As we continue our trip through GENESIS, let’s recap …
LAST WEEK’S MESSAGE
In Chapter 1, the first thing we learned was God is. Not that God is this, or God is that, but simply that God IS, and that God is eternal. We also discovered that, even though we act like we are the creators, He is the one true Creator of all things, including us.
Chapter 1 shows us the power of God’s spoken word and the beauty of His earthly creations. In Chapter 2, we saw a detailed account of how He made mankind. He spoke everything into existence with His powerful Word, except for man. With us, He took the time to lovingly touch us and mold us; to gently kiss the breath of life into us.
As we progressed into Chapter 3, we saw that because of our sin, everything that was beautiful in Chapters 1 & 2, was destroyed in Chapter 3. We went from the fall of man in Chapter 3, to the very first murder in Chapter 4. We saw the nature of our sin when God asked Cain where his brother Abel was, and Cain disrespectfully replied, “I don’t know – am I my brother’s keeper?”
Chapter 4 says Cain was cursed and God made him leave the area where he killed his brother. But we saw that even while God was punishing him by making him leave, God also loved Cain enough to protect him so others would not murder him.
The next thing we want to look at is the genealogy that began to populate the earth.
CHAPTER 5 – From Adam to Noah
To be truthful, genealogy can get kind of boring. Starting in Chapter 5, we have a list of who-begat-who, starting with the creation of Adam and continuing until the time of Noah. Most of us tend to skim over these lists, but we must be very careful, because sometimes we will find the most interesting things buried in these passages.
A quick example is fouind in 1 CHRONICLES 4. That passage is verse after verse of who begot whom, and right in the middle of that list, there are two verses that stand out like a neon light. In these two verses, we hear about a man names Jabez who prayed a prayer that was so powerful, it is still affecting millions of people today. And then it goes right back into the list of genealogy.
Many people wonder why the Bible would include a boring list of genealogy. Here is a story that might explain it better than I can.
There was a man by the name of Gideon Miller. He was about 5’6” and had size 16 shoes. To say the least, Gideon was a very intimidating fugure. He was married to a German woman who had been a member of the Hitler Youth. Now, that was odd, because Gideon was a Jew.
After WWII, Gideon and his wife made their way to America and ended up in Las Vegas where he became a gambler. He soon realized that he was an alcoholic. He was not well liked. He was considered a dangerous type of man who could not be trusted in business or personal dealings.
He eventually started going to Alcoholics Anonymous, which was being held in a back room of a church on the Las Vegas strip. One evening, he got to the meeting much earlier than anyone else, so he began looking around for something to read while he waited on the others to get there. He found a Bible and began to thumb through it. He took the Bible home with him after the meeting and kept reading it.
Gideon said he wasn’t getting too much out of it at all, until he came to the genealogy of Jesus. He said he suddenly realized that Jesus wasn’t a Christian; He was a Jew – just like Gideon was! He said that was the one thing that turned the Bible into a personal testimony for him.
That long line of “who-begot-who” made Jesus real to one man and brought him to accept Jesus as Savior. So, we must be very careful when deciding to skip any part of Scripture, because all of it has God’s unbelievable power to change our hearts.
Let’s now talk about more consequences of our sin. Let’s go proceed to …
CHAPTER 6 – The Account of the Flood
In GENESIS 6:1, we read where man had begun to increase in numbers on the earth. That would tell us that many generations had come and gone; enough to populate much of the known region in those days. We also learn about two lines of people; the Godly line and those who were evil. The Godly line married into the line that was not godly, causing them to become ungodly, too.
In fact, in VERSE 5 says,
‘The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that He had made man on the earth, and His heart was filled with pain. So, the Lord said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth – men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air – for I am grieved that I have made them.”
Can you imagine living in a society where everyone was evil? Sometimes I think today’s people must be just like the society talked about in this Scripture - evil all the time. And it grieves me deeply to even think that God is so disappointed in us that He would be sorry He made us. But that is what we deserve.
ROMANS 3:23 tells us we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God. In ROMANS 6:23, tells us that the wages of our sin is death. That is what we deserve for sinning against our Creator. So, God gave us our just dues when He flooded the world.
Some say God was showing hate when He did that. I say He was showing His great mercy. If God would have allowed the world to continue, more and more people would have become sinful and they, too, would have populated hell. So, in His mercy, God cut it short, actually keeping many more generations from going to hell.
In Chapter 6, we see where a man named Noah was a righteous man. God told Noah to build an ark. Now you have to understand that in those days, a big boat like that was unheard of. Some scholars say it hadn’t even rained upon the earth yet, and here Noah is, taking over 100 years to build an ocean going vessel where there was no water. This shows that Noah really did lean on God, and not on his own understanding.
Let’s concentrate on Noah’s Ark, for a few moments. There are many lessons in this story that can help us in our walk with Christ today. Here are just some of the things to be learned from this event. To be secure in the future, you must plan ahead. After all, it wasn’t raining when Noah began building the ark.
You are never too old to work for God. Noah was 600 years old when he finished making the ark. Everybody is in such a hurry. We busy ourselves with the running back and forth, not with the outcome of the job we are doing. But speed isn’t everything. Noah had cheetahs onboard the ark, but he also had snails.
Sometimes, we hear stories so often we ignore the lessons in them. For example, common sense would dictate that Noah probably had help with building of the ark. And if he did, there is no doubt that some of those who helped may have known more about carpentry than Noah did. But just knowing about a subject does not always work to your benefit. When the floods came, even those carpenters who knew more than Noah – perished like everyone else.
In Chapter 8, we are shown that the first thing Noah did when he came out of the ark and let the animals go was to build an altar to honor God. And because of that altar, and the sacrifices upon that altar, God promised to never curse the land again, even though man’s heart was evil from childhood.
Let’s read about …
CHAPTER 9 – The Blessing from God
And in GENESIS 9:1, it says that God blessed Noah and his sons. He told them to go and multiply and fill the earth, and then in Verse 2, God handed control of all living things over to mankind.
In Verses 8-16, we find the Rainbow Covenant. That is where God promised to never again destroy the earth by flood. He said the sign of his promise would be the everlasting rainbow. That whenever a rainbow appeared in the clouds, we would be reminded of His promise, and He would also remember.
Our whole belief is based on faith; faith in God through Jesus Christ. But too many times I think humans have intelligent faith but fail to have heart faith. Let me explain.
Noah obeyed the Lord in building the ark. That was intelligent faith. He lent intellectual capacity to something of God. But when Noah and his family stepped into the ark to have the door sealed shut behind them, it became heart faith. He put his life and the lives of his children at stake, depending totally on God for their survival. In other words, he had to trust God with all his heart.
Today, we might go to church and say all the right things, but when do we fully trust in God? Usually, we only give God our complete attention and total faith when we are at the literal end of our rope with nowhere else to go, isn’t it?
I am sure you have heard the story where a man was climbing a mountain and it became very late and very dark. In this darkness, he slipped and began falling. He cried out to God to save him from certain disaster. After crying out, he felt his rope snap tight and he stopped falling.
By now, he had lost all of his tools, including his flashlight. In the total darkness of night, he could not see anything. All of a sudden, he heard God tell him to let go of the rope. In panic, he did what we do when God tells us to do something. He started coming up with reasons why he couldn’t do it. This went on for hours, and he finally told God that he was not going to let go of the rope.
He died in the sub-zero temperatures that night. The next morning, the search team found him hanging from the rope, two feet above the ground. Had the man trusted God fully, he would have lived, but he gave up his life rather than trust the God who could have, and would have, saved him. How many times have we refused blessings in our lives because we just didn’t want to trust fully in what God wanted us to do?
Noah stepped into the ark and the door was sealed. He had put himself and his family at the very mercy of God. They would live or they would die, depending on what God would do. And nowhere in the Bible does it say that Noah ever had a doubt. That is total trust. That is total faith. That is what we are supposed to have today.
As we leave Chapter 9, I want to ask you to remember how God has said that we have evil in our hearts all the time. That seems to be the human condition of our hearts. That is evidenced by what a pastor did when he was a young boy.
As he rode in the family car, he would see construction men working on the road, and so he decided that was what he wanted to do when he grew up. One day, while he was still a child, he made up a realistic looking stop sign and attached it to a broom handle. Then, he proceeded to leave his yard and go out into the road, holding it up and directing cars to stop.
When the first car stopped, he panicked, dropped the sign where he stood, and ran home as fast as his little legs would carry him, screaming for his mommy. Why did he do that? He did that because he suffered from what I call, “The lack of man.” Let me explain.
The little boy knew he wasn’t supposed to go out of his yard, but he did because he wanted to. He knew he wasn’t supposed to go into the street, but he did because he wanted to. Mankind is that way. No matter what we are supposed to do, we always seem to do what we want. Our first choice is always based upon our own selfishness.
When the car stopped, the little boy ran home in fear because he instinctively knew that he was going to be held responsible for what he had done.
And when our world collapses because of the choices we have made to please ourselves, we run to God in the same panic as that little boy ran home. We run to God, screaming for Him to help us out of harm’s way.
Until our desires get us into trouble, we don’t seem to realize that we are doing wrong. For most of us, it is only after we get into trouble that we start focusing on God.
CHAPTER 10 – The Nations from Noah’s Sons
Chapter 10 is another list of genealogy. But I think this one is a bit different. It not only tells who fathered whom, it also tells how the nations of men came about. It all started with Noah’s three sons; Japheth, Ham, and Shem. Each of these sons created a line of peoples, and through the centuries, they created more lines of peoples. When you draw it out on paper, it looks very similar to our modern day workflow charts used in many businesses.
The lines of descendants belonging to Japheth were called the Japethites. Many scholars believe that this line includes today’s Orientals, Greeks and European Caucasians.
The lines of descendants belonging to Ham were called Hamites. Last week, I spoke of the Hittites. This line came from the original Hamites. This group of people is believed to have become what is known today as Egyptians and Africans.
From Shem, sprang the Semites, which is believed to include today’s Jews, Arabs, and other Arabic nations. You can best remember the two lines from Shem because one built a name for themselves in Babylon and the other built a name for themselves in Abraham.
Now, let’s end today’s teaching with …
CHAPTER 11 – The Tower of Babel
In Chapter 11:1-9, we read about the Tower of Babel. Before the Tower of Babel, man’s history with God had been anything but good. There was that fiasco in the Garden of Eden, and that led to things going from bad to worse until God finally wiped out everything He had made, except for one righteous man and his family.
Now, sometime in between the Great Flood and the introduction of Abraham in Chapter 12, we find this story about the Tower of Babel.
Let’s read GENESIS 11:1-9.
‘Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone and tar for mortar.
Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language, they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
So, the Lord scattered them there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel - because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there, the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.’
One of the greatest fears known to man is the fear of being left out; shunned; or not recognized by others. Humans have this inherent need to be recognized by others. That is why very few children dream of having a factory job when they grow up, but most kids dream of being astronauts, movie stars, or having other attention-getting careers.
In verse 4, the people wanted to build a city that had a tower in it that reached heaven. Why did they want to do that? It certainly was not so they could get closer to God. The verse says it was so they could make a name for themselves and be known! Their only motivation in doing this was to have everyone look at how important they were. They wanted to be recognized by the whole world. They built a tower that stretched towards the heavens in hopes of finding the recognition they so desperately sought.
There was one episode of ‘The Apprentice’ where “the Donald” took the winning team up in a helicopter to show them every tower he had built in New York, and then he spent the next half hour telling them what he had done that was so special. That is the exact same need for boasting and recognition that caused the Tower of Babel to be built.
That is also the same type of need for recognition that the Pharisees in the New Testament craved. They satisfied themselves on being called Rabbi as they walked along the market place, and they demanded respect because they had so much knowledge of Scriptures. The Pharisees knew the Word, but they had no idea what the Word meant. The only problem with having this type of attitude is that it makes you place yourself in the spotlight and when you do this, you automatically take God out of the spotlight.
God wants, and deserves, to have our total focus on Him and Him alone. So, when they were building the Tower of Babel, God confused their language so they could not understand one another. This caused them to divide into groups who had the same language, and those groups wandered away to start their own civilization elsewhere.
Will the Praise Team come forward?
Let me summarize today’s message for you. After Adam and Eve sinned and left the Garden, civilization flourished. But as it flourished, it became more and more wicked. Finally, God was so grieved that He was going to kill everything, but then He saw one man who found favor. That man was Noah. So, God had Noah build an ark, which would save him, his family, and two of every living creature. Then God let the world flood and destroyed all that was evil.
After the flood, civilization again prospered, but as it did, it again became evil. Eventually, man had turned their backs on God to the extent that they wanted to be the center of all attention, so they started building the Tower of Babel.
I think the main lesson today is for us to realize what God wanted us to be like, and how far away we have walked from that plan. We need to realize just how sinful we are. And if we realize how sinful our nature is, we will then realize how there will come a day when we shall pay the price for our selfish desires.
God has given us thousands of years to repent and come back to Him, but we have ignored those chances. What about you? Can you look back in your life and see places where God has tried to get your attention? Can you look back in your life and see where you have chosen to ignore His calling? Most of us can.
But the question of the day is – not what you have done in the past, but what you plan on doing now. See, God loves you so much He is giving you yet another chance to focus on Him. Will you do that as we stand and sing?
INVITATION
