Special Message on Prayer

The Neglected Power of Prayer

(Mark 9.29)

Introduction

What is evil and where does it come from? It is not just a novel question. It is real life. In reality there are evil forces at work in the world that seem to come out every day just to threaten our peace and sanity. We might be entertained by evil on television or at the movie theater, but when evil rears its ugly head in real life the situation is much more serious. Sometimes all we can do is stand and watch helplessly while evil forces have their way, cutting a swath of destruction and sorrow in our lives.

The Bible addresses the issue of evil and gives us some answers, but not always in a way that fits our preconceived categories. It turns out that evil is much stranger and even more disturbing than we expected. The Bible often makes things even more complicated and uncomfortable because it is telling us the way things really are rather than simply supporting our bias.

For example, Jesus often encountered people who had been possessed by demons, or evil spirits. A possession means that the demon, or perhaps even a group of demons, has taken complete control of an individual. The Bible teaches us that there is a spiritual world. This world is filled with personalities, some of which are evil or hostile to both God and men. This is one of the reasons why the Bible forbids any kind of contact with the spiritual world through magic or witchcraft. It is like opening your front door to the spiritual world. And you do not know what might come in!

This is a frightening possibility that many modern people do not want to consider. We now have a scientific view which regards such things a demonic possession as ancient superstition. That is, this is how the Western world thinks. But there are still many people in the world who believe in evil spirits. Even in the West there has been a sort of revival of interest in spiritual things. This has included a renewed interest in the old paganism and the occult. It is naively believed that anything spiritual must be good. Nothing could be farther from the truth!

Let’s avoid the extremes of a scientific naturalism that writes off the spiritual world and a naive spiritualism that simply opens the door to anything that might be out there. 

There is no reason to disbelieve in the possibility of demonic possession today. But neither should we think that evil will manifest itself in the same ways in every time and place. Evil spirits can be at work under our very noses in subtle and deceptive ways. Though we may never have to deal directly with someone who is demon possessed, we should not be ignorant about evil and how it operates all around us. Perhaps the danger in our time is becoming lax and almost blind to the workings of evil powers. We are in a fight against evil forces. We need weapons for this battle or we will be impotent. One of the main weapons we have in this fight against evil is prayer. We dare not neglect it.

The Reality of Evil

We cannot afford to be simplistic or naive about the presence and power of evil in this world. The ancient Greeks had a myth about how evil entered the world. There was a woman named Pandora who opened a box she was not supposed to open and this unleashed all of the evil and sorrow in the world. Sometimes those ancient myths transmit truth in surprising ways. Actually, evil did enter the world through a woman who did something forbidden, and who then was followed in the same folly by her willing husband. Adam and Eve’s sin opened the door to evil. And evil has come into our world. Evil was not native to this world because God made everything good. God is not the author of evil. Evil exists wherever there is rebellion and opposition to the will of God.

The fact that there is evil in the world means that not everything is in harmony with the will of God. Ultimately, the will of God is going to be done, on earth as in heaven. But now we live in an evil Age. Something is seriously wrong with this world and with the human race. It is almost like there is something out to get us. Something is hunting us. We can’t seem to escape it no matter what we do to hide or protect ourselves. The world is a dangerous, evil place.

When we read accounts in Scripture about evil spirits that take possession of people, even of a child, we are reminded that no one is safe from the presence of evil in this world. We know and recognize evil when we see it. It is serious business. True evil is almost too terrible to look at and we have to look away. It becomes especially difficult when we see something evil happen to a child. It is easy to read over the details of stories in the Bible. But what if this boy possessed by an evil spirit was your son? Your grandson? Your nephew? We tend to be a little insensitive to evil until it touches us personally. Then evil is no longer an abstract idea. It is real. And it hurts.

Evil is anything that is hostile to and destructive of human life as God intended it. God did not make the human body as a habitation for evil spirits. God did not make us so that cancer could eat away our bodies. The sensation of pain is not itself evil. But when there is enduring, unreasonable, pointless pain we call that something evil. Perhaps the most troubling part of this kind of evil is its seeming randomness. Why did this boy have a demon? Why do people suffer things like cancer or mental illnesses? We always seek answers for these random evils.

Why is there evil? Science seeks answers that are physical and material. And no one is against trying to understand the natural world. But when it comes to understanding evil, the Bible gives us a transcendent or spiritual view that is more complex than the natural and the material. This world we can see and touch is not the only reality. If we think or believe that it is then we will have a simplistic, one-dimensional view of evil. There will be things we cannot explain. Contrary to the belief of many modern people, science cannot explain everything. Actually, true scientists know there are still many mysteries in the world and humility is always the best attitude to have, especially when encountering the powers of evil.

The Power of Evil

Humility is exactly what the disciples learned in their encounter with this demon-possessed boy. When Jesus encountered demons there was no contest. The demons always submitted to Jesus, even begging him for mercy! But in this encounter, Jesus was not there. The disciples were on their own, and in this case, they failed. Perhaps they tried everything they knew to do. Perhaps they commanded the demon to come out of the boy. But they had no authority over this evil. In the same way, we often find ourselves helpless in the face of evil powers. We can relate to the disciples and their failure to cast out the demon! Have you ever felt this helpless? Have you ever faced some kind of evil and immediately knew that you were over-matched? That is a terrible feeling! Especially if you are a disciple of Jesus. We feel that because we are Christians we ought to have all the answers. We ought to be able to say the right words and the evil spirits should go away. But sometimes they don’t go away.

If we find ourselves over-matched by some evil power, the thing to do is face the facts and admit that we don’t have authority over that thing. There is no use in pretending to have power we don’t have or just talking big. Messing around with powers greater than ourselves can get us in trouble. Just ask the seven sons of Sceva (See Acts 19.13-16). I know we feel that, because we are Christians, we ought to be able to handle anything. And if we feel we can’t handle it then we feel that we have failed as Christians and that perhaps we just don’t have enough faith. But remember that FAITH is the key ingredient. Faith means that we are depending on another Power, not that we are equal to every situation on our own. By ourselves we ARE weak. With the Lord we are strong. That was certainly the case with the disciples. When Jesus was there the disciples were always coming out on top because they were with Jesus.

When we are going out on our own, we may lack the wisdom to understand the real issue. I once heard that anyone with a relatively high intelligence can graduate from medical school. But the hardest thing to do, and the most challenging thing to teach to medical students, is how to make a proper diagnosis.

This is true in all areas of life, including spiritual and moral life. Unless we can know the real sickness we can never find a cure. I am afraid that there is much time and effort wasted on trying to fix problems that are not the real problems. We treat the symptoms rather than the disease. And religious people are just as guilty of this as anyone else. Our intentions are good. We want to help. But unless the demon is cast out the problem will continue. Sometimes we just don’t go deep enough to understand what is really going on. We are shallow and stay on the surface of things. But if we do lack wisdom we should pray and ask God to give us the wisdom we need to do His work (James 1.5).

Trouble is, even if we know the real issue, we may still lack the power to bring about a change. Every day we encounter evils that we cannot change. It is a terrible feeling to stand by and watch while evil seems to have its way. What do you do when you have done everything you know to do and there is no victory? It is easy to get discouraged.

Fighting the Power of Evil

We sometimes feel like giving up the fight against evil. It seems like we can’t win. We have tried to cast out the demon and we could not. So why keep trying? Perhaps the disciples were never really meant to cast out the demon in this boy. Maybe there are some evils we are simply not meant to change. If we try to change these things we will just end up frustrated and disillusioned. Maybe it is even the will of God that certain evils exist in the world. Maybe God wanted that boy to have a demon for some reason. Doesn’t God use even evil for His own purposes? So if we can’t change something, maybe we should just accept it as the will of God. If we are not careful we can end up affirming another version of the old pagan belief in fate. All the bad things that happen to people must just be fate. And you can’t fight against fate. You just have to accept your fate, no matter how unjust it may be. But that is superstition, not Biblical faith in God.

Jesus taught us to pray “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The implication is that the will of God is not always done on earth. That is why there is evil in the world. The question is what does God want done about it? Why doesn’t God intervene directly and just rip the evil out of the world? It is not a question of His ability. Nothing is too hard for the Lord.

But this question about evil has been a source of doubt in the minds of many people. The skeptical philosopher David Hume has probably inspired many generations of atheists and agnostics by his famous statement that if God were all-powerful, yet did nothing about evil, then He is not good. And if He is good, but does nothing about evil, then He is not all-powerful.

Something that skeptics often do not consider in this argument is human agency. That is, what part does God want people to play in fighting against evil? Is it possible that God allows evil to exist because He is expecting us to fight against it and to actually be successful? While God does intervene in human affairs, the Bible is filled with examples of people who were called by God to do a work, which usually involved some kind of fight against some evil. God makes a habit of using people to fight evil in the world.

Sometimes God seems rather hard and callous about how difficult the fight actually is and what kind of sacrifice and pain will be necessary if evil is to be defeated. He let His Son die on a cross while all the forces of darkness looked on and mocked. Maybe we are just soft and expect an easy time of it and so we give up too soon and too easily.

Maybe we expect God to do His own work while we sit by idly and passively in the work. What does it really mean to be the servants of God if there is nothing for us to do? The goal is for us to join God in His work. That was why the disciples were following Jesus around. They were in training to do what Jesus was doing, to carry on the work. Jesus was not always going to be with them. He was going back to heaven, but His work on earth was going to continue in the Church, which is His body. And a body is made for getting things done. If the Church can’t do the work of Jesus in the world, then it has not claim on being His body.

The Church is not just a social club or a spiritual support group. The Church is supposed to be something more like an army going out to war. That being said, an army does need to be properly equipped with the most powerful weapons it can get if it hopes to win. There was a weapon the disciples did not have when they encountered this demon. Their failure may give us a clue about the reason for our own failure in the fight against evil.

The Source of Our Failures

When Jesus finally arrived on the scene He knew why the disciples had failed. “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.” The disciples knew about prayer and fasting. Those were not unfamiliar concepts. In this case they had failed to apply what they already knew. This can describe much of our failures too.

It is not a problem of ignorance. It is a problem of application or of practice. We know what to do. We just don’t actually DO it! Christianity is not just about having great ideas. Christianity is also about doing something. It is not just about talk. It is about power.

Satan is a Power in this world. He rules a kingdom of darkness. He is the god of this world. Satan has authority to do certain things and the only way to fight against him is to have some power ourselves. Where is our source of power for fighting evil? “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.”

The problem here is that this seems like doing nearly nothing. Sometimes prayer is what we do only when we think nothing else that we can do will work. Prayer has become a last, desperate resort we pull out in a moment of despair. There is nothing wrong with praying desperate prayers. But there are times when prayer is not the LAST thing we can do, it is the ONLY thing we can do. Prayer is doing something! In fact, to do something WITHOUT prayer may be the most powerless activity we can engage in. But we almost feel guilty about JUST praying. It seems like resignation, passivity, or accepting the inevitable victory of evil.

Why do we often neglect the power of prayer? Maybe we think God is not really interested in what we are praying for. But if we know God we ought to know something about what God wants. If we pray according to His will, we know He hears us. Perhaps we are not patient enough to keep praying for something. We give up far too easily, before the evil is dislodged. Jesus taught us to pray without giving up, always counting on the goodness of God. It is not that we have to get God’s attention with many or flowery words. We don’t know God’s timing and we need to keep praying until we see Him work.

But prayer is hard work. There is such a thing as struggling or wrestling in prayer, like Jacob refusing to let go of that mysterious man until he gave him a blessing. We prefer a shortcut, perhaps a formula. But prayer is not like saying the magic words. We might be tempted to think there is some special kind of prayer for casting out demons. What kind of prayer will do that? But that is the wrong question. The question is not “what kind of prayer will cast out demons?” but is actually “what kind of people pray the kind of prayers that can cast out the demons?” It is not about the kind of prayer, but about the kind of person who is praying. When Jesus prayed, He was heard. So how can we be more like Jesus, and as a result, pray the kind of prayers that are heard by the Father? Jesus was in total submission to the will of God. This is why He always knew what the Father wanted Him to do. And that is why Jesus never failed to do the will of God. The power is given to someone who is completely devoted to doing what God wants done. God does not underwrite our agendas.

We must be about our Father’s business, which means any kind of selfishness has to be put to death. We take up our cross to follow Jesus. This is why fasting is mentioned here along with prayer. “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.” Fasting means self-denial. We put aside our own needs and desires in order to serve another agenda. Then the power flows. When we are empty then we can be filled. Prayer is only effectual through humility. The secret power of prayer is found in our dependence on the power of God.

Conclusion

The kind of prayer Jesus is talking about is not something we can do by simply scheduling a prayer meeting, praying longer prayers, using special words, or working up some emotional state. Any kind of programming, organizing, systematizing, or categorizing, all of which Western Christians love to do, will kill the power of prayer. Prayer is never meant to be something that we can capitalize on for our own purposes. We can’t package this and sell a book or build a Church on it. We are not in control. The disciples quickly found out as they encountered this demon that they were not in control of this situation. We pray when we realize there is something too powerful for us to handle on our own. It would actually be a good thing for the Church today to encounter more demons! We think we can engineer the Church and the Kingdom of God. If we have the right programs, the right cultural approach, a good band, and a nice building we can be successful. All we have to do is look around at all the demons running loose in our culture and we can see that we do not have things under control. The helplessness of these disciples in dealing with this demon is a good illustration of the Church today, at least in the Western world. We seem to be over-matched.

The Church has been unable to keep Western culture from becoming more and more secular. “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.”

The Church has tried to have an influence on the political system, only to lose on more and more key issues. “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.”

The Church has tried to bring people to Christ and turn them away from the power of darkness, only to see people all around us in the grip of sin and destroying themselves in various ways. “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.”

We have even tried to reform the Church herself and bring her back to a point of revival and deliver Her from the grip of sin, apathy, compromise, and division. Instead we have seen religious corruption grow and the spread of false teaching along with a renewed institutionalism and sectarianism. “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.”

We may play the numbers game and think that we have too small a number on our side to really make a difference against evil today. We seem to be outnumbered. But that has always been the case for the people of God. God has never needed numbers to win a great victory. The difference has always been the power of God. And that power exercises itself through the prayers of God’s people.

The powerlessness of the Church may be the result of Her prayerlessness. After everything we have tried to do in the fight against evil has failed, maybe we will finally listen to the words of Jesus. “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.”

He said He would never leave us or forsake us. He is always with us, just a prayer away. All power in heaven and on earth has been given to Him. And He is our great High Priest who intercedes for us, bringing our prayers before the Throne of God. We are never alone. We are never powerless, if we will only pray.

God and the Nations (Part 2)

Babel: The Rebellion of the Nations

Genesis 11.1-9

Babel is the end of a section of Genesis that illustrates the effects of the fall. We immediately see the degeneration of the human race. Even in the very first family there is the terrible tragedy of a brother murdering his own brother. Eventually the world became so violent that God was grieved he had created man and decided to send the flood upon the earth in the days of Noah. The human family was allowed to survive through Noah and his sons, but the sinful tendencies are still evident in the lewd behavior of Ham toward his father. As the human race begins to flourish again on the earth we then come to the scene at Babel. Genesis is a book of beginnings. Here we see the origin of all the different nations of the world. But the beginning of the nations is not a good one. And what happened at Babel still describes the state of the nations.

Babel becomes a kind of Biblical symbol for rebellion and opposition to God. The result of the rebellion is confusion and division. God Himself introduced this state of confusion among the nations of the world, which continues to this very day and is one of the major lessons of human history. Babel is the source of all of the strife, competition, and conflict among the nations of the world. The wicked project at Babel represents worldliness or the world of men in alienation from God. This is the City of Man which has continued to be reconstructed wherever men have come together to create human society and civilization. There is also a pagan, idolatrous, religious element in Babel. Many scholars think the tower was actually a place of worshiping the sun, moon, and stars. So Babel also represents all false religion. When we think of Babel we are reminded of this crucial admonition in Scripture:

“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:15-17 ESV)

There is an alternative to the World Order. There is the Kingdom of God. Immediately following the story of Babel is the call of Abram and the beginning of all of God’s plans for the salvation of the nations. It is no accident that the call of Abram comes right after the account of Babel. The passage clearly shows a contrast between the plans and actions of men and the will of God. Babel shows how God is managing the world according to His own purpose. There is hope for the world but never in the progress of mankind, which would only make another Babel.

Babel is not just a history lesson, although it really happened. The Bible is not just interested in history for information but for theological principles. Babel is teaching us something about the nature of human history and God’s dealings with the human race. On one hand we are warned by Babel not to rebel against God. On the other hand, we are encouraged by Babel that the history of the world is managed by a purposeful God who will not desert the human race completely.

The nations of the world have been characterized by alienation from God. Babel provides a good model for this condition so that we can recognize it in the world today. The basic nature of the world has not changed. Human nature has not changed and neither has the human condition, in spite of what the pride of modern man might claim to have accomplished for the progress of the human race. (We should not think that any particular nation is somehow a shining exception to the principle illustrated by Babel. The Bible does not encourage nationalism.)

In this lesson we will consider the account of Babel for what it teaches us about man and for what it also teaches us about God. This will provide some foundational thoughts for the rest of this series about God and the nations.

The world is in rebellion against God because of man’s sinful pride. This pride is the direct result of man’s alienation from God, which also results in a false view of the purpose of human life. Prideful man believes that he lives to accomplish his own goals and to create his own destiny. There is a great desire in the world to remove any obstacles that seem to be in the way of mankind’s development and his self-made plans for the future.

The account of Babel shows us something about the greatness of God and His ability to deal with mankind. God’s greatness can never be successfully challenged by rebellious man. The story of Babel shows us a God who is not distant or passive but is present and actively involved in the affairs of human history. However, God’s involvement is often seen in His opposition and His judgement of mankind’s plans and the prideful, rebellious actions of the nations.

Babel was a significant and formative event in the history and development of human society and is crucial to our understanding of the world today. Babel is like a spirit or a principle that pervades human life and society. The spirit or principle of Babel has been expressed in all of the great civilizations of human history. Babel is a model for understanding the world.

Babel Teaches Us About Mankind

 

A Warped View of Life

We are seeing at Babel the effects of sin. Sin is the underlying cause of all of mankind’s troubles. But there are many effects of sin. Sometimes it is easier to focus on the effects and to ignore the cause. The Bible is always trying to help us see what is underneath of human life. The Bible never operates on the surface of things. Beneath the surface of human life is alienation. This is how the Apostle Paul described the state of the world apart from God:

“Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity” (Ephesians 4:17-19 ESV)

Our most important relationship is with God. But alienation pervades human life. When we are alienated from God we are also alienated from ourselves. In knowing God, I know myself. But when I am alienated from God I am also ignorant of my true self. I don’t really know who I am or why I am living on the earth. Life becomes a great mystery that becomes impossible to solve. Most people spend their lives running here and there without knowing why they are doing the things they do. Asking questions about the meaning of life is actually something most people avoid because these issues could possibly lead someone to think about God, which is the very thing most people are trying to avoid.

Ironically, mankind is hostile to the very thing that could solve the mystery of life. Sin brought a double curse: we are sick and we are also hostile to the Cure. It is vital to see that no cure for humanity’s ailments will come apart from God, yet the knowledge of God is the very thing that humanity seeks to avoid and even to suppress. The people of this world live as if God does not exist:

The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds, there is none who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one (Psalm 14.1-3; 53.1-3; Rom. 3.10-12)

The book of Genesis is tracing the sources of human life, like a family history or a genealogy. Why are things the way they are? Genesis addresses this question. Human life is warped because mankind has been diverted from his original purpose. This is what was revealed about the creation of man by God:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:26-28 ESV)

The original purpose of mankind was to be the image of God on earth. This image has been warped by sin. The image of God has to do with man having dominion over the world God created, along with the faculties to rule this creation. But man was to rule it for God, as God’s steward or viceroy. Image can refer to a representation. Man was to be the representation of God on earth. The earth was given to man to inhabit and to rule. That is his domain, his dominion. God lives in heaven. But God is the ultimate owner of the earth and mankind is accountable to God. We must report to God, just as an employee must make a report of his work to the manager, or a tenant must submit to the will of his landlord.

But sin interrupted this relationship between God and man. Man refused to submit to God and has sought to take control. This rebellion did not completely erase the image of God from man. The image has been distorted and misdirected. Instead of serving God, man seeks his own agenda and is thereby misusing the faculties and resources God has given. The higher the creature the more dangerous the fall of that creature. Monkeys do not build towers or bombs. But sinful men use their capabilities for purposes that God did not intend or command. Babel was not God’s project.

Independence from God

We were not created to be independent from God. Man was created for Divine fellowship or partnership. We were to be with God and work with God. But sin means we want to be our own Master. Behind every transgression is the desire for independence and for control. The actual transgression is of less importance than the attitude or the reason behind it. Every sin is like a little, cosmic rebellion. It is the spread of that great, cosmic, ancient rebellion and fall of Satan. The English poet John Milton said that every soul in Hell has basically said that it is better to reign in Hell than to serve in heaven. That is, mankind prefers to have his own way rather than submit to God. In refusing to submit to God and wanting to be his own master, man simply becomes enslaved to his own passions. “Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin” (John 8.34). Mankind has exchanged Masters. By choosing not to serve God we have become slaves to our own corrupt appetites.

Anything that is not done in submission to God’s will becomes warped. Nothing is good or bad in itself. The world God created was good. And there are all kinds of things we can do that are completely within the will of God. Even those human desires that we might think to be base can often be traced back to a perfectly legitimate desire that God put there. Whatever God put there He also meant to provide for its satisfaction. But we sin when we seek to fulfill our desires without God. When God’s hands are off the reins, human life goes astray. The only legitimate activities in life are those things that seek God as the ultimate end. Any activity of man that is not done for the glory of God will ultimately be done in vain. All the Towers of Babel that we build must fall in the end.

The people who began to build the Tower of Babel never considered the will of God or asked God if they could act in this way. God was simply ignored. The people may have not even believed in the existence of God, choosing to worship the elements of creation instead. The main consideration at Babel was man and his will, not God and God’s will. Man desires to chart his own course in the world and determine his own destiny.  This is nothing but evil pride. Making plans for the future does not seem to be evil. But when this is done without God in mind it becomes sin. Consider this exhortation and warning from James, which was given to professing Christians:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil (James 4:13-16 ESV)

At first, this planning for the future may not seem like such a bad thing. In fact, many people, including Christians, argue that God has given man free will and the ability to make his own decisions. It is difficult to read the story of Babel and conclude that mankind is free to do anything it wants to do. If God was unable or unwilling to overrule the will of man, then history would look very different. The burden of teaching in Scripture is on the sovereignty God, not the free will of man. It has been said that “man proposes but God disposes.” Men have choices to make, either to submit to God or to rebel, but there is no indication in Scripture that men are free to get their way when they decide to oppose the will of God.

Another Agenda

What was the reason for the agenda at Babel? Why was the project started? I do not think that this was an artistic project. There was a very practical reason for building this city and the tower. A city is a way of organizing and obtaining a collective advantage. There is safety and power in numbers and organization. One of the highest values in the world is security. Man always feels exposed and unsafe in the world and society tries to mitigate this feeling. One aspect of God’s curse was the fact that the creation would no longer provide for mankind willingly but would produce thorns and thistles that would frustrate man’s efforts to live and to thrive in the world. We are always fighting the elements and we do not have perfect dominion over the created world. Man seeks an organization or a mechanism by which to combat the elements. We come together in order to mitigate the risk and the hardship of life in a fallen world. Man applies his power of reasoning, a God-given faculty, and utilizes technology in order to do this, which was also evident in the building of Babel.

But this desire for security and to master the environment does not seem to be inherently wicked. In fact, God commanded mankind to subdue the creation and rule over it. But at Babel we see men taking matters into their own hands and pursuing security and dominion apart from trust in and submission to the Lord God. We are supposed to rely on the Lord for what we need and we are to go to Him for safety and security in times of distress and danger. We are to seek the Kingdom of God before everything else, and then everything else will be provided. Rather than trusting God the world takes matters into its own hands. Jesus told His disciples they are not to be like the pagan unbelievers of the world:

do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you (Matthew 6:31-33 ESV)

But even the pursuit of security is not an end of itself. Why do we want to have security? What would we do if we did not have to worry about the elements or be concerned about our basic needs? What would we then be free to pursue? Once we managed to build a Utopia, what would we do with it? Apart from God mankind has no higher goal than the freedom to pursue the gratification of its own desires. In other words, the main goal of society becomes the pursuit of pleasure. And it is the pursuit of pleasure apart from God, or the pursuit of pleasure as an end of itself, which is always warped and leaves us empty and frustrated.

God raised up Solomon and gave him a certain kind of earthly wisdom in order to demonstrate the futility of earthly things. Here is what Solomon observed about life in the world:

           

And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun (Ecclesiastes 2:10-11 ESV)

Even if we are able to enjoy all the pleasures of the world, as King Solomon did, we will end up with nothing but dust in the wind. Even if we got everything we wanted in this life, there is still the reality of death that continues to frustrate our plans. There has to be more to human life than the pursuit of earthly pleasures.

What was happening at Babel is still happening in the world today. The men of the world are desperately trying to remove all of the obstacles that get in the way of their plans and their ability to secure or determine their own future. The major obstacle that must be removed if man is going to have his own way is the knowledge of God. If there is a God in Heaven, then His will may conflict with the plans of men and this could ruin everything that man plans to do! What will men do if God gets in their way? The Apostle Paul assessed the history of the nations and concluded that these had all sought to suppress the knowledge of the true God and so they exchanged the worship of the Creator for the things of creation. The moral state of the nations can be attributed to the fact that

although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator (Romans 1:21-25 ESV)

It seems to make more sense to simply submit to God, but this is not the way mankind has chosen. We are rebels. Mankind originally knew about the one, true God. But to worship this God meant obedience and submission. Man preferred rebellion. The dominant quality of the world is rebellion against God. God is a threat to projects like Babel. And so the Psalmist prophesied correctly that “the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying, “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us” (Psalm 2:2-3 ESV). Ever since Babel mankind has continued to rage against God.

Babel Teaches Us About God

 

The Greatness of God

There is something very close to sarcasm and even humor in the story of Babel: God had to come down to see this tower that the men were building! Now why would God have to actually come down to see this thing? The great Tower of Babel was so small to God that He could not even see it unless He came down out of Heaven! This kind of language about God is called an anthropomorphism. It is a way of talking about God in human terms to help us understand something.

In this case the thing we are understand is the greatness of God compared to the true smallness of what they were doing at Babel, though it probably did not look small to the men who were building it. The greatness of God is being contrasted with the relative smallness of the project at Babel. What seems large to mankind is not large to God. We should not be unduly impressed with the things men can do, including our own personal projects or abilities. We need to consider the greatness of God. Only then will our perspective be brought into proper focus. If we get up high enough our perspective is altered, like the view from an airplane or the top of a high mountain. From God’s vantage point, the Tower of Babel looked small. “It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers” (Isaiah 40:22 ESV).

God’s perspective is from Heaven. Scripture teaches us to think about God in a certain way. He is our Father IN HEAVEN. He is above us or far superior to us. He is a much higher being than we are. God is not like us but is separate from us and also from the world itself. He is transcendent. The Bible does not teach pantheism, or the idea that everything is God, which would significantly lower God’s person relative to us and to the world. God is higher than the world and He is certainly not a man. God is infinitely more powerful than all of the combined strength of the human race upon the earth. There is really no comparison between God and men and it is foolish for men to challenge God like they did at Babel. God has no true competition, not even in Satan, not to mention in mortal men. We have to look up to God because He is so much greater than we are. And He has to look down on us, His mercy and compassion being the only reason for Him doing so at all.

The Bible divides reality between two realms: heaven and earth. The earth is the domain of men. Heaven is the domain of God. “The heavens are the LORD's heavens, but the earth he has given to the children of man” (Psalm 115:16 ESV). And God is always on His throne in heaven. Men like Isaiah, Daniel, and John the Apostle all saw into heaven and the first thing that met their eyes was the throne of God. Heaven is the control-room for earth. God is always on His throne and nothing is out of His control. The men at Babel thought they were in control. But they were seriously mistaken. Men today still ignore God and believe that they are free to do what they want. But God is in heaven. He is still looking down on the nations of the world and all their plans. God has His own plans for the world that do not coincide with the plans of the nations. Is there any real question about whose will is going to prevail in the end?

Like the men at Babel, men today do not acknowledge the greatness of God. God is not feared or obeyed. “Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart; there is no fear of God before his eyes” (Psalm 36.1). If people were more aware of God their behavior would be different. When we are in the presence of someone who is greater than we are, or someone who might even make us afraid, our behavior is modified. We talk with more respect. We mind our manners. But wicked people have no fear of God and that is why they feel that they are free to rebel against God. Perhaps they think that God is not really there. Many people feel that God is too kind or patient to do anything in response to their sin.  Babel should teach us that God is not neutral or impotent when it comes to responding to human sin and rebellion. To test the Lord by sinning willfully and then presuming on His kindness or patience is a very risky business, to say the least! There may be some intellectual atheists out there who have philosophical objections or questions about God. But there are many more practical atheists. The practical atheists are denying or ignoring God by their actions and their lifestyles, just like the people at Babel.

We need God to exist, but men tend to believe they are self-sufficient. The world fails to acknowledge God as the source of everything. One of the greatest sins of the human race is ingratitude. Thanksgiving is not just something to pray at dinner or to have during the holidays each year. True gratitude is a humble dependence on God each and every day, and is based on an acknowledgment of His greatness. This dependence on God glorifies God because it means we are aligning ourselves with who God is rather than competing with God. The men at Babel were trying to be great themselves instead of glorifying God.

The Nearness of God

The building of Babel did not go unnoticed. One of the great doctrines of the Bible is the omniscience and omnipresence of God. No one can escape the gaze of the Heavenly Watcher. We should not think of heaven or the presence of God as being far away from the earth and the world of men. The idea of a distant, disinterested God who is not involved in the world or in human affairs is completely foreign to the Bible. This nearness of God is the argument the Apostle Paul used when speaking to the pagan philosophers in Athens:

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for “In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said, “For we are indeed his offspring” (Acts 17:24-28 ESV)

But it has always been the desire of men to escape the gaze of the Heavenly Watcher, to hide from God, like Adam and Eve in Eden, or like Jonah running away from his calling. Since God is spirit and is not visible to the physical eyes of men, this does not seem like a very difficult thing to do. Does a Supreme Being even exist? If He does, then can He see me? Does He know me? Does He even care about what I do? Even if men accept the possibility that God exists, does it logically follow that God is anywhere near the world of men?

Maybe God is something like an absentee landlord. Perhaps He simply made the world, wound it up like a giant clock, and then left to do something else up in heaven while the world runs on its own. So much of man’s thoughts about God have been more in the vein of God’s absence and irrelevance to human life rather than a full-blown atheism. An absent God is convenient to our plans.

But the Bible reminds mankind that God can always see. The Psalmist might have been talking to the men at Babel when he said to

Understand, O dullest of the people! Fools, when will you be wise? He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see? He who disciplines the nations, does he not rebuke? He who teaches man knowledge—the LORD—knows the thoughts of man, that they are but a breath (Psalm 94:8-11 ESV)

At times, when we are left weak and defenseless against the cruel forces of the natural world, we may wish there were a higher power who could sweep in and save us. But most of the time men are content to be free from the presence of God and therefore free to pursue their own plans. The people at Babel did not expect or want God around, but He came anyway, and He cancelled their plans.

The story of Babel shows us that God is not limited to His heavenly abode but has access to the world of men, though this ability to access both realms is not shared by human beings. We are physical beings who occupy one space at a time. But God fills heaven and earth and has no corporeal limitations. Augustine attempted to illustrate the omnipresence of God with the image of a sponge floating in the ocean. While the ocean is obviously immeasurable vast in comparison to the sponge, the ocean’s liquid form is able to interpenetrate the sponge and fill it. In the same way, God fills the universe while also being infinitely beyond the universe.

And so God was there at Babel in some sense, though the people did not perceive His presence and would probably not have welcomed God’s inspection of their project. The nearness of God is always a reality. It is our perception of this reality that is lacking, especially if we have moral reasons for our incredulity.

The Opposition of God

God did not come down to support the workers at Babel. He came down to oppose what the men were doing. God set Himself against these men and the city they were building. The presence of God was not manifested in a fiery judgement. No one was killed at Babel. The people at Babel did not perceive God’s presence, but they did feel the effects of His displeasure.

Even if there was no death and destruction at Babel, the presence of God was there to judge the people. God judged them by opposing their rebellious project. God has introduced into human society a principle of confusion and disunity among the people of the world so that it becomes impossible for them to reach their goals. God has come out in opposition to the agenda of people who are alienated from Him and unwilling to acknowledge Him. That is the enduring lesson of Babel. “The face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth” (Psalm 34:16 ESV).

The reason God opposed Babel is because He had his own plans for the world and these plans would grow best in the soil that God was preparing. Who knows what kind of environment would have been created in the world if Babel was allowed to continue and to be a success? When a gardener prepares to plant his plants he must first prepared the soil and clear it of anything that would be a detriment to what he wants to grow. God was going to grow His Kingdom in the world and this meant that the project at Babel had to be uprooted. Babel was abandoned at that time and place, though other versions of Babel would be attempted. But only what God builds will be allowed to stand. When Daniel interpreted the dream of Nebuchadnezzar that he had dreamed concerning that golden image, Daniel stated that

the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever, just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. A great God has made known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure (Daniel 2:44-45 ESV)

And so shall the Kingdom of God continue to grow in the earth. Every other kingdom, all the great projects of human history, will become like dust blown away in the winds of time. Only the City that God is building will stand.

Series: God and the Nations

Part 1

"God's Plan for the Nations"

Gen. 11.1-9; 12.1-3; Acts 2.1-12; Rev. 7.9-10

The world is a place of struggle, conflict, and competition. This is true for individuals as well as for groups. Sometimes this tension erupts in physical violence. This condition exists because everyone wants to have their own way. It is not always clear who should get their way. Who is right and who is wrong? It requires moral or value judgments. Everyone tends to think that they are right! People are naturally selfish and interested in their own agendas or that of their own group. And everyone thinks that his interests, views, or group are superior to other interests, views and groups!

Power is the ability to get your way. It might be through persuasion, influence, threat, intimidation, coercion, or deception. Power is at work everywhere in the world! Is there anyone free from the effects of power? But the will or interests of people conflict and not everyone can have their way at the same time. From one perspective everyone wants the same kinds of things, such as security, food, or shelter. But there are some interests that people have that we must question morally. The ability to get your way enables you to determine your own future. Generally speaking, people don’t want their future to be determined by someone else. We want the control of self-determination. This desire for power or self-determination was behind the first temptation of man in the Garden and is at the root of all sin against God’s authority. Rather than trust God we want to take matters into our own hands.

God gave man dominion over the earth. In this dominion man was made in God’s image. But Satan also has power and dominion in the earth. Ultimately, the earth belongs to God and we are God’s stewards who must give an account to Him. We are not free and independent to do as we want. Men live on the earth, but God lives in heaven. God rules the world from heaven. There are also angels, principalities and powers in heavenly places who also exercise some power over the world of men. Jesus has entered heaven and is now ruling the world. The Bible is constantly showing us that heaven is the main place and the superior power or control room for the earth. Nothing is ever really out of control.

The will of God reigns supreme. Can men successfully resist God’s will? It appears that men can FOR A TIME. But then the judgment comes and God has the last word. What about “free will?” It depends on what you mean by “free.” Man is free to resist God. But he is not free to escape from God and the consequences of this rebellion. God is present and active, not distant and passive. He is not the clockmaker god of Deism. He is not like the capricious, petty gods of the pagans. God cares about the world. Common grace is experienced by all men. God upholds His creation, gives life and breath and everything else. This is all because of God’s own nature, not man’s goodness.

God holds men responsible for their choices and actions. Most men fail to acknowledge and thank God for His good gifts. Men can know something about God, but mankind has purposefully rejected that knowledge and worshiped idols. Man suppresses the truth about God.

God is driven by His eternal purpose. The world is a stage on which God is working the drama of redemption, with spiritual powers watching it unfold. God’s purpose does not depend on what men do but on His own will. God is not just reacting to human need or even to human rebellion. There are events in Scripture which caused the eternal purpose of God to move forward significantly. We must assume that all events recorded in Scripture fit into the overarching purpose of God and do not have a life of their own but only take on their real significance in the context of the larger story or purpose. The Bible contains a gradual unfolding of God’s purpose or PROGRESSIVE REVELATION. The purpose of God required extensive preparation without which it would be difficult if not impossible to understand what God is doing. The purpose of God is continuing to advance toward a destination or goal that will be realized so that everyone can see and acknowledge God’s work thereby giving glory to God. We must be able to identify these key events if we want to understand the MEGA-NARRATIVE of Scripture. This helps us to avoid the misuse of Scripture for private agendas. This also helps us to see the consistency and unity of God’s revelation.

We should be able to see that what often looks like chaos in the world is actually being managed by a purposeful God. The nations do not exist according to their own will but according to the will of God. The nations did not simply evolve on their own but were provided for by God for His own purpose. God’s management of the nations of the world involves both His wrath and His mercy, resulting in the revelation of His person and His purpose. God will be glorified among the nations!

Babel: The Alienation and Scattering of the Nations

The Babel narrative comes at the end of a lengthy section detailing the effects of the Fall. Violence soon erupted in human history. The trouble with the human family continues even among righteous Noah’s offspring. In attempting to understand the “human condition” we must see how sin and alienation from God have been at work in human history. Any failure to acknowledge sin and alienation will cause us to be focused only on symptoms. The problem with the world is that it is hostile to its source of healing. Sin is the desire for independence from God. The effect of this independence can only be death. In this context in Genesis we see the effects of sin continue with each successive generation. Things never improve. Sin is always a downward spiral. Left to his own devices man never improves from a spiritual or moral perspective. What is it that keeps the world from imploding? God has his hand on human history! What would happen to the world if God withdrew His hand completely?

The evolutionary theory has infiltrated every part of modern thought. The Biblical doctrine of sin is a direct challenge to the modern mindset. Modern, secular thought fails to consider the spiritual or inner life of man. Man is a biological machine with no higher purpose than to survive and flourish according to his own appetites. Morality in this context is simply a means to the end of forming the kind of society men envision. There is no higher goal or purpose other than what men think they want. The Bible teaches that sin corrupts the heart of men rendering their thoughts and desires corrupt as well. Human life is bent in the wrong direction. To keep moving, or evolving, in the wrong direction is not progress. This is why the Bible never places hope for the world in men.

Sin is more than breaking a commandment. Sin was in the world before God gave the Law. Sin is alienation or man living apart from any thought of God. Anything becomes warped, bent, or twisted when God is not the goal. Man’s ambition is to be his own god and to dethrone the authority of God, to throw off the fetters of God’s very existence. This was also the sin of Satan and caused his fall and expulsion from heaven. This same spirit of rebellion has infected the world of men, who are actually in agreement with Satan and under his dominion.

The plans of the men at Babel may not seem to be overtly wicked. What is really going on is a conspiracy against God. God is being removed from the mind and actions of men. All of the plans of men have a spiritual or moral dimension. It is dangerous to separate spiritual and moral issues from everyday life. All plans that are made without God are wicked, not because of the content of the plans necessarily, but because we are living apart from God. This alienation is the result of a deliberate ignorance of God. There is nothing innocent about this agenda. There is knowledge about God available to men. But for moral reasons men reject this knowledge. The knowledge of God is a constraint the world does not want. If you don’t like the umpire’s call, then why not just remove the ump from the game entirely? Men are held accountable by God, which assumes that there is some kind of knowledge available to men. Men cannot successfully escape from God. But men often assume that they can.

The major sin of Babel seems to be pride and the desire for men to exalt himself rather than glorifying God. Pride may be the root of all other sins. Pride must always be seen as a wrong view of self that comes from being alienated from God. The person who knows and acknowledges God can never be proud because in His light we see ourselves accurately. To glorify God means to defer to or advance His person, will and purpose. If God were a piece of music, then to glorify Him would be to play that tune as loudly and as accurately as possible! But man would rather play his own tune. If God is God, then He deserves and has the right to be glorified. Man has no such inherent rights but can only derive his worth and dignity from the Creator. There is a glory that comes from God that we should seek. But men do not seek this glory. We usually seek glory from other men rather than from God.

The men at Babel were in no way concerned with the will of God but were only interested in their agenda. The will of God was for man to fill the earth and subdue it, not to stay in one place. The will of God had been revealed and they were ignoring it. We should never defy the revealed will of God. If we do not know the will of God, then it is our responsibility to seek His will. Those who seek will find! Those who never find are not really seeking.

The word “Babel” and “Babylon” become a Biblical shorthand for opposition against God and a man-centered agenda. This is the spirit of the World. Babel or Babylon is the City of Man. In Babylon man is on the throne and is the center of all things. But God is creating His own city or community of people. We are either citizens of Babylon or citizens of Zion! Babylon and Zion are growing together in the same world now, but eventually a separation will be made. Until that time the people of God in the world must separate themselves spiritually and morally and come out of Babylon. If the Church marries the world and is unfaithful to God, then her married name becomes Babylon.

The tower may have seemed impressive to men, but it is so insignificant that God had to come down to see it! Man is not really a challenge to God. The Bible is calling us up higher to see things from a better perspective. Don’t be overly impressed by men. Fear God!

Man’s fall and wickedness is so great because he is made in the image of God. Monkeys don’t build towers or bombs. God knew that the unity of mankind in a state of alienation would not be the proper environment for His purpose to be worked out. Even if the world were to perfectly unite it would be wicked if not on God’s agenda. God is managing the world so that His purpose can advance. It is like a man who has a garden. The point is to grow his vegetables. The Garden is not for the weeds to grow!

God introduced a principle of confusion and disharmony among the people, which in turn would produce rivalry and mistrust. God is not the author of confusion. Whatever God produces does not result in chaos. But Babel was something man was doing that God judged. As long as the nations are struggling with each other they cannot unite against God’s people in the world. Man is not free to do whatever he wants. Man will not be allowed to successfully challenge the sovereignty of God. Just as the governments of the world constrain their citizens, God governs or constrains the nations. God is the one who actually raises up nations and their rulers. This is why it is expedient to submit ourselves to authority, even wicked governments.

The scattering of these nations reminds us of Adam being driven out of the Garden. Sin scatters and drives us out, alienating us from God. The principle of sin and death, which entered the world through Adam, continues to be at work in the human race. Mankind has a kind of collective memory of Eden, always trying to get back to paradise or the perfect world. There are many utopian visions among men, but these have never been realized. The way back to Eden and the Tree of Life was blocked in this world.
 

ABRAHAM: THE PROMISE OF GOD’S BLESSING FOR THE NATIONS

Unable to work with the nations at Babel, God will create a nation for Himself and work through them. How can we explain the existence of the Jews apart from God? The significance of Israel is their association with God. Israel’s association with God has made them the object of hatred among the nations. Abram’s call comes right after Babel and is a contrasting vision for human life and history. Abram is God saying “there is another way and I will provide it and show it!” We don’t have to conform to the world’s system of thought and living. The world is nothing but a frustrating circle of vanity. But God provides a way out!

God’s focus narrows as His purpose moves forward. Blessings through one man is a shadow of Christ. Abraham is a conduit. We must be connected to the approved conduit to be blessed by God. The blessing for the world was not just the nation of Israel. Israel would bring the blessing into the world, which is Christ. God let the other nations go but did not completely forget or neglect them. However, He did not recognize them as being a part of His purpose. God made no covenant with any other nation. No nation can claim to have exclusive rights to the blessing of God.

Abram is called to be physically separate from other nations. God was making a distinction between the people associated with His plan and those who are not. Even though we live in an earthly nation, this is not our primary identity or association. We are not called to be physically separate, but we are called to be holy. God will make Himself known in the earth through His people. Therefore, His people must accurately represent God among all the false gods of the nations. Idolatry is ubiquitous. God will not share His glory with false gods but will prove the worthlessness of idols and His superiority through helping His people. Abram’s separation was actually for the benefit of the nations. The separation was the means to an end, not an end of itself. God needed to be able to use Abram in the world so he had to be separate from the world. Abram and his descendants would be priests. Priests are holy so they can intercede and bring people to God. Abram was an alien and stranger in the world. Abram lived in a tent and had no city even though the land of Canaan actually belonged to him. This is a picture of the people of God in the midst of the world. The promise to Abram concerning the land will only be fulfilled ultimately in the world to come, which belongs to Abraham and all his children. This world is not under our dominion. But the world to come will be!

The nations at Babel wanted to make their own way in the world apart from God and His will. Abram is trusting God’s way and entrusting his life to God’s care. Faith is more than believing God exists. Faith is trusting God’s word and believing that He is good. The only way to have a relationship with God is through faith. The nations were disobedient to God. Abram is consistently obedient. Obedience is the fruit of faith. Obedience is not always easy and may not seem to be the best way. The nations took what they wanted for themselves. Abram received what he had from the hands of God. Greed and ambition define the spirit of the World. The original temptation was for man to take for himself rather than rely on God. This is a spirit of independence or self-sufficiency. It is living as if we don’t really need God. The nations worked to accomplish their objectives. Abraham did not work, but trusted God to fulfill His promise. The purpose of God will not advance through human works and effort but through the faithfulness of God. Faith rests in the promise of God and relies on Divine power.

The nations at Babel were cursed, not blessed. They were scattered, alienated. They had to make their own way in a world that was not in their favor. All the odds were against the nations. They would struggle to survive, as the original curse of God predicted. Abram is blessed by God’s presence and attention. God is working for Abram and not against Him. God’s favor is on Abram. Abraham was called God’s friend! It is a serious matter to make oneself an enemy of God! But the World has done exactly that! No one deserves God’s favor, but God does bestow it according to His own gracious character and will. Abram was blessed with everything necessary for life in the world. He did not have to worry or run after material things. The world labors and strives for the wrong things: creation over Creator, gifts over Giver. If we have God then we have everything else. To have all the world’s goods without God is to have nothing.

Abram would have God’s protection in a dangerous world. His security was in God who was His shield. One of the biggest concern of the nations is security or safety. Nothing in this world is actually secure. Money can fly away. The strength of an army can fail. God is a strong tower for those who trust Him. It is wrong to trust any other source.

PENTECOST: THE GATHERING OF THE NATIONS

Babel was a work of man. Pentecost was the work of God. The disciples were waiting for God. They were not going at it on their own. There was a Divine power that was absent at Babel. To have God’s power you must be doing God’s work.

God’s presence at Babel was for a curse. God’s presence at Pentecost was for a blessing. The blessing of Abraham included the indwelling Spirit. Christ has overcome the alienation making God’s presence a blessing rather than a curse. The world has been reconciled to God through Christ!

God caused confusion and division at Babel. God caused understanding and unity at Pentecost. When it is God’s work there is unity and understanding. The unifying factors are the Spirit and the Gospel. Confusion and division is a work of the Flesh. No work of God can be done in this environment.
God scattered at Babel. God gathered at Pentecost. The gathering at Pentecost was just the first-fruits of a greater harvest from the nations. It is God’s objective to reconcile people to Himself. This must be our objective too!

God’s agenda or purpose would be advanced through the declaration of a message to every nation. The message concerns what God has done. It is a message of good news and is for all the nations. Like Abram we are given a word from God that we must believe. The blessing of Abraham is appropriated through faith. Even Gentiles who believe can be children of Abraham! God wants to bless people, not curse them. The Gospel is the announcement of the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham. Christ is the Seed of Abraham. All blessings are in and through Him. The Promise is both exclusive and inclusive.

The Church is the people God is calling out of the nations. God has always wanted a People for His Name. Jew and Gentile made into a single Body. The Church is a holy nation in the midst of many nations. We are to be Salt and Light. There will be tension with the world! The Church is to represent God among the nations. People come to know God through His people. This includes both privilege and responsibility.

Salvation: The Glory of the Nations

The children of Abraham will indeed be numerous! The people of God often seem like the minority. But we will not be at the end! Right now the children of Abraham are mixed in with the children of the Wicked One, like tares among wheat. This multitude had come through the tribulation of a world in rebellion against God! Our time in the world will be like sailing through a stormy sea. The World does not love the people of God because the world hates God.

Salvation is a big project that will be successful in spite of all opposition. It requires the power and wisdom of God for us to overcome the Dragon, the Beasts, and the Prostitute that John saw in the book of Revelation. There are Powers in the world that look impressive, including the spiritual powers of darkness, but we know where the real Power is. God will get all the glory for salvation because it is His work, not man’s. All the work of men, that was not done for the glory of God, will be blown away like dust. The only work that will stand is the work of God.

What looked like a hopeless mess at Babel will end up glorifying God! There are aspects of God not previously revealed that will be seen by heavenly personalities in the salvation of men. Evil cannot triumph over God. He will have the last word. Since all the nations were rebellious against God we can only trace salvation back to God’s mercy and grace. No one will be able to boast before God. The dark backdrop of the sin of the nations will make God’s grace shine even brighter.

In the book of Revelation, at the end of the Bible, the corrupt City of Man is judged and falls. The only thing left to emerge from the ashes of human history will be the New Jerusalem. Everyone is a member of the City of Man or the City of God: two parallel societies developing together throughout history but in different directions. The City of Man cannot be saved. We must be saved from out of it like Lot out of Sodom.

Just as many are included in this City of God, some will be excluded as well. A great separation is coming! If we are rejected by the City of Man we will be at home in the City of God. If we are at home in this City of Man we will be rejected by the City of God. Anything not compatible with God will have to be removed. In the World to Come there will be only one nation left. This will be a nation prepared to be in the presence of God to serve Him forever. All of the nations of men pass away because nothing opposed to the Kingdom of God can stand.

God has a plan for the nations of the world! Even though the nations rebelled against God He never completely deserted them. At Babel the nations rebelled and were judged and scattered by God. God then called Abram and separated him from other nations. Out of Abraham God created His own nation. Through that nation came the Savior who would bless all the nations. At Pentecost God reversed the curse of Babel. In the end there will be a great multitude of the saved from out of every nation!

Series: The Resurrection of the Dead (1 Corinthians 15)

The Hope of Final Victory

1 Cor. 15.50-58

This is the final part and the crescendo of Paul’s argument about the resurrection of the dead. Some of the Corinthians did not believe in the resurrection of the body. But Paul begins by reminding them that the Gospel was preached to them that Christ rose from the dead. He is the first-fruits from the dead.

If Christ was not raised then the whole of the Christian faith amounts to nothing. But Christians have hope in Christ that He will come to put away death forever and raise all the dead. If there is no hope of the resurrection then there is no motivation to live for Christ now.

The Corinthians may have thought that Paul was teaching that the resurrection body would be just like our mortal bodies. But Paul clarified that the resurrection body will be of a different kind or a different order from the bodies we now have. Our bodies now are subject to death, which is the legacy of all of Adam’s children. But our new bodies will be like Christ’s glorified and immortal body.

We cannot enter into the Kingdom of God, or the New Creation, with these mortal bodies. We must be changed. The final victory will come only when the saints put on their new, immortal bodies and death itself becomes obsolete. This is the final stage of our salvation for which we are waiting in eager anticipation. Until then we live in hope knowing that our lives here are not in vain but are leading to a glorious revelation when Jesus comes again.

The difficulty with Paul’s argument is that it is all based on events that are still in the future. We tend to become wrapped up in life here and now and the future looks dark and unknown. But some things about the future are known, at least to faith.

Hope is faith looking forward into the future. What does faith see when looking forward? It sees this final victory over our greatest enemy, which is death. We have to have hope in order to live properly in this world of sin and death. If we have no hope then we will be swept away by the world and its passions and lust and will give in to despair. We live in a generation that is quickly giving up all hope. Many people wonder why they should go on living, and more and more are choosing either to dull their senses with some kind of artificial escape from reality, or perhaps to end their own lives in a final act of despair and desperation.

As we consider this passage and the hope of final victory, we must not only think about the future but must ask what this hope in the future does to us now and how it helps us live today. Because this was Paul’s purpose: to give Christians encouragement in the present by giving hope for the future.

Let’s begin by attempting to define the nature of Christian hope. Hope is one of those things that the world has managed to make ambiguous. Language often hides meaning rather than making it clear. When we use the word “hope” in common speech we usually mean something we are wishing for. We hope that we can someday purchase a particular home or have a certain career. These wishes may never come true. At least with some of these wishes there are concrete steps we could take to make it happen. We can save money for a down-payment on that home or go to school to have a career. But we still might not reach our ideal situation. But there are other things we wish for that we have no control over whatsoever. We might wish that no one in our immediate family gets sick and dies. But we know there is nothing we could do to stop this possibility. Even a simply thing like wishing for a sunny day so we can enjoy an outing is out of our control. We hope it won’t rain, we wish for the perfect weather pattern, but we know we have absolutely no control over the weather! Christian hope is not analogous to either of these examples.

The things we are hoping for are not what we can make happen. In fact, the coming of the Kingdom of God does not depend on any of our work at all! Jesus rose from the dead without our help and He will come again when He is ready apart from anything we might have to say about it. But there are some people who say that Christians are just wishful thinkers. We are just starry-eyed dreamers who want to escape from the unpleasant realities of this world and so we have created our own little fairy-tale world to help us feel better. That’s why Karl Marx famously said that religion is the opiate of the people. Instead of working to create change and a better world now, we just accept the suffering of this present world because we believe a better world is coming.

How can we respond to this criticism? Well, let’s use Marxism as an example. Is Marxism a reality or is it also just wishful thinking? Anyone who knows anything about history and politics knows that the vision of Marx and his followers has never become a reality. In fact, it has failed miserably in the real world. But is the Christian hope of a New Creation like the wishful thinking of a failed ideology? Christianity is NOT an ideology. This Gospel did not come from man but from heaven. And we are not working toward a better world, like all the rest of the political and social ideologies. We are WAITING for the New Creation to come in when God is done with His purpose. So our hope is in God, not in the progress of mankind, and not even in the progress of the Church and its mission in the world.

So when Christians speak about the hope that we have we are not saying that we wish that the world would accept our ideology so that a new and better age can be ushered in. We are waiting for no utopia on earth. We are waiting for something from Heaven. Actually, we are waiting for SOMEONE from heaven who will usher in the eternal kingdom of God. There is something very concrete about Christian hope because it is anchored in a person and not in an ideology.

So, what is Christian hope, exactly? Hope has to do with looking forward or anticipating some future event. Hope is closely related to faith. We have hope because we have faith in God and His promises. We believe God, that is, we believe that His word is trustworthy.

So when God makes a promise about a future that He will bring about, we believe God is not lying and we have hope that God will bring these things to pass in His time and in His way. This is the very thing that Abraham and Sarah had to do when God promised them a son. And they had to believe in God’s promised future even though what God promised was impossible to the flesh since they were too old to have children. God’s promises are always a challenge to the abilities of the flesh. Whatever God promises to do will take God’s power to accomplish, and that is certainly true of the final victory over death and the resurrection of the dead.

What could we possibly do to defeat death and raise the dead? We have to trust God to make that happen. Because we believe God and we trust His promises we have the hope of the resurrection. So hope is faith looking forward. We can look back and see how God has made promises and kept those promises. We know that God cannot lie. God is consistent and does not change (See Heb. 6.13-20). So our hope is based on the veracity of God’s word and the immutability of God’s character and purpose.

Hope is something positive. I could believe that something is something is coming in the future that is very bad. That is not hope that is fear and dread. Hope is a positive expectation that something will change for the better. A person who is sick, for example, has the hope of one day getting better. Someone who is poor may have hope that they will have more money eventually.

Hope means that I have a reasonable expectation that my situation will improve. Now the key word here is the word “reasonable” because there are some hopes that really do not have their foundation in reality. Hopes can be disappointed, or we can have what is called a “false hope.” A false hope is a hope that is unreasonably founded.

I may have a false hope that is based on nothing but a lie. There would be no good reason for me to base my hopes on a lie and in the end I will be disappointed. Now this happens in real life all the time! People believe in all kinds of things and build their hopes on things that turn out to be false.
Some people believe that the Christian faith is a lie and that Christians are placing their hopes in something that will ultimately disappoint. Paul has already made the point that Christianity really is a false hope IF Christ did not rise from the dead. If Christ did not rise then the Gospel is a lie and there is nothing on which to place our hopes for the future. But if Christ has been raised from the dead, then placing our hope in Christ IS a reasonable thing to do and we are not going to be disappointed if it is true that He was raised.

Those who hope in the Lord will NOT be disappointed in the end, unlike those who place their hopes in the things or people of this World. Christians believe that things are going to get better.

Christ is going to come again and death itself will die. There will be a New Creation and God Himself will dwell with His people forever. We will inherit eternal life. Our hope is the anticipation of a great change that is coming. The most personal aspect of this change will be the change in our bodies. For those who believe in Christ this change will be the fulfillment of all their hopes. We will be forever with the Lord. Hope is like the feeling seen in a young child who is waiting at the window, perhaps standing on her tiptoes, straining to see her daddy pull into the driveway. She looks forward to running into his arms and being caught up in love and affection. We are waiting with eager anticipation to be caught up in the arms of our Savior and Bridegroom. That is Christian hope. Our hope is in a person who will come for us. We are waiting for Jesus. Jesus will bring with Him all of the other things that we are longing and hoping for, including these resurrection bodies, but the main thing is to see Christ.

We will be changed by that vision into an immortal creature of such glory it would probably be unbearable if we were to see ourselves now in that state. We will be like Him for we will see Him as He is, and that is a purifying hope even now as we are waiting for that day to come (See 1 John 3.2-3).

So we have been trying to understand the nature of Christian hope. It is not wishful thinking or blind optimism in human progress. It is faith looking forward into the future, being based firmly on God’s word and character. And hope is the anticipation that things will get better.

Things will change and we greatly desire this change, especially the end of death and the immortality of a resurrection body. Those who hope in the Lord will not be disappointed because Christ has risen from the dead and will come again to bring the fulfillment of our hope.

We need to think further about the ground or the reason for this hope that we have in Christ. I have hinted at this already. Hope has to have a reasonable foundation or it is nothing but wishful thinking or a false hope that is based on a lie.

Now please understand that I am not saying that Christian faith must be reasonable according to a purely human logic or according to the standards put down by the wisdom of the world. If we apply human reasoning to the Gospel it becomes foolishness because the world’s wisdom begins and ends with man and cannot take us any farther than that. But there is a certain reason or logic to faith and to the hope that springs from faith. If we begin our reasoning process by contemplating the power of God then our hope in the resurrection becomes quite reasonable. I think Paul has implicitly been doing this kind of reasoning through this chapter in Corinthians. Some of the Corinthians were in error because they did not know God and this made the hope of the resurrection unreasonable to them. But with God all things are possible! The God who made the world with all of its complexity and mystery can certainly make a New Creation and can also make new bodies for us to live in His New Creation.

The first reason or basis for our hope is the Gospel. That is how Paul began this chapter, by going back and rehearsing the simple facts of the Gospel: Christ died. Christ was buried. Christ was raised. This is the starting point and the bedrock upon which our hope is built.

What is the Gospel? It is the message about what God has done in Christ to redeem us from sin and death. All the heavy lifting has been done. The Gospel is a report about certain facts that have actually happened in our world. In this way Christianity differs from an ideology, a philosophy, and even a religion. An ideology is an idea about how the world SHOULD be and perhaps how to change it. A philosophy is an idea about how the world works. A religion is about what we can do to change ourselves. The Gospel is none of those things. The Gospel is simply the message about how Christ has won the victory against all of our significant enemies and that one day He will return to consummate this victory. The only thing that is left to us is to make sure that we are on the winning side.

I was not alive to witness this, but I have heard stories about the wild jubilation that overcame Americans when it was announced that the Second World War had ended -- first on VE Day and then on VJ Day. (Victory in Europe and Victory over Japan, respectively.) On receiving this good news the nation could have hope that things were going to change and were going to get better for everyone concerned because all the death and fear of war had passed and victory had been obtained. Of course, there was a high price for this victory. But even those who were not directly involved in paying this price were still going to benefit from the victory and could therefore rejoice and be glad.

The same is true of the Gospel. In this case, Jesus paid the price for the defeat of our enemy, which was death, and all of us get to reap the benefits of His victory, both now and especially in the future when He comes again. The Christian life here and now is really just beginning to appropriate the victory that Jesus won. But there is much more to come in the future, and that is our hope of the resurrection.

That leads me to the second aspect of the ground or basis for our hope: the coming of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God has to do with God’s purpose or will being accomplished in the earth so that what was once out of harmony, or alienated, is brought back into union with God. Now there is a sense in which the Kingdom has already come. But it is still coming. The plan has not yet been completed in which all things will finally be in perfect union and harmony with God the Father.

We know that Christ has risen and is reigning in heaven. But only when He comes again from heaven and death is finally put away for good will the Kingdom of God have come in all its glorious fullness. And earth and heaven will be one, all things being brought together in Christ (See Eph. 1.10). At that time anything that is not reconciled to God will have to be put away for good, including death, the last enemy to be destroyed.

The book of Revelation gives us that final act in the drama of redemption in this apocalyptic imagery:

“Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:11-15).

That passage in Revelation is saying in apocalyptic imagery the same thing that Paul is saying in our text. But Paul is saying it from the perspective of the redeemed and the victory that we will experience at the resurrection of the dead.

We have already submitted ourselves to God’s plan and have already become a part of His Kingdom that keeps on coming. So when it comes in all its fullness that will be glory for us. So while we believe the Kingdom has already started, we also have hope that there is much more to come. We have only seen the first-fruits of the Kingdom of God.

The third basis for our hope is the coming of Christ. I have already made this point. Christians are waiting for Jesus to come again. Our hope is in Christ. When He comes He will usher in the fullness of the Kingdom of God. His command will cause the dead to rise and death itself to become void. When Jesus comes we will be changed from mortal to immortal and the earth itself will also be changed, the present heavens and earth passing away and a new world emerging. All of these things will happen when Jesus comes again. So it is the coming of Christ that will fulfill all of our hopes. Jesus Himself spoke of the events that the Apostle Paul is expounding in my text: “an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment” (John 5:28-29).

When the New Testament speaks about the end of time, or what theologians call eschatology, the main feature is the coming of Christ. This does not mean that the other events associated with the end of time are unimportant. But these other events take on their significance because of the One who is coming to bring the history of the world to an appropriate conclusion.

But today it seems that the whole focus of eschatology, at least in Evangelical circles, is on the other events associated with the end times rather than on the coming of Christ Himself. You seem to hear more emphasis, for example, on the coming of the Antichrist than on the coming of Christ! This has to be wrong because this is not the emphasis of the New Testament. And if we are not careful we can allow a wrong emphasis to rob us of our hope.

The coming of Christ is designed to cause hope and anticipation to flame up in our hearts. But many people do not have hope flaming up in their hearts when they think about the end times. Many people actually have fear, which is the very opposite of hope and the antithesis of the purpose of the Gospel! If we think about the end of time and are unsettled and afraid then we need to go back and reconsider the meaning of the Gospel. The salvation promised in the Gospel will not be complete until Jesus comes. In this hope we have been saved and are being saved (See Rom. 8.23-25).

We have tried to define the meaning of hope and the basis or reason for our hope. But these considerations could be merely academic unless we consider what hope can do for us now. Hope is looking toward the future and anticipating something that has not yet happened and that we have not yet received. But does that make hope irrelevant to our lives now? Many Christians seem to think so, because this whole subject of the resurrection of the dead seems to be ignored today. People seem to be blind to the connection between this future hope and our lives now, as if there are aspects of the Gospel that are irrelevant. But we cannot live without hope. People who don’t have hope either despair of life completely and give up, or they become completely devoted to pleasure in an attempt to get all they can now before their eventual and inevitable demise. Neither of these options are open to the Christian.

So how can we apply hope to our present situation? Or, how does hope help us live as Christians now, even in this present, evil world?

First, we must apply the hope of future victory in Christ to the reality of death. What I mean is that unless we are alive when the Lord returns and are simply changed without having to suffer death, we will all have to face the eventual demise of our earthly vessels, our bodies, and also the death of our loved ones. How we respond to this reality is the real test of our faith in the Gospel and our hope. It may be easy to name the name of Christ when we are in relative ease and comfort and the leaves of the tree are green. But the seasons of life change. Death is the great robber of men’s hopes. Every hope that we have in this world will eventually be taken from us by death. And it might seem hard to think about, but God is the one who has declared this to be. That is because God did not intend for our hopes to be realized apart from Him. Adam’s race is doomed to die. There is no hope in Adam. Every hope that is anchored in Adam and this present order are doomed to disappointment. We must look beyond Adam and this world to Christ and the Kingdom of God to have any hope beyond death. Only when death is destroyed and we are clothed in immortality will our hope be realized.

Secondly, we must apply our hope to facing opposition.We live in a world that is opposed to God and opposed to faith and hope. Having faith and hope in this world is like trying to climb a mountain or swim upstream against a fierce current. When we do encounter any kind of opposition we must have a strong hope that in the future things will be different and that this present conflict and suffering will not last. Unless we have this strong hope we will eventually despair and give up. If we have no reason for hope, then there is no reason to continue to face opposition for Christ. Why suffer if no hope?

Finally, we must apply our hope to facing times of discouragement.The first thing I would say about this is that every believer can become discouraged. The important thing is what we do with this discouragement. But think about why we get discouraged. We might feel like what we are doing is futile or insignificant. But this fails to take into consideration that the victory is not won through what we do, but through what Christ has done and what He will do in the future. As long as my main focus is what I am doing, then I have a reason for discouragement because my work will never be enough. If I focus on Christ and the Gospel then it becomes impossible to be discouraged because the victory is already mine and my future is also secure! I still have to fight the good fight of faith. But my fight will be effective because Christ has already secured the victory and the future is not in doubt.

Now we can summarize and conclude. Christian hope is not just otherworldly wishful thinking. The most powerful incentive for living is found in the hope of the resurrection. Because the final victory is sure there is really nothing for us to fear in this life, not even our own death. Nothing can hurt the believer and so he is free to give himself completely to the work of the Lord.

In this life we are surrounded by the old order, which is still dominated by sin and death. There are always reasons for us to give up in despair or to be afraid. But if the resurrection of the dead is true then there is really nothing for us to fear. If death is defeated then what other enemy can hurt us?

This is how we must reason so that we will not become distracted from the work of the Lord and give up. The only question that remains is whether or not we really believe in the resurrection of the dead.