The Tower of Babel

Summer Blockbusters
July 31, 2022

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar 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.” —Genesis 11:1-4

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” —Genesis 1:27-28

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. —Genesis 1:5-9

WILL WE LIVE TO MAKE OUR NAME GREAT OR GOD’S NAME GREAT?

“Pride is the illusion that we are competent to run our own lives, achieve our own sense of self-worth and find a purpose big enough to give us meaning in life without God.” —Tim Keller

LIE #1: I know better than God.

LIE #2: I am better than other people.

“Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition is gone, pride is gone.” —C.S. Lewis

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.” —Genesis 12:1-3

Truth: Jesus has a better name.

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. —Philippians 2:9-11

A vision of God’s greatness and a zeal for his clout and fame are the only things that will displace a zeal for personal clout and fame. In a world consumed with personal glory, Jesus shows us the way to live.His invitation is to lose our life, to renounce our obsessive concern with ourselves and make the glory of God our consuming desire. Life and freedom are found not in satisfying the insatiable demands of our ego but in centering our lives entirely outside of ourselves, bigger than ourselves…becoming less preoccupied with us and more preoccupied with God. —J.R. Vassar

After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” —Revelation 7:9-10

Whose name will you make great?