Title: What Happens When the “Self” Meets God? (The self-reliant, the self-important, and the self-centered)
Text: Genesis 11:1-9
Thesis: God is a God who comes down to us… to move us out!
Introduction
Last weekend Bonnie and I were in Charlotte, North Carolina visiting Bonnie’s parents.
Here in metro Denver, when we decide to go into the city we say we are going downtown. But in Charlotte, when you go into the city you say you are going uptown. My father-in-law told me a bit of history, which I later confirmed on Wikipedia. The city of Charlotte was built on a long rise between the intersection of two Native American trading routes, theYadkin and Catawba Rivers… so, in that Charlotte was not built “down by the river,” one does not go down to Charlotte, one goes up to Charlotte.
While driving through uptown, Dad Payne pointed out the tallest building in the city, which is the 60 story Bank of America Corporate Center. In an aside he added, “It won’t be the tallest building for long. Donald Trump is planning to build a new 60 – plus story Trump Tower on the southern edge of downtown (uptown).”
I did some looking online and found that the tower is actually going to be a complex of luxury condos, a five-star hotel, and an office tower which will include ground floor retail shops and restaurants. (WSOCTV.com, May 18,2007)
However, the proposed Trump Tower of Uptown Charlotte is a low-rise when compared to the Dubai Marina Murjan Tower being built in the United Arab Emirate, which when completed will be 200 stories tall.
The need to be the biggest and best or to build the tallest is not a new phenomenon. People have always had large egos and many have an exaggerated sense of self and importance.
That’s why people buy big SUVs and fast cars. That’s why Sylvester Stallone needs growth hormones when he’s sixty years old. That’s why the Rocky Mountain News headline on May 11, 2007 read, Carmelo Moves into a New Crib… Carmelo’s new crib is a 25,000 square foot, Tuscan style mansion that cost nearly twelve million dollars. Realtors point out that it was a bargain because if it were in Cherry Hills, it would have sold for thirty million dollars.
Our bible story today is set in what we now know as southern Iraq. It was Babylonia than and the city was likely Babylon. It was a primeval time… the story rises from the earliest accounts of human history. So, the urge to live large is not a new phenomenon.
People have always had an exaggerated sense of self-reliance and power.
I. The people of Babel were self-reliant.
“Come,” they said, “let us make great piles of burnt brick and mortar. Let us build a great city with a tower that reaches to the skies…” Genesis 11:3-4
Those are the words of the first urban developers and economic planners. Those words set the stage for the first urban sprawl and the first complex of luxury condominiums, a five-star hotel, and a ground-floor retail and restaurant center beneath the first office tower.
Given the fact that we know how this story ends, we can gather from the tone that the words “let us make” and “let us build” were not particularly pleasing to God whose desire for them was that they, “multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.” Genesis 1:28
It is apparent that they were moving ahead with their own plans without giving a thought to what God might want them to do. While none of us is likely to ever set out to build a tower that will reach to the heavens… we would be wise to consider the counsel of Scripture.
Let me share with you some wisdom from James 4:13-15. Look here, you people who say, “Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and we will stay there for a year. We will do business there and make a profit.” How do you know what will happen tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog… here a little while and then it’s gone. You ought to say, “If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.” Other-wise you will be boasting about your own plans, and all such boasting is evil.
In my reading this week I came across a statement that rings true even today. “Jesus’ message fell on the deaf ears of the rich, the powerful, and the complacent. It didn’t take long for people to discover that the good news was only good if you were the last, the least, or the lowest.” (Gipprich and Wicks, Handbook of Spirituality for Ministers, P. 109)
When we have great health, the opportunity and means to do what we want, money in the bank or room on our credit card, and a great big pile of bricks and mortar… who needs God’s guidance? Who needs to trust God? But when life unravels… who does not need God?
Nikko Landeros did not anticipate that he would be learning to drive the family SUV using controls designed for a double amputee and Tyler Carron did not anticipate that he would be learning to walk across the stage to accept his high school diploma on custom-made, computerized artificial legs. Michelle Berra did not anticipate that she would be at the wheel when her Land Cruiser struck both young men while they changed a tire on January 15. Neither these students nor their parents, who must have been devastated when they received that late night phone call, will ever be as they were on January 14, 2007. (Associated Press / The Denver Post, 2/27/07, 5/20/07, 5/23/07)
None of us knows what will happen tomorrow. Our circumstances can change in the blink of an eye.
There is a certain arrogance in plunging ahead in self-reliant disregard for and dependence upon God… however, we tend to catch on fast when we loose an income, get snow-balled by credit card debt or an adjustable rate mortgage, discover a lump where there shouldn’t be a lump, quit one job before we have another, or get served papers by an officer of the court.
Sometimes we do self-destructive things that catch up with us and other times we just get caught between the cross-hairs in matters not of our own doing. In either case, we are humbled and reminded of our dependence upon Someone bigger, stronger, and wiser than we are.
It is wise to give oneself a reality check whenever we get to feeling self-reliant and invincible or all inflated with a sense of self-importance and grandiosity.
II. The people of Babel had a sense of self-importance or grandiosity.
“…a monument to our greatness!” Genesis 11:4
The people in that growing metropolitan center were not only sure of themselves, they were thinking big, very big. They said, “Let’s build a monument to “our” greatness.”
You will recognize the title of the novel written by Pierre Boulle. It was made into a film in 1968 and has been a staple of television reruns over the last thirty-nine years. The Planet of the Apes is set some 2,000 years in the future. Astronauts crash their space ship into a lake on an unknown planet where apes are the dominant life form and humans are beasts. In the last scene Charleton Heston, playing the role of the astronaut, Taylor, discovered the Statue of Liberty half-buried in the beach… and he realizes that while he and his colleagues were light years away in outer- space, mankind has destroyed their own civilization.
Here in Colorado we have the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde. In South America there is evidence of great Mayan and Incan civilizations. In China there is the discovery of the Terricotta Warriors… an 8,000 strong underground army of hollow, terracotta warriors, buried in front of Emperor Quinshihaung’s tomb to protect him in the afterlife. His dynasty lies buried with him. So much for our attempts to leave monuments to human greatness.
Those ancients who set out to build grandiose monuments to themselves are a contemporary reality check to remind us of who we are.
The Psalmist had things in perspective when he inquired of God, “When I look at the night sky and see the works of your fingers – the moon and the stars that you have set in place, what are mortals that you should think of us, mere humans that you should care about us?” Psalm 8
In the context of our story, we hear God speaking to Abraham in Genesis 12 saying, “I will cause you to become the father of a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and I will make you a blessing to others.” (Note the prominence of the word “I”… “I’ will cause you…” “I will bless you…” “I will make you…”)
Sometimes we set out to create our own great nation, but it doesn’t quite work out. One amusing tombstone epitaph bears witness to the fact. It reads, “Here lies the father of twenty-nine. He would have had more but he didn’t have time.”
Speaking of epitaphs (a little aside), On a tombstone found in England reads, “Remember me as you walk by, As you are now, so once was I, As I am now, so shall you be, Remember this and follow me…” Some one later responded, writing on the tombstone, “To follow you, I’ll not consent, Until I know which way you went.”
Donald Trump isn’t the only tower builder among us… most of us wish to leave some kind of legacy or monument to the fact that we were here.
We all wish to be remembered for something. The scripture reminds us that if we are to seek anything at all it should be the approval and blessing of God upon our lives. If we are to be remembered for anything at all, may it be that we were blessed by God and a blessing to others.
Our story today infers that part of the problem with humans is that we are too concerned about our own interests and preserving our own existence.
III. The people of Babel were primarily concerned about their own self-interests and self-preservation.
“This will bring us together and keep us from scattering all over the world.” Genesis 11:4
The stated goal of those ancient peoples was to come together for the purpose of self-preservation.
Those ancient people were consumed with the desire for self-preservation… they did not want to be scattered all over the world. They wanted the edge of their world to end at the city limits of Babel.
There is a certain sense of safety in the city. When we first moved to western Kansas our nearest neighbors were two miles away. The little fourteen-bed hospital, fire station, and sheriff’s department were fifteen miles away. It seemed the coyotes yelped and cried all night long. We were told to leave our keys in our vehicles because it was better that we let someone steal the car than be accosted by a thief during the night. My recurring dream was that of the early pioneers who wagon trained across those prairies. I spent many nights frantically running from window to window firing my rifle in an effort to drive away the horseback riders circling our house.
God wanted those people to trust him in regard to their safety and get about the business of multiplying and filling the whole earth. (Genesis 1:28) Christ commands us to think beyond the safety and security of our own limited self-interests when we are admonished in the Great Commandment to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength… and our neighbor as ourselves. He urges us in Great Commission to demonstrate concern for the spiritual well-being of all the peoples of the world in Matthew 28:19-20. In Acts 1:8 the first Christians were urged to leave the comfort of Jerusalem and carry the Good News from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth.
In the New Testament story of the Good Samaritan, there is a man who was attacked, robbed, and left to die beside the road. Three people who come along but only one stopped to help the man in distress. The one who helped the man is the Christ-figure in the story. The Good Samaritan is the presence of Christ in the world.
Conclusion:
At the conclusion of the story in Luke 10:37, Jesus says to us, “Now you go and do likewise…” It is the will of God that we become Christ-figures in the stories of our lives.
Our story today is an ancient story of how God visited the people of Babel for the explicit purpose of scattering them into the world. Today is Pentecost Sunday… it is also a story about the day God came down to visit the followers of Christ, filling them with his Holy Spirit, and sending then into the world.
God is moving us as well, out of our self-reliance, self-importance, and self-centeredness. God is moving us to listen, discern, and do his will… depending on his strength for all of life.
