I want to thank all of you who have been attending and listening to our current series on
‘The Bible and Your Vote: Do They Align?’. We’ve looked at some pretty compelling
material in God’s Word. From Israel telling Samuel (and Jehovah God) that they no longer
wanted a Theocracy but a human king, to Paul’s clear words about our responsibility as
citizens to participate in the governmental process. From the post-flood generation of
perhaps millions deciding to misuse the reality of unity to build a monument to themselves
so that collective humanity could become ‘god.’ To God Himself ‘coming down’ to
scramble their languages, create nations and most importantly to save mankind from what
may have been another flood-like apocalyptic wipeout of humanity.
Because of the richness of the story of the Tower of Babel and the volume of relatable truth
that clearly applies to today, we haven’t quite been able to get through all of the important
points in the story. First, the story demonstrates that man cannot ‘go up to God’. Even if he
could, that does not make him a god. Man is a created being. I can only imagine that if God
had not come down, to stop the building of the tower, in His righteous anger He may have
unleashed an apocalyptic destruction on humanity once again. After all, the identity of God
is so important that the very first of the ten commandments deals specifically with this
reality: “I am the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of
your slavery. 3 “You must not have any other god but me.” Exodus 20:2–3 (NLT) At the
Tower in Shinar, man was setting himself up as his own god!
The second part of this is that man’s only hope is God ‘coming down’ to save him. Because
God is perfect, it takes a perfect human to relate to Him. Because of our sin, we are
obviously not perfect. But God would ‘come down’ with the birth of Jesus – the perfect
Son of God – to stand in our place at His crucifixion, so that we could stand in His place.
In other words, His perfection ‘stands in’ for my imperfection, and reconciles me back to
God. So now I can relate to Him – in my total imperfection! Similarly, at the Tower, God
‘came down’ and scrambled the languages to stop the construction of the tower and to save
man from going too far in setting himself up as that false, substitute god. The scrambling
of languages was a very good thing for humanity. Come, let’s go down and confuse the
people with different languages. Then they won’t be able to understand each other.” 8 In
that way, the Lord scattered them all over the world, and they stopped building the city.
Genesis 11:7-8 (NLT)
So, in this moment, man was shown to be subject to the rule and intentions of his righteous
and just – and sovereign and loving – Creator. Being subject to his Creator would
disqualify him from being a god anyway. The folks at Babel just couldn’t see it. They were
so full of themselves and their self-centered ambitions. Man is the creature, and not the
creator.
Here is the deal – the people of that day had fallen prey to an idea that was impossible: That
THEY could become God. Therefore, they pursued a pathway of twisted ideas…. The
same ones that Satan used on Adam and Eve.
These ideas that Satan used then in the Garden and at Babel, are the same ones he is using
now to deceive mankind into thinking he can become his own god. Then at Babel, and
TODAY, man has fallen into a false ideology. An IDEOLOGY is defined as the integrated
assertions, theories and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program. Ideologies are (predetermined) outcome-based; And as we have discussed these past two Sunday mornings, in
an outcome-based system, morality takes a back seat to the accomplishment of the
outcome/objective. We have to be careful because often with an ideology, the ‘END’
justifies whatever means it takes to create that ‘END’. This is why morality is often
shortchanged in the interest of getting to the place defined by the ideology.
The main problem with ideology is that it can lead to people becoming IDEOLOGUEs.
The ideologue is defined as ’… an often blindly partisan advocate or adherent of a
particular ideology; The scariest part of this definition is the ‘often blindly partisan
advocate….’ This blindness for the ideologue typically obscures a sense of moral and
ethical clarity. For example, Jesus was crucified by a mob (sound familiar?) that was led by
ideologues who were so driven by their hatred for Jesus that they resorted to absolutely
despicable means to make His death happen. But little did they know – or even care –
that God would use the outcome of their hatred to accomplish His plan for saving the
world. (Spoiler alert: Jehovah God uses whatever circumstances that are in play to
accomplish His greater purposes…)
Other examples of the impact of ideologues include The Crusades, Constantine and his
making Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, and many others. Today, we
see ideologies of Marxism / Socialism / Communism, Woke-ism, etc. all of which are
based on the same phony lie that says ‘man can become god!’ These ideologies are being
driven by ideologues – many of whom are attracted to work in the government – who are
blindly sold out to the devious outcomes that the ideologies endorse.
But it is important to remember that the Word of God, which provides us with all the
wisdom we need in order to navigate life, is not based on pre-determined outcomes. It is a
principle- based THEOLOGY – and not ideology. And if we follow those principles, we
will find that the outcomes will come out of those decisions we make using those
principles. They will be outcomes that lead to our fulfilling the purposes and plan that God
has laid out for us. After all – For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in
Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. Ephesians 2:10
(NLT)
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