Chapter 11 is the perfect flow from chapter 10. It's not thrown in there randomly after a genealogy in chapter 10 Then if there's another genealogy coming up as well The Tower of Babel is perfectly perfectly situated here So I got it some more parallels for you And I took these parallels again from that great little introductory book from John Berg's mother Bible basics for Catholics And what he pointed out here is that the Tower of Babel story is the parallel to the sons of God and daughters of men's story back in chapter 6 So if you remember the last lecture the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair the intermaried This is the good line of the bad line intermarrying now That's what we're going to see here these two genealogies. We just studied in the table of nations are now going to intermarry So look at these four parallels here that I borrowed from dr. Berg's mom and they're laid out in their notes There are two creation accounts, right the original creation narrative and now you have the flood as the new creation narrative And we discussed that previously B.
There are two falls from grace, right? Adams forbidden fruit and Noah's drunkenness from the fruit of the vine. We just looked at that as well C. There's widespread sin that results after the falls from grace You've got the intermarrying of the line of Seth and the line of Cain and now you're gonna have and see the intermarrying Between the line of Shem and the line of Ham, okay So there's a universal corruption of man because of this widespread sin before the flood versus this We're gonna see the prideful arrogance and the sinfulness of those people the Tower of Babel But God responds both times very differently, but in both times God responds He needs to handle the problem in the first response.
Of course, it's the worldwide punishment in the flood now We're going to see because he swore he would not destroy the whole earth What he's going to simply do is scatter all peoples at Babel, okay? All right, so let's look at this Let's read here a chapter 11 Well, actually just keep in mind Let me just reread chapter 10 verses 8 to 10 Remember it is because we came the father of Nimrod who was the first on earth to become a mighty man If the Nimrod goes along and found a city in Babel in the land of Shinaar, that's where we are now So let me read chapter 11 verses 1 through 4 it says now the whole earth had one language and few words and as men migrated from the east They planted eight they found a plane in the land of Shinaar and settled there and they said to one another come Let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly and they had brick for stone and bit of inform order And they said come let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens and let us make a make a name for ourselves Let me be scattered abroad on the face of the whole earth. All right, let's not right there here Okay, so Wow lost to unpack you got these descendants of ham, okay Specifically Nimrod right this king who founds the city and they say in three ways first Let us build a city for ourselves that's make a name for ourselves. Let's break this down What does this mean here number one remember that to call upon the name of the Lord means worship means intimacy with God walking with God We saw that back in chapter 4 verse 26 how Noah and Seth they they're lying they call upon the name of the Lord, right?
So these folks here at Babel they are making a name for themselves. They're not worshiping God They're worshiping essentially themselves in in this prideful rebellion All right They're worshiping their own name instead of or in place of the name of God and they want to make a name for themselves So that first point is this is rebellion against God. They're not calling upon the name of the Lord They're making a name for themselves. So that's rebellion arrogance pridefulness against God But it's more than that.
It's also against the shem because the Hebrew word for name is Shem they want to make a shem for themselves So this means that they are rebelling against the true shem know his firstborn son Remember I explained he is the bearer of the line of promise the line of blessing that comes from Adam They want his authority the same parallel We just saw with what Ham tried to do as the wives has the power he was trying to take the authority the blessing the birthright from Now his descendants are trying to do the same thing. Let's make a shem for ourselves They're trying to seize that blessing. Okay, so they're rebelling against God by not calling upon the name of the Lord and trying to make a name for themselves They're also trying to rebel against the lawful possessor of the Adamic blessing of the priesthood of the authority Which is shem the firstborn son of Noah? All right, but it goes it's more than that though number three to make a name Also means that he is a Hebrew idiom.
It means to make a dynasty build a dynasty All right So you've got you know the Habsburgs the Tudors these are the help the the names of the dynasty that reigns okay in these countries so they're trying to build a dynasty for themselves and battle is their capital right it's their city It's a secular capital city set up against God and Shem now these points here should sound familiar has a strong echoing of Cain Who founds a city and names the city after his own line right his own son? It's a complete Revisiting here of the two lines and those that worship themselves which we say the custom identifies really as this simplifying I know but the city of man but those who worship God who belong as citizens in the city of God in the church It's powerful connections here right so they're rebelling against God they're rebelling against Shem they're setting up this secular Anti-God capital and they got the present of the tower that brings us to number four So the tower that they're trying to build here is known in the ancient world and many scholars have identified this is what's known as a ziggurat A ziggurat is you could google it and see the images you still have this in Iraq But you basically a ziggurat is this representation of a mountain right with kind of like these massive staircases that go up to the top And on the top of this the ziggurat this mountain is where you kind of have entrance into the heavens Right so what they're doing is building this pagan shrine temple ziggurat tower That's going to force entry into the heavens on their own without God in prideful arrogant rebellion against God all right So babble means gate of God They're trying to force interest force entrance into heaven is the gate of God into the heavens And this is what Babylon Babylon me or babble means and this is where the city of Babylon is going to come from later on And there's a plan words babble also means he confused as we're gonna see in just a second here how God responds God confused other languages as everyone knows so there's this there's this play on words going on all right So you can see there's there's a lot happening here So not only that there's also a literary device because you would count at least in this translation here the new revised Standard version if they say let us do XYZ three times Let us make bricks. Let us build ourselves a city with a tower Let us make a name for ourselves So it's really this progression of arrogance and pride as outlined for you just now But this threefold occurrence of lettuce do XYZ. This is a kind of a literary superlative of rebellion Hebrew does not have good better best Right comparative superlives.
This is why a classic example is when the scriptures say God is holy holy holy That means that he is the most holy right he would say God is a holiest God is holy holy holy Same things happening here in a parallel God is holy holy holy. He's the most holy well They're saying let us do this XYZ meaning we are completely and totally rebelling the superlative sin against God and against Shem who bears the blessing of the promise of God, okay? So the tower of Babylon friends It's just this classic image of putting human secular accomplishments before and against God before and against his commands It's this classic image of seizing right grasping at the blessing All right that doesn't belong to you or yeah Seizing and taking it for yourself instead of maybe even being patient and letting God give you the blessing on his time Not ours and that goes all the way back to the garden of Eden if you remember in lecture three all right So how does God respond to all of this? Well, let's say verse five the Lord came down to see the city of the tower Which the sons of men had built notice by the way, they're called sons of men now, okay?
This is a bad line He came to find that hilarious They're trying to make this tower into the heavens right this battle meaning gate of God But it's pathetic God comes down to their level kind of like look at their little measly lego set that they've been working on together Right even our tallest skyscrapers today. They don't get to the heavens right as a correct as it pales into comparison to our skyscrapers It's just a hilarious little subtlety where they're trying to get up to heaven But God has to come down and see their little lego set they're playing together So God comes down a verse six and he says behold they are one people and they have one language And this is only the beginning of what they will do right so they're prideful their unity and pride their unity and sin will get worse It goes on and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them come let us go That's great. It's kind of in response to their statements have led us. It's also incidentally a very strong trinitarian illusion All right So just like we saw earlier in chapter one let us make man in our image and likeness and kind of have the same repetition here I'll close parent that a remark there come Let us go down and let us confuse their language that they may not understand one another speech and so essentially know this This is what happens so he confuses their language All right now This is to prevent scattering them is to prevent them from this shared cooperation in this rebellion Okay, they originally don't want to be scattered that they say as much in verse for hey We don't want to be scattered so let's build a city Let's build a name because they want to be unified kind of strength the numbers Let's be unified here in our rebellion and so that's precisely the answer to the problem So God scatters them.
He confuses their language. There's the play on the word battle which comes in English very nicely Just confuses their language and scatters them so they wouldn't be united in these perverse evil designs Okay, and the catechism points this out a great little paragraph 57 says the state of division into many nations is at once cosmic Social and religious it is intended to limit the pride of fallen humanity united only in its perverse ambition To forge its own unity as at battle and that's the point here God scatters them to limit their perverse ambition at sinful unity God wants humanity to be unified absolutely But he does not want humanity and it's fallen state to be united in sin and rebellion Okay, so he scatters them to prevent this continuing unification in sin right? This is not what God's design is going to be God does want us to have access to the gate of heaven God does want us to be unified in the right way But the only way we can truly get to heaven the only true gate the door to heaven is Jesus And I got these verses for you in the notes John chapter 10 verse 9 Jesus famously says I am the door If anyone enters by me you will be saved So the only way to get to heaven is through the gate to the door of Jesus Christ He says something very similar in John 14 6. I am the way the truth and the life No one comes to the Father but through me this is again a challenge to the modern world where everything's relativistic Right?
This is Satan's classic boy. You can determine what's right and wrong what's true and false But Jesus lays it out. No one gets to the Father. No one gets to heaven But through him he is the way he is the door the truth in the life So Muhammad and Confucius and Buddha and your I don't know your neighborhood guru these people these persons and personalities Leaders of religions they don't get you into heaven only Jesus Christ because only Jesus through his incarnation Unifies the heaven and the earthly the divine and the human he's true God and true man He's the bridge from humanity to divinity.
So that is just so powerful if we want to get to heaven We can't do it on our own sinful methods And this really I should say is the application isn't it the tower of Babel is perfectly applied to our own time We say we can get to heaven by doing Basically we say in the modern world the number one virtue is just to be nice and tolerant, right? If you're nice if you're tolerant, you're good to go everyone goes to heaven essentially We're building our own tower We have our own towers that get into heaven towers to make a name for ourselves things that we do we think that they're gonna be Our intro take it into heaven, but it's not our ways that get into heaven if God's way We can't get into heaven on our own without God We can't get into heaven rebelling against God and rebelling against the lawful a holder of the authority of the birthright the promise Which in this case is Jesus and his vickers the pope those who are in Peter's chair, right? So there's a lot to say there a lot to preach about but it's very very applicable We can't set up our own towers of pride of rebellion trying to get into heaven on our own, okay? All right So let's look at how Babel is reversed because it really is the this great epitome of sin of rebellion rebellion against God And this is not what God wants He does not want to scatter humanity he wants to unify humanity and this begins at Pentecost Pentecost reverses the tower of Babel what we have here I mean we not have time to read too much of this at all I mean if you go to Acts chapter 2 verse It's really the whole the whole chapter here But what you have is these hundred and twenty one individuals all with Peter 120 individuals with Peter and the apostles and Mary and the disciples They're there in the upper room and you know the story I suddenly a sound came from heaven verse 2 like the rush of a mighty wind and it filled the house where they were sitting And they appeared to them tongues of fire distributed in resting on each one of them And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the spirit gave them utterance So here they are speaking in other languages and in verse 5 It says that there were people from every nation under heaven and at the sound of this mighty wind they come and they gather and in verse 6 It says they were bewildered because each one heard them speaking his own language and Peter preaches to them Peter's first address so scared cowardly Peter is a completely new man now he preaches and they were cut to the heart in verse 37 And they said what shall we do Peter says repent and be baptized and we can talk about this whole story at another Bible study But you can see here there's a reversal going on because in Babel you've got this confusion of multiple languages and then being scattered Well now at Pentecost you've got the understanding of multiple languages and they're not scattered They are united into the one family of God which is the church They hear the one language of the gospel being preached by Peter they believe and are now unified They were once scattered and confused now they understand they believe and they're unified Okay, so a number two a scattered divided human family is not restored and it's united into the family of God That is so so important because any nation tried tongue Gender male or female gender that that belief that comes into church They're now coming from a state of scattered being scattered and confused now believing the one language of the gospel and coming into the church And being united into the family of God Pentecost continues all the time every generation It's just so overwhelming the beautiful right and finally number three here the tower of Babel which was once the epicenter of rebellion and slavery Right, you know that they are enslaving people with this bricks for stone and bitumen from order There's some echoes there of the slavery of Israel and Egypt We'll talk about that later as well But this is the epicenter of rebellion against God and oppression and slavery of their fellow fellow human beings It's now replaced in the church, right?
The church is the epicenter of obedience of happiness of joy of fulfillment and freedom, right? We're no longer slaves to Satan sin and to endure eternal death No, we're freed in Christ We've defeated Satan sin and death through the Paschal Mysteries of our Lord So it's beautiful Pentecost reverses battle and Pentecost continues throughout the life of the church