All right, so that's chapter 10, the table of nations, and the main highlights that we need to understand there. There are 70 nations that descend from Shymm Ham and Japith, the numerology, significance behind that. But the more important thing is before we go to chapter 11 is now we see the main characters. We see the line of Shem being introduced, and the line of Ham being introduced, and the individuals who ultimately become the founders of nations who are Israel's arch enemies, Egypt and Canaan and Assyria and Philistia and all these other places, they descend from Ham.
That's the bad line continuing Cain and Shymm continues the line of Seth. All right, so we're good. And that's important for understanding chapter 11 where we're going into part three right now, the Tower of Babel. The Tower of Babel is not some independent story where you can kind of see the flood and see no as fall, which we discussed about.
And like, oh, there's this little interruption with the table of nations and the genealogies, fine, we'll skip over that. And now there's the Tower of Babel. No, it all flows together. So the Tower of Babel needs to be understood as what's going on in the line of Ham.
Ham's this, and especially Nimrod. We look at him. I love the name Nimrod. It's just like the junior high boy, and me, what a Nimrod, right?
That's what is this verse eight, chapter 10, verse eight. So now let's go to chapter 11 and see the story and unpack this. But before we do, we have to understand that the Tower of Babel continues our parallels. That the Tower of Babel story is a parallel to the sons of God seeing that the daughters of men, remember that all of that in chapter six, that Tower of Babel story is a parallel to the story of the sons of God taking the daughters of men, that story.
And you can check out the footnote for the reference here if you want a little bit more reading with Dr. Berg's mind. But let's just continue what we've studied so far. Number one, the two creation accounts.
There are two accounts at the beginning of the world, the original creation. And then you have, of course, the new creation story that's taking place with Noah, who was depicted as a new Adam, everything we talked about in the last lecture. Then what we talked about at the beginning of this lecture was there are two falls from grace. Adam and Eve fall from grace by eating of the forbidden fruit.
And then Noah falls from grace by eating of the fruit of the vine. And then all the shenanigans with Ham, and we discussed all that at the beginning. Then after that now, there are two accounts of widespread sin. There is the universal corruption and violence of man over the whole earth at the time of the flood.
And now here you've got this prideful sinful arrogance for those individuals that ascend into the presence of Ham at the Tower of Babel. Widespread sin at the flood, and now widespread sin here at Babel with their tower. And then number four, God's response. God responds both times to the sin in incredibly dramatic ways.
Number one, or at the time of the flood, you should say, the flood itself, right? The deluge, the waters wash away all of the sinfulness of corruption on the face of the planet. And then here with the sin of those at the Tower of Babel, those descendants of Ham, you see God responding by scattering them and the purpose for scattering them. And ultimately God's mercy on how he's going to call them back.
So the parallels continue. They're not independent stories. You've got two flood accounts. You've got, sorry, I should say, two creation accounts, excuse me, two falls from grace, two accounts of widespread sin, and then two accounts of how God responds.
So this whole section that we've been studying, and Genesis one through 11 over the past six, seven lectures, this whole section of primeval history has these two subsections about creation, fall, widespread sin, and God's response to that sin, usually leading up, in fact, always leading up to mercy on how God will fix things. Okay? So that's how you can contextualize this entire story. Now let's go to Roman numeral two here and read the account of the Tower of Babel and then unpack like what's going on because it's not just a bunch of guys who went to Home Depot and got all their materials and they want to build a big tower of the heavens and everything's just going great.
Just a big old construction project. There's a lot more going on here with what they're saying. So with that, grab your Bibles everybody. Let's open up to chapter 11 verse one.
Let's read verse one to verse nine. So now the whole earth had one language and a few words and it's been migrated from the east. They found a plane in the land of Shinaar instead of there. So that's already that thing, thing, thing, thing, thing.
We talked about Shinaar back in chapter 10, okay? So that's the connection here, chapter 10 and 11. And then they said to one another, come let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly and they had brick for stone and bit of inventory and they said, come let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top to the heavens and let us make a name for ourselves lest we be scattered abroad over the base of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built.
And the Lord said, behold, they are one people and they'll have one language and this is only the beginning of what they will do and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come let us go down and confuse their language so that they may not understand one another's speech. And the Lord scattered them abroad from the face of the earth and they left off building of the city. Therefore, his name was called Babel because the Lord confused the language of all the earth and from there their Lord scattered them, et cetera.
So classic story, the tower of Babel, scattering of languages, the introduction of the multiplication of languages and all this stuff, but why did all this happen? That's what we're gonna look at. So who was the founder of Babel? Well, if you read chapter 10 as we discussed earlier, the founder of Babel was our buddy Nimrod, right?
In verse chapter 10 verse eight, Kush was the father of Nimrod. He was the first on earth to be a mighty man. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Therefore, instead of like Nimrod and mighty hunter before the Lord, the beginning of his name was Babel and then he went on to build Nina and Syria.
We talked about all of that. The founder of Israel's two arch enemies ultimately destroyed Israel later on, Babylonians and the Assyrians. All right, so Nimrod is the founder of the city and it's not, a bad reading would be like, he's a great hunter, right? Like he every time he shoots that bow, bam, he takes that deer.
That's not what's going on. He never misses, no. It's really the language is that he's mighty before God's face. This is hubris.
So keep in mind, he's in Ham's line. That is not good. Keep in mind, he is the sixth son of Kush. If I remember, check out the notes here.
Yeah, he's the sixth son of Kush. Sixth is the number of evil. It's all this typology and symbolism that's going on. He's the sixth son of Kush.
Like Alameh, if you remember, was the sixth son of Cain, sixth is the number of evil. So he's building the founder of these two great cities that are Israel's enemies. All kinds of major red flags going on here. So to say that he's mighty before God's face, which your commentary will say is a better translation, is that hubris.
It really means he is this ruthless tyrant. He's a tyrant who is dominating other people through his empire. We'll talk more about this empire that he's building a battle in Syria later on. He wants to dominate others.
It is a political tyranny that is going on here. And so when Nimrod's founders, they say, okay, let's build a city for ourselves and they a name for ourselves. There are a number of things to consider. Number one, to, and keep in mind, to call upon the name of the Lord by contrast.
If you remember back in chapter four, verse six, Seth and his descendants called upon the name of the Lord, that means they worship God, they love God, they obey God, they walk with God as Adam did and as Enoch the other did. So there's relationship between them and God, fine. So to call upon the name of the Lord means to worship him, but if they're making a name for themselves, that means they're not worshiping God, they're not glorifying God, they're glorifying themselves. The same thing kind of happened with Cain.
So if you end up, because again, Ham is continuing Cain's evil line. Remember, Seth began to call upon the name of the Lord, Cain built a city, that's a really important parallel there, Cain builds a city named after his son. So it's self-aggrandizement, it's self-lorification going on by Cain, and now the same thing by those individuals living in battle, Nimrod and all their descendants. So they're not worshiping God, this is rebellion against God, that's point one.
Point two, to make a name for themselves, the Hebrew word for name literally is Shem. They wanna make a Shem for themselves. And that's significant with everything that we just discussed here, with the aftermath of Ham seeing as far as nakedness and that whole story that we discussed. Ham tries to use Shem's authority, blessing and birthright, take it by force.
So what's going on here is that the descendants of Ham are trying to make a Shem for themselves, and aim for themselves over and against, in rebellion against the true Shem, the man who has received God's birthright and blessing through Noah. Noah gives that blessing of birthright to Shem, the firstborn son, that's what we discussed, okay? So Shem is the true bearer of that blessing that comes from Adam to Seth to Noah. He bears that blessing, and now the descendants of Ham are trying to usurp it, they're trying to make a Shem for themselves, all right?
So that's the point number one point number two, it's rebellion against God, and it's rebellion against Shem, you can say God's people, and that's really important too. Number three, to make a name for themselves also means a dynasty, let's make ourselves a kingdom, a dynasty for ourselves, with which we rule other people, okay? So Babel is the capital, the tower is just like this monument to their political pride, we wanna build a tower in the city that reaches up to the heavens, a dynasty that rules over and oppresses other people. And the tower itself is probably not just like a leaning power of Pisa, okay?
There's some little tower with those staircase going up or whatever it might be. The tower, in many commentators, point this out, is probably what's known as a ziggurat. A ziggurat, you could google it for yourself and see different pictures, a couple of them still remain out in the Middle East, like Iraq for example, but a ziggurat was a representation of a mountain. So think of a pyramid, but there are steps, so the sides are not smooth, but they're little steps that go to the top of the ziggurat or this sort of pyramid shape.
And it's meant to represent a mountain where the gods were supposed to live, all right? So with this tower, and Babel literally means the gate of God or gate of heaven, with the tower they're trying to force entryway into heaven. If the gods belong to the top, they build this massive ziggurat and they're able to enter into heaven without God, to be like God, without God, to get into heaven, without following God or being in relationship with God. That my friend sounds very, very much like the temptation narrative.
Sounds like Satan himself, right? Satan was envious of God. He wanted to be like God against and above and without God, right? And so he falls from grace.
Then he tells Adam and Eve, listen, you can be like God knowing evil and they fall from grace. The same thing is going on here with this tower, with this ziggurat structure, they're trying to force their way into heaven without God, okay? So that's what's going, a little bit more of what's going on here. Also, Babel means gate of God or gate of heaven, but it also, as the text indicates here, it means like he confused, so there's a kind of a play on words right there.
And then this fifth point here in your notes, I wanna clarify, and this is a couple of people have pointed this out, the ziggurat or this tower is all these things that we discussed, but it could also be perhaps flood insurance. Like if God were to send another belluge and cover the whole earth with water, on the top of this ziggurat would be a safe haven for the elite, the aristocracy, the royalty, right? Those who are in commanded rule others, they can come to the top and hopefully survive the flood if it comes again. What's interesting about that, and that's not necessarily super explicit in the text, but it makes a lot of sense.
But if you understand the fact that these individuals making the tower of Babel are in the line of Ham and they're not in covenant with God, they're of the evil line, it makes sense that they would build this tower as a flood insurance, so to speak, because they don't trust God. Now we saw it back in chapter nine, God swears a covenant, they're both saying, I will not send water to destroy the earth, but these folks here are not in relationship with God, they don't trust God, so they don't believe God, they don't have that relationship with them in any way, shape or form, so therefore they're gonna build flood insurance because there's no trust there. Whereas they just send us a shim, for example, they would trust, and again, we can talk more about that at the time, but in any case, it's really interesting to say if it's flood insurance, that makes sense because they don't trust God's oath, they don't trust his promises. All right, excellent.
So with that, there's a lot in that line, let us make a name for ourselves in building the city. All of this is extremely important. Now three times there is this expression, let us do this, first it's let us make bricks, then let us build for ourselves in the city, then let us make a name for ourselves. This threefold let us do such and such is basically like a superlative, a superlative of sin and rebellion against God.
That often happens in scripture where, first of all, holy, holy, holy, that is like God is most holy, it's where you repeat the adjective three different times, same kind of ideas going on here. This is a superlative against God and against shim who is the leader now of God's people, all right? So what that means is that the Tower of Babel becomes this classic image of putting oneself first, of pride, of egotism, of hubris, of putting one's own secular human achievements before and against God. We saw that with Cain, if you remember back in the previous lesson we looked at chapter four, Cain built a city, named it after his son because he wasn't calling upon the name of the Lord, and then it lists all of these achievements.
Now the achievements in and of themselves, but not all that bad, it's just that they're not in conformity with God's law and with God's will for humanity. So this is what's going on here as well. It's building up of the city, it's a bad line of ham, the rebellion against God, rebellion against God's people, shim to be precise. And that is a very important lesson for us too because if we're gonna apply this to our own lives, we have to ask the question like, what towers do we build against God, right?
What towers do we set up to try to gain access to heaven or gain control or call the shots to be like God, knowing good and evil, determining good and evil? We do this all the time in science and technology. So many examples with reproductive rights and cloning and all this stuff, we're trying to be like God, or other examples is like, hey, you know, I can get into heaven, we think, you know, I can go to heaven no matter what, I'm a good person, I don't need to believe in Jesus, I don't need to repent of my sins. We're setting up these towers, fame and fortune or an industry, whatever it is, you fill in the blank.
We're setting up towers, trying to force entry into heaven without God. We're doing the exact same thing, trying to access heaven without following God's law and being obedient to our heavenly Father. So there's a lot of application here with this as well. Now how does God respond?
God responds in a very humorous way, okay? So as we read here, the Lord came down to see their city. So even though this is supposed to be this massive tower and this ziggurat that goes to the tops of the heavens, it says God still came down, almost as if, like it's a Lego building or something like that. Like they're playing Legos down, but like a father comes down and his hands and knees and says, oh, it's not, you know what tower are you building, right?
Their heaven is pathetic, it's pitiful. God comes down to their level to see what they're doing what they're all about. And then it says, God says in verse seven, let us go down and confuse their language. This let us, by the way, is another one of those Trinitarian illusions.
We talked a lot about that before in Genesis chapter one. Let this is probably not a royal we or he's not talking to the angels. It's a continuation of what we saw before in the creation account. So let us go down and confuse their language here and see, they see their pathetic little city.
Now, confusing their speech and scattering them. This is exactly what they did not want. If you caught it back in verse four, they built the city, they wanted to name for themselves a dynasty for themselves, lest they be scattered across the face of the whole earth. And that's precisely the punishment that God gives them interestingly enough.
God always gives us what's best for us. They wanted to be united in their perverse ambition, their perverse corrupt, prideful unity against God and against Shem, God's people. So in order to prevent them from falling into that grave sin, he scatters them. Now, the catechism has a great point on this and catechism paragraph 57 here.
It says, the state of division into many nations is at once cosmic, social, and religious. It is intended to limit the pride of falling humanity. Note this, united only in its perverse ambition to forge its own unity as in battle. Only unified in sin and to prevent that God scatters them.
You're not gonna force entry into heaven. You're not gonna fight against God in his people. It's time to scatter you. Ultimately, in order to regather them, which is what's going to happen later on.
So a couple of little points here I wanna talk about in terms of typology. Number one, the only gateway into heaven is Jesus. Couple of verses for you in your notes. John 10, verse nine, very famously, Jesus says, I am the door.
If anyone enters by me, he will be saved. See, Jesus is the true gate into heaven. You enter through Jesus and you will be saved. And also very famously, John 14, verse six, I am the way, the truth in life.
No one comes to the bottom of my me. So we can't set up these little personal towers that we might have or societal towers that we have thinking that we're going to heaven and everyone's going into heaven because they're good people and they're not murderers. Or I don't know, Hitler's going into hell or any of this stuff. No, it's only through Jesus, the repentance of our sin, clinging to Jesus and loving him as he loves us infinitely.
That's the only way in which we're gonna go to heaven. Apart from Jesus, we're all scattered like those people in the Tower of Babel, you see. There's a lot more to say about this. And we'll talk more about this in relation to Jacob and his vision of the latter and the angels descending upon the latter.
That's also a ziggurat and how that applies to Jesus' statement to Nathaniel and John chapter one. So stay tuned in our next few lessons. We'll talk more about how Jesus is the true gate or the tower or the ziggurat if you wanna say it into heaven. All right, and then one more points.
I'll try to inspire that. God desires a unified human race in union, in covenant union with him. That's what he wants. So he will immediately, if we're gonna see in the next lecture with the call of Abraham, he's going to immediately build back his family.
But ultimately, the reunification of the human race in union with God will take place in the New Testament, specifically at Pentecost. Pentecost is the beginning of the reversal of the Tower of Babel. How so? Well, number one, at Babel, there's all these multiple languages.
The confusion of the multiple languages, the babbling, right? We kind of have that in English. It's the babbling, the confusion of multiple languages. That is now reversed with Pentecost and the speaking of tongues, where the multiple languages is no longer a problem.
Everybody hears the one language of Jesus Christ and the gospel being proclaimed, okay? So confusion of languages now being reversed, now there's the understanding of multiple languages in the speaking of tongues. Number two, the scattered and divided human family is now being reversed because all these people, in Acts chapter two, they're from all of these different nations and parts of the Roman Empire, they're scattered and now they're coming into the unity of the family of God. And that's what happens.
Any time a person is validly baptized, they're brought into God's family, the mystical body of Christ, the church. And that's what's happened ever since. Starting with Pentecost, even to this day, across the whole globe, right? Every person, every continent, every nation, when you're baptized, you're brought into the unity of the family of God.
And that first happens at Pentecost, okay? So the reversal of Babel starts with Pentecost and continues to this day. And then finally, this tower of Babel and this tower in the city and this whole epicenter really is this epicenter of tyranny, of rebellion, of oppression, okay? That's through because of sin, right?
Because of self-aggrandizement, a rebellion against God and God's people. That now is replaced by the church, okay? So the church is now the center of freedom, of obedience, of love, and of unity, as we've been saying, in God's family. And that's really, really significant.
So now people who are baptized, who are brought into the family of God, they're unified in God's family, they're freed from Satan, sin, and death, this is all being reversed. So Babel is not the end of the story. God wants to fix the problem. He'll do it starting with the call of Abraham, and it will lead all the way up to the fulfillment of Jesus Christ and his church.
Hi, I'm Dr. Nick. Thank you so much for watching this clip. I hope you enjoyed it.
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