a reason why we have to be very cautious and even at times a bit suspicious about where it might end.

Because we know, to quote Jeremiah, we know that the heart is deceitful, desperately wicked. Who can know it? Here's what happens with humanism: humanism unmoors us. from being the image of God. It says humans are all that in a bag of chips, but doesn't tell us why.

Why are we? Because we're the highest of the evolved creatures? Or because we were made in the image of God, it disconnects us from the divine design that we were given and acts as though we just landed here. And now, having landed here, we have a certain stewardship responsibility of sorts, but it is just to. Curate our own domain, not for any ultimate end for God, but simply for us and our own further advancement.

And then humanism underestimates. Sin, it doesn't have a category for it. It actually sees sin as just that stuff that slows us down. I wouldn't even call it sin. It's just the things that hold us back.

So, a Neuralink might help you actually get away from the things that hold you back. Right? It might free you in a way and actualize something in you and augment you in a way through human AI symbiosis that's now the rage. That's happening and now begin to enhance you. And what now, right now, feels like, man, this is like Buck Rogers, this is like the Jetsons.

Where are we going? We never imagined we'd be here. Please know that right now, young people will never know a generation without AI symbiosis. Let that sink in for a minute. That's crazy.

But that's where we're headed at light speed. At light speed, because a decade ago we didn't even know what AI symbiosis was. And now We got companies. We have people. We have all kinds of entities coming and converging.

And we're underestimating. The human heart in the midst of questing to remove ourselves from our own limitations. Why? Because all that funnels to rejecting the boundaries. And this is what you see.

So just think back at the etymology of sin for a moment, where it all started. Adam and Eve. Tempter comes. And what is it he says? Want to be like God?

That's why he doesn't want you to eat it. Because you'll be like him. Knowing. good and evil. Go to Genesis 6.

starts to spiral even worse.

Sons of God, daughters of men. And I told you, it looks like it's some type of demonic activity happening.

Some people think it's just straight angelic. Entities that have come and are pro-creating. I don't think that's it, but I think there's demonically infused. Ancient people. But you have something crossing a boundary.

Right? Come to Genesis 11.

Well, hey, let's build this thing. and we'll make a name for ourselves, but the implication in the ancient world is we're going to go up and we're going to begin to push against. The threshold of this barrier between the divine and the human. And we're gonna go to God in that way. This is the nature of what humanism brings about.

Derek Kidner was an Old Testament scholar. died a number of years ago. Kidner wrote this: the primeval history reaches its fruitless climax as man, conscious of his new abilities. prepares to glorify and fortify himself by collective effort. The elements of the story are timelessly characteristic of the spirit of the world.

That's a great quote. He looks back and goes, hey, what happened back then? Doesn't that kinda look like, uh I don't know, what's happening now? Absolutely looks like what's happening now. Turned over and over and over and over again.

Community can accelerate rebellion number three, so select companions wisely. They get together and together They think they're better. They could be. I'm a big fan of community. I don't know if you know it or not, but it's in the name of our church.

It's a pretty cool thing. I need you. You need each other. Community is wonderful. provided you got the right community.

But if you get the wrong community It'll kill you. You'll be a part of something. that you won't even fully realize until it gets really whooping along. And you get caught in it. You can get caught in the draft of it all.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. to famous the psalmist in their anthology of worship. They could put that collection of Psalms together. In any possible way, and under the inspiration of God, the collection of songs over a span. of a number of years is pieced together so that the first thing you read when it comes to orienting your life and worship to God is a warning about who you hang around.

Isn't that interesting? That's where it starts. You're blessed. If you don't listen to wicked people. You're blessed.

If you don't stand and hang out, In the way, the ethical way, the orientation of life of sinners, you're blessed. If you don't hang out with people, Who scoff at wisdom, who think they're the smartest people in the room, who can't shut their mouths long enough to listen. You're blessed if you don't hang around with those kinds of people, and that's where the worship anthology starts.

So, if you want to think about orienting your life right with God. Think f uh uh uh an early thought ought to be Who am I hanging around with? Who am I listening to? What's the information I let come in? in my feeds.

Make no friendship with a man given to anger. Nor go with a wrathful man lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in his snare. Proverbs just is just a series of wisdom statements, and the wisdom statement is what? In this issue of anger, I highlight this because it's just one issue. You could throw in lust, you could throw in greed, you could throw in covetousness, you could throw in anything you want.

The idea is, you get around somebody that's got one ethical bent and they just kind of normify that in their life, be careful because you might start to normify it in yours. It just can bleed over in ways. that you're not even realizing. and cause death to emerge.

So a community just accelerates it. Four. Notoriety, look at the text, right? Come let us. Let us, community, but the the in verse 4, come let us build ourselves a city.

With a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves. But let let uh let's let everybody Go. That group, that's why it's a subset. It's not everybody together. We're making a name for ourselves.

We're going to make sure The table C us magnified. Right. This is what happens when your life becomes about you. Is that you're concerned with how everybody thinks of you and whether they would think of you in the way you would want them? to think A view.

And it fuels. A kind of rebellion. Why? Because anything that keeps you. Yeah.

from becoming the kind of person that is known for the things that you'd like to be known for. Maybe that's a particular image that you would like. You're the hard worker. Right? So you become a workaholic.

So everybody around you thinks you're a hard worker. You're the strong leader.

So, you're the person who, even when you're not sure what to do, just acts like you know what the heck you're doing. Right. You want them all to think that of you. You're the empathetic person. Who everybody can always count on.

Listen to. But you really kinda like getting into everybody's space a little bit. There's a part of you that is real dissatisfied in your own life, but you're super satisfied knowing everything about everybody else. We can manipulate and actualize for the sake of varied kinds of notoriety. and curate our lives in particular ways.

because we're deeply concerned about what others think.

So the answer, the solution to that is to orient yourself. to know this. This is important. Do not become the kind of person that responds to all of that and says, yeah, you're right, Brian. I need to be the kind of person that doesn't care about affirmation.

You'll never be that kind of person. You need to be the kind of person that just decides that you're going to live for God's affirmation alone and then put a period after it. Mm-hmm. to want the affirmation of your heavenly Father. You were made for that.

You were made for a relationship with him. You are a son or a daughter? You were made kirk for connection with a father. But you weren't made.

so that everybody else thinks you're the bee's niece. You are made. for his affirmation in his sula. I want to show you a text. Jesus comes in the triumphal entry earlier in John.

And he's engaging people. He's gathering a crowd. He's actually gathered in John, it's kind of like two crowds. There's this crowd from when he raised Lazarus, meet him up on the top of the hill, and then he comes down into Jerusalem, and they meet another crowd. And so you got like this big crowd that are all around him.

And he begins talking and teaching. And when Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them. Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, so that the words spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled. Lord, who has believed what he heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said, He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them. Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him. This is the idea that Isaiah looks in Isaiah 6 and sees the one enthroned, and John says, Yeah, that's God the Son. Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so they would not be put out of the synagogue.

Why? For they loved the glory that comes from man. more than the glory that comes from God. They couldn't Uphold their confession of Christ within the milieu of their present religious culture. Because they were concerned what their neighbors thought about them.

They were concerned what their coworkers thought about them. They were concerned about going to the family reunion and not being part of whatever the local religious enterprise was. And instead, They caved. Because they love the glory that comes from men more than the glory that comes From God.

So it'll make you shrinking violet in our worst a ways. It'll make you somebody who actually is really deeply concerned about your whole social. Oh collective. and how you look and how you appear and how you appeal. But you'll lose favor with the Lord.

Final point. Divine frustration meets rebellion, so take note of Babel. It builds, it builds, it builds. Come, let us, come, let us. And then.

God, by the way, there's like this irony in the narrative, right? God has to come down and condescend. to arrive at the apex of human achievement. See that? Humans get together and do the best thing they can.

God has to condescend to come down because God is so great. And so God comes down. Sees what they're doing, sees pride driving it, notoriety driving it, sees the leadership, sees the community. It's accelerated and fomented rebellion. They want to cross the boundaries.

And so God gives them the very thing they don't want. Let us come together, make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed. And God says, nope. We're going to diversify your languages. From one common tongue here, and we're going to diversify your languages, and now we're going to cause you to be dispersed.

Now, throughout history, Babble. becomes Babylon. And Babylon, as I mentioned to you, becomes a thorn in the side of Israel. and becomes an oppressor of Israel. Literarily through the scriptures.

This is very important. Babylon becomes a kind of foil over against. God. Babylon becomes a a little bit of a catch-all, the term does. for the spirit of the age that is over against.

The Lord. And Aaron preached a message here a couple summers ago when the associate pastoral staff during my sabbatical was preaching through Zachariah. And he preached a message in Zechariah 2. And in that passage, it talks about fleeing from Babylon. And in that passage, it's actually about leaving the spirit of Babylon.

It's leaving the kind of ethic that Babylon has. running away from it in some way. When you get to Revelation.

Okay. you have this idea of Babylon that shows up in Revelation. And what happens is, people interpretively sort of start over-exegetting the passage because they're deeply concerned about. The space of history.

So they want to know is you know Babylon, is it a literal reference to Babylon? Is it a reference to Rome and so forth? Probably historically when John's writing to his original audience, they probably did think of Rome. as a connected point here, because Rome typified Everything that was in terms of the spirit of the age and culture and religious ideas over against God. But the language in Revelation of, just read you a couple of passages, 14:8.

Another angel is second, followed, saying, Fall and fallen is Babylon the Great, she who made all nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality. Revelation 18:2. And he called out with a mighty voice, Fall and fallen is Babylon the Great. She's become a dwelling place for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast, and so on. Verse 10 and 21.

What happens at the end of Revelation? Babylon is judged. Babylon is. while maybe in the minds of the readers thinking about Rome, It was the typification, to go back to what Kidner said in referring to Babel, it was the typification. of the spirit Of the world and the spirit of the age.

That's what in Revelation Babylon signifies. It is the kingdom of the world. and it gets thwarted. It gets done away. It gets cast down.

And what replaces it? What comes down from heaven, the city of God? The New Jerusalem, as a bride adorned for her husband. It's the language of the church. And what you find in the book of Revelation is this big thing going on.

And the big thing going on is that God is judging the world in its rebellion, and He is destroying the kingdom of the world. And it's become the kingdom of our Lord in Christ, and he shall reign forever. In that new kingdom, as God deals with rebellion and we're to take note of rebellious cultures, humanistic cultures, cultures that put their heads together, cultures that follow leadership with bad character, And we're supposed to take note as the church, and we're to separate, step back, and be separate from them. I want to show you a final passage because it's just amazing how the theology of the Bible bookends itself. In Babel, you have God judging them, confusing the languages, Babel.

They're babbling, right? They're moved into confused hearings with one another. They're dispersed and they disseminate the very thing that they didn't want in the humanistic enterprise is thwarted at that moment. Only now, right? Over time, various iterations of Babylon to recycle the humanistic enterprise again and again and again and again.

What happens when the Lord returns, establishes his kingdom, overcomes all of the spirit of the various ages and establishes his bride as the locus of his people. Zephaniah 3:9 and 10. Look at it. for at that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a spear speech. that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord, and serve Him with one accord.

From beyond the rivers of Cush, my worshippers, The daughter. of my dispersed ones. shall bring my offering. Zephaniah is hearkening back to Babel. Looking forward.

to one day when God will set all things to rights. in giving us a linchpin a bridge of Biblical theology. to make the connections. that all of the best enterprises of man will never thwart the enterprise of God.

So, my encouragement to you is that in a culture of rebellion. Uh do first Do two things. First, make sure that you're on the Lord's side. That's the first thing. And you do that by curating community.

You do that by observing leadership. You do that by not buying into the humanistic philosophies of the age. You do that. By not seeking notoriety, you do that with a realization that God will put all things to rights. But here's the second where I started the sermon: Be real careful.

That you don't put rebellion as that thing that's over there that I'll never fall in. And as I said, in just thinking about this message, I've thought about a lot of really Thought about some people. And thinking about that is heartbreaking. Because if you only think about it as this thing over there, you won't realize how far you may have drifted from this over here. Father, I pray that you would bless us and draw us to yourself.

Help us to be wise, discerning people. Committed to shepherding our daily lives on a daily basis and curating the things around us for your glory. In Jesus' name, amen.