Babylon's Bricks or Jerusalem's Jewels?

Well, good afternoon. Thank you, Shavid. That was a moving song, beautifully sung. Well, today, as we come into this Pentecost feast, I'd like to talk to you about a tale of two cities. There are many ways to describe the story that's in this book, many right ways you could describe it. But one of them is a tale of two cities. It's a lens which spans from the first page to the last page of the Bible, and it has a significant touchdown on that great day of Pentecost in AD 31. So what do you think the two cities I'm talking about are? Anybody have any guesses?

Just shout them out. Jerusalem. What was the other one you said? Old and New Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the one that I'm thinking of. That's the most commonly discussed one. What was that? Babylon. Babylon is the second most commonly discussed one. Jerusalem and Babylon. Let's turn back to Genesis 11. Genesis 11. Where are we going in Genesis 11? Tower of Babel. That's right. But this is not the first time a city is mentioned in the Bible. To find the first city in the Bible, you have to go back to what Mr. Rudy Rangel was talking about, about what happened with Cain and Abel.

Cain goes out after he murders Abel. He's a murderer. He's worried what will happen to him. So God says, I'll put a mark on you to protect you out of this graciousness that he has. But that's not enough. Cain still feels the need to look after his own defense, his own interests. So he goes out and he builds the first city that we have in the Bible.

He travels to the east, builds a city. So here, flash forward to Genesis 11. Also Cain names the city after his own lineage. The city is going to be named after his posterity. Here in Genesis 11, we have people who journey east, or from the east. They're in the east, and they build a city. The city is mentioned more times than the tower, actually, in this story. And it's not that a city is a bad thing, necessarily.

It's not wrong to build cities or live in cities. In fact, the Bible ends in a city. But there's something about cities where a person has a certain potential, and that potential can be good or that potential can go bad. The cities have this amplifying effect of that. Cities can be very good or very bad, amplifying the potential of people. So Genesis 11, verse 1.

Now the whole earth was one language and one speech. And it came to pass as they journeyed from the east, and they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. And they said to one another, Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly. Now, when they say that in Hebrew, it's a little bit more like, Come, let us brick bricks and burn them for burning. And the New English Translator's notes note something about this.

They comment, This reflects the grammar of Akkadian speech. There's these people over here who have a language like Hebrew, Akkadian, but the language works a little differently. And this has the sound of mocking that speech. This is like you put on your best mock Akkadian accent. You let us brick bricks and let us burn them for burning.

So they had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. And they said, Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top is in the heavens. Literally, its head is in the heavens. Let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth. Now, when talking about this tower in Shinar with its head in the heavens, the first hearers of what we have as Genesis, the Genesis scroll, are going to be the Israelites. They're going to make a connection whenever they hear the head with its head in the heavens.

It's kind of like if I were to say, Make America Great Again, and I were to do it in the voice of the person who first said it. You wouldn't just take those words on face value. You'd know that I'm talking about something that's become a greater idea. And that was true here as well. We have this exact expression, this head in the heavens, in surviving inscriptions relating to ziggurats, which come from that area, the plain of Shinar.

In fact, the IVP Bible Backgrounds Commentary, page 42, says, This phrase is reserved almost exclusively for the description of ziggurats in Akkadian usage. And we actually know who were building these people, why they were building them, and so why were they? If you could bring up the slide here now, this is a couple pictures of a couple different ziggurats here. What do you notice as a prominent feature from these?

Any thoughts? Staircase. The staircase is huge. It's the main feature there. In fact, it's the point. These are not like Egyptian pyramids. They have a network of rooms inside and everything. It's just a pile of rubble basically built up and then built upon a building for the staircase.

The NIV Application Commentary says this on page 374 about it. The best indication of the function of ziggurats comes from the names given to them. For instance, the name of the ziggurat at Babylon, Etimonatki, means temple of the foundation of heaven and earth.

When at Larsa means the temple which links heaven and earth. Most significant is the name of the ziggurat at Sippar, which means temple of the stairway to pure heaven. The literal stairway to heaven. Except it's not. It's not a stairway to heaven. It's a stairway from heaven. You see, this whole thing had to do with the system of thinking that said humans have needs, gods have needs.

People thought about there being many gods at this time. And so they said, well, let's make a deal here. Let's make a deal. We're a powerful people. We can build this god here. We can build you a better house. We can build you a better path down from heaven. We can give you better food and better offerings, better worship. And in return, you give us something. You give us good crops. You give us fertility, protection. And we get to make a name for ourselves by having a kind of exclusive access here. We'll be the gatekeeper between the gods and people.

And so you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Kind of a situation here. We'll have control over the gate of God, which is what Babel means in Akkadian.

So this is a worldview that scholars call great symbiosis thinking. And the Bible pushes back against it multiple times through the Bible. Like Psalm 50 is an example. Psalm 50 is a place where God says, I made the birds of the field. I made the beasts of the forest. I made the birds of the air, you know, the wild beasts of the field. It's all mine. I give it to you. It's an entirely different model than what these people were doing. Reading again from the IVP Bible Backgrounds commentary, it says, Ziggurats were structures designed to provide stairways from the heavens, the gate of the gods, to earth so that the gods could come down into their temple and into the town and bring blessing. So they built a ladder and then they built a temple by it. The gods come down the ladder, they go into the temple, you bring them food, they give things to you. It was a convenience provided for the deity and his messengers. These stairways were featured in the mythology of the Sumerians and also are portrayed in Jacob's dream, Genesis 28. We're going to come back to that thought. Hold that thought. There were no rooms, chambers, or passageways of any sort inside. The structure itself was simply made to hold up the stairway. At the top was a small room for the deity, equipped with a bed and a table supplied regularly with food. In this way, the deity could refresh himself during his descent. So it's like we not only build you the stairway, we put a little buckies on top, a little rest stop there, something that's going to refresh you a little bit as you're halfway down and make things a little bit easier there for you. Bring them down into our brick house for you. The Bible doesn't point out that this wasn't worship for other gods. It's possible that that part was just so obvious that it really wasn't worth mentioning it. And instead, the story as we have it in Genesis 11 gets at something even deeper. It aims its guns at something deeper, something that is so rotten with what's happening here that even if you were to do it for the true God, it would fall apart. It would be something God would have to shut down. Because you see, what these people wanted was a genie and a bottle. This was the relationship they wanted with the gods. They wanted control over this relationship to be the gatekeeper to access to God. You could say they're trying to corner the market on the gods, you know? It's just us. We've got the special relationship here. You've got to go through us. But ultimately, it was about control.

And remember, their goal was, let us make a name for ourselves. Let us make a name for ourselves. Well, God had already started his own building project. And his was designed to do something similar. It was also to unite heaven and earth. It was to bring God's space into man's space for him to walk alongside man. It happened in Eden. It happened in the garden.

But then a seed of Babylon thinking crept into Eden. And like all projects like this, God had to shut it down. He had to shut it down in many ways for humanity's own good. And Babel was likely, if this is correct, if the mocking the Akkadians, and using this particular phrase, if this is a right trajectory for how Moses wants us to read this story, then Babel was an attempt to reestablish this link, but to do it on man's terms.

To do it on mankind's terms. These great men had something to offer God, and they were attempting to renegotiate the contract. They were going to make God an offer he can't refuse. But as it turns out, God will not be manipulated through the art of the deal. That's not how it's going to work. So knowing all this background helps them when you come back to Genesis 11. If that's correct, then you can hear the rich irony of the story.

If they built this thing to bring the gods down, but in the way that they could control, well, here's what happens in verse 5. And the Lord came down, indeed, to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. They got what they wanted, but not how they wanted, as we'll see. Now, what's interesting about this story, too, is that it's really short. It's a very short story, but it takes time to talk about a technology that made this thing possible.

The brick.

I'm going to set this right here.

The brick.

Something new. Something new that comes along. This is a wonderful thing. It's efficient. It's repeatable. It's fast. You get a whole bunch of these in a row. You can build all kinds of things on it. It's not like messing with stone. Each one of the stones is different, but all these bricks are the same. That is fantastic.

If you're trying to build big projects to make your name great. The ultimate commodity. What do you think the Israelites, the first recipients of the full Genesis scroll, what do you think they think when they hear about the brick? Do you think that has any significance to them? Well, it sure does. You could write this down or turn there if you want. Exodus 1, 10 through 14. Actually, it's the next time the brick shows up in the Bible story. They've got a lot of personal experience with this. In Exodus 1, verse 10, Pharaoh speaking, he says, Come, let us deal shrewdly with the Israelites, lest they multiply. So Pharaoh wants to destroy the Israelites, and he makes a plan. And his first plan is, so the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigor, and they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, and mortar in brick, and in all manner of service in the field. All their service in which they made them serve was with rigor. Commenting on the Babel passage, the theological wordbook of the Old Testament, on page 468, says, Most usages of this term, the brick, occur in contexts showing the toil and futility of human effort. A sarcastic, poetic doublet emphasizes that the tower of Babel, an arch-type of futile human effort, was built of brick. And the sarcastic doublet was that, let us brick bricks, let us burn them for burning. So the Israelites knew a thing or two about bricks, because they had been the targets of an extermination campaign that was built around the brick. They understood that the backbreaking, dehumanizing labor of Pharaoh's grand building projects. And there was something about a brick in Egypt, then, that makes the person making it like the brick itself. It was the ultimate commodity, completely one-swappable with any other. And there was something about what was happening to Israel that was making them just like that. In fact, they were worth even less than that, because Pharaoh wanted more of these, but fewer brickmakers. That was the point. I picked this up for 68 cents this week at Lowe's. The clerk started to say, do you want a receipt with that? And he kind of looked at it and was like, probably not. It's just a brick. It's just a brick. They were in bondage to someone who viewed them as worthless. They could surmise that whoever in this Babel story was actually making the bricks, they're not going to share in that glory, most likely. But they were instead probably going to be the first victims of that great imperial dream. So Babel was a power play. If this approach is right, Babel was a power play in two dimensions, against God and against man. God's two great commandments are to love Him with all our hearts and to love others as ourselves. And it turns out those are two sides of one coin. Whenever we worship the wrong gods or worship the right god wrongly, we end up usually oppressing other people. That's not far behind. And vice versa. So they had brick for stone. So God says in Genesis 11.7, Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. Therefore its name is called Babel. Babel in Akkadian was gate of the gods. Now it's Babel in Hebrew, which is confusion.

Because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth. Now you turn one page over, and you see where God says, Okay, I'm going to kick my building project into gear now. From the unlikeliest of places. Actually, from this place, I'm going to pull an elderly couple out of here and start my project.

From the unlikeliest of seeds, an elderly couple, God has an eye on how He's going to turn this thing around from that point forward. So let's turn now to Genesis 28. Genesis 28. Because there's actually two towers with their head in the heavens in the Bible. They're both in Genesis.

Now, in Genesis 28, Jacob is fleeing from Esau. He's actually doing the reverse of Abraham's plan. Abraham was coming from Huron into the land, and he stops in Bethel as one of his first places. Jacob's on his way out because he's running from Esau, and he's headed to Huron. But before he leaves, God gives him this vision in Genesis 28.11.

So he came to a certain place and stayed there all night because the sun had set. And he took one of the stones of that place and put it at his head, and he lay down in that place to sleep. Then he dreamed, and behold, a ladder was set up on the earth, and his top reached the heaven, or its head was in the heaven, literally there. It's the same expression. And there the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. The other shoes dropped now. The other shoes dropped. Here is the real portal between heaven and earth.

God's building project is initiated from heaven. It is 100% from God's gracious love, not the glory of the works of human hands. It's going to involve God's own sun coming down, tabernacling with men.

And all of the glory of it will go to God because he gives all the resources and guides all the work. So then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it. And he was afraid and said, How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. And he calls the place Bethel, house of God. Babel vs Bethel, the two towers of Genesis. In one, in Babel, it's a brick stairway down to a brick house, but God showed Jacob he's planning his own building project here, with a different way of thinking behind it. Again, both initiatives are trying to bridge heaven and earth. That's not necessarily a wrong idea. It seems that God has wired us, put it in our hearts to want to seek that. But how we do it matters a lot. We can do it in a corrupted, disordered way, or we can do it through the path that God brings down to us. See, in Babylon, God is merely an ally. They view him as an ally. He's a side character in their story, is what's happening there. And that is not the way that this plan is going to work. God's plan is to dwell with his people, but in a way that's going to be the way that produces all light and no darkness, where God can become all in all, in a way that preserves the individuality that he ordained in each of us, and produces the conditions for us to thrive without the chaos that comes from each of us trying to seek to build our own little kingdoms, our own little empires and monuments to ourselves. So let's turn over to Exodus 24. Just like the Bible story is part of a larger story that doesn't even begin there, it goes back to the Cane City and goes all the way to... I'm using left and right wrong. I always do that up here. All the way from Cane City. All the way to that humongous, terrible Babylon system that we have in the Book of Revelation. So Bethel is the same way. Its story begins in Eden. This idea of the correct way for God's space and man's space to overlap, for the holy to come in contact with humanity, for humans to be holy. That's an idea that starts in Eden. We get flashes of it. It moves to Bethel and it moves to Sinai. And then God instructs how to build a portable holy mountain for himself, the tabernacle that can move, and it goes to Shiloh and finally winds up in Jerusalem. But next to this 24, this is at Sinai, in verse 9 we read... Again, the question that we're asking here is, when God starts a building project, what do you think that building project is made out of? Then Moses went up, also Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel. And they saw the God of Israel, and there was under his feet, as it were, a paved work of sapphire stone.

And it was like the very heavens and its clarity. Now, it makes sense to render it that way in English, but in Hebrew the word pave there is the word brick from the Bible story. It was bricked with sapphire stone. So in the Bible story we're told that they used brick for stone. And we find here that when God creates these spaces to meet with people, he uses stone for brick. There's a different approach happening here. I have something else.

This is a maybe 200 carat diamond or so. I brought it in on an armored truck. It's probably worth millions of dollars. Not really. It's good of you to chuckle. This probably has more in common with this brick than it does with a real precious gem. It's mass produced, quite inexpensive. Nobody is crafting it. But it makes the point. Precious stones. Precious stones is what we're after.

Eden is described in Genesis 2 as nestled among lands with precious stones. In Ezekiel 28 we get a reflection on that as well in a story that we believe is a portrait of Satan, actually. It talks about him and says that he was an Eden, the Garden of God, and walked amidst the fiery stones. In Exodus 28 we see how the high priest is outfitted whenever he goes into the holy place. He's got this breastplate that has 12 stones. All different. All unique. All different colors. Each one is etched the name of one of the tribes of Israel. By wearing them, he symbolically brings Israel into the presence of God through the symbolism of wearing those 12 precious stones. Then in Revelation you get those stones pop back up. Almost the same list of 12 stones become the foundations of the holy city at the end of Revelation that are decorated with these beautiful stones representing the United People of God in that time, now living in God's presence. So if there's one thing I'd like for you to take away from this message, one line to remember this message, it's this. Babylon makes bricks. Jerusalem makes stones. Babylon makes bricks. Jerusalem makes stones. Which city is going to win this? How's the story going to turn out, though? Which one's going to win in the end? Can the scattering and confusion of Babel ever be reversed? You might jot down Zephaniah 3, verse 8, but let's turn over to Acts 2. Zephaniah 3, 8 is one of several places that looks forward to some kind of reversal of the Babylon situation there. The Babel situation in Genesis 11 includes even...it's laced with keywords from that story. So God's anticipating at some time this thing is going to turn around. And when we come down to the Pentecost of the New Testament in Acts 2, we get this. It says, when the day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. That sounds positive, but given what we just read, it could have a negative sound to it as well. Of course, we're supposed to read it positively. This is the disciples gathered together. But there's something interesting that's being developed here. There was one accord in one place. Suddenly there was a sound from heaven. The sound came from heaven. And at Babel, God said, Come, let us go down. As of a rushing, mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting, then there appeared to them divided tongues of fire, and one sat upon each one of them.

And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. Verse 5, And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, that word sound, from the Greek version that we have, of Genesis 11, that they rely on normally when they quote the Old Testament, in the New Testament, that's how the story starts. Everybody is of one sound in there. And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together. They came together. Then what happens? They were confused. And this is the same word from the Greek version of Genesis 11. They came together, and they were confused. But why were they confused? They were confused because everyone heard them speaking in his own language.

Everyone heard them speak in his own language. They were confused because they can understand each other. You have to imagine Luke smiling as he writes these words. When God gives him the inspiration to understand the significance of what was happening that day, and putting it together, whether that came from Peter or other sources to him, whatever way God inspired that understanding. He records this in this way. And then they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, Look, are not all these who speak Galileans? And how is it that we hear each in our own language in which we were born? I could point out a couple other word connections between these. I think I'll just skip over those for time. But these Galileans, how is it that these Galileans are able to speak in a way that we understand them? The Babylonians of the world are built by the Nimrods of the world, typically. The great and mighty people. But who do we have here? We've got these people who, Acts 4.13, calls them uneducated and untrained men. Galilean fishermen. Yet these are men who had walked with Jesus. And that makes all the difference. Something monumental had happened here, and the people were there, recognized it. The world had shifted on its foundation right here, at least for those people who saw it. Babel had begun to reverse. In this moment, God has broken ground on a new phase of his building project right here, in a new way, on a new and perfect cornerstone, which is Jesus Christ. And then, in verse 9, they go more or less around the clock, around the world as they knew it, the farthest-flung places, Parthians, Amoebes, and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontius, and Asia, Phrygia, I always struggle with that one. I'm not sure if I said that right, Pamphylia, Egypt, all of these, in a way that evokes the lead-up to the Babylonian story, actually, the Babylon story, in Genesis 10, with what people call the table of nations, where you get this whole list of the 70 nations and people of their own tongues, and you say, how do they get these tongues? And then the Bible says, well, let me tell you. I'll give you a story about that in the Tower of Babel. And here we are, recalling all these people from all over the face of the earth. God scattered them all over, and now He's recalling these people. Devout Jews, but both Jews and Proselytes, Cretans and Arabs, we hear them speaking in our own tongues, the wonderful works of God.

The Spirit filled the house. Now, they're in the temple complex here. This is the literal Bethel, the house of God, is where they are right here in Jerusalem. This is the house of God. And this kind of thing had sort of happened twice before. Whenever the tabernacle was first made, remember in Exodus 40, the glory of God comes down whenever it's made. Moses can't even go in. He's prevented from going in because the glory of God fills the tabernacle. And then again, when Solomon constructs the temple and he dedicates it, the glory of God again comes down and fills the temple.

And the priests can't go in it now. It's because the glory of God has filled the temple. And you know, this is something that we don't have any record of ever happening in the second temple until right here, until right here.

And it does it in the most incredible way. It comes down. And are all the people forced out from the fire and the smoke? No, it comes down and it fills the people. It fills the people because the people are the temple. The spirit gives them the ability to speak out. And what were they speaking? Were they speaking things that would make up a name for themselves? No, they weren't. They were speaking the wonderful works of God. And so, Peter gets up. He gives this incredible sermon. At the end of the chapter, after that, we find this picture of the Church of God.

They're praising God instead of making a name for themselves. They're selling all and taking care of each other's needs. Treating each other like jewels, not like bricks. Babylon, remember, makes bricks. Jerusalem makes jewels. And that is the picture that we have there. So the builders of Babylon, they make themselves known by showing the world what they built.

The people of God's city will make themselves known through the love that they have for each other. And that love flows from God's spirit whenever we trust the Father and follow Jesus Christ. And that's how they're known, how they love each other. Now, this is a mindset that we have to take with us. For those of us who've worked in, say, large companies. I've worked in a couple large companies before I worked for the Church. You can encounter brick thinking or jewel thinking. Sometimes you might have good management for a while, and then the management changes, and people come in, and maybe your job doesn't change that much, but you can tell something has changed.

And where it felt like we were doing something important, now it feels like we're making bricks. Or it feels like what I'm doing is just building up this person's reputation, and they don't even see me. That kind of thing happens in the world, and yet we're still called to be the ones who have jewel thinking that we bring to it.

In fact, even something funny can happen in the Church sometimes. Something funny can happen on the way to Jerusalem, where you think that you're building Jerusalem, in whatever thing that you're working on, and something happens, and you switch over to building Babylon. History is littered with great Babylon builders who thought that they were building Jerusalem. People from the Pharisees to Constantine the Great. It's an often told story.

In fact, even someone like King David. You think of King David. When he numbers Israel, whenever he decides, I'm going to have a census to find out how powerful I am with these Israelites, that's the moment. That's the moment. He's moved from building Jerusalem to building Babylon. And God has to shut it down when he does that. And it can happen in the Church. You look at some of the, like, diatrophes in John 3 in the New Testament.

He probably thought he was building Jerusalem, but he was not. He was building Babylon. Sometimes it can happen in our era. We might get an idea. And the idea seems like such a great idea. And everything else starts to, like, it just crowds out everything else. And you start feeling like, man, if everybody would just do this idea, if everybody would just do what I say and do it exactly as I say it, you know, if they would all just be bricks, imagine the thing I could build.

If everybody would just be a brick for me. You know, we can do that. Or we might even idolize somebody in the Church. We pick a person and say, wow, they're the most amazing person ever. They're the most amazing speaker. They're the strongest speaker. Only they should be in charge. Something like that. And you start modeling everything on somebody who's not Jesus Christ. It's going to be problems down the road. We can think God is using us to turn people into jewels.

Or we think, okay, I know exactly how people should be. It's usually like myself. It's usually what happens. This is the way they should be. And we think that we're helping God turn them into jewels, but we're actually turning them into bricks. When a man builds bricks, God builds with unique, carefully fashioned stones. Solomon's Temple was built with stones, not bricks. They didn't need mortar because the stones were handcrafted to fit together. Each stone was crafted to fit with the other stones. And this all happened out of sight of the temple complex. If you were there, you didn't see it because it was happening way back at the quarry, is where it was happening.

So that no hammer or chisel or iron tool was heard at the temple while it was being built. And so we can look around and stand. We want to build big things, and we can look around at the temple complex and say, where's all the action? I want to see some hammering going on here. I want to see some big things happening that will impress everybody. But as we've said so many times before, we need to be a work before we can do a work.

And often the most important work that's being done is being done back at the quarry. It's where those stones God is patiently fitting them, and He's patiently preparing them, fashioning each of us to fit together. And even as we go out and as we shine our light in the world, we have jobs, we work, we interact with people, we need to try to see the potential jewels in those people who right now may be treating us like bricks, which is a hard thing to do, to see someone as a jewel who sees you as a brick.

But Jesus said in Matthew 5, Matthew 5, 44, 45, He said, Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in Heaven. That's what He does. He died for us while we were still enemies, which means that He sees us for what we will be, not just what we were and not what we sometimes still are.

He sees us for what we will be. He sees us as the living stones that the Father is shaping, as jewels, ready to be fashioned on Jesus' foundation. When we answer the Father's call, and whenever we accept His grace and follow His instruction and do what He says, Babylon makes bricks, Jerusalem makes jewels. So if you're somebody who's led by the Holy Spirit, then you are called to be a piece of this new Jerusalem in Babylon.

Babylon can invade Jerusalem. Jerusalem can also invade Babylon in some small ways. Or to put it another way, we are ambassadors for the world tomorrow. So as we enter this Pentecost feast, let's strive for the unity that comes through glorifying our Father and Jesus Christ, and not glorifying ourselves. And let's reflect our Master Craftsman and strive to see the world through the eyes of the great jeweler in a world that's making bricks.