We hope that you enjoy this teaching from Christchurch.
This material is copyrighted and no unauthorized duplication, redistribution, or any other use of any part is permitted without prior consent from Christchurch.
Please consider donating to this work in the San Francisco Bay Area online at ChristchurchEastBay.org.
Good morning, I'm Melissa Arosuniega and I'm part of the El Cerrito Kensington Community Group and Oikos Group and the Deacon.
Today's scripture reading is from the book of Genesis, chapter 11, verses 1-9, and chapter 12, verses 1-9, as printed in your liturgy.
A reading from the book of Genesis.
Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.
As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shiner 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.
But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building.
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.
The Lord had said to Abram, go from your country, your people, and your father's household to the land I will show you.
I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you.
I will make your name great and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you, I will curse.
And all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.
So Abram went as the Lord had told him and Lot went with him.
Abram was 75 years old when he set out from Haran.
He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated,
and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan.
And they arrived there.
Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moray at Shechem.
At that time, the Canaanites were in the land.
The Lord appeared to Abram and said,
To your offspring I will give this land.
So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him.
From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent,
with Bethel on the west and I on the east.
There he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord.
Then Abram set out and continued toward Negev.
The grass withers and the flowers fade.
The Lord of our God stands to our Lord.
Good morning Christ Church.
We have these flowers here from our memorial service yesterday for Will Muller,
where we celebrated his life and the precious gift that he was to us.
And that also means that this is my second day in a row of preaching.
So I need your help a little more than usual.
So if you're here this morning, just kind of give me an eyebrow raised or something like that.
More than your typical, hmm.
Okay?
We're exploring this first part of the first book of the Bible.
And we just heard this word in Genesis 11, 8.
So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth and they stopped building the city.
And, you know, the initial question is, is God against cities?
Is God anti-urban?
Is he pro-agrarian?
And I won't repeat everything we said over the past few weeks,
but we'll just say that God created us to live in cities.
And that all this stuff you see in these first 11 verses of Genesis 11,
with people moving closer together to consolidate the social order,
people building city walls to protect the vulnerable and the poor from harm and injustice,
people pooling their diverse talents for creative potential,
people using language to cooperate and to draw out all the riches of nature and of the soul
for both the sciences and the arts,
people dividing up their labor to build civilization.
All of that is good.
All of that is part of what God intended for his good creation.
And God intended cities to be a place where we would collectively reach up to heaven,
where we would look for a spiritual center,
where we would seek an elevated reality beyond just ourselves.
All that is what our creator God intended from the very beginning.
But there's something amiss, right?
There's something off kilter here in this story.
And so we want to ask ourselves, what's fundamentally flawed in this city?
And what is God's solution for our most basic human problems?
And so we want to look at three things.
Surprise, surprise.
We want to look at Humanities Babel Project, God's Blessing Project,
and Living by the Promises of God.
Humanities Babel Project, God's Blessing Project,
and Living by the Promises of God.
You with me?
I told you I need your help today.
Okay.
So Humanities Babel Project, verse 4, says this,
that 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
and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.
This tower is actually a ziggurat.
It reaches up to the clouds, up to the stars.
It's got a shrine at the very top,
and it's got this giant staircase coming down from the top.
And it's meant to be a bridge between heaven and earth.
It's designed by its builders to make it easier for God,
to make it more convenient for God to come down,
as if this city and these people can somehow help God be God.
And what we see already is there's this transactional relationship
where we're here to help you, God,
and you, God, are there to help us, protect us, make us prosper.
This is not only a bridge to heaven, but it's also a beachhead.
Right?
It's a beachhead for this kind of covert assault on God.
We don't want to make a city so that his name will be great.
We want to make a city so that our name will be great.
The strength of our unity is our language.
The symbol of our unity is our tower,
and we are going to unite together to make a name for ourselves,
to seek an identity and a significance independently apart from God.
And we've seen this already.
This is a replay of Genesis chapter 3.
Remember we talked there about the creator-creature distinction
where God is authoritative and he's independent,
and we as creatures are derivative and we're dependent.
And yet there in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve said,
we don't want to abide by this creator-creature distinction.
We want to assert our own autonomous, self-made, self-defined identity.
We want to be the masters of our fate and the captains of our soul
without depending on the one who gives us life and breath and everything else.
And that's what's happening here, again, in the city on a grander scale.
We're going to satisfy our material and spiritual aspirations independently apart from God.
Our language, our ingenuity, our technology, all these good gifts from God,
we're going to use these to make a name, make a significance apart from God in our collective achievements.
And it's kind of confusing because the tower looks religious, you know,
and they're pursuing it with a religious kind of zeal,
but actually it's a symbol of their own self-centeredness,
that we're going to use God, we're going to use the gifts of God to make us great.
We don't really care about God himself.
We don't want to glorify God.
We want to glorify ourselves.
This is a city that's not centered on God.
It's centered on the collective self.
And you can really see that in the tallest and highest buildings in any city today, right?
They're monuments to our human power, monuments to our money, monuments to our success,
monuments to our technology and our reason and our intellect and our science.
We, after all, can split atoms and we can launch rockets into space and we can edit genes
and we can create artificial intelligence and we can live by DoorDash.
So who needs God?
Who needs to live by his rule and his authority?
We can be our own lords and our own saviors.
You know, and all the Babel projects from the ancient city to modern cities say,
we don't need the rule of heaven.
We can live without God at the center and we'll be okay.
And in verse 5 it says this,
The Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people were building.
The irony is that the builders of this tower are so proud that it reaches up to heaven,
but God can hardly see it, right?
And we know God is capable of perceiving what people are doing without having to reposition himself.
But he intentionally parodies their heaven-storming aspirations by bending down, right?
To see the thimble-like grandeur of their puny and pathetic power to preserve their own identity
and control their own fortunes and glorify themselves.
And verse 6 says,
In other words,
If they keep infringing on my divine sphere,
if they keep transgressing into the place where only I deserve to be,
if they keep putting themselves in my place,
living as if I'm unnecessary,
living as if they can achieve stability and durability independently from me,
as if nothing can shake them,
as if nothing can destroy them,
then there will be absolutely no end to their arrogant schemes.
They're not going to respect any of the God-given boundaries that I've built into my creation,
and they're not just going to try to build a city,
they're going to try to build an entire empire
in which the Creator is excluded from His very own creation.
And so, verse 7,
That word Babel in Mesopotamia meant the gate of the gods.
But now in Hebrew it means the city of the confused.
Right?
The metropolis of the mixed up.
They sought to make a name for themselves apart from God,
and the result is that they now have this infamous name
that's the exact opposite of their desires,
which is what Jesus taught.
He said,
Anyone who exalts themselves is going to be humbled.
Well, how do we apply this to our own lives?
Application number one is on a corporate and collective level,
God's judgment here is not a spiteful move to keep humans divided and dumb.
Rather, this half-built, unfinished, incomplete tower
and its dispersed builders
show us the power of God's grace
who will not allow human autonomy to go unchecked.
But rather, in His grace,
He restrains the damage
that our human autonomy will cause.
And He comes to limit the extent
to which human beings
will harden themselves against Him.
And so if God frustrated the human schemes in Babel,
how do you think He might be at work
in the frustrations and failures of our culture right now?
The weakening of our institutions,
the fraying of our social fabric,
the polarization of our perspectives,
the erosion of our trust,
the rising tide of global populism and authoritarianism,
the increase of political violence,
do we think that God might somehow be at the back of it all
allowing us to be disabused of our stability,
to be shaken up
so that we might be a people
who more seriously seek after His name
and glorify His name
rather than seeking to glorify
and make a name for ourselves?
That's application number one.
Application number two is that
on an individual and a personal level,
if you're here today
and you've mapped out your future life,
you've mapped out how your career's supposed to go,
how your plans ought to be,
and all the relationships in your life,
ask yourself this question,
is this plan made under God?
Or is it made apart from God?
Because if you plan your life without God at the center,
without seeking His blessing,
He will, in His grace,
allow it to be frustrated.
He'll allow it to come to nothing
because He loves you so much.
He wants to protect you from you.
He knows that you cannot live without Him.
This is what the Babel Project is all about.
It's a foolish errand.
It's absurd.
So it's interesting to me that
God saw fit to put Genesis 11 and Genesis 12
right next to each other,
juxtaposing them
so that we could compare and contrast
humanity's Babel Project
with God's blessing project.
God's blessing project in Genesis 12.
You see, in the first three,
two chapters of Scripture,
Genesis 1 and 2,
we see God's good creation
but then from Genesis 3 and on
to Genesis 11,
that good creation's fallen into this
downward spiral of sin and death and judgment.
And the question at this point is,
if the nations have lost their way,
then how will God shine His light on us?
How will He provide a way of salvation for us?
Genesis 12 comes along
and Genesis 12 is a new beginning.
Genesis 12 says,
For God so loved the world that He gave Abraham.
For God so loved the world that He gave Israel.
And this is God's counter-initiative
to our Babel Project.
And here's what it says in Genesis 12, 1.
It says,
The Lord had said to Abram,
Go from your country,
your people,
and your father's household to the land.
I will show you.
I will make you into a great nation.
And I will bless you.
I will make your name great.
And you will be a blessing.
See, Babel's desire to make a name for themselves
is in diametric contrast
to God's promise to Abraham
because only God can give an everlasting name.
Only God is the source and the center of life.
And only He gives us a name
so that we will glorify His name
and not ourselves and our own achievements.
So who is this person that God chooses to bless?
Who is Abram?
Well, just to trace a line from Genesis 4 last week,
we learned about Seth and Enosh
and their family line
which began to call upon the name of the Lord
and through that family line,
the knowledge of God was to be preserved among humanity
all the way to Abraham's family line.
This was the one ray of hope
in a world that was mired in oppression and violence.
But if you look at right before Genesis 12,
it's very interesting that when God calls Abraham,
His family is actually living in a center of lunar worship.
And Abraham's father's name means moon.
Right?
So the one family that's supposed to be preserving
the knowledge of the true God
is no longer worshiping the Creator.
God is worshiping the creation.
And by the end of Genesis 11,
the last flickering candle of humanity
has just gone out.
Right?
Abraham is lost spiritually.
His wife, Abraham,
or his wife Sarah is barren physically.
And the human situation
is really quite hopeless.
And it's at a dead end.
And there's no human power
that can bring a change
to the violent world in which we're living.
But God,
but the Creator God
who spoke in Genesis 1
and said,
let there be light,
He's the same Redeemer God
who speaks in Genesis 12
and says,
Abraham,
I'm going to bless you.
The Word of the Lord comes
and it creates hope.
It creates life.
The Word of the Lord
calls into existence
things that are not.
And what this shows us
is that Abraham
is utterly dependent on God
for blessing.
Right?
The blessing of God
is not something
that Abraham initiates.
It's not something
that he goes to get.
It's not something
that he takes for himself.
But rather,
it's something that God gives
by His grace.
Right?
Because Abraham's
not even looking for it.
Abraham's not qualified.
He's from an idol-worshiping family.
He's compromised.
He's paganized.
He's bowing down
to all the wrong things.
But God in His grace comes
and He says,
I'm going to bless you
and I'm going to make
your name great.
We have a slide,
I think.
And what it seeks to show
is that our culture
operates according to this
in-shaped dynamic
where we perform
and God rewards us.
We offer gifts to God
and God responds with blessing.
So performance
leads to reward.
That's the default mode
of our culture.
But Genesis 12
and really the whole Bible
operates according to
a U-shaped dynamic.
We can go to the next slide
where God gives us grace
even though we don't deserve it.
God is not waiting
for Abraham to change.
He's not waiting for him
to come up to scratch.
He just blesses him.
He just gives him grace
which he presumes
will lead to gratitude.
He just gives him blessing
which he assumes
will lead to response.
And what exactly
does God promise Abraham?
Well, four things.
You guys with me?
Alright, four things.
He promises a people.
Verse 2,
he says,
I will make you a great nation
and I will bless you.
And to bless someone,
to bless a person
means that you give them
the power of life,
you give them
the enrichment of life,
you give them
the increase of life.
And of course,
Abraham has no kids.
He's 75 years old.
His wife, Sarah,
is barren.
And God says to him,
I'm going to give you
a miracle child.
I'm going to give you
an offspring.
I'm going to give you
descendants.
I'm going to give you
grandchildren and
great-grandchildren
and extended family
and tribes
and a nation
that's blessed
with life.
Well, where are all
those people going to live?
And that's the second thing
is God promises a place.
In verse 1,
he says,
go to the land
I will show you.
In verse 7,
he says,
to your offspring
I will give this land.
I'm going to give you
the land of Canaan,
the promised land.
Your offspring,
you're going to live
in this land
that's flowing
with milk and honey.
The great nation
that comes from you,
childless Abraham,
is going to live
at this crossroads
between the most powerful
civilizations
of the ancient
Near East.
And how will
that happen?
How will this
promised people
live and survive
in this promised place?
Well, the third thing
is God promises
protection.
In verses 2 and 3,
he says,
I will make your name
great and you
will be a blessing
and whoever blesses
you, I will bless.
And then this next part
doesn't really come
through in the English,
but the Hebrew says
basically,
whoever deals lightly
with you,
whoever dismisses
or disparages you,
whoever holds you
in contempt,
whoever seeks to harm
you will be removed
from my blessings,
will have their life
diminished.
I will curse them.
So God is saying
to Abraham,
I'm going to
sovereignly protect you,
I'm going to actively
intervene for your welfare
so that you can be confident,
so that you can walk
unafraid.
And what is God's
ultimate plan
for his promised people
and the promised place
and his promised protection?
The fourth thing
is God promises
international blessing.
Verse 3,
he says,
all the peoples
and all the families
on the earth
are going to be blessed
through you.
We have another slide.
And what this shows
is God's gracious blessing
is meant to go
to all the nations
that he made
and that he loves.
And it's like this hourglass
that funnels down
through this narrow neck,
this narrow passageway
through his covenant partners,
through this one man,
through this one family,
through this one nation
and through one particular
offspring of that nation
named Jesus,
God's blessing
is going to go out
and his life
is going to go out
to everyone else.
Why does this matter?
Because remember
in Genesis 1-2,
God's people,
Adam and Eve,
were living in God's place,
Eden,
and they were enjoying
God's protection
under his word
and they were at rest
with God's blessing.
But they lost
all four of those things.
But now God says,
Abraham,
through you
and through this
royal fourfold promise
to bring my kingdom
from heaven to earth
through you,
I'm going to begin
to reverse
the downward spiral
of sin and death
and judgment.
This is how
I'm going to overcome
the devastation
and alienation
wrought
by human sin
and pride.
And how does Abraham
respond to God's
call and his promise
and his blessing?
Well, Abraham
says yes.
He says yes to God.
And that's amazing
because God does not
give Abraham
all the details.
God doesn't even tell
Abraham where
he's going to take him.
He just knows
that God is calling me
to forsake
all that's familiar
and all that's secure
and all that's comfortable
and all that's precious
and to abandon
all of the things
I'm bowing down to,
all the things
that I'm seeking
for blessing in life
and instead
to enter into
a personal relationship
with the living God
and to exclusively
embrace
this one true
creator God
and to have no other
gods before him
and simply to live
by faith
in his promises.
And pagan Abraham
says yes
and he repents.
He converts
and he demonstrates
his faith in God
through his obedience
and he left
absolutely everything
to follow the Lord.
and the question
for you today
is have you been called?
Have you been called
out of humanity's
Babel project
and into God's
blessing project?
Are you willing
to come out
of your old life
apart from God
in order to enter
into a new life
with God?
And do you want
what Abraham has?
Do you want to share
in this fourfold
amazing blessing
that God has given
to Abraham?
So we talked about
humanity's
Babel project
and God's
blessing project
but I want to close
talking for a moment
about living by
the promises of God
because Abraham
doesn't just say yes
right?
He does yes.
Living by the promises
of God.
Other scriptures
give Abraham
the highest honor
by calling him
the friend of God.
He's the friend
of God.
What does that mean?
It means that Abraham
rebuilt his entire life
around the promises
of God.
It means that Abraham
restructured and
recenters his whole life
on the word
of God
and the promises
of God
in personal
and practical
ways.
And you see it
right here
in verse 4.
So Abraham
went as the Lord
had told him
and Lot
went with him.
Abraham was 75
years old
when he set out
from Haran.
He didn't consider
himself retired
from life
with God.
And he went out
to do something
that was not convenient
that was not easy
that was not comfortable
and that was not safe.
He was 75
years old
he goes out
where there's
no secure sources
of food and water
no police force
no justice system
and he goes
as God sends him
into enemy
occupied territory
to live as a tiny
minority
in the midst
of a majority
of unbelieving
pagans
who are opposed
to his faith.
And if Abraham
had not done that
if Abraham
had not acted
then we wouldn't
be here today.
We would not
be experiencing
the blessings
of God
through him.
So what that means
is in order
to get the blessing
and in order
to be the blessing
we've got to go.
We've got to act.
We've got to obey.
Abraham exchanged
what was known
for what was unknown
and he lived
the rest of his life
for things
that he absolutely
could not see.
Right?
He did not die
with the whole
promised people.
He died
with one child.
He did not die
with the whole
promised land.
He died
with one tiny
little burial plot
in that land.
The promises
of God
had barely
begun
to be fulfilled.
But as Hebrews
11 1 says
faith
is the assurance
of things hoped
for
and the conviction
of things
not seen.
And look at how
Abraham lives out
his conviction
of the things
that are not seen.
It says in verse 6
Abraham traveled
through the land
as far as the site
of the great tree
of Morah
at Shechem.
At that time
the Canaanites
were in the land
the Lord
appeared to
Abram and said
to your offspring
I will give
this land.
So he built
an altar there
to the Lord
who had appeared
to him.
And from there
he went on
toward the hills
east of Bethel
and pitched his tent
with Bethel
on the west
and I on the east
and there he built
an altar to the Lord
and called
on the name
of the Lord.
Why did he do that?
Because he knew
that in order
to be a blessing
to all the peoples
of the earth
I've got to go
to the strongholds
of their foreign gods
and the strongholds
of all their pagan idols.
That's what that sacred tree
at Morah is all about.
That's what these mystical hills
in Bethel
are all about.
And Abraham knows
that he has to go
to those places
and he has to worship
the Lord there.
He's not building
a tower
up to the heavens.
He's simply
leaving behind him
altars of costly sacrifice
and praise
and prayer.
Symbolically
claiming
that this place
will one day
be filled
with people
who call
on the name
of the Lord.
Is that not
what we
are doing
in Berkeley
in the East Bay?
Verse 8
in English
says he called
on the name
of the Lord
but in Hebrew
it says
he made proclamation
of the Lord
by name.
And what that means
is that the worship
of Abraham
involved witness.
It involved
calling on the name
of the Lord
in the midst of
and in the hearing
of people
who did not believe
in this one true God
because Abraham
felt responsible
for them.
He felt responsible
for the peoples
and the families
of the earth
and he said
if they're going
to get the blessing
of the Lord
through me
then that means
I need to share
my newfound faith
with them.
I need to share
the meaning
of the Lord's name
the attributes
of his name
the activities
of his name.
I need to share
with them
the knowledge
of the Lord
and the promises
of the Lord.
See Abraham's faith
was a faith
that not only
obeyed the word
of the Lord
but also shared
the word
of the Lord
with others.
And it wasn't
about making
a name for himself
it was about
making a name
for the Lord.
And all of his
spiritual offspring
who want to be
called friends
of God
must follow suit.
You all
including me
are blessed
to be a blessing
to others.
God's blessing
on you
is not an end
in itself
it's a means
to the end
of blessing
all the nations
of the earth
and you've been
blessed not just
so you can
know the Lord
but so through
you many people
can come
to know
the living God.
And friends
we have a
greater message
to proclaim
than the one
that Abraham
proclaimed.
Jesus said
in the gospel
of John chapter
80
said
your father
Abraham
rejoiced
at the thought
of seeing
my day
he saw it
and was glad.
In other words
Abraham knew
that all the
peoples of the
earth
would be blessed
through one
blessing bearing
person
a particular
son
of Abraham
and I want
to suggest
to you
as we close
that
Jesus
is a true
and better
Abraham
because he
answered the
call of God
to leave
all that was
familiar to him
all that was
secure in heaven
all that was
comfortable
all that was
precious
and Jesus
left his
father's house
and he went
out into
the unknown
he went out
into a very
unsafe place
and he went
out to live
by faith
and the assurance
of things hoped
for and the
conviction of
things not seen
and Jesus
created a new
people of God
by the shedding
of his blood
and the forgiveness
of their sins
and the blessing
of abundant
and eternal
life
and Jesus
would turn
the whole
world into
a place
where heaven
and earth
can come
together
and where
all creation
can be the
promised land
that's filled
with the presence
and the power
and the kingdom
of God
and Jesus
would pour out
his Holy Spirit
so that we
could experience
the protection
of God
and the
international
blessing of God
until he comes
again to make
all things
new
and so like
Abraham
we are invited
to have
a faith
in things
that are already
secured for us
things that are
already promised
for us
by God's
eternally beloved
son
Jesus
and that's why
the resurrected
Jesus
he blessed
his disciples
and he said
go make
disciples of all
the nations
go be a blessing
to all the peoples
of the earth
and know
that I'm
going to be
with you
every step
of the way
as you
complete that
task
and even
now friends
through the
church
the call
of God
the blessing
of God
the promises
of God
the life
of God
the salvation
of God
is extending
out all
over the world
right now
today
so friends
Abraham
built an altar
to the Lord
in a pagan
place full
of idols
and he made
proclamation
of the Lord
by name
to a majority
of unbelieving
people who
were opposed
to his faith
and that's
why he was
called
a friend
of God
and that's
how we too
can be called
friends
of God
the letter
of the Hebrews
chapter 11
says this
and I'll
close with
these words
it says
by faith
Abraham
made his
home in
the promised
land
like a
stranger
in a
foreign
country
for he
was looking
forward to
the city
with foundations
whose architect
and builder
is God
in the name
of the Father
Son and Holy
Spirit
Amen