INTRODUCTION-VIDEO
Anybody here ever seen a silent movie? Did you enjoy it? Well, I’ve got a vintage silent movie for you this morning. It is called Bob and Craig’s Excellent Dress Up Adventure! Take a look:
SAME BUT DIFFERENT
Did you like that? Funny guys! Anyway, in our little silent feature this morning we watched Bob and Craig play dress up. Why? Well, did you notice how different—yet, the same they looked in each different outfit.
Let’s think about what they wore for a minute. How would you respond to each character they dressed up like? They started off with dumb hats and looked a little slow. What’s your response to that type of person? They dressed in construction hats. How do you feel about construction workers? Stereotypically are the approachable non-approachable? Then they looked like a couple of old ladies? How do you feel about older folks—comfortable or uncomfortable around them? Nerds in umbrella hats—would you make fun of them? Cool dudes with shades and a do-rag? Do they intimidate you?
I could keep going, but the one thing I want you to get is this? There are a lot of different types of people in this world and we all feel different ways about different types of people. In general, people that are different than us can make us feel uncomfortable. Can’t they? And when we are uncomfortable around a certain type of person, it’s hard to share Jesus with them. Isn’t it? Yet, and this is an important yet, when we really get down to it, people, even when they are different than us, they really aren’t that different. Are they?
BEGINNING WITH THE END IN MIND
Now as I start my message this morning, I want to begin with the end in mind. As Christians living today—we really are lucky! We know the ending of God’s story! And the cool part is this: we get to live out that ending! We get to begin to make that ending a reality right here, right now! We get to live out God’s story and move God story along! But we have to know the story for this to happen. So let’s see how the story ends! Look at Revelation 7:9. It describes the throne-room in heaven. Here is what it says:
After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. …
The movement of salvation history ends with heaven full of people that are worshipping God. Notice it’s a diverse people! The people are from every nation, tribe, people group, and language group!
Now how cool his that! There are Israeli’s and Palestinians. There are executives and hippies. There are Americans and Iraqis and Afghanis and Pakistanis. There are blacks and there are whites. There are poor and rich! There are clowns and students. There are nerds and cool people. People groups that hate each other or who have hated or disliked each other at one time or another are standing together as one before God’s throne! Isn’t that cool! Isn’t that awesome!!
Now here is what happens at the very end of the Bible. Look at Revelation 21. It says:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.
John sees a new (the verb can also be translated renewed) heaven and earth! Now I don’t care about your eschatology, we agree to disagree about the specifics. However, there is one thing we can be sure about. There will be a new or renewed heaven and earth filled with a diverse people who are worshiping God thru Jesus Christ! Amen!
I look forward to this. I think this sounds good! As a matter of fact, I can’t wait for it! Do you want to know why this sounds so good? Because we don’t experience this now! Humanity is divided! We are fractured! We are broken!! This is why we have wars! This is why there is hate in our world! This is why there is office politics and church politics and just plain old politics in general!
Let me explain it this way: Do you remember Jr. High and High School! BOY I DO!! I hated both!! Why? There were all these different groups—the preps, the jocks, the stoners, the good students, the nerds, the skaters, and on and on. What I remember is that nobody really liked anybody that was in a group that was different than their group. Yeah there were a couple of exceptions to the rule. But not many!
Then I went to college and I loved college. Why? The dividing walls came down. There really weren’t as many walls dividing these different groups. There was a lot more unity or solidarity or oneness! And do you know what? It made life so much better! So much fun!! I loved getting to know different people and people groups in college, learning what they were all about, what they liked and didn’t like, their struggles, what made them tick! It was good!!! Diversity without the walls added a lot spice to life! Do you know what I mean? That’s what I love about our church. We are more diverse than most!
I mean isn’t chili better with several different but similar ingredients? Paul makes a killer chili! When she makes it she uses 5 or 6 different kinds of beans! Red beans, black beans, chili beans, white beans, navy beans! Then she uses several different kinds of spices: Red Pepper, Chili Pepper, Green Pepper, Cumin, Garlic, Cilantro, Onion. Chili just isn’t as good without the different beans adn spices—is it?
So, what we learn from Revelation is that God is going to save all different kinds of people and they are going to live, and work and worship as one people, they will worship our one true God Jesus Christ. You see what is happening here? God is saving, or one could say he is restoring or renewing his original creation. Heaven when it comes to earth isn’t a bunch of white folk playin’ gold harps on the clouds. No... No… It is a city on earth full of different people who form or make this spicy salsa sort of existence as they live [and work] and worship God with their lives in the New Jerusalem!!
FROM GARDEN TO BABEL
Why does this the Bible end this way? Because God finishes what he started! In the first few chapter of Genesis we learn that God creates a beautiful Garden. God tells Adam and Eve to fill it and take care of it. In other words, God says extend the Garden into the whole world. But that isn’t what happened. Sin entered the world. Humans quit following God and doing what he said. The whole world becomes this Dark, Evil, and Barren place. It became so Evil that God floods it and starts over with Noah’s family.
But Noah and his sons sin too. Evil and Darkness filled the world again. The world fills with people who do not follow God and they gather at Babel to build a tower, a monument to their selfishness and sin. Prostitution and child sacrifice were common at their tower/temple.
The evil of the world was pervasive! To diminish the effects of this evil God confused the languages and scattered these people all over the world after the tower of Babel incident. The biblical account of the Tower of Babel is the Climax of Genesis chapters 1-11. It is the climax of sin, darkness, barrenness, and evil in the whole world!
REVERSING BABEL
How do we go from this dark evil scene to the beauty of the scene I just talked about in Revelation 7? How do we get to this wonderfully diverse new heaven and new earth? How Does God reverse Babel? The rest of the Bible answers this question and God’s plan to save the world and reverse Babel begins in earnest starting with Abram in Genesis 12.
THE MOVEMENT OF SALVATION
God saves 1person (Abram), to save a nation, in order to save the world. God starts with one person! God saves Abram from his personal darkness and barrenness. If you will recall from last week, Abram is leading a barren life because he could not have kids. He had no posterity or heritage to leave behind and in the Ancient Near East you are nothing without a son. His name and reputation will end with him! So look what God promises Abram in Genesis 12:2-3. God says:
“I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing…and all the peoples of the earth will be blessed through you.”
God says I’m saving you from your personal barrenness. I am going to give you kids.
God saves 1 person (Abram), but notice this: God doesn’t stop with personal salvation. Abram’s kid becomes a nation that brings the blessings of our savior to the world. God saves Abram to save the world.
Have you ever noticed that that church tends to “sell” Christianity by offering personal salvation? We make it all about the individual! How God will make our life better! Now that’s good news, but not as good as the new God wants to proclaim. God says I want to save you in order to save the world. Isn’t that world being saved much better than just you being saved? God wants to rescue you from your personal Darkness in order to use you to rescue the world from its present Darkness.
When we make it about our personal salvation and leave it there, never grow to take our salvation to the world. I wonder if we are really saved. Why? Let’s think about this for a moment.
What was the crime or the sin of the people at Babel? It wasn’t that they worship the Moon and sacrificed children to the moon god or forced all their virgin daughters to serve the Moon god as prostitutes in the temple or tower that they built. No, that wasn’t the real offense. Those were just symptoms.
Genesis 11:4 describes their real crime. This is what it says:
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.”
Their crime or sin is that they wanted to make a name for themselves. It was selfishness. At its root sin is selfishness. It is our wanting to make a name for ourselves instead of wanting to make a name for God! If salvation is only personal, only for our own benefit, have we really been saved from the crime or sin of Babel? If salvation is just personal—doesn’t that make it selfish, about building our life, our name and reputation?
We all want something to show for our life. We all want to be remembered for something. We want a good name, a good reputation! Don’t we? In fact we work hard for this!
Parents, don’t we work hard to be a good mom or dad? Don’t we want people to say—wow look at our kids. They are so well behaved. They get such good grades. They never get into trouble! Don’t we work had for this recognition whether we get it or not?
Or maybe it’s our work. We are building a name for ourselves at the firm. We go in early—we stay late! We work hard, all for our reputation and name! Or maybe your retired you’ve worked hard, you’ve tried to be a good parent—but it seems like that name that reputation you tried to build wasn’t built as good as you like. You are wondering if you have time to fix it or correct it and leave behind a good name, a good legacy before you die. Or maybe you’ve just given up! And you wonder what your good for. You don’t think you’re good for much of anything anymore. You’re depressed because you think your name doesn’t mean much.
Now let’s go back to the tower of Babel. The people of the whole earth that gathered at Babel say they want to build a tower to make their name great. It is their concern for self and reputation that is ruining the world!
What happens when we work to build our reputation in the firm? We don’t leave time for our family, and we end up hurting the people we love. We don’t have time for God. Our reputation ends when we die, because our family doesn’t want to remember who we were!
What happens when the parent is concerned about building their reputation as a mom or dad? They control their kids! They strangle them, so to speak with rules. They ridicule their kids when they’ve embarrassed them in public. They don’t let them make mistakes. They don’t give them room to fail and learn. How do these kids end up? Hating their parents and wanting nothing to do with them or their family name!
What about the older person that looks back on their life and feels they did not make a good enough name or leave a good enough legacy? They become bitter. They become Angry. They become cynical and then hurt the people around them. The result: no one wants them around
God saves Abram from the mistake the people gathered at Babel made. Look at the second half of Genesis 12:2. God says, “I will make your name great as you follow me and become a blessing to others.” Here God begins to teach Abram that he can’t make a great name for himself without God. He is telling us that when we try to make a name or reputation for ourselves instead of God, we end up bringing Darkness, Evil, and Barrenness into the World.
Let me say this: When “Christians” use church and God and the Bible only to learn how to build their reputations as parents and workers, and so on, and so forth, I wonder if they have been truly saved. And let’s face it, some churches make it easy for “Christians” to think this way. At some churches, 90% of their messages on Sunday morning are focused on how to make people better parents, workers, spouses—the focus is on self! It’s not bad to teach people these things! But if 90% of what they do is about these things—the churches are actually training people to be selfish, which is the sin of Babel!
INDIVIDUAL/PERSONAL SALVATION TO WORLD SALVATION
Here is something I want you to see: God promises to save Abram so he can save a nation in order to save a world. Let me say that again. God promises to save Abram so he can save a nation in order to save the world. When we read the rest of the Bible—God saves Abram. Abram’s family turns into the nation of Israel, which ends up in slavery in Egypt. God saves the people of Israel from their slavery in Exodus! Then He teaches them how to build God’s name not theirs.
God saves Abram the individual, so he can save the nation of Israel, so he can save the world. Remember Jesus our Savior was born thru the nation of Israel! Now fast forward to Paul. Listen to what he says in Galatians 3:8:
The Scripture foresaw that God would justify [save] the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.”
The Gentiles are the rest of the world that God wants to bless in Genesis 12!
Salvation or Rescue from Darkness and Barrenness moves from Individual, to national, to the whole world as we look at the totality of the Bible. This is the movement of salvation. God saves individuals, to save families, to save cities, to save nations, to save the whole world! This is how darkness is displaced. This is how we begin to live God’s story and make God’s story a reality right now!
The Journey or the Movement of Salvation goes from us to the World. We move salvation forward! Our salvation is for the world’s salvation so God gets the glory! Our salvation is not ultimately about us or what will feed us or make our lives better!!! It is about the world! Should I say that again? Our salvation is not ultimately about us! It is about people who are different from us! It is about people from every tribe, nation, people, and language!
How does God save us from our selfishness, our building our own name? Like he saved Abram. Abram followed God, listened to God and obeyed God’s voice or word. Abe left his old world that was ruined by sin and selfishness to build God’s name.
How did God help Abram do this? God told Abram to Go and Bless. When we look at these two verbs in the Hebrew, they are imperatives! They are commands. God commands Abram to Go and Be a Blessing. When God commands this, He’s saying “Abram it’s not about you. It’s about me! It’s about others! In other words God tells Abram go follow me and my voice in order to take my blessing and my salvation to the world.
Didn’t Jesus do what Abram did? Jesus listened to and followed God’s voice, his Father’s voice—just like Abram. Jesus left his world to bless people that were different than him. He went to us! He left to bless or save us! He didn’t go to make a name for himself. In fact his life was pretty miserable. People hated him and wanted him dead. So they killed him. But that was his plan all along. He died to bless or save the world by paying the penalty for the world’s sins with his shed blood on the cross.
Now look at what Jesus tells people to do if they want to be experience this new life and salvation. In Mark 8:34-35, Jesus says:
"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it."
We are to give up our names and reputations for the Gospel. When we place our faith in Jesus Christ and his work on the cross we realize that God didn’t save us for our personal salvation. It’s not a get out of hell free card meant to be used only for you! Salvation is not given to provide you a good life, name and reputation on earth. God saves individuals to save nations to save the world. We are to take God’s salvation to the world! We are to build God’s name and fame, not our own. Building God’s name and fame saves us from the selfishness of building our name.
God teaches us it is not about us—it is about him and about others! We are to find ways to bless others in order to save them from their selfishness and sin thru the blood of Jesus Christ.
We start with people who are like us, our family and friends, we move to people who are different than us—the biker, the construction worker, the nerd, the old lady and so on and so forth. When we do this our churches will begin to look like heaven in Revelation 7:9. We will see black and white, and Hispanic, rich and poor, old and young all worshipping God together. We will begin to live heaven on earth.
What was scattered in Genesis is starting to be gathered right now. We gather corporately each week to remind us that that day is coming when there will be no more sorrow and pain caused by the selfishness of people out to build their names and reputation. We gather each week as the assembled church to celebrate and remind us that a day is coming when every tribe, nation, people, and race will gather before God and worship him, because it is about his name not ours! What was scatter at Babel will be gathered in Revelation and we play a part in making that gathering happen! That’s the Gospel! That’s the Good News! Let’s pray.
Pray—As the musicians continue to play, I want you to take a moment and guide us in a corporate time of prayer. First, ask God what do I do with this message this morning. Do you need to be saved from the selfishness of building your own name? Do you need the blessing and salvation that is found in Jesus? If God is laying this on your heart come forward. Someone will be glad to share how you can do this. If you know you’ve been saved thru Jesus take a moment and ask God where he wants you to go? Who does he want you to bless? Who’s in your Oikos? Write down a couple of names!
Next, ask God how he wants you to bless those people he has laid on your heart. Ask what you can do to serve them! Pray that God will give you an opportunity to share the ultimate blessing of salvation that is available thru Jesus Christ!
Finally, salvation moved from the individual Abram, to the nation of Israel, to the world. Today it moves from individuals, to the church, to the world. Take time right now and the rest of this week to pray for our vision team. Pray that God will reveal to this team who he wants our church to bless, how he wants us to do this, and how we can the blessing and salvation that are found in Jesus Christ to our community. Pray!
