Pride Comes Before The Fall / Lessons From The Stairway To Heaven

Pride Comes Before The Fall

Lessons from the stairway to Heaven

Genesis 11:1-9

Intro: A lady said to her doctor: "Doctor, take a look at me. When I woke up this morning, I looked at myself in the mirror and saw my hair all wiry and frazzled up, my skin was all wrinkled and pasty, my eyes were blood-shot and bugging out, and I had this corpse-like look on my face! What's wrong with me, Doctor?" The doctor looked her over for a couple of minutes, then calmly said, "Well, I can tell you one thing... there isn't anything wrong with your eyesight."

. We all want to take a little pride in how we look don’t we?

. Pride seems to be in our DNA .

. In the comic strip peanuts, one day Linus is talking things over with Charlie Brown. He explains to him: “When I get big, I’m going to be a humble, little country doctor. I’ll live in the city, see, and every morning I’ll get up, climb into my sports car and zoom into the country! Then I’ll start healing people.... I’ll heal everybody for miles around!” Then in the last frame he winds it up, “I’ll be a world-famous, humble, little country doctor!”

. The desire to be world famous and humble seems to be an oxy-moron doesn’t it?

. One man said he owed his success to something learned from his Dominick rooster. That rooster was a powerful fighter. He could fly higher and cut deeper than any other rooster in the neighborhood. But he often lost fights against weaker roosters. His trouble was that right in the middle of a fight, he’d stop to crow. Any time we stop to crow about ourselves in life we’re headed for certain trouble.

. Pride always cometh before the fall.

. We are back in Genesis this morning.

. Chapter 11, as we look at the story of The Tower of Babel

. Genesis 11:1-9:

1At one time all the people of the world spoke the same language and used the same words.

2As the people migrated to the east, they found a plain in the land of Babylonia and settled there.

3They began saying to each other, “Let’s make bricks and harden them with fire.” (In this region bricks were used instead of stone, and tar was used for mortar.)

4Then they said, “Come, let’s build a great city for ourselves with a tower that reaches into the sky. This will make us famous and keep us from being scattered all over the world.”

5But the LORD came down to look at the city and the tower the people were building.

6“Look!” he said. “The people are united, and they all speak the same language. After this, nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them!

7Come, let’s go down and confuse the people with different languages. Then they won’t be able to understand each other.”

8In that way, the LORD scattered them all over the world, and they stopped building the city

.9That is why the city was called Babel, because that is where the LORD confused the people with different languages. In this way he scattered them all over the world.

. As we look at this story, what stands out more than anything else is the pride that had developed within the community and people.

.The people had migrated into the region of Babylonia and there they had established themselves.

. Things must have been going along pretty well because pride reared its ugly head.

.Look at verses 3&4 again:

3They began saying to each other, “Let’s make bricks and harden them with fire.” (In this region bricks were used instead of stone, and tar was used for mortar.)

4Then they said, “Come, let’s build a great city for ourselves with a tower that reaches into the sky. This will make us famous and keep us from being scattered all over the world.”

. The KJV translation reads:

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.

. Let us make a name for ourselves.

. They were in direct conflict with God’s command to them.

. Remember, God told Noah and his children to be fruitful and multiply, they wanted to build a city, a tower that would reach to the heavens and stay right where they were in direct disobedience to God.

. If we can become great, we can be equal with God. We can build a tower, a stairway into the heavens. Into the domain of God.

. You see that’s what happens when pride takes over, it becomes all about us and our accomplishments.