Origins - Don't Be A Nimrod

Let's get into origins. Why am I the way I am? Maybe more importantly, why do I do the things I do? One of the most comforting verses in all the Bible for many of us is when the Apostle Paul, the spiritual titan who wrote most of the New Testament, a man that actually met the risen Jesus.

You would think if anybody was gonna have it together, it'd be the guy that met the risen Jesus. It changed his life a lot, but at one point Paul goes, just like we do an underlying question, he goes, I don't understand why I do what I do. He wrote to the Romans, what I wanna do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do. Why do we do what we do?

I mean, can we stop? Can we change? How? And so welcome to this series of talks called Origins, a look at our shared genealogy, our one big dysfunctional biblical family, if you will.

And so here's where we are, we've discovered why so many times in life at one point or another, we all come to a shared conclusion that things should not be the way they are. Something is not right. All the death and the pain and the hurt, my friend Wayne in this morning, he teaches up at Children's Ministry every week, Wayne Kenneth said, did you hear about the train accident this morning? Could you ask folks to pray for the victims of the Amtrak accident?

The reason that we feel this way is that deep in our core, deep in our core, we were meant for something else. Well, we've really learned this, deep in our core, we were meant for someplace else. You see, we were created for what the Bible calls this concept of Shalom, this lack of better ways of explaining this four-part harmonious interconnectedness of love and purpose and tranquility and peace and prosperity between ourselves, right? We're not double-minded people.

Shalom peace interconnectedness with others, with God and with creation, but we live, if you're honest, we live something quite different. Now, the ancient stories we've been looking at show that the creator gave us a choice, a choice required by the very definition of love, to live perpetually and eternally. You were created to live eternally in this four-part state of Shalom, which was permitted by and undergirded by us, creations allowing the creator to define what is good and even right and wrong. That's what permitted this to exist.

We had, we were created to have full, we just sung about this. You are good, you are good, right? We were created to put our full faith and trust in the goodness and the rightness of God to choose Him to be God, but we made a choice, a choice that we continue to make, I make it all the time, to decide for ourselves to be God, and to be gonna put faith, not in God, but in ourselves. And this eternal enemy we saw came along and tricked us.

He duped us with a simple question. You know, that God really said, you know, you could be like God. And we bet, man, we were duped. We thought we knew better.

See, I still think I knew better, no better. We thought we knew better, we thought we could do better. Oh, God, he's just a whole fashion. He's so restricted, he's trying to hold back on us.

He's trying to hold out on us. And so, you know, we'll just take it from here. We'll decide. And so our four bearers did what we do every day.

They decided to try to be like God, and put their faith in themselves. And they decided that they had a better ability to determine right and wrong, good and evil. And here's what we've learned so far, okay? We really stink.

And stink is not a good enough word there, but this is church, but you can think of a better word. We really stink. Humanity is terrible at determining good and evil right and wrong. Just a quick glance of our shared history would prove that point.

And we've looked at over these weeks, the unraveling of this shalal, the migration east of Eden, is slipping away of life. In fact, last week we saw how bad things had gotten, how broken God's heart was, how he feared the potential of what could happen if man continued in this state. And so there was this reboot of humanity known in every culture that's existed as a worldwide flood. But we saw again, just like we did in the Cain and Abel story, that the enemy, it turns out, was not outside of the ark.

The enemy was actually inside of the ark. Was in some of Noah's sight. Was in Noah? Was in some of his sons that's in you and me.

I said back to the story, it's a familiar one. You know it. The, the, it ducks. Noah's sons, their wives, the animals, they all climb off.

It's a, it's a world ride reboot, a new chance. And here, I don't know if you know this. You know God gave them the same command, Noah and his wives, sons and wives. He gave them the exact same command that he gave Adam and Eve in the garden.

In chapter one, he said it out of me. In chapter nine, he says this, God blessed Noah and said, God blessed Noah and his sons and told them, be fruitful and multiply fully and filled here. We've heard this before, right? It's a reboot.

Go, God says. It's a giant go. Restart, repopulate. I'm gonna go with you.

I'm gonna be with you. I'll be your God. You'll be my people. Things could be the way they were meant to be.

Go. But the problem wasn't inside of the ark. We're outside of the ark. The problem was inside of the ark.

The problem was inside of you and me. And so Noah's sons, they begin about 100 years or so, goes by, maybe up to 150. His children begin to have children and populate. And the story picks up here with an interesting detail.

It says, at one time, all the people of the world spoke the same language and used the same words. It's an important detail, right? There are at this time, no nations yet, no countries, no boundaries, they are one people. And scripture says, as they migrated to the east, they continued to move east, they found a plane in the land of Babylonia and settled there.

Settled there. They stopped. Right there. See, they were supposed to go.

But they stayed in direct violation of what God had commanded them to do, because, you know what? Oh, God. Doesn't really know what he's talking about. This is a nice plane here.

I think we'll stay right here. He's so restrictive. In fact, here's what they said. They said to each other, come.

Let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly. And they use brick instead of stone and tar for mortar. And you might say, well, that's strange. Why would they include that?

Here's why, because this was a brand new technology. This was groundbreaking, folks. This was history-defined. This was a technological breakthrough called bricks and mortar.

It was the sliced bread of the day. It was the internet of their time. No longer do you need to search for dig, out, remove, hone, cut, transport rocks. Oh, that's so first century.

That's so BC. No, no, no. Here's what we're going to do. God has given us the ability to make some.

Actually, they didn't say God has given us the ability. Their thing was we have the ability to make out of brick and tar whatever we want. What an achievement. What is possible for us now?

We've got bricks. That means there are game changers for them. It gives them a new sense of power. It gives them a new sense of independence.

We build what we want when we want where we want. And then, so then they said, come, let's build ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens so that we can make a name for ourselves. Otherwise, we're going to be scattered all over the face of the earth. I mean, why go?

We can stay. We've got bricks now. The scripture says, the Lord sees all this and, but the Lord came down. It's just like the Garden of Eden, right?

It's the same story. I told you in Genesis, it's a continuous story. It's one story. It keeps going, going, going.

But the Lord came down. So see the city and the tower of the people were building. And the Lord said, if it's one people speaking the same language, they begun to do this. Nothing they plan to do is going to be impossible for them.

So come, let us, there's the Trinity again, quickly, early in Genesis, years before there was a full understanding of this, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other. Guys, understand this, just as cutting us off from the tree of life was merciful, death in a sense was merciful, the lack of eternal life became merciful to keep us from existing, eternally in this fall in creation, in this falling state, in the unending pain. It was the mercy of God at work here, preventing the rapid progression of evil when we all spoke the same language, we all thought the same way, there was this rapid progression of evil, God confuses it, God stops it, God separates us. You know, I couldn't help but think about the internet.

I love the internet, man, I love me some Facebook, right? And there's a lot of cool stuff on the internet. I'll tell you right now, it makes writing, like doing research on sermons a lot easier. But you and I also know the internet carries with it.

You know, there's one kind of language. It really does have the opportunity to quickly spread around a lot of bad stuff. So the Lord scouted from there all over the earth and they stopped building the city. That's why it was called Babel, because that's where the Lord confused the language of the whole world.

From there, the Lord scouted them over the face of the whole earth. Now, if you've been with us over these few weeks, here's what we're learning together. That oftentimes in these stories, they're not as simple as they seem. There's a deeper meaning in the context of the story that we need to understand, because God, the writer, trying to get across what God so desperately wants his sons and daughters to know.

You have to understand, contextually, what's happening. So with that in mind, let me start with this question this morning, have you ever wondered who built Babel? Whose idea was this? Who was responsible for it?

It's actually found out and pointed out in the chapter before. We never talk about it, but let me show it to you, because it's quite fascinating. The chapter before talks about the sons of Noah. Remember when we talked about them last week?

So here's what it says about the genealogy coming from Noah. Cush, okay, Cush is a name. Remember Noah's son, Ham? We talked about him last week with that kind of raded R, story about Ham and what was going on in there.

Noah's tented R-S. Okay, Noah had a son named Ham. Ham had a son named Cush. Cush was the father of Nimrod, who became a mighty warrior on the earth.

He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. That is why it is said, like Nimrod, a mighty warrior before the Lord. So this morning, what I want to teach you is lessons from a Nimrod. Now you probably are saying every week I show up here and I get lessons from a Nimrod, why would this Sunday be any different than any other Sunday?

And here, see, you shouldn't laugh that hard on it because now I don't feel as good as I thought it'd be a passing laugh. See, here's why. Do you know Nimrod used to not be thought of the way it currently is for thousands of years, up until about 60, 70 years ago. What's have we heard the name Nimrod?

They thought it was synonymous with mighty warrior, mighty hunter. Now Nimrod, over the last couple of decades, has taken on a new meaning, it's kind of like you're a Nimrod, you're a clutch like buffoon. Does anybody know who changed, what cultural icon changed the meaning of the biblical term Nimrod? Does anybody know?

Bugs, buddy, I don't know who said that, but they're 100%, right. Bugs and bunny changed biblical meaning, all right? Nimrod used to mean mighty warrior, mighty hunter. And so what happened is Bugs, buddy started to call this mighty hunter, anybody remember his name?

Elmer Fudd, Nimrod. And for all the decades since, it's taken on a grand new mean. Now, Nimrod, the Bible says, was called a mighty hunter before the Lord, which sounds complimentary, but here's what scholars would tell you. Terminology means something quite different.

The name Nimrod, the Hebrew word of Nimrod is not mighty warrior, it's revel. And the preposition before the Lord really marks separation more than anything else. It's better understood if you translate hunter as plunderer or conqueror. Then the parts of Nimrod start to come together.

Nimrod is this conqueror of might before God. He's animated by this spirit and he puts it to work. Excuse me, he puts into his work, and all of this, and does all of this conquering, plundering, empire building outside the presence of God. Nimrod becomes kind of this great warrior building cities, tearing down other ones outside of the will of God.

He's the great builder of cities, and he's the great plunder of them. Back to the next verse, this verse. The first centers of his kingdom, the first cities he built were Babylon, Babylon. So he built Babylon, he built this tower of battle.

He was responsible for getting everybody fired up. And you see there's a whole lot of lists of other cities here including Nineveh. That gets picked up later in the story of Jonah. That's interesting.

If you remember when God cursed came for what he'd done, he'd send him out, but he sends him out with this mark of mercy on his, we don't know where, he sends him out with his mark of mercy so that no one will harm him but came. Even then he has the option again to trust in the mark of God, but he doesn't. So the Bible says that he comes to a land called Nod, Nod means translates wanderings. King comes to a land of wanderings, but he sets about to make his own life.

He's gonna secure himself. He's gonna escape from wandering, and he builds, listen to this important, King builds the first city. And he names it after his son Enoch, which means initiation. And so Cain is initiating this new way of city life, a new way of security, a new way for rootedness outside of God.

No longer do I need God for protection, I have the city for protection. And then the flood house. And what does Nimrod, this mighty warrior do post-lud, sets about building cities. So here's my question to you this one.

It's a very deep question I've been thinking about all week. Are you a city builder too? Maybe you're more of a tower builder. Maybe you're like me as you reflect on it all week, man.

I am a sickening mixture, toxic mixture of both of them. I love to build cities and towers. Something deep in me so wants to spend my life building towers to myself, for myself, handing myself in into a city, securing myself. The people were told by God to go, and they stayed wide.

Well, here's what the scripture says they were trying to do. It lists four things. It said that they wanted to build a city. They wanted to build a tower to heaven.

They wanted to make a name for themselves. And they wanted not to be scattered. And these four things actually just relate to two issues. They were going to build a city so that they didn't have to be scattered.

And they were going to build a tower to heaven so that they could make a name for themselves. Cities and towers. I don't know which one I struggle with more. I have a desire to build both of them.

And it's rooted in a lack of trust in God. It's rooted in a desire to be like God. It's rooted in desire to be my own God. I love towers.

Huge tower, big towers. Born a brand tower builder. Huge amounts of time constructing, worrying, taking care of my tower. I just desperately want a tower so bad.

I desperately, desperately want to make a name for myself. Now, this is not just limited to antiquity. I want you to know. Men forever have been trying to build towers to the heavens to make names for themselves.

Let me show you what I mean. Because you're going to see this happens all the time. Anybody know what his name is? Eiffel, right?

Where's that tower going? Who the heavens? Now, we bow, well, that's a couple of years ago. We wouldn't do anything like that anymore.

Oh, really? How about this? No political statement here, OK? There's no political statement here.

Because there's 8 million other ones. There's a Chrysler tower. We can go on and on and on. Of course, it helps when we put your name on it so we don't make sure everybody knows.

But this is what we do. We build towers so that everybody looks and goes, you know? You really are the man. I build them all the time.

Not so much out of brick and mortar. Because I'm not that smart and I'm not that wealthy. But I build them the best I can. I build them out of achievements.

I build them out of accomplishments. See, I can make anything foul. I build them out of possessions, career. I build them out of ministry, cars, cash, jewelry.

This week, you know what I discovered I was studying this? My time was also studying how to build abs at 50 years old. So where'd I go? Can I swear to go to church?

But I'm going to myself. You're building a tower of abs. Like, for what purpose? My abs are fine now.

But no. No, I get to build a tower, right? I build them all the time. You know you think about it, right?

I go back in my life and I'm just such a mess. Oh, honey. 25th high school reunion coming up. Well, don't applaud that.

35th high school reunion coming up. You know, could you put something on a little nicer? Because I can build a tower out of my spouse. Look at me.

Look who I have on my arm. Remember the method that last week? I do it all the time. Do it with my spouse and do it with my kids.

Oh, this is so disgusting. Can I tell you how disgusting I am? I probably shouldn't. But I have to just because it was going to my eyes.

It was building powers this week. And the Lord was teaching. I'm driving with my daughter Caroline, who's the hardest working kid you'd ever want to meet in your life. Works like a dog and everything, OK?

And so she's been learning how to work. She's been working like crazy at it. She just started really trying to run this one race a few weeks ago. And all of a sudden, she started getting really crazy good.

And so our coaches come up with me going, you know, you're a daughter. So you really good at this. Like, you should drop her out of other events and just have her do this. I said, me?

My daughter? Really? And so I was driving the school with Carrie again. I said, Carrie, do you know what the records are?

High school for the Hurst? You know what they are? She's like, well, no. Like, why don't you check in for me?

Because you don't have to think about it. If you've got every record, you will be the greatest hurdler in the history of West Maris Central High School. You build that tower, girl, right? And so this week, she had district championships.

And I need to back up. Some of you are familiar with that. I ran a little track back in my day. And so when I was in the county championships back in my day, I was first seed.

And I was building a tower, a big old tower. It was a good looking tower. And so the county championships were at my high school. I was number one seed.

I had all my friends come. I had all my relatives come. My grandfather came to the one and only athletic event he ever went to. And I was winning it until I got to the last hurdle, right in front of the homestand.

And I took a face plant to end all face plants. And I thought to myself, my tower. Fast forward to this Friday. After I had given her my poor and jelly card working little girl, all this talk about how she was going to build a tower, she took off in her 55 meter race.

And on the second hurdle, she clipped her trail leg, which caused her to lose a little bit of time. She didn't face plant like her father because she's a winner, right? She kept going. But she didn't post the time that she thought she could have.

And I thought she could have. And almost at the same time, you know what you could hear Caroline and I both scream? My tower! Did I build towers out of anything?

See, for tower builders like me, it doesn't matter how high my tower actually is. My tower doesn't need to go all the way that happens. My tower only needs to be good in yours. So this is my house.

Am I TV? My car, my bank account. See, it doesn't matter how fast my kid is. She only needs to be faster than yours.

It's funny. But it's sick. Doesn't matter how pretty my life is. She just needs to be prettier than yours.

I see, this is why tower builders. We can wind up spending more time tearing down other people's towers than building our own. Tower people's marriages unwind for the same reason that tower building nations go to war. At the heart is this deep-seated, twisted need for personal glory.

Why do I have this insatiable need for you to think a certain way about me? It's because I want to be like, oh, some, 19 says this. The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim to work in his hands.

Some, 29 says, ascribe to the Lord, glory and strength. ascribe to the Lord. The glory do his name. Why do I build a tower?

Why do you spend all your life building towers? Because you want to be like God. The glory he's do deserves and frankly needs so that men see him and know him and follow him. I want so bad for them to see me and know me and follow me.

But my glory, the building of my kingdom is not helping anyone. The glorifying of me above God, building my kingdom, above his, winds up with people in hell. My kingdom doesn't have the ability to save anyone out of the mess we find ourselves in. Let alone me.

See, if you remember from week one, we talk about purpose. Our purpose was to be an image bearer of God, a glory reflector, if you will, not a glory manufacturer. I read a quote this week. You know why I knew it was great?

Because it really offended my flesh. Maybe it will years too, it was by Nicholas Zins and Dorff. He argued about the mission of being a Christian versus the ambition of the world by saying, get ready, ready to feel your flesh. He said, here's what we, especially ministers of the gospel should be doing.

Preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten. My tower, the scripture says, by his grace alone, if you will allow him to be God for all eternity you will share in his glory. If you want to feel what it felt like in Eden for just a moment, just step back and don't feel the need to build a tower. Now, maybe your city will go down.

You know, that's not relegated to antiquity either. Just this week I came across this headline, check this out. Sodi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He announced his plans to build a new city on the Red Sea coast, promise and quote, check this out.

It's all gonna be a lifestyle, not available in today's Saudi Arabia. As he seeks to remake the kingdom in a time of dwindling resources, I'm gonna bring them all in here so I have them. The prince said that the city will operate independently. Independent won't be the one.

See why go? When we can stand here. There's danger out there. But in here, we got walls, oats, guard towers, guns.

City builders will do anything to protect what they have, to be independent. No reliance on anybody, anything, anywhere. We go out there to hunt and we bring it in here to keep it safe. City builders trust walls and guns and money and 401ks and pensions for protection.

And if we're honest, I mean, sometimes they just feel so much more trustworthy than God. But you see, if you're a city builder, you will feel the need at this deep heartfelt level to take care of number one, because you will think you can't trust anybody else to help you. City builders are control freaks. City builders are worry words.

City builders in their own desperate search for security and not relying on anyone else or God, they build up over time, huge levels of fear and worry and anxiety. The walls got to be bigger, but guns got to be stronger. The battle goes on to become this biblical city known as Babylon. Babylon took city building to a new level.

Surviving a series of conflicts became the most magnificent city in the world. There's a historian, Herodotus, that said the city was surrounded by a wall. Listen to this. 350 feet high.

The wall was 87 feet thick. It was wide enough for six chariots to drive a breast. Around the top there were 250 watch towers. Outside was a huge moat.

Surrounding the city filled with water from the Euphrates. The cost of constructing this military defense was estimated at the time to be in excess of $1 billion. Building cities, man. Building cities costs.

They have a cost. I mean, sometimes it's money. Sometimes it's love. Sometimes it's relationships.

I mean, some of us build walls around everything, right? Like, some of us build walls around. What do I love more than anything else? What do you love more than anything else?

My kids. Yeah, yeah, we bring them up here and we dedicate them on a Sunday morning to the Lord. We didn't really need it. Because we really don't trust the Lord with them.

I can't sleep it up, so where am I going? I've got to figure out a way to hand them in. Hold them back. Some of us build walls around our hearts.

Maybe your heart got so wounded at some point, in some relationship. And so you can't give it again. You can't let it go. You can't let it be broken again.

So you guard it so fully. You'll never give it to another let alone to the God that wants it and created it. We spend so much time building towers so we don't get hurt. We spend so much time building towers so we can glorify ourselves.

When the scripture says this one brilliant thing, the name of the Lord is a four to five tower and the righteous one to in and are safe. When you hold me the other night, Karen and I drove home from track me. I'd already messed her up with my whole theory of tower building. Sat down in front of the TV, it was 11 o'clock, it was late, flipped on the news.

I thought, well, at least I have my 401K. Anybody see what happened in the market on Friday? Hold out the old laptop. My city, the walls came down.

Jesus told us about towers and walls and cities. He said, there was a rich man that had a fertile farm that produced my crops and he said to himself, what should I do? I don't have room for all my crops. And he said, I know I'm gonna tear down my barns and I'll build bigger ones.

They don't have enough room to store all my wheat and other goods. And I'll sit back and say to myself, my friend, you have enough store to wait for years to come. Take it, eat, drink and be merry. You build yourself a good old city boy.

Nice thick walls on this one. But God said, don't you fool, you're gonna die of this very night. Who's gonna get everything you worked for? Your city.

Jesus's conclusion is just so brilliant. He concludes because yes, a person is a fool, the store of earthly wealth to build cities here, but not have a rich relationship of trust and faith with God. Are you tired of building cities and towers at Crumble? I mean, do you wanna know how to overcome all the anxiety and the fear and the cultural pressure for your kids to be perfect, your house to be perfect, your job to be impressive?

It is the same answer. I'm giving you wheat after week in this series. I wish I could give it to you and make it more complex, but it's this faith and trust. It is the way we reverse the curse.

I don't mean intellectual assidance to a historical truth. I don't mean just believing in the historical veracity of Jesus. I mean, full out abandonment to Christ, to trust, to believe, to have faith, to let him define who you are, to let him once again define good, evil, right, wrong. Isaiah saw it when he was prophesying to God's people.

He said this, listen to Isaiah, this is so funny. He said, you will keep in perfect peace, all who trust in you, not themselves, all whose thoughts are fixed on you, trust in the Lord. Always, when the Lord God's you turn around, he humbles the proud, listen to this, how good is this? He brings down the ark, it's in you.

He brings it down to dust. Guys, our arrogant cities. Our greatest powers. They're all coming down.

You know your high school records go full. Your kids are gonna grow up and leave. The markets are gonna crash. The layoffs are gonna come.

Eventually a call about a prognosis not being good will reach your home. Your looks will fade. Will you? Can you trust God to be your God?

I have a band come up, I wanna close with this. I want to look ahead to the next week. Here's what I want to include with church. If you remember nothing from this week, but I want you to tell your friends is what I learned at church today.

Don't be a Nimrod. Don't be a Nimrod. Stop building cities and building towers. Here's the cure.

Here's your piece. You know, I showed you so far that according to the writer of the New Testament book Hebrews, people were asking him, well, before Jesus, how were people saved? Like how did they go to heaven? They couldn't put their faith in Christ.

Like how did this happen? And here's what he wrote. He said, by faith, we understand that the universe was formed. That's kind of Genesis one and two.

And then he said, it was by faith that Abraham God of better offering than came. He talked about that a couple of weeks ago. And then he said, by faith, no, when word about things not yet seen, built an ark to save his family. And check this out, this is so good.

Next week we're gonna pick up our story with Abraham, who was to, anybody know God comes to Abraham and he tells him, Abraham, I don't want you to stay. I want you to go. This is the story of Abraham. It's our story.

I don't want you to stay here and build a city. I want you to go. Trust me. What allows Abraham to go and not stay?

Here's what the writer said. It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as inheritance. He went without knowing where he was going. And when he reached the land, God promised him, he lived there by faith.

For he was a foreigner living in tents. And so did Isaac and Jacob who inherited the same promise and listened to this. Did he see what do you and I need to see? Abraham was confidently looking forward to a city with eternal foundations.

City design and built, not by John, but by God. Father, would you give us the same confidence that Abraham had in Lord? That we too might live, invest in, believe in, hope in, live for and deeply trust in. That there is for us a city with eternal foundations.

Not one we've worked on, not one we've strived to make, but a city design and built by God. And Jesus, great name, I pray.