SERMON:
Throughout the day, radio operators
on the Titanic had been receiving warnings about ice in the area. The
captain of the Titanic responded to these reports by turning the ship slightly
to the south. He did not, however, make any orders to slow its speed.
At 9:40 pm, a nearby ship reported
that they had seen a large ice field full of pack ice as well as a great number
of large icebergs. The radio operator on the Titanic, however, felt no
need to pass this information on to the ship’s bridge.
About an hour later, another nearby
ship reported that they had stopped when it became clear that they were
surrounded by ice. The Titanic’s radio operator responded to this
warning with the following message, “Shut up! Shut up! I am busy…”
About forty minutes later the ship
that was called “unsinkable” had scraped along the side of an immense iceberg,
and was now filling with water.
Two hours later, the Titanic was
on the bottom of the Atlantic ocean.
Some would say that an iceberg sunk
the Titanic. Others would argue it was human pride that took this ship
down.
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Pride is an exaggerated opinion of
one’s own importance, intelligence, or ability. Pride can be secretly cherished
in the mind, or displayed outwardly by what a person says and does.
Pride is problem for mankind today,
as it has been from the beginning. Countless tragedies can be traced back to
human pride.
The part of God’s Word which we’re
going to study today is all about pride.
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But, before we read from the Bible,
let’s get a feel for where we are in history. Our reading for today is a
fascinating and ancient account. It takes place somewhere between Noah’s Flood,
and Abraham’s birth. That is, it takes place somewhere around 4,300 years ago.
Noah’s family has come off the Ark
in the region of the world that we call Palestine. They have continued life.
Their families have grown. There are now many people on the earth. But these
people are all in one place. There are no nations yet, only this one group of
human beings. They are the only tribe. They are the only people.
Let’s see what happens.
Genesis 11:1-9 (NASB)
1 Now the whole earth used the same language and
the same words.
2 It
came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of
Shinar and settled there.
3 They
said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.” And they used brick for stone, and they used tar
for mortar.
4 They
said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make
for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of
the whole earth.”
5 The
Lord came down to see the city and
the tower which the sons of men had built.
6 The
Lord said, “Behold, they are one people,
and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now
nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them.
7 “Come,
let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not
understand one another’s speech.”
8 So
the Lord scattered them abroad
from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the
city.
9 Therefore
its name was called Babel, because there the Lord
confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face
of the whole earth.
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The first thing about this account
that I find amazing is that these people are our ancestors. Like I said before,
at this point, there weren’t any nations yet, no ethnic groups, no differing
languages. This is the human race right here, from which we all have descended.
They’ve been living in Palestine,
when they decide for some reason, to migrate east. And the place they finally
decide to settle down in is Shinar—that is, Babylon. If you want to find the
place they went to on a modern map, just look about 58 miles south of Baghdad,
Iraq. That’s where this story unfolds.
We learn just a little about the
culture and technology of the time. Mankind had developed various building
methods by this point. They weren’t just tenting or building stick-frame houses,
they had learned how to process shale and fire uniform bricks from it. Bricks
that were strong enough that they could undertake a huge tower project.
They had the infrastructure to pull
this project off. They had the architects to plan it, the foremen to direct it,
the workers needed to build it, and the food sources to fuel all these people.
Furthermore, they had decided this
was a good place to settle down. You don’t build in brick if you’re planning to
leave anytime soon.
Verse 4
gives us their intent,
“Come, let us build for ourselves a
city, and a tower whose top will reach into
heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered
abroad over the face of the whole earth”
(Genesis 11:4 NASB).
Unified under one language, Mankind
saw the potential for great power in community and numbers. And they were
beginning to dream about what they might do with that power.
But they needed something to keep
them together. Something more than one language must bind them together where
they might grow more and more powerful. Someone posed the idea of a great city,
and a great monument. A project that was grand enough to display their great
strength and ingenuity. Something to give them prestige and keep the future
generations here, like a huge magnet.
We can see their pride pretty
clearly, can’t we? What we don’t see is any thought of God. These were the
descendants of the faithful Noah! You would think that they would have passed
down the knowledge of their Creator. You’d think that they would have passed
down the Promise of the Savior from sin that God had made. No doubt there were
followers of the LORD among them who knew these things. But, still, we find no
mention of a great monument to God. No temple plans. No place of worship. The city
and the tower were to glorify mankind only.
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One of the characteristics of human
pride is that it always seeks to put Man in the place of God.
God’s plan was this: Make a world.
Fill it with human life. Bless that human world so that it would praise its Creator.
Man’s plan was this: Make a city.
Keep the people and the power in one place. Build a monument to glorify Man.
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When
Noah’s family stepped off the Ark and sacrificed a thank offering to God
for saving them from the flood, God told them that He would bless them. And
furthermore, God told them to go and spread throughout the world. In planning
this city and tower, the descendants of Noah were forgetting, rebelling even,
against God.
But spreading mankind throughout the
world wasn’t the main thing God was concerned about here. When God saw their
plans beginning to be fulfilled He said,
“Behold, they
are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they
began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for
them” (Genesis 11:6 NASB).
God saw their pride. That it was
growing. That it would continue to grow as their project progressed. God knew
that pride of this kind had no room for Him. Pride of this kind takes the
abilities and blessings that God gives and uses them to squeeze Him out of the
picture. And so, God took action to limit Mankind’s destructive pride by
humbling him and dispersing his power.
The LORD simply took away their
unifying language. And their plans fell apart. With no way to overcome this
hurdle, they began to disperse through the land, and the country, and the world—as
God had told them to do in the first
place. And while their pride was not extinguished altogether, it was severely
limited in its scope and power.
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Today, man still dreams his dreams
of glory, power and prestige. We’ve split the atom. We treat cancer. We
transplant organs and limbs. We talk with each other on phones that reach
across the globe and beyond. We create technological wonders like face
recognition software, and drones which kill from above with terrible precision.
And we still build towers to show off our grand abilities. They stand in every
major city.
But when one empire rises to high,
the others turn and tear it down, and pride is brought down to the dirt once
more. Towers fall, ships sink, and monuments to the greatness of Mankind topple
over and rot in the dirt.
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I may sound like a bit of a negative
guy, but there’s a point to all this. God made mankind as the crown of His
creation. But when man uses his abilities to serve his pride, God interposes
and brings the prideful down.
And God doesn’t do this because He’s
a mean, spiteful God. He does this because He loves us. God alone belongs on
the throne of our hearts, and God will do anything He can to keep us from
putting ourselves there.
When our lives end, we must stand
before God and be held accountable for what we’ve done. Only the humble person
who relies on God for forgiveness will enter Heaven. That’s why God brings the
prideful down.
The prideful, God humbles. But the
humble, God lifts up. This is why God brings the prideful down, so He can lift us
up.
This is why God’s Bible talks so
much about our sins. We need to be humbled. We need to see that while we think
ourselves pretty good, God judges us by a higher standard. He pronounces us completely
unacceptable. Utterly sinful.
When we accept this truth, God shows
us His plan of salvation. He shows us that even though our sins disqualify us
for heaven, His Son has covered those sins by suffering Hell in our place and
dying on the cross. To those humbled by the knowledge of sin, God gives the
gift of forgiveness and eternal life in Christ Jesus.
If we depend on our own strength,
our strength will fail us. But if we depend on God’s strength, we’ll find that
our weakness is more than compensated for by the power of God.
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Today is Pentecost Sunday. It’s the
day that we remember how the Holy Spirit made His power known in Jerusalem. You
remember the story.
After Jesus had risen from the dead,
He told His followers to go and share the message of sins forgiven through His cross.
Go and tell sinners that in Christ they are cleansed and given a place in God’s
family. On the first Pentecost, the Holy Spirit gave the followers of Jesus the
ability to speak in languages they had never learned. And they used this power
to speak the message. Thousands came to faith and were saved from hell that
day.
Essentially, the curse of Babel was
reversed. Where communication had been lost due to Man’s pride, communication
was now restored miraculously so that God’s mercy might be proclaimed.
On the day when God looked down on
Babel, He toppled Man’s tower of pride. When God looked down on Pentecost, He
lifted mankind up by the gift of forgiveness in Christ, received through faith
in His Name.
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We began today by remembering how
one iceberg sunk one of man’s most glorious ships by brushing against it in the
Atlantic. But pride is more dangerous than any iceberg. Icebergs melt in the
warmth o f the sun. Human pride only melts in the light of God’s truth.
Take this lesson away with you
today. Our strength and intelligence is nothing when we set it against God. Our
sinfulness makes anything we might be proud about into absolutely nothing. In
other words, we are WORTHLESS because of our sin. BUT, in Christ we are
declared PRICELESS, because God’s own Son gave His life to redeem us and make
us His own.
Discard your human pride whenever
you see it, and let Christ be your boast instead. Like Paul wrote in his letter
to the Galatian Christians…
“14 May I never
boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has
been crucified to me, and I to the world”
(Galatians 6:14 NIV).
Amen.
The peace of God which surpasses all
understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
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