Good morning my ‘Walking with Jesus” friends,
When was the last time you sat around a campfire, on a summer night, looking up at the star-filled sky, reflecting on the story of your life and your family heritage? What great events have happened in the past which have defined who you are today? And may I ask… how do you see God, the creator of the universe, involved in your story? Would you consider God is actually the author of your story, for He created you and He gives you every day you live, every breath you breathe! How are you and God working together to write a remarkable, unique story of the human experience, which can be passed on to your friends and descendants?
Thus far in 2021 we’ve had quite a journey together in this daily “Walking with Jesus”. For those of you who are new with us, may I briefly review where our journey in the Bible has taken us this year? It’s really quite amazing!
In January we joined the Hebrew captives in Babylon in about the year 540bc as a new global leader, King Cyrus, was coming into power. His amazing declaration, that any captive Jews were free to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their city and their Temple, changed everything! We joined them in their journey in the Bible book of Ezra. We followed with those who returned from Babylon back to Jerusalem, and rebuilt their city and Temple. We were amazed as we traveled through the chronology of the Biblical story of God’s working with His people, the Jews, from that event, through the rest of the Old Testament, to the silent 400 years between Malachi & Matthew.
In March we walked through the Biblical Gospel accounts of Jesus, following Him to the Easter weekend events which changed the world! And since then we’ve followed the chronological story of what happened after Jesus’ resurrection and His ascension back to heaven, as recorded in the book of Acts. Yesterday we concluded our journey through the little letter James, the 1/2 brother of Jesus, wrote to Jewish Christians scattered all across the Roman Empire. In part his letter was an appeal for them to remember their unique heritage, and their role in the world as God’s chosen people. Furthermore James urged them to understand and celebrate that their relationship with Jesus Christ, their Messiah, was a fulfillment of all God had been doing from the days of Abraham, in their unique story as a people of God.
As I’ve pondered where to go next in our journey together, I believe the Holy Spirit of God, who is the author of this “Walking with Jesus” journey, is leading us to go back to the beginning… to Abraham, and for the next few months, let’s walk the ancient paths with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses and Joshua. For many centuries a unique group of people, the Jews, recounted these stories to their children and grandchildren, generation after generation, and celebrated their annual festivals faithfully, so they would never lose the wonder of their unique identity among all peoples of the world. In our high tech world of artificial entertainment and fast paced living and social media, the days of families gathered around the campfire or the dinner table, as great-grandfather leans back, looks up into the night sky and tells the amazing story of their family’s ancient heritage…oh my, those days just don’t happen much anymore do they? So let’s join them, Abraham and his descendants…around the campfire, and walk the journey of their remarkable history with them. Why? Because it’s our story too, my friends!
Toward the end of his life old Moses said this: “Ask now about the former days, long before your time, from the day God created mankind on the earth; ask from one end of the heavens to the other. Has anything so great as this ever happened? Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of the fire, as you have, and lived? Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by miraculous signs and wonders, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds like all the things the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? You were shown these things so that you might know that the LORD is God; besides Him there is no other god.” (Deuteronomy 4:32-35)
So join me in the first book of the Bible, Genesis, and let’s join the ancient story in Genesis 11:1. “Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.” You may recall Genesis 6-9 is the remarkable story of Mr. Noah and his family who lived perhaps the greatest demonstration of FAITH of any person or family in all of human history! God had spoken to Noah telling him the wickedness of the world had reached such widespread evil, that God was going to wipe out every living thing and start over! Noah and his sons were instructed by God to build a huge floating zoo! It required decades of hard hand labor, for they had no modern tools or construction equipment. The flood did come and it did kill all except those people and animals floating in the mammoth ship they had built. Eventually the waters receded, Noah’s family and all the animals left their quarantine and began repopulating the earth. Many years passed, but still the human populations, all descendants of Noah’s family, spoke one language… until Genesis 11.
Look around the world, to all the great cities, and you’ll see two things: large concentrations of people all doing life in close proximity with each other, and tall buildings, as tall as their construction techniques enable them to build reasonably safely. That has been part of the human journey since Genesis 11! A great city was being built, and a massive structure, towering high into the sky. Why? For the same reasons we build tall buildings in the 21st century! Perhaps you have heard of the Jeddah tower, now in construction, which is projected to be the tallest building ever designed and built by mankind anywhere on planet earth! https://thejeddahtower.org/
Upon completion it will be over 1000 meters tall, much taller than the current tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai: https://en.wikipedia.
By contrast, near where I live is a structure called the “Citrus Tower”. https://citrustower.
Built in 1956 it reaches 226 ft in height. Not very impressive by modern standards of tall buildings, but consider it’s original purpose: simply to welcome visitors to central Florida and give them a panorama view of the amazing orange groves, stretching in all directions, as far as the eye could see. Those orange trees, thousands of them, loaded with millions of delicious oranges, provided orange juice to the world! In recent times however, homes are more valuable than oranges, and thus the Citrus Tower is surrounded by thousands of homes, as far as the eye can see! I wonder if you can see how all three of these towers, and thousands more like them around the world, are reflections of Genesis 11?
Genesis 11 tells us God was watching. He’s always watching, everything, everywhere, everyone. Do you understand that friends? Why? Because God is very, very interested in how we human beings use our free will to live. God created each of us unique from each other, 7.7 billion of us now, all living together on one planet, which He created specifically to sustain human life. God loves us, each of us, all of us deeply, and He works hard to sustain our lives, and He longs for us to know Him and love Him and live in a vibrant, genuine relationship with HIM, the author of life! Psalm 33 tells us “From heaven the LORD looks down and sees all mankind…He watches all who live on earth – He considers all they do…” (Ps. 33:13-15) May I urge you to think about that from time to time? What is God seeing as He looks at our world in July 2021...as God looks at your nation, your city, your family, and YOU!?
In Genesis 11 we see God determined it would be much better for humanity if we spread out across the earth rather than living congested in one big city trying to unite our efforts to accomplish great things, like building tall towers. So God said “Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other. So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth and they stopped building the city. That is why it is called Babel – because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world…” (Gen. 11:8,9) Did you notice the plural as God was speaking? “us”? Who do you think that is? Consider how God spoke when He decided to make mankind “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness…” (Gen. 1:26) That is God the Father, God the Son (Jesus) and God the Holy Spirit, the TRINITY God, “Elohim”, working together as ONE, true, Almighty, Holy God.
As today, people scattered from Babel and their building project, when they could no longer understand each other, and they were drawn together as they discovered common languages. Towns, cities and nations of people grew out of that as the population of our world grew…and God watched, to see who, among all the people of the world, would seek to know God and worship God and live in a ‘friendship relationship’ with God! Tomorrow, I’m going to introduce you to a man in the Bible who was called ‘a friend of God”. For today, simply stand amazed at God’s love for humanity that He has created in our vast differences, and thank Him for making YOU…uniquely YOU! Thank God for loving you, knowing you better than you know yourself, and wanting a very special relationship with you!
Here’s a song to help you with that…
Today’s Scripture is Genesis 11:1-9.
Choose below to read or listen.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.
Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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