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Welcome to Daily Drive Time Devotions, hi this is Pastor Tom Holliday and we are
in week 3 of our look at the book of Genesis, we're going to look at the
chapters 11-15, remember we're doing a chapter a day rather than a chapter a
week as we walk through this incredible book, and it is an incredible book. I
was reminded in studying through Genesis of a article that Time Magazine did, oh
years ago, maybe 10 years ago, on the book of Genesis, it was the cover issue,
cover story, and in that article they talked about the value and the incredible
power of what Genesis has to say to us. One quote from that article was, "At
this moment of post-war confusion, about where we're going as a civilization,
with all kinds of murky religious ferment, it makes sense to do some stock
taking.

Let's go back to the book that started the whole shebang. " That's the truth,
Genesis has everything we need to make it through understanding who we are as
human beings and our deep need of God, and also look forward to what God's going
to do, we're going to talk about that this week, what God's going to do for us
in Jesus Christ. I also love, this is my favorite quote from that story in time,
"No day passes when we do not touch upon the stories of Genesis.

" That's the truth, there are stories about you, there are stories about me, and
about how God is at work in our lives, and none of those stories is quite so
personal, I think, to you and me today as Genesis chapter 11. It is a powerfully
personal story. With Genesis 11, we're going to end the first major section of
Genesis, the story of man's beginning on the earth.

We've heard about creation and sin and judgment the last couple of weeks, those
themes are going to be repeated in this chapter. Genesis 11 tells you and I
about one of man's highest achievements to that date, and it tells us about
God's feelings about that achievement. Genesis 11 tells us what God really wants
for man, it tells us what really God wants for you in your daily life.

In Genesis 11, man builds a great city, and you'd think God would be proud. His
reaction, however, shows us that God is more interested in building people than
he is in what people build. In Genesis 11, there's a tower that's built, we've
come to call it the Tower of Babel, because God confused the people's speech in
that place.

In that setting of what happens in that day, God says some things to the people
that you and I need to hear today. Listen to Genesis 11, verses one to nine.
"Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.

As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said
to each other, 'Come, let's make bricks, bake them thoroughly. ' They used brick
instead of stone and tar for mortar, and 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 and not be scattered over the whole face of the earth.

' But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men 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 be able to
understand each other.

' So the Lord scattered them from there all over 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 whole face of the earth.

" Now what is going on at the Tower of Babel? I mean, wouldn't God be proud?
Wouldn't he be grateful that we had built such a great city, that we had gone
from the Garden of Eden to building this great thing?

No, because of what was happening to people's hearts. God is all about people's
hearts. There are four phrases that are used in verse 4 that God judges.

"Come, let us build ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens,
so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of
the whole earth. " In what God does at the Tower of Babel, he judges each of
those phrases. Let's walk through them.

"First, let us build ourselves a city. " Now the Lord's judgment was that he
scattered them over the earth so that they didn't build the city. Doesn't God
want man to build?

Yes, but only if he is the recognized landlord of the completed project. And
that phrase, "build ourselves," that's what it's all about for mankind many
times. It's all about us.

They were constructing a testimony to man's self-reliance rather than an example
of man's dependence on God. And if you really want to know what God thinks about
building, make a contrast between the Ark and this city. Both of them were
building projects, and yet God blessed one and he judged the other.

The difference isn't what was being built, but why it was being built. One was
being built, the Ark, in response to God. The other was being built in the
absence of God.

Let's build ourselves. Without God's direction, our capacity to build, to
rearrange the creation that God has made, becomes our capacity for
self-destruction. Great medicines are also used in germ warfare.

Nuclear power is used in a nuclear bomb. Space travel becomes a space missile
platform. God actually did mankind a favor at Babel.

He slowed down our development. We were going too far, too fast for God's
timetable for the world. Just think if we'd had an atomic bomb 2,000 years ago.

God slowed it down because he knows if it's just built on our pride, it's not
going to get us where we need to be. Oh, the tower might look good, but our
hearts are devastated. And in the end, our culture is even devastated by the
pride that comes in.

Let's build ourselves. God judged that one. The second thing God judged was this
phrase, "with a tower that reaches to the heavens.

" And God's judgment was, "Let's go down and confuse their language. " The
question here is, doesn't God want us to reach upward and outward? Yes, but only
if it's a balanced reach.

We reach outward, but we also have to, at the same time, reach inward. And the
restlessness that you and I have as human beings, by which we try to satisfy
ourselves by reaching outward, as if that's going to be the only satisfaction
that we need, that restlessness can only be satisfied by reaching inward,
connecting with God, the God who made us, and then doing the great things that
he's made us to do. As we reach upward to the stars, we also have to reach
inward to the Son of God and recognize what he wants to do in our lives.

Otherwise, you and I, we can reach the further star and still not know who we
really are, that we're connected with God. And there's an interesting thing in
what happens here. Did you notice that God still had to come down to their
tower?

They were reaching to the heavens. It was the highest thing that they could
build. The Bible says here, God says, "Let's go down.

" God still had to come down. The greatest extent to which man will ever
stretch, will ever reach, is going to still be small indeed in comparison to the
might of God. And that's what we fail to see when our towers get too high, when
we think of ourselves in too great of terms.

God's reaction to this tower isn't because he hates towers. He loves it when we
do the things that he's made us to do. And if we're a builder, he wants us to
build.

No, his reaction to this tower shows us what's truly important to him. I'm all
for human achievement, all for human advancement, who wouldn't be? But it's more
important to God that he reach human hearts than that we reach the stars.

It's more important to God that he master our lives than that we master the
secrets of the genetic code, because that's what's going to last our
relationship with him. God judges the statements of man at Babel. A third
judgment that he gives is against this statement, so that we may make a name for
ourselves.

And God says, let's go down and confuse their language so they won't even
understand each other. Now, doesn't God want us to make a name for ourselves?
No, God wants us to live up to the name which he's already given us.

The name for them was little more than a title. It was as if somehow they could
advance themselves by making a name for themselves. They were disconnected from
God and wanting to do that.

Instead of living up to God's direction, they wanted to set their own pattern
for life. We're going to see in a couple of days, Genesis 12, too, that God also
can make a name, and he does it throughout the Bible. And when God makes a name,
a great nation is the result.

When man tries to make up his name, confusion is the result. And then there's a
fourth statement that God judges here. They said, we want to be together in
doing this.

We want to not be scattered over the face of the whole earth, but God instead
scatters them over the face of the whole earth. And our question is, why would
he do that? Doesn't God want us to be together, to all be unified, to get
together?

In one sense, no. God's orders for mankind are for them to populate the earth.
Remember back in Genesis 1 and 2?

Populate the entire earth. Not all get together in one city. They selfishly
clung together while the world around them lay wasting.

It sounds like what we as Christians sometimes do today. We cling together in
our churches instead of going out to a world that needs us. Now, God does want
fellowship.

He wants togetherness, but only under his direction, and not at the expense of
doing his will. Otherwise, all you've got is an organized meeting. You don't
have changed lives.

This is a chapter about what's really important to God. What he would like to
see become part of our human history. What he would like to see become part of
the history of your life.

What's important to God? Not building cities, but building people. Not towers to
the heavens, but people ready for heaven.

Not us making a name, but us living up to his name. Not clinging together
selfishly, but scattering out obediently. So this place is called Babel.

Now, Babel, that word originally meant gateway to God, but it's come to mean the
confusion of man. Why? Because God confused the language there.

Because of man's confusion about what that gateway really is. It is not our
achievements that are going to help us to reach God. It's his love.

It's not our crowded cities. It's a lonely cross. It's not our high towers.

It's God's towering grace. It's not a name for ourselves. It's the name of
Jesus.

And under his love, no matter how scattered we may feel inside or from one
another, we are going to be brought together forever together in him. Any
achievement that God wants in my life, in your life. He wants it in relationship
with him.

That's when it works. Anything beyond that, it gets confused. Lord Jesus, as we
spend a few minutes talking to you right now, all of us get confused sometimes.

Because I'll admit it, I want to make a name for myself sometimes. Pride enters
in very easily. And so we get confused.

Help us to see, maybe with clarity like we've never had before, the points of
confusion in our lives. And that they're there, not just because somebody
doesn't want to make it work for us. Not just because we don't understand all
the things that we need to understand in knowledge, but that many times the
confusion is there because we're disconnected from you.

Lord, today help us to reconnect at those very points of confusion, those places
where it feels like life isn't working. The building project is falling down at
those very places, whether it's a family or a job or an actual building. Lord,
right now we reconnect with you and we realize that whatever happens with that
building, we can build our relationship with you.

And we thank you for that. In Jesus' name, amen. And join us tomorrow.

A man by the name of Abraham is going to come on the scene.