LET US MAKE US A NAME

Making a Name · Part 1 of 2 ·Genesis 10:1–11:9

BEFORE THE SERMON

This is the map of the world after the flood.

Genesis 10:1 Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood.

Seventy peoples from Noah’s three sons. Notice: “every one after his tongue.” Hold that.

Genesis 10:5 By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations.

Nimrod. Babel. Shinar. Remember that address.

Genesis 10:8–10 And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.

Peleg: “in his days was the earth divided.” Moses is dropping a clue.

Genesis 10:25 And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan.

Genesis 10:32 These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.

Now Moses rewinds the tape and shows you how it happened.

Genesis 11:1–9 1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. 2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. 3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. 4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. 6 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 have imagined to do. 7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; 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.

PASTORAL PRAYER: Coffeys ingernship. Those leanring a language. TJ Gabriel recovery.

INTRODUCTION

For eleven chapters, Genesis moves fast. Creation. The fall. The flood. The nations. Thousands of years and the whole world.

Then in chapter 12, the camera slows down and zooms in on one man. His story runs all the way to chapter 25 and we’re going to stay with him a while.

Why? Why does God go from the whole world to one family? Because of Genesis 11.

“The Bible is basically a story about God.”

Babel is what happens when we try to make it a story about us.

• Every judgment so far ends with grace, clothes for Adam, a mark for Cain, a rainbow for Noah.
• The story just stops.Babel ends with no grace at all.  That’s why we need Genesis 12.
• This week, humanity says:(11:4) “Let us make us a name.” 
• Next week, God says to one man:(12:2) “I will make thy name great.” 

GENESIS 11 IS THE QUESTION. GENESIS 12 IS GOD’S ANSWER.

BIG IDEA

WE BUILD TOWERS TO MAKE A NAME WE CAN CONTROL. GOD COMES DOWN TO GIVE US A NAME WE CANNOT LOSE.

The question this morning is not whether you are building a tower. It is whose name is on it.

TRANSITION: Before we see the tower, we have to see the map — and the map raises a question every one of us is asking.

1. A WORLD DIVIDED Genesis 10

God made us one family, but our pride turned us against each other.

Turn on the news. Sit at Thanksgiving. We know we are supposed to be one human family. We just can’t live like one. Why can’t we get along?

A. Every nation comes from one family.

1. Japheth, Ham, then Shem — seventy peoples, the whole human race on one page.
2. Ancestry kits tell you you’re 12% Irish and 30% West African. Genesis 10 gave the results first: **100% Noah. 100% Adam. 100% image of God.

Acts 17:26 And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;

3. Watch what Paul does with this in Athens. The Athenians boasted that they were sprung from the very soil of Attica — a people unlike any other.

4. One man — and from him, every nation. Both the so-called brilliant Athenians and the so-called barbarians sprang from one ancestor.

5. You bright, arrogant men of Athens have the same blood in your veins as the barbarians you despise. Same great-great-great-grandfather.

a. Paul’s main point is against idolatry

b. His words cut straight against their pride and racism.

7. Racists have twisted this very passage. For centuries, people used Noah’s curse (9:25) to justify slavery — the so-called “curse of Ham.” But the curse fell on Canaan, not Ham, and it was fulfilled when Israel took the land of Canaan — not in Africa.

8. No people is beneath you. Who do you quietly avoid, dismiss, or assume the worst about?

We are one family by creation. Only the gospel makes us one family in Christ.

B. God cared about every nation before Israel existed.

1. Israel isn’t on the map. The nation God will choose doesn’t even appear in the list.

**SIDE NOTE: **Count the names in Genesis 10 and you get seventy nations. Centuries later, when Jacob’s family moves down to Egypt, how many are there? Seventy. Not the nations — just one family. One family for the seventy nations. Hold that thought — we’ll come back to it as we follow Abraham.

1. From the beginning, the nations were the plan:

Revelation 7:9 After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;

C. Something broke the family.

1. Moses shows us the result before the cause. Chapter 10 already has many languages — but 11:1 says there was one.

2. The clue: Peleg — “in his days was the earth divided.” (10:25)

3. The suspect: Nimrod, whose kingdom began at Babel, in the land of Shinar. (10:10)

A HOLY PARADOX

1. On the one hand, the division of humanity into languages and ethnicities was a kind of judgment.

2. On the other hand, it was part of God’s plan of salvation: that Christ would be known, loved, and praised not by a single ethnicity, but by thousands of peoples and languages.

3. Christ gets more glory by being honored from a diversity of peoples than from a single people.

THE DIVISION OF HUMANITY INTO LANGUAGES AND ETHNICITIES WAS BOTH JUDGMENT AND THE PLAN FOR SALVATION.

TWO ANSWERS THAT FAIL

1. Unity by sameness — everyone thinks alike, or else. (That’s Babel.)

2. Diversity without unity — every tribe for itself. (That’s our world.)

God has a third way — and we’ll get there.

TRANSITION: How did one family end up scattered? Now Moses rewinds the tape to show us.

2. A NAME WE MAKE · Genesis 11:1–4

We build towers because we’re afraid of being nobodies.

A. They journeyed east and stayed put.

Genesis 11:2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.

1. In Genesis, going east is moving away from God — Adam, Cain, and Lot all go east.

2. “They dwelt there.” God said fill the earth; they said stay. Disobedience often looks like staying put.

B. They said “let us” — and never said “God.”

Genesis 11:3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.

1. Let us… let us… let us. God is never mentioned. They planned like practical atheists.

2. “Brick for stone.” Israel knew all about bricks:

Exodus 1:14 And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour.

3. Israel had built Egypt’s cities as slaves. Babel is what every proud empire looks like.

C. They built to make a name.

1. **In Babylon’s own story, the gods build Babylon as heaven’s gate. **Genesis says men built it — and God had to stoop to see it.

1. The Hebrew word for “name” isIn Scripture,That’s why Jesus’ first prayer request is shem.  only God makes names.  “Hallowed be thy name.”

3. “Lest we be scattered” — underneath is the fear of being forgotten, and finally, the fear of death.

Hebrews 2:15 And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

4. Pride cuts both ways. It drives some to climb and freezes others into playing it safe. Same fear, different tower.

“Boasting is the response of pride to success. Self-pity is the response of pride to suffering.”** — John Piper, Desiring God**

YOUR TOWER — ASK SLOWLY

1. Babel has no bar fights. It has committees and progress. It is the sin of capable people.

2. The religious tower: “I serve. I tithe. God owes me.” Religion done to earn God is just Babel with a steeple.

3. What would you be crushed to lose? That’s your tower.

4. What are you afraid you’ll be without it? That’s its foundation.

MAN BUILDS UP. GOD COMES DOWN.

TRANSITION: From the ground, the tower looks like it reaches heaven. Now Moses lets us see it from heaven’s side.

3. A GOD WHO COMES DOWN · Genesis 11:5–9

God breaks our towers because He loves us.

Genesis 11:5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.

Verse 5 is the hinge. Everything before it goes up. Everything after it comes down.

[ SLIDE: the story’s mirror shape, with verse 5 in the center ]

A. The LORD came down and saw.

1. The holy irony: their tower to heaven was so small God had to stoop to look at it.

2. Bruegel’s painting (1563) shows a giant tower already crumbling while the workers keep building. That’s every human tower.

[ SLIDE: Pieter Bruegel, The Tower of Babel (1563) ]

The center of Babel is not the tower. It is the LORD.

B. The LORD restrained them.

1. Verse 6 is not fear — it is restraint. Unchecked, united pride has no limit.

2. God answers their “let us” with His own (v. 7). One divine “let us” cancels every human one.

3. Pride can’t cooperate forever, because pride is competitive:

“Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.”** — C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity**

4. The scattering was mercy — for them and for the whole human race.

C. The LORD confounded their language.

1. In Hebrew, “let us make brick” and “let us confound” sound almost the same. The seeds of collapse were in their own words.
2. Babylon meant “gate of god.” Moses ties the name to the Hebrew word for “confound.”

THEY WANTED A NAME. THEY GOT ONE: CONFUSION.

3. At home: when everyone is building their own name, the words stop working. Ask: whose name am I building here?

D. The LORD scattered them.

1. What they feared, God did. “Lest we be scattered” (v. 4). “So the LORD scattered them” (v. 8). Every Babel ends half-built.

2. Even the real tower ended half-built. It was about 300 feet square at the base. By Alexander the Great’s day it lay in ruins. He planned to rebuild it — and reportedly spent 600,000 days’ wages just clearing the rubble. Then he died in Babylon in 323 BC. The work was never finished. Today it’s a square outline in the dirt.

3. Babel never stopped building. Nebuchadnezzar stood on the same ground:

Daniel 4:30 The king spake, and said, Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?

4. And the last Babel falls for good:

Revelation 18:21 And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.

IF YOUR TOWER HAS ALREADY FALLEN

1. Someone here is sitting in the rubble — the career that stalled, the marriage dream that cracked, the money that vanished.

Psalm 34:18 The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.

God didn’t knock your tower down to crush you. He knocked it down so it wouldn’t fall on you.

James 4:6 But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.

MAN BUILDS UP. GOD COMES DOWN.

TRANSITION: If the story ended at verse 9, the world would be scattered forever. But God doesn’t leave the nations at Babel.

CONCLUSION

MAN BUILDS UP. GOD COMES DOWN.

Babel is the only judgment in Genesis 1–11 with no grace. That’s because the grace is a Person.

GOOD NEWS: The God who came down to scatter us at Babel came down in Jesus to gather us and give us a name we cannot lose.

JESUS NEVER BUILT A TOWER

• He made Himself of no reputation. (Phil 2:7)Babel grasped at heaven. Jesus already had heaven — and let it go. 
• He never sought a name for Himself. Facing the cross, He prayed:

John 12:27–28 Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.

• At the cross,— forsaken by the Father — so we could be gathered. He was the one scattered 
• And with His blood, He bought back the very tongues Babel scattered:

Revelation 5:9 And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;

Philippians 2:9 Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:

THEY BUILT A TOWER TO MAKE A NAME. JESUS CAME DOWN AND WAS GIVEN THE NAME.

Isaiah 56:5 Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off.

A NAME YOU EARN, YOU CAN LOSE. A NAME YOU RECEIVE, NO ONE CAN TAKE.

FROM SCATTERING TO SENDING

• At Babel, God scattered the proudIn Acts, God scattered His church — in judgment.  and they carried His name everywhere:

Acts 8:4 Therefore they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the word.

The third way: not sameness, not tribalism — every tongue gathered around one Savior. God turned scattering into sending.

“Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t.”** — John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad!**

RESPOND

• Stop building. You cannot climb to God.Trust Christ today.If you are not saved:  He has already come down. 
• Name your tower.If you are a believer:  You cannot out-humble pride — you can only run to Jesus.
• Every nation was on God’s heart before Israel existed. Are we building for our name —As a church:  or sending for His?

CLOSING LINE

You will spend your life building something. It will end like Babel — half-finished and forgotten — or it will rest on the name above every name.

CLIFFHANGER

They wanted a shem — a name. Then the very next verse:

Genesis 11:10 These are the generations of Shem: Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood:

Shem. “Name.” Moses traces that line straight out of Babel to one man in Ur.

MAN JUST FAILED TO MAKE A NAME. NEXT WEEK, GOD GIVES ONE.

[ PAUSE — INVITATION ]

AFTER THE INVITATION - TONIGHT

Come back tonight. We’ll hear from Zachariah, who is headed to Taiwan — one of the scattered, going on purpose. We’ll look at this same passage in light of Pentecost, the day God began reversing the tower.