Thru the Bible

Steve: Last time on Through the Bible, Dr. J. Vernon McGee told us the Tower of Babel was a rallying point of defiance and rebellion against God. Well, in this study, we're going to hear what happens when man rejects God and focuses all his attention on himself.

I'm Steve Schwetz, welcoming you aboard the Bible bus for another great adventure in God's Word. Now, before we begin in Genesis chapter 11, I want to ask you to join us in honoring America's National Day of Prayer. Philippians 4:6 and 7 says, "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."

And 1 Timothy 2 says, "Prayer for our nations is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." So as you know, we got a lot to pray about for our country, don't we? And really, not much has changed since the stories we're hearing about in Genesis. Dr. McGee often commented on this subject, so let's listen to a few of those thoughts now.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: We have seen that God has given to mankind generally a morality, even before the Ten Commandments were given, but then He spelled it out in great detail.

That morality is the morality on which He judged the world twice, by a flood and then again at the Tower of Babel. And today, we are seeing the breakdown of that morality. That's the morality that this nation was founded upon, Bible morality. We've heard about the all-American boy. Well, he was raised on this kind of a morality.

May I say to you, we hear a great deal today about atheism and about those that have rejected the morality of God, and they don't want to hear anything about it. May I say that there's nothing quite as un-American as that. For our nation was founded on this morality, and the warning is that God judges nations that reject this morality.

Steve: Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank You for Your Word that guides and directs us. Would You open our eyes and our minds so that we can hear from You, and then help us to take to heart what we discover to be true, so that we can live each day for Your glory. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Here's Dr. J. Vernon McGee with our study of Genesis 11 on Through the Bible.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Now friends, last time I only got down through the third verse of the 11th chapter of Genesis. And if you have your Bible, we'll pick up at the fourth verse. Now I did read verse four last time, but I want to begin there today. And this is the Tower of Babel that men built. It was built, as we saw, of brick and slime, not of stone and mortar. To begin with, it wasn't down in that valley.

And I read now verse four, "And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach under heaven. And let us make us a name lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." Now the emphasis here is upon us. Let us, let us, you notice. A bad case, as we said last time, of perpendicular itis.

But apparently, it was Nimrod that led in this movement. He was the builder of Babel, and evidently the Tower of Babel. And it was to be a place for him to rear a world empire that is opposed to God. And in order to realize his ambition and make his dream come true, there are two factors and features that are essential.

He needed a center of unity, a sort of headquarters, as it were, a capital, a place to assemble, a place to look to, as it were, and that was the city of Babel. And then there had to be a rallying point, not just geographical but psychological, that which gives motive or reason, a spark, an inspiration. Sort of like, "Rally around the flag, boys!" or a song or a battle cry.

Remember the Maine! Remember Pearl Harbor! There must be some impelling and compelling motivation. There must be a monument. Lenin's tomb is where communism meets. And in that day it's the Tower of Babel. And the Tower of Babel, "Let us make us," is defiance and rebellion against God. "Let us make us a name," overweening ambition.

Now, let's see what the Tower of Babel was not. It was not a place for man to go in time of high water. He wasn't building above the flood stage. That's a very trivial and I think puerile interpretation. After all, Lenin's tomb is not a place to go when the Volga River overflows. This tower revealed the arrogant, defiant, and rebellious attitude of man against God.

God said to man, "Scatter over the earth and replenish the earth." Man said, "Nothing doing. We're not going to scatter. We're going to get together. We're through with You." And the Tower of Babel was against God. Now, it's not just a symbol, it's not non-religious. It was religious. It's a ziggurat. All through that valley, as we've indicated, the ruins remain today. As I told you, I have a picture of the ruins of the ziggurat that was at Ur of the Chaldees.

And this was the place where they worshipped the creature rather than the Creator. They worshipped the sun, moon and stars. There was a runway on the outside of it. It was more or less solid. Some were round, some were square. But this runway led to the top and on top they worshipped the sun, moon and stars. After all, when you could see the sun, moon and stars, you're not going to have a flood. And God had been pretty mean to send a flood according to them.

Now, will you notice God's reaction, "And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one and they have all one language, and this they begin to do and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they had imagined to do." Now, this is a tremendous statement. You see, language has been a tremendous barrier.

And they are now going to attempt to build a tower and get together. They're all one language. And you find here fallen nature in spite of the flood. Man's totally depraved. And the question is now, God cannot ignore this rebellion. And this is rebellion against God.

And so God's going to put up a protective wall. He's going to throw up a wall, and He has to do it for several reasons. One reason is, man is a very capable creature. He can go to the moon, he can fly in a jet plane. I'm amazed sitting five miles in the air in a jet plane being served a delicious dinner.

I just can't get over it myself. I'll be honest with you. It seems unbelievable. Man's done that, friends. Man's a very competent creature. Now, you can see what he would do with one language if they all came together against God. So God put up a barrier. And so, notice what He did. He says in verse seven, "Go to, let us go down." Man said, "Let us." Well, God says, "Let us go down and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech."

"So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth, and they left off to build the city. Therefore, the name of it is called Babel, confusion, because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth." Now man is scattered over the face of the earth.

And he's scattered now because here they are building the Tower of Babel, they can get together, and now they can't understand one another. You know, language barrier is a barrier and a wall that's higher than the Great Wall of China. It's higher than the Berlin Wall, more effective. It is that which separates people, and it's stronger than any national border or any ocean, the language barrier, where there's no communication.

Now the question has always been raised, in fact a great many try to say, "Well, this took place gradually." Well, it says that God confounded their language. So right there, as they were building, they couldn't understand each other, and they went in every direction. Now you have here this tremendous thing that takes place. Here's a speaking in tongues, and they couldn't understand each other. Also, it's a miracle of hearing as well as speaking.

Because you have a miracle of tongues, our ears here, they spoke a different language and the ear couldn't hear what the other one was saying. Now frankly, this is something that God did, and the question arises, and I'd like to ask you the question: Was this a blessing in disguise or was it a curse upon man? Well, for God's purposes, it was a blessing.

For man's development away from God, it was definitely a judgment. And it's been a great hindrance, as you well know, down through the centuries. Man has been kept separate. And one of the things that's happening today through this matter of radio and TV and the jet plane is the walls are being broken down. And the walls of Jericho are certainly come tumbling down today.

And that is the reason that I believe that God's coming down again in judgment is because of that. But I'd like to put over against this tongues movement, the day of Pentecost. That was another great tongues movement. And at that time, why we find the gospel is given in all the languages that understood there. It wasn't given in an unknown tongue. That never was a tongues movement to begin with.

And you find on the Day of Pentecost, God's giving His answer to the Tower of Babel. God is saying to mankind now, "I have a gospel and a message for you, and I'm coming to you with the gospel in your language." And that is the thing that God has done. And today the Bible is probably gone into more languages. Well, not probably, it has than any other book. It's gone into more languages than any other book.

And today, it's being translated, and the gospel is being brought to literally hundreds of tribes throughout the world today. You see, the gospel is for all mankind. And the reason and the purpose for the talking in tongues is to let the human race know that God had answered the Tower of Babel, and He had a redemption for man now. The mission has been accomplished.

No longer necessary today for man to try to work out his salvation. He is now to turn to God and listen to God's message. And the gospel therefore is for you, whoever you are today, and whatever tongue you speak, it's for you. It's for the nations of the world. And we're told that finally in the book of Revelation, they gathered there in His presence out of all the tribes of the earth.

Now that brings us to the end of the Tower of Babel. And frankly, I think that's about as far as we care to go with that. There are many other things that we'd like to see. Now you will notice that we're going to take up the line of Shem because it's the line of Shem that we're going to follow. Verse 10, "These are the generations of Shem." Shem was a hundred years old. And then when you follow down through this, why you have his genealogy given, and you come way down to verse 24, and we read, "And Nahor lived nine and twenty years and begat Terah. And Nahor lived after he begat Terah a hundred and nineteen years, and he begat sons and daughters." But you see, we're following Terah. Why Terah? Well, verse 26, "And Terah lives seventy years and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran."

Now, we're going to follow Abram's line. You see, we're following the line of Shem, and we're going actually right through the Bible, following this line. In other words, the Word of God is going to begin now and go directly to the Cross of Christ. That's exactly. God has put down all of this as preliminary. And you see that God now has demonstrated to man that he's in sin.

There at Cain and Abel, we find that Cain would not acknowledge that he was a sinner. You have pride of life there. And then at the flood, you see the sin of the flesh. They were given over to the sins of the flesh. They were indulging in violence, and every thought and imagination was evil. And they were blind to the need of the person of Christ. They were deaf to His claim, dead to God, dead in trespasses and sins.

And God gave an invitation through Noah. Those are the sins of the flesh at the flood. And then here at the Tower of Babel, it's the sin of the will. May I say, it's rebellion against God. This is the Tower of Babel. And do you have a Tower of Babel, your own little Tower of Babel that you've built away from God and are you in rebellion against Him? Well, it's natural for human nature to be in rebellion against God.

The little boy, he was really very cantankerous. Even it was a rainy evening, and he was really cutting up. His mother was having a great deal of trouble with him. And finally, she just had to get her little boy, little Willie, and she put him in the corner, and sat him down with his face to the corner, and told him to sit there. And she left him in the room, and she went out into the living room with the rest of the family.

And after a while, why she heard a noise in there and she said to him, "Willie, are you standing up?" And he says, "No, Mom, I'm sitting down, but I'm standing up on the inside of me." Well, believe me, friends, a lot of men today and women standing up on the inside of them against God, their own little Tower of Babel. Now, we're following this line that's going to lead to Christ.

Verse 27, "These are the generations of Terah." You see, we're following the families. "These are the families of Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran. And Haran begat Lot. And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees. And Abram and Nahor took them wives. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai. The name of Nahor's wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah. But Sarai was barren. She had no child.

And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son's son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife. And they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees to go into the land of Canaan. And they came unto Haran and dwelt there." Haran means delay. "And the days of Terah were 205 years and Terah died in Haran." Now that is given to us to let us know that we're going to follow Abraham. His story will begin now in the next chapter. And that will tell to us the story now, and the book of Genesis, and for that matter, the Bible now takes a turn.

Now you will recall at the very beginning, we said that there is a great Grand Canyon that goes right down through the book of Genesis. The first 11 chapters are on one side, and then from Genesis 12 all the way through the 50th chapter is on the other side. In these first 11 chapters, we cover 2,000 years plus, as much as the rest of the Bible put together.

And it's put over against just 350 years from Genesis 12 to Genesis 50. Now you have in these first 11 chapters creation, Genesis 1 and 2, and the fall in Genesis 3 and 4, the flood in Genesis 5 and 9, the Tower of Babel, Genesis 10 and 11. And we have seen these four great events, and this has covered a great deal of territory, and it's the reason we've spent so much time here.

Now at chapter 12, we go to the other side of the Grand Canyon. The atmosphere is altogether different now, because we are going to slow down to a walk, just as we are in this five-year program. But not only that, the emphasis is from events, stupendous events, to great personalities or, shall I say, important personalities because some of them can't quite be called great. We have four here in Genesis, and of course there'll be more to follow in the other books of the Bible. Abraham is the man of faith, Genesis 12 through 23.

Then we're going to have after that Isaac, the beloved son, and then Jacob, the chosen and chastened son, and then Joseph, suffering in glory. The one who's more like Christ in his life and the events of his life than any man whoever lived. And yet he's never mentioned as a type of Christ anywhere in the Bible. Now, I just want to introduce us here to chapter 12 today. That'll be coming up next time.

We have here in chapter 12, and we probably ought to say this, we're halfway through the Bible, friends, chronologically. And the five-year program is just getting underway. And we're halfway between creation and the Cross. And now God has turned from the nations to a man through whom God will make a nation and in turn from that nation will bring the Savior of the world.

Now, Abraham, by any person's measuring rod, though, is a great man. He's one of the greatest men who's ever lived on this earth. And how do you measure great men even today? Well, to begin with, a man has to be famous. And Abraham certainly measures up to that. I think that he's probably the world's most famous man. Did you know that probably more people have heard of Abraham than have heard of anyone else, than the president of the United States, or any movie star, or any athlete?

More have heard of Abraham. May I add to that that the three great religions of the world go back to Abraham. And I'm having to put Christianity in that now. We have, first of all, Judaism, and then we have Islam, and then we have Christianity. They all go back to Abraham. Abraham's very important. Literally, there are millions of people in Asia and Africa today that have heard of Abraham.

But they never heard of the ones that make the headlines in our country today. That's one of the marks of a great man. Abraham was a great man. What is another mark of a great man? Well, he must be a generous man, a noble character. Well, can you imagine anyone that's more generous than Abraham? I doubt whether there's a man living today would have done what he did. When he and his nephew came back into that land, he told Lot to choose any portion he wanted, and he'd take what was left.

You think any man would do that today in a business deal? I don't think so. They don't even do it in the church today, friends, let alone in a hard-boiled business world today. But Abraham was a generous man. And if you ever noticed how generous he was with the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah? He told them, "I won't take the booty, I won't even take a shoestring from you or a piece of thread." God is the one he was looking to.

And then the third thing, a great man must live in a momentous time. He must be, as Napoleon said, a man of destiny. The man and the right time must meet at the crossroads of life. That was certainly true of Abraham. And then the fourth thing, I believe the world would agree with me up through the first three I've mentioned, but maybe not on this one. He must be a man of faith. And you'll notice that all great men, even when they're not Christian, have something that they believe in.

Now Abraham has been called a Columbus of faith. I doubt whether that's true. But we're going to see he had seven great visions and four backslidings. And each time brought him closer to God. And it's said of Abraham, the greatest thing that's said about him in the Bible is that he believed God. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness.

I mention all of this so that you will know next time when we take up Abraham in the 12th chapter, we are taking up one of the great men of all time, and the great man of either secular or sacred history. No one quite measures up to him who is just altogether human. And we'll be looking at him next time and spending some time talking about the man that's probably mentioned more than any other in the Word of God. So until next time, my beloved, may God richly bless you.

Steve: If you'd like to take your study in Genesis deeper, well, we'd like to help. You can visit us at TTB.org where you'll find an entire virtual library of resources available to you, including our Bible companions. Download your copy for free or order a print version of our New Testament Bible companions for group study online. Again, it's TTB.org or by calling 1-800-65-BIBLE. And don't forget, May is letter month, and we'd love for you to drop us a note. What's God shown you through His Word? Is there something specific that you've learned about Him or His nature? Maybe something that's begun to shape the way you live, pray, or trust Him more deeply? Why don't you tell us about it?

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