Come Let Us Build a City

Well, thank you, Jamie, for the beautiful special music. I've heard that twice now today. She did it down in Eugene this morning. It's a beautiful song, beautiful words. Very much appreciate the sentiment contained within it. It is a tough thing at times to praise God in the difficult times as well as the beautiful times and so appreciate that very, very much. A quick show of hands. How many of you are familiar with the Burj Khalifa? A couple of you are. I know a couple of you have been to Dubai, so please tell me you're at least familiar with the Burj Khalifa. For those that are not, the Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world and it's located in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Again, I know some of you have been there. I know some of you have seen the Burj Khalifa at least at a distance. I don't know if you did the tour, but you're at least able to then see that particular building. I'm going to ask, I put a small PowerPoint together here. For those that have not, this is the Burj Khalifa against the Dubai skyline. It's a modern skyscraper. It stands just over a half a mile high. It's a very imposing structure against the Dubai skyline. What's really funny is you look at the little buildings, the baby buildings on the side. Those are actual like full-size buildings that we would normally look at and go, wow, what a tall building. And then you have this thing just dwarfing them in comparison. The building stands more than twice the height of the Empire State Building at 2,717 feet.

It was completed 15 years ago today on January 4, 2010. So today is the 15th anniversary of the grand opening of the building. And so far, in the last 15 years, no other building that has been built has managed to dethrone it as the tallest in the world. There are a few now hot on its heels, and in the coming years they will likely succeed. But for now, as of January of 2025, the Burj Khalifa is the world's tallest man-made structure. If we want to advance the slide to the next one, this shows you generally how this building compares to some of the other major skyscrapers in the world. Just to give you an idea of comparisons, when the Burj Khalifa was built, the tallest building in the world was Taipei 101, which is the one right in the middle of that particular diagram next to the Petronas Towers, the dual towers there, to the right of it. That right, my left up there, to the right of it. Ultimately, that particular building was the tallest. And so when the Burj Khalifa was built, it was a statement. It was not even close. For the longest time, when it came to skyscrapers, there was like this little by little by little by little race. So one skyscraper would get built, and then somebody would go, oh yeah, well I can make one taller than that. And they'd get it a little bit taller, maybe a couple hundred feet, 300 feet, whatever. The Burj Khalifa was more than 1,000 feet taller than the next tallest building at the time. Those in between, so World Trade, or the One World Trade, and then the couple of others there to the right, which you can't read from this distance. But those two have been built since 2010, but they were in progress already and were not designed to be built higher than the Burj Khalifa. The building itself is an engineering marvel. In that sense, you look at the height of this building, there is no other man-made thing at this time on this world that extends that high into the heavens anywhere. Anywhere. The building is an engineering marvel. In fact, you look at it, the whole city of Dubai is an engineering marvel. The fact that this building in this height is being built on the sands of the United Arab Emirates is really incredible. The engineering, the architecture, the amount of work that went into completing it, they actually built the whole thing from the ground up essentially just under six years. So the amount of time it took them to build it is Herculean, to be honest. From the top, so if you go all the way to the top of the tower, you can see 60 miles in either direction. There is not much to see, 60 miles of sand to some extent, but you can see 60 miles in every direction, and you can actually watch the sun set on the ground, take the elevator to the top, and watch it set again, because of the distance you can see in the curvature of Earth that you can see from that distance. In fact, it's actually kind of interesting. Muslim clerics in Dubai have actually ruled that anyone living above the 80th floor in the building should wait an extra two minutes to complete their fast for Ramadan. And anyone above the 150th floor, the ruling is they need to wait three minutes, because of the amount of time that it takes and the distance that they can see the sun as it sets. You go ahead and bring up slide three real quick. The building has a really telling design.

I mean, if you take a look at the building, it's laid out in a three-lobed footprint. You can't see that on this particular picture, but it's a three-lobed footprint that is patterned after a local flower known as the spider lily. Each of the wings of the building, you note that there's wings in those little lobes, in the valleys of those lobes, and ultimately, each of those wings spirals upward. It spirals as it goes.

Now, that design is deliberate. It's to break wind shear and to make the building more resistant to wind. But the architect who designed it also said that he took inspiration for this building from what is known as the Great Mosque of Samara. That is the Great Mosque of Samara. It's located in Samara, Iraq, and it is very standard from ancient Mesopotamian ziggurats of the region. You might be familiar with ancient Mesopotamian ziggurats.

Go ahead and bring up the next slide. There was one of them that was built on a little plain out in the land of Shinar a lot of years ago. The construction of the Burj Khalifa, if you want to go ahead and bring those down. Construction of the Burj Khalifa was a multinational effort. There was an American architecture and design firm. It was built by a South Korean firm, Samsung, their construction side. They were built by a Belgian firm called Bessex and a local team, Arab Tech. The building relied heavily on local labor and a whole lot of labor that was imported from Southeast Asia.

In fact, there were some problems with that. You might recall when Southeast Asian migrant workers were dying repetitively because of lack of safety standards on the build. They weren't so concerned with expendable labor from places they could import. It was kind of a thing. It became a big news article a while back as they were building this. From an article on Medium.com, I want you just to see some of the articles that were written right at the time when this tower was released and when this thing was brought up.

This is from Medium.com. It's called The Burj Khalifa, A Triumph of Human Achievement. The author, Sanjay Mohindra, writes the following. He says, rising majestically amidst the dazzling skyline of Dubai, the Burj Khalifa soars to a height that seems to touch the heavens. Its gleaming spire reaches toward the infinite, symbolizing our unyielding spirit of progress and ambition. This iconic structure not only offers breathtaking, panoramic views of the city, but also serves as a symbol of human achievement and of the limitless possibilities of human endeavor. He goes on to talk about how the building is inspirational and how there is an inspiring nature to this for future architecture. But then he concludes with the following, and I found this statement interesting.

It says, the Burj Khalifa is more than just a building. It's a symbol of what humanity can achieve when driven by vision and determination. Its remarkable height and its stunning design continue to inspire people worldwide. And as we gaze upon this magnificent structure, let us remember that the sky is not the limit.

It's just the beginning of our boundless potential. This building was built to be a statement. This building was built to be a statement. It's an iconic tower, the Burj Khalifa, and it was intended to send an unapologetic message to the world. And that message was that Dubai was on the map. That Dubai was to become an economic powerhouse. It was a place of wealth. It was a place for foreign businesses to invest. They didn't build it a little taller than the previous one.

This thing was a thousand plus feet taller than Taipei 101. They built it in such a way that it would be the tallest skyscraper out there for a 15-year period. It was intentional. It was purposeful. There are people who talk about these kinds of things in magazines and books. I'm not an architect. I want to be abundantly clear. I don't subscribe to architecture magazines. It's not my thing.

Some of you might. It's not my thing. But I found it interesting what individuals that are in that business had to say at the time that this was put together. So this woman's named Anne Gray. She's in a high-end real estate advising company that works in Dubai and other places. She wrote, the record-setting height of the Burj Khalifa and the exclamation point that it adds to the Dubai skyline declares even to non-architects that this building was not designed from the inside out but as a visual statement to the world that Dubai had arrived as a regional commerce center.

That's Anne Gray from Gray Real Estate Advisors. Gary Dickon, who's the architect director at BDP Mina, said the following, the Burj Khalifa is unashamedly meant to represent the dominance of a city-state. It is the defining icon of the city. And this gentleman, H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who is the Emir of Dubai, said, Dubai will never settle for anything less than first place.

Dubai made a statement with the building of this building. Now ironically, when the building was launched in 2010, back on January 4th of 2010, Dubai had just gone through a housing crash that sprung from the 2008 crash here in the United States. And so they actually were in fear of losing the entire city. They had $10 million pumped into the city from the Sheikh of UAE at the time. His name's Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nayan. Oh, that sounds familiar. His name's on the building. So it was probably the most expensive naming rights deal in history. Cost him $10 billion to have his name on the building in that sense. But that $10 billion kept Dubai afloat.

And today, Dubai is indisputably the wealthiest city in the world. There is more wealth in that city than anywhere else on this planet. And so the investment paid off. You know, the $10 million bridged the gap. It got them going, and they were able to ultimately become what they've become. But that city has made a name for itself. When you say Dubai, people think wealth. They think power. They think influence. They think all these things. They've made a name for themselves. Let's turn to Genesis 11. Let's turn to Genesis 11. Genesis 11, we see the story of the Tower of Babel. We see the story of the Tower of Babel.

And just prior to this account in Genesis 11, we see the account in Genesis 10. We see ultimately the aftermath of the years following the flood. We see Moses, through the inspiration of God, has provided the genealogies of Shem and Ham and Japheth and all the nations and all the tribes that were ultimately born to them. And so he goes through this process and lays all these peoples out, lays these families out, these nations, these groups.

And what we see is that the account in Genesis 10 states that they were separated into their locations. Verse 5, verse 20, and verse 31 of Genesis 10 say that God separated them into their regions and their locations by their languages, by their lands, their nations were established. What makes this a little confusing initially is that Genesis 10 and Genesis 11 are not chronological. They're not chronological. Genesis 11 is the cause. Genesis 10 is the effect. Okay, Genesis 11 is the reason that God separated them into their lands based on their languages, based on their boundaries, et cetera, that we see in Genesis 10.

So reading those somewhat out of order helps it to make a little bit more sense as to how it's written and why it's written in that way. But Genesis 10 lays out where all these nations came from and then includes the generalized locations that God established as their boundaries, as nations and as families.

Genesis 11 and verse 1. Genesis 11 and verse 1. So we see the cause. We see what it was that caused God to maneuver these people from their places into these specific locations. Genesis 11 and verse 1 says, now the whole earth had one language and one speech. The word there actually means lip. So they all had one language and one lip. They weren't sharing one lip. They were sharing the same speech, right? It came to pass. They journeyed from the east. They came down from and across from Mount Ararat and the area around where the ark ultimately settled and where they began to settle and spread and expand. Then ultimately they journeyed from the east and it says they found a plane in the land of Shinar and they dwelt there. So they found a plane in the land of Shinar and they dwelt there. It says, then they said to one another, come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly. It says they had brick for stone. They had asphalt for mortar. And they said, come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top is in the heavens. Let us make a name for ourselves lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth. So we see the people journeyed from the east. They came across a plane in the land of Shinar and that plane looked as though it was a place that they could settle down and they could build a city. Maybe they could farm. Maybe they could establish a city in this location.

They determined that they would raise this city and this plane and within that city they determined that they would raise a tower that would raise into the heavens. They determined that they would take mud bricks and for those that aren't aware of the process of mud bricks, mud and straw and other things, you let them cook in the sun to dry out.

They baked them. They can also fire, you know, kiln fire them if you have that sort of technology. It makes them even stronger. So you can go through and utilize fired brick, but it says they baked them thoroughly and they constructed the city and the tower. They used asphalt or your translation might say bitumen. It's like a tarry kind of asphalt-like substance. Interestingly it's the same substance that Noah used on the inside and outside of the ark according to the Hebrew word. So that was what Noah was instructed to smear on the outside and the inside of the ark.

But they used bitumen which was from order. So they would stick these bricks together with essentially asphalt or tar or bitumen and then ultimately they built this city and built this tower. And what scripture tells us is there were a couple of reasons that they wanted to settle this city.

There were a couple of reasons why they wanted to settle in this city. Number one, they wanted to make a name for themselves. It very specifically says they wanted to make a name for themselves. Now the word here in Hebrew is the word shem which kind of refers to one's name, refers to one's standing, their reputation. We might say fame or renown. So the word can be translated in any number of ways. Essentially they wanted this city to be noticed. They wanted this city to be on the map. They wanted it to be something that people saw.

As they came down into this plain it was likely a very flat area and this would be just a huge city with a huge tower and people would go, whoa, look at this. You know, it was meant to be a city of renown. It was something to make a name for themselves, to ultimately create a reputation or a standing. But secondly, it says that they wished to not be scattered abroad over the face of the earth. This city was intended to be a place where they would consolidate. They would consolidate resources. It would become perhaps a place of power. Maybe it would become a military powerhouse.

It would become a city of renown. And you think of the great cities, you know, going back in through history. You know, they wanted this to be this great city, this to become this great city. Well, the city that they founded, which is described in Genesis 10-10 as being founded by Nimrod, became known as Babel. Or as we better know it today, built ultimately on the ruins of Babel, Babylon. See, we know that this was the city of Babylon, ultimately that was built over the top of what was there.

The Akkadian word for Babylon is babim and it means gate of God. Babim means gate of God. That's the Akkadian word for it, the Babylonian language for the city itself. But the city meant gate of God. And in their mythology, they believed that it was in this city that they could ascend to heaven. Now, was that because the tower went so high? Don't know. But they believed that this particular city was the one in which that could take place.

They did say, come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top is in the heavens. That's the title of the split sermon today. The second split is, come, let us build ourselves a city. You know, Babylon became a great city, and I use that in quotes, but a great city in the sense of history. It had significant cultural, political, economic power in the ancient Near East.

It was the home of, depending on who you talk to, one or two of the seven wonders of the world. Turns out they were arguing about that kind of stuff then. Just like Yilp today, it was kind of the same way then. It was like, no, that's not a wonder. This is a wonder. So there were different lists. Most lists though don't include the Tower of Babel as one of those.

But the Hanging Gardens of Babylon was one of those seven wonders. It contained the Ishtar Gate, which still exists today. You can see the Ishtar Gate and the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, so you can go and see that.

If you'd like, it's beautiful. It's really a beautiful structure. You know, it kind of gives you a consideration of thinking like, maybe the city wasn't just drab brown bricks everywhere. It's a beautiful, beautiful gate. But of course it also contained, at least before all of those other things, the Tower of Babel. It was the city of origin for many of our modern holidays today through millennia of religious syncretism.

Out of Babylon came Christmas, came all Hallows, came all these things. It was out of Babylon that all of this was produced. Babylon's also a type in Scripture. It's symbolism. It's a type. It's a symbol of attitude of human pride and rebellion against God. So Babylon as a whole, when you see that word in Scripture, whether it's referencing the physical Babylon itself or whether it's referencing the ideology more so, it is often describing a worldly system that is in opposition to God. It denies God. It's used frequently as a spiritual metaphor for sin and for idolatry. And that's the image that we see when we look at Babylon in the book of Revelation. In the book of Revelation, Babylon is described as this world system, essentially, that when God returns, these worldly attitudes, these powers, these ideologies will fall. Okay? They will fall to God. And so that's the idea is the way this is used throughout Scripture. In Genesis 9, you can turn there if you'd like, Genesis 9 and verse 1, God commands Shem, Ham, and Japheth post-flood with his instructions of what they were to do as they came out of the ark and as they were to go outward from there. They likely remained in that area for a short period of time as they built up and grew. And ultimately, these families and these individuals would then distribute accordingly across these areas.

But Genesis 9 and verse 1, he instructs Noah and his sons to be fruitful and multiply, to be fruitful and multiply. Same thing that God told Adam and Eve in the garden, be fruitful and multiply. And he said, and fill the earth. God's intent was that these families, these nations, these groups would go outward from that place and would settle, that they would tend, that they would keep all of these things, that they would have dominion over God's creation, that they would tend it, that they would keep it, that they would ultimately work in it, as Mr.

Hanson brought out. Six days a week, they would work in it and then rest on that seventh day. That was certainly God's plan from the very beginning as we see Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. But it follows then that they're stopping and consolidating in Shinar, okay, they're stopping and consolidating in Shinar with multiple family groupings that ultimately began speaking different languages, right? These were different individuals in these groupings. Then was rebelliousness.

Was against God's instructions. God said, go out and fill the earth in these places. They said, no, no, no, we're stopping here because we don't want to be scattered all over the earth. We don't want to be scattered. We don't want to go out and be in different places. So begs the question, a couple of different questions. Did they rally around Nimrod? Was Nimrod like such a charismatic leader that he could kind of bring all these individuals together? Did they kind of rally to his desires? Were they just simply sick of walking? That's certainly a possibility. Got to land a Shinar and said, you know what, my feet hurt.

I'm done. I'm good. Thanks. We'll just stop here. What exactly were their motivations? We don't know for certain. What we do know is that they said two things. They wish to make a name for themselves and they wish to not be scattered over the face of the earth. Those are the definite motivations that we do know. But I think there may have been some other motivations as well. Let's go ahead and we'll turn over to Genesis 7.

Leave a bookmark here in case you forget how to get back here from Genesis 7. You probably won't. You'll be fine. It's not that far. And it won't take you that long to get back either. But Genesis 7, I always forget to tell you to leave a bookmark in it. But I want to look at a little bit of additional context because we want to keep in mind kind of where these individuals were coming from and ultimately what their background was and what it was that they had experienced.

And this is a little bit of speculation. I'm going to be upfront, completely and totally, on this. But Genesis 7, when you take a look at this account, Genesis 7, we'll pick it up in verse 17. So Genesis 7 and verse 17. It says, now the flood was on the earth 40 days.

So the flood had been taking place for 40 days at this point. Water had finally reached the point now where the ark was lifted off the ground. So it reached the point now where it rained for 40 days and 49s. The water had increased. It lifted the ark up and it rose high above the earth. It says, the waters prevailed. It's kind of a way of saying they increased or they rose. The waters prevailed and they greatly increased on the earth.

It says, all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered. So now the waters are reaching a point where what we would consider to be hills and we don't know what their definition of hills were. I know what my definition of hills are. They go out east. They don't have mountains out east. They have hills compared to what we have out here. But we saw that the water now has prevailed and risen over the high hills, it says, under the whole heaven were covered.

It says, the waters prevailed exceedingly on the earth. It says, the waters prevailed 15 cubits upward and the mountains were covered. So it reached a point in which it was 15 cubits over the tops of the mountains. It reached a point where all of those animals, all those people, all those things that were out there did not have a dry spot to put their feet.

And if you do that long enough, the entire population of the earth will drown. For reference, 15 cubits is 23 feet. There's not a whole lot of things that can stretch 23 feet, maybe really tall giraffes. But there's not a whole lot of things that can manage to extend that distance.

But what it says, it says, they prevailed 15 cubits upward and the mountains were covered. All flesh died that moved on the earth. Bird and cattle and beasts and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth and every man. In all whose nostril was the breath of the spirit of life, all that was on the dry land died. So he destroyed all living things that were on the face of the ground, both man and cattle, creeping thing and bird of the air.

They were destroyed from the earth. Only Noah and those who were with him in the ark remained alive and the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days. So a number of years before the event that we see in Genesis 11, right, they're stopping in the plane of Shinar and raising a city and a tower. A number of years before that event took place, life on earth was destroyed. Life on earth was destroyed, complete and total. Every animal that moved on the earth, all of humanity drowned. Except for those that were on board the ark with Noah. Except those animals that were taken on board with Noah.

So the descendants that were building this tower came from Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ultimately, they came from this lineage that survivors, so to speak, of the flood. These three sons were survivors of the flood. And as those stories were told and as those stories were passed on from generation to generation, which I'm certain they were, you know, you don't just not tell that story, right? So those stories are going to be passed on. But in verses 18 and 19 of Genesis 7, what we see is that the depth of the water above the tops of the mountains was 23 feet and it was long enough for those on earth to drown apart from what God spared.

Were those in Babel building an insurance policy? Were the people of Babel building an insurance policy? Again, total speculation. I'm just asking the question. Was the goal for them to build a tower that could reach into the heavens so that if God went back on His promise, they could climb to safety in the tower that they had built?

Was that a factor in this decision? Or was it simply grandeur? Was it simply making that name? Making the consolidation? Getting them settled in one area? There's an extra-biblical book known as the Book of Jubilees. It's part of the Apocrypha. You know, apocryphal books, any of those things that are extra-biblical that are not canon have to be taken with gigantic grains of salt. They're not canonized. They've not been put through the proving process. But the Book of Jubilees was a book that is contained in a section known as the Apocrypha. It contains an account of the Tower of Babel.

It actually contains an account of the Tower of Babel. It's kind of interesting. Again, you don't base doctrine on it, but it's kind of interesting to look at. According to the Book of Jubilees, if their measurements and their timelines are correct – and that's a big if – if they are correct, the Book of Jubilees claims that the Tower of Babel took 43 years to construct.

They claim that it attained a height of 5,433 cubits and two palms. I don't know what a palm is. Cubits 18 inches most of the time. But 5,433 cubits and two palms, which is an overall height of 8,150 feet. That's the claim in the Book of Jubilees, that the Tower of Babel rose to a height of 8,150 feet.

For perspective, could you bring up the first slide on our thing again, please? If it's not already hidden and set away through our sound guy curveball. So as he's bringing that up, perhaps, as he gets that up there, 8,150 feet is more than three times the height of that building right there. More than three times the height of that building. Again, if the Book of Jubilees' accurate and can be believed. There's another apocryphal book – go ahead and pop it back down. Thank you, Odell. There's another apocryphal book called The Third Apocalypse of Baruch, which has a much more modest claim.

It claims that the height of the tower was 463 cubits, which is approximately 700 feet in height, which, if that were accurate, that would make it the tallest human structure on Earth until the Eiffel Tower was built in 1889. The Eiffel Tower beat that by a little bit, but it wasn't until 1889 that that building – or that tower, rather – was created.

There are medieval sources who claim to have talked to people in those areas who passed down stories and legends with regards to sizes. They've gone and looked at areas, etc. Some medieval sources have claimed heights of anywhere from 3.6 miles to 8 miles to 4.7 miles in height, with those same medieval sources claiming that the tower was 50 to 80 miles in circumference. Those are the medieval claims, which an individual – if you even take a random assortment of those numbers and we look at them – got some people thinking, is that even structurally possible?

There's a gentleman, his name is G.E. Gordon, he's a professor, wrote a book on structures and how they stand. Sounds like great bedtime reading, but he claimed the following. He said, based on the crushed strength of brick and stone – so if you take a brick or stone and you submit it to enough pressure and weight, it will crush eventually – based on the crushed strength of brick and stone, if you stack them directly on top of each other, it would give a maximum height of 1.3 miles before the bricks underneath were to be crushed.

That's his claim. But he said, if the walls tapered as they rose – which we know from what we understand from history that it did – as the walls tapered as they rose, he said, and this is his quote, that they could well have been built to a height where the men of Shinar would run short of oxygen and have difficulty in breathing before the brick walls crushed between their own dead weight. Those of you that have mountaineered before, how high does it take you before you start noticing shortness of breath?

About 6,000 feet, 7,000 feet, typically. So J.E. Gordon, his claim, is that that could have been structurally possible, up to those kinds of heights. Now was it? I don't know. I have no idea. I wasn't there. But this is what some of the sources claim. So what he made the point though, Professor Gordon made the point, that structurally, an extremely tall tower made of ancient brick is possible from a load standpoint. Now whether it was 700 feet high, whether it was 1.6 miles high, whether it was 8 miles high, what we do know is the men who built it built it in a spirit of rebellion against God. That was the reason for its being built. It was constructed to make a name for themselves. And what that tells us is that God's name wasn't good enough. That's what that tells us. It wasn't enough to have God's name on them as his people. What they needed to be was their own God, in a sense. They needed to make their own name for themselves. You can imagine, I mean, what this thing must have looked like in the ancient world, this big imposing tower on the plains of Shinar. You go back to Genesis 11. Again, don't get lost going back. Genesis 11. What we're going to see is God's response. Okay, so we see God looks down, sees this tower, says verse 5, the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. I want you to notice this statement, verse 6. It says, the Lord said, indeed, the people are one and they all have one language and this is what they begin to do. And now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. Realize the impact of that statement. That is God going, huh, wow. This is substantial. We need to maybe stop this because if we don't, there's no telling what they're going to do.

In that sense.

So he says, now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. He says, verse 7, come, let us note that, let us go down in their confused their language so that they may not understand one another speech. I've often wondered what it would have been like to be a fly on the wall in the process of that building like you're building it here. And you turn to the guy and you go, hey, hand me another brick. And he goes, and you go, what?

Hand me a brick.

And you hear the guy over here. And it's just the confusions getting louder and louder and louder. That would have been kind of interesting to see, I think.

But says, so the Lord scattered them abroad from there, verse 8, over the face of all the earth and they ceased building the city. It says, therefore its name is called Babel because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the earth. God realized with a single common language that anything that they would conceive would be possible for them.

Confusing the languages was a way to be able to prevent continued disobedience, to prevent continued rebelliousness without destroying them entirely. But interestingly, it also achieves God's ultimate goal of separating and distributing them into their nations. You know, they said, no, no, no, no, no.

We're not getting scattered. And God goes, yeah, you are.

Yeah, you definitely are.

We are going to scatter you.

So interesting to see that God's will ultimately is what is upheld.

What we see from the whole entire story, what we get out of this entire story is the unfortunate reality that the post-flood man was just as rebellious and just as wicked as the pre-flood man.

That's the unfortunate aspect of the story. And God promised not to destroy his creation again. And this time there was a different route taken. There was a different process that underwent beginning with the line of Shem, beginning with the patriarch Abraham and a covenant and promises that God would bring about mankind's salvation through that lineage.

Because what we see is that nothing really changed in the heart of man between the front end of the flood and the back end of the flood.

Now, I don't think it's coincidence that Genesis 12 immediately follows the story in Genesis 11.

I don't think it's coincidence because here you have in Genesis 11, this story of disobedience. You have this story of rebelliousness.

And then as soon as Genesis 12 starts, you have God beginning to work with Abraham going, hey, Abraham, leave everything that you know and go to this place I tell you. And Abraham says, okay.

I mean, I'm sure he, you know, said something different than that.

But basically, yeah, all right, fine.

I'll go.

You see a very stark difference in the way that God now begins to work with one lineage of individuals at first, but with the covenantal promises that through the seed from that lineage, the whole world would be blessed.

That through Abraham's son Isaac and that lineage would come the Messiah that was promised all the way back in Genesis 3 ultimately would come for salvation and deliverance through the world. And realistically, that is only through him that that deliverance is possible.

We see man come out of the flood and what we see is them spread across the globe and continually push God aside.

Man goes and they continually push God aside. They begin to trust in everything else but God.

They trust in their own might.

They trust in their own strength.

They believe that they could fight their way then out of any problem they encountered. All I got to do is be stronger and more powerful than the guy next to me and we're good.

I don't have to rely on God.

I just need a bigger army.

Right? They began to trust in their wealth, began to trust in their station. They began to trust in the influence that they had. They could broker these deals and alliances and all these other things. They could influence or buy their way out of whatever challenges they found or allow their alliance to come in and help them.

They built these huge cities, large cities with walls that were two to three chariots wide. You could run two to three chariots down the tops of some of these walls sometimes.

Or they built walls that were so high they were perceived to be unscalable. You couldn't possibly climb to the top of these walls. Fortresses that couldn't be penetrated. Armies so large they couldn't be conquered.

Towers and fortresses that protected them.

And all of their empires still fell.

Regardless of all of those things, all of their empires fell.

All great empires fall.

In some ways, the prophecy that Nebuchadnezzar saw in Daniel 2 is illustrated to show us this. You can turn there if you'd like. We're going to go to Daniel 2, verse 44.

We're not going to go through the full prophecy itself. We're just going to take a look at.

We've got a lot of materials on that on the website. We've got a lot of information on that out there.

What I want to look at is God's promise of what's going to take place at the end of all of these empires.

But in Daniel 2, Nebuchadnezzar sees this statue.

You know, it's a very specific statue.

Ultimately, he sees all of these, you know, empires that were going to succeed one another. They were ultimately be overthrown by the next.

And what we see in this prophecy and what we see throughout history is that civilizations crumble.

Economies fail. Natural disasters strike.

Famines, wars, they take place.

And in their wake, nations are no more.

Right? Nations rise. Nations fall.

God puts people in authority. He removes people from authority.

God is in this process.

Babylon physically is nowhere to be found today.

Like in a sense of a continuing empire today.

Babylon is no longer a physical empire today.

Its ideology, its spiritual metaphor, all that still very much continues.

But the physical kingdom of Babylon, by and large, is gone.

And so is that of the Medo-Persians.

So is that of the Greeks.

So that of Rome. Well, at least as it once was.

Rome's kind of done this thing where it keeps resurging over the years.

We're kind of in the midst now of this resurgence of the Roman Empire with these toes of clay and toes of iron that are part of this statue. But where I want to pick it up is in verse 44.

Daniel 2 and verse 44 says, in the days of these Kings, in the days of the Kings of these toes, the rulers of this kind of divided clay and iron empire that we see here at the end of the statue, in the days of these Kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed.

And the kingdom shall not be left to other people.

It shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms.

And it shall stand forever.

This kingdom will not fail.

It shall stand forever.

In as much as you saw, the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands and it broke in pieces, the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold. The great God has made known to the king what will come to pass after this. He says, Daniel tells Nebuchadnezzar, this dream is certain and its interpretation is sure.

That final kingdom, the kingdom of God, will never be destroyed.

It is not a kingdom that will fail. It is not a kingdom that will be susceptible to the sands of time.

It will shatter all of these other kingdoms and it will last forever.

And you know, in that sense, no amount of physical preparation will prevent this from coming true.

There is no army.

There is no fortification.

There is no amount of wealth, no amount of influence, no gathering of wealth, power station, armies, etc., that will prevent this from taking place. When God says go, it will happen.

And the nations of this world will be defeated.

But there's not any amount of preparation that can solve that.

That doesn't mean preparation is a bad thing. I want to be kind of clear.

Nothing wrong with preparing.

Scripture speaks to the principle of the importance of preparation, vigilance, and making sure that you care for your family in times of difficulty.

But when you begin to trust in your preparations, when you begin to trust in your own strength, your own wealth, more than you trust in God, that's when it crosses a line into idolatry.

All of those things are going to fail.

Every last one of those things will fail.

It talks at the end about the gold in the streets.

All those things are going to fail.

Only God remains.

You know, it's wise to keep some food on hand. It's wise to keep some funds on hand in the event of an emergency.

Does it make sense to stock a bunker with five years of rations?

600 pallets of ammunition, whiskey and cigarettes for bartering with the, you know, the post-apocalyptic population? No.

No, it doesn't.

It definitely doesn't.

Let's turn over the book of Proverbs real quick.

Book of Proverbs here as we begin to close today.

Book of Proverbs. We see an incredible amount of wisdom that's contained in this book. Solomon records these Proverbs and frequently these Proverbs talk about the strength of God and talk about who and what God is. We're going to pick up and read Proverbs 18 and verse 10.

Proverbs 18 and verse 10.

So Proverbs 18, we'll pick it up in verse 10 here with the words that are recorded.

And I'm going to include verse 12, 10, 11 and 12.

It's sometimes hard with the Proverbs to know where one proverb ends and the next one starts.

12 is loosely related. I think it fits with 10 and 11.

It could be its own, but I think it fits with 10 and 11.

18 verse 10 says, the name of the Lord, the name of the Lord is a strong tower.

The righteous run to it and are safe.

The rich man's wealth is his strong city and like a high wall in his own esteem.

Before destruction, the heart of a man is haughty and before honor is humility.

Solomon writes, the name of the Lord is a strong tower.

That word is the same word that's used in Genesis 11 and verse four, the Hebrew word shim, which again translates as name directly translates as standing, reputation, renown, fame, you know, those sorts of things.

Like if you take somebody and you go out into the, out into society and you say, oh yeah, my, my dad was so and so.

Hopefully that means good things.

Right. Hopefully there's a good reputation there and they go, oh, hey, yeah, we know your guy was, your dad was a person of honor. You know, your dad was somebody who kept his word or did this or that, you know, rather than, oh, that cheat still owes me money.

You know, you hope that's not the, you hope that's not the reputation that goes out there.

But he writes that the name of the Lord is a strong tower.

When the people of Babylon said, let us make a name for ourselves, it's that same word.

And so this could mean that God's name directly. It could mean that it could refer to his reputation. It could refer to his standing, his renown.

What we see is in God, there is strength in God. There is strength. There is no need to make any other name for yourself. You already have the strongest possible thing that is backing you in that sense. You don't have to go out and make your own name in that sense.

You don't have to distance yourself or separate yourself in that way from God's name.

But brethren, it asks, it kind of begs a couple of questions. And that is when we think about God being strength, where do we turn when times get tough?

Where do we turn when times get tough?

Where do we turn when we're scared?

When we're maybe uncertain?

Like we're not real sure where to go. Do we turn inward?

Do we turn to our own strength, our own wisdom, our own knowledge?

Or do we turn to God?

Do we consult his word? Do we determine the scriptural principles that we see to help us make the decision? Do we pray God's will in that scenario? Do we ask him to help guide that decision?

Do we rely on him?

Or do we turn to our own strength?

Do we turn to our own wealth or to our own preparations?

You know, unfortunately, the attitude of Babylon as a city is alive and well today.

You know, we see it in the world around us. We've been asked to come out of this type of attitude, this sort of thing.

We see this attitude of pride. We see this attitude of rebelliousness. We see this attitude of all these things, of come, let us build a city.

Let us make a name for ourselves. Let's ascend into heaven.

At the end of the day, that attitude is really saying we don't need God.

We don't need God.

There is no problem that human ingenuity can't solve.

Except that of the human heart.

We haven't figured that out.

We don't even come close.

Well, I mean, heart transplants, but you know what I mean?

You know, changing the heart of stone into a heart of flesh.

Conversion.

We haven't figured that out yet.

God's offered us the opportunity to be a part of his family, but it has to be done his way.

Has to be done his way.

We can't reach out and take it.

You know, those that built that tower, they couldn't just climb that tower and ascend into heaven and claim it for themselves.

God has given us the way. He's given us the truth. He's given us the life.

Christ died for all of mankind.

God has given us the ability to be reconciled to him, but it has to be done on his terms, not on ours.

We don't get to dictate the terms.

We get to submit ourselves to the covenant that has been laid out in front of us. That's our option in this process.

Today marks the 15th anniversary of the opening of the Burj Khalifa.

It'll be eclipsed by another tower someday.

In fact, there's one under construction right now in Saudi Arabia in the town of Jeddah, known as the Jeddah Tower.

I'm sure at some point it'll be named after someone who donated an obscene amount of money to it, but it's slated to be finished in 2028.

So it was supposed to be done in 2020 and then a pandemic happened.

So 2028 is the new time that it should be finished and it will beat the Burj Khalifa and it will be the first man-made structure to reach one kilometer in height.

So it'll be 3,200-ish feet when it's all said and done.

Now, unless the figures in the book of Jubilees are accurate, in which case the Tower of Babel was first.

So, yeah, I don't know.

Who knows? But, you know, at the end of the day, Burj Khalifa, Jeddah Tower, Petronas Towers, Freedom One, even, they're all going to fall.

They're all going to fall.

They're all going to crumble.

Someday the empires that they're a part of will crumble. The vast wealth of those countries will collapse.

They will cease to be and the sands will reclaim it all.

Just has been done with empire after empire after empire before.

These testaments to mankind's ingenuity, to mankind's boundless potential will fail when that stone that was cut out of the mountain without hands breaks into pieces the kingdoms of this world. God's name is a strong tower.

It's in him that we find strength and protection and deliverance.

Blessed be the name of the Lord.