47. From Babylon to Blessing: The Promise of a Faithful God

By the rivers of Babylon There we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion There we hung up our lyres on the poplar trees for our captors there asked us for songs and our tormentors for rejoicing Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

How can we sing the Lord's song on foreign soil?

Those are the words of mourning sung by Judean exiles conquered, captured and transported to the far off land of Babylon.

They'd lived in the land given by God to their forefathers.

Their capital city was Jerusalem on the mountain of Zion, the place where the God of all the earth had chosen to put his name.

Their kings were from the family line of the great God appointed kings David and Solomon.

They were the chosen people of God.

And yet here they sat, beaten and tormented by the great enemies of God.

The Babylonians who worship a false God and who are thirsty for power and prestige.

They're teasing the people of Yahweh.

Go on, sing one of those songs about how your God is victorious, or how he saved, or how he has power over all the nations of the Earth.

How can those songs be sung when God's own people are sitting in the dust?

G', day.

I'm Dave Whittingham, and welcome to Stories of a Faithful God.

Do you ever feel like evil is winning?

Like sin has conquered the world?

Like wickedness seems undefeated in your own heart and the heart of others?

Perhaps you go to church and sing of the love and power and salvation of God.

But then you walk back out into a world where he's ignored, rejected, seen as a joke or an abomination.

And perhaps you wonder, is God really that powerful?

In our story today, we'll see just how embedded sin is in the human heart.

How even the destruction of almost everyone on the planet and a fresh start with new blessings from God still isn't enough to defeat it.

And yet we'll also see the power of God to overcome sin.

We'll hear him make a promise, a short promise to an unknown man who has no permanent home, who looks weak and pathetic next to the power of sin.

And yet God's faithfulness to that promise will prove to be the most powerful force in the world.

And so, without further ado, I present to you our next episode of Stories

of a Faithful God.

At the end of our last episode, the world had been given a fresh start.

The evil generations had been wiped out in the flood.

Just eight people had been saved, headed by the godliest man in the world, Noah.

From him and his sons, Shem Ham and Japheth, the entire population of the world is descended.

Noah becomes a farmer.

He's a vigorous 601 years old.

He still has more than 300 years to live.

And on his farm he plants a vineyard.

We're told in Genesis chapter nine that he makes wine, drinks some of it and gets drunk.

In his drunkenness, he lies down in his tent naked.

His nakedness reminds us of the nakedness of Adam and Eve back in the garden.

There was something wonderful about their innocence there.

My wife and I have often joked that once a year we should have a pre fall Sunday at church where everybody comes naked.

Thankfully, no one's ever listened to us.

Nakedness in the garden was a good thing.

So is Noah, who's effectively the new Adam in this post flood new creation.

Is he just enjoying a garden like innocence?

No.

You may remember that when God found Adam and Eve after they'd sinned, when they'd made ridiculous clothes for themselves out of fig leaves, his answer wasn't to strip them naked again.

No, with sin in the world that's lost.

Instead he made better clothes for them.

There's something shameful about nakedness now.

It's something we generally understand, which, which is why we never have a pre fall Sunday at church.

It's why you never go to the shops naked or go to the cinemas naked.

I hope Noah's lying there naked, not out of a desire to live like they did in the garden, but because he's foolishly lost control of his decision making.

That's what drunkenness does.

Part of the fruit of the spirit is self control and drunkenness robs us of that.

And so here we have the godliest man in the world, the hope of the world, lying in a state of shame.

But it gets worse.

One of his sons, Ham, comes into the tent.

We're told for the second time in this chapter that Ham is the father of Canaan, which should immediately raise alarm bells.

The Canaanites are going to be great enemies of God's people.

The conquest of the land of Canaan by Israel will be about punishment of the Canaanites for their evil as much as it is about giving the Israelites the land.

And now we can see that evil present in Ham, the father of Canaan.

When he sees his father lying there exposed and shamed, he wants to increase the shame of his father, expose his dad even further.

He heads outside and he gets his two brothers.

Hey, come and check this out.

You'll never believe how I've found dad, Shem and Japheth.

Are much more honourable and much more concerned for the honour of their father.

In chapter nine, verse 23, we're told then, Shem and Japheth took a cloak and placed it over both their shoulders and walking backward, they covered their father's nakedness.

Their faces were turned away and they did not see their father naked.

These two men show kindness and care.

Where Ham took the opportunity to shame his father.

Eventually Noah wakes up and he's horrified by the actions of his son.

And so he curses Ham's son.

He says in verse 25, Canaan is cursed.

He will be the lowest of slaves to his brothers.

Noah also says, blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem.

Let Canaan be Shem's slave.

Let God extend Japheth.

Let Japheth dwell in the tents of Shem.

Let Canaan be Shem's slave.

And that's how it plays out.

The Israelites, who will become so central to God's plans later on, come from Shem's family line, and eventually the Canaanites will be enslaved to the Israelites, enslaved to the family of Shem.

In the bigger picture, how heartbreaking is this?

The fresh start given to humanity, a fresh start that's come at such a cost, is already mired in sin and shame.

Too often people think if we just eliminate or lock up all the bad people, bad in inverted commas, and we

just have a society of the good

people, we'll be fine.

This story of Noah and the Flood shows us just how wrong that is.

There was no one better than Noah, but even when the world was restarted with him, he couldn't escape the power of sin.

And that sin is going to spread throughout the world through his children.

Chapter 10 of Genesis describes that spread in what's often called the Table of Nations.

It's a remarkable list describing the outward expansion of the descendants of Shem, Ham and Japheth.

It's a remarkable list from a historical perspective, understanding where different groups have come from.

There's actually no other list like this in the ancient world.

Even more than that, though, it's really important for how things pan out in the rest of the Bible.

We see God working through lots of these people to bring about his plans.

We're first told about the sons of Japheth.

This is the shortest list.

Unlike the descendants of Ham and Shem, there are far less names we recognize from later on in the Bible.

From the perspective of the land that later became Israel, Japheth's descendants spread mainly north and west into what's now Turkey, the Balkans, Greece, and even the northern shore of the Black Sea in modern Ukraine.

Chapter 10, verse 5 says, from these descendants, the peoples of the coasts and islands spread out into their lands according to their clans in their nations, each with its own language.

There is one name in the list of sons that I want to notice, though.

Japheth's grandson, Tarshish.

The city or land of Tarshish, which is presumably named after this man, is thought to have been on the coast of Spain.

Whenever it's mentioned in the Bible, it's synonymous with ships and the coast and with being really, really far away.

One of the signs of King Solomon's wealth and power was that he was able to send ships to Tarshish.

When Jonah tried running away from God, he jumped on a ship bound for Tarshish.

Basically the end of the world.

The most exciting thing about Tarshish, though, is that God will send his gospel there and gather people from there to be his people.

Not just from there, but all over the world.

In Isaiah 66:18, God says about the nations, knowing their works and their thoughts.

I have come to gather all nations and languages.

They will come and see my glory.

I will establish a sign among them, and I will send survivors from them to the nations, to Tarshish, Put and Lud, who are archers, Tubal, Javen, and the coasts and islands far away who have not heard about me or seen my glory.

And they will proclaim my glory among the nations.

You see, as far as these descendants of Noah spread, all of them have a part to play in God's big salvation plan.

The plan will start with Israel, but these other people are not lost to God's vision.

God's love is worldwide and extends to all peoples.

And we'll see that a bit later when we focus on the origin story of Israel.

After Japheth, we hear the descendants of Ham.

We should expect more tension as we hear these names because of the actions of Ham.

Pretty much every major enemy of Israel will come from Ham's family.

Broadly speaking, these descendants spread south, starting in the land of Canaan, down towards Egypt and south of Egypt to modern Sudan, or the land the Bible calls Kush.

They also spread to the southwest tip of the Arabian Peninsula and into North Africa.

In the list of names, God helps us focus in on one particular man, the grandson of Ham and son of Cushion.

His name is Nimrod.

We're told he began to be powerful in the land.

He seems to be the sort of guy who likes to be in charge and anyone who disagrees will probably be in trouble.

Apparently, he's a mighty hunter from earliest times.

In the very areas where Nimrod reigned, hunting was a sign of a king's power.

You can see today carved pictures of Assyrian kings hunting lions, showing off their prowess.

As well as being a fighter, Nimrod is a builder.

As his kingdom spreads, he builds new cities.

Verse 10 says his kingdom started with Babylon, Erik, Akkad and Calneh in the land of Shinar.

From that land he went to Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth, Ur, Kala and Resin.

Between Nineveh and the great city Kelah.

A few names jump out from biblical history there.

Babylon, the great city that destroys Judea and Jerusalem in 587 BC.

We're going to hear about the founding of that city and its rebellion against God in the next chapter.

You might have also picked up on Nineveh in the land of Assyria.

It's the Assyrians who will go on to destroy the northern kingdom of Israel, wiping out the capital Sumeria around 722 BC and assimilating the people so they'd never rise again.

For us both these events are in the distant past, but for Nimrod, they're in the distant future.

In fact, the people groups who will

control these cities will shift and change over time, but the cities themselves will stand as symbols of human power and violent evil.

After hearing about Nimrod, we're then told about Ham's son Mizram, which is the Hebrew name for Egypt.

Egypt is obviously the great enemy that Israel needs to be saved from.

In the book of Exodus, he fathers a number of different people groups, including the people of Kazlore, from whom, we're told, the Philistines come another name that jumps out as an enemy of Israel.

We saw in our series on the start of 1 Kings how much trouble the Philistines caused Israel.

Then we hear about Ham's son, canaan, the cursed one.

Verse 15 says Canaan fathered Sidon, his firstborn, and Heth, as well as the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, the Archites, the Sinaites, the Arvidites, the Zemarites, and the Hamathites.

Afterward, the Canaanite clan scattered the Canaanite border, went from Sidon, going toward Gerar as far as Gaza and going towards Sodom, Gomorrah, Admar and Zeboyim as far as Lasha.

The first few names there are the nations that Israel will drive out of the land of Canaan.

Because of their evil, the last names Sodom, Gomorrah, Admar and Zeboyim are absolutely synonymous with evil.

Even today, people will still speak about Sodom and Gomorrah.

In the Descendants of Ham, we see the standard bearers of evil and rebellion against God.

Not that other people aren't evil, but

these people become the representatives of it.

Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, the Philistines, Sodom and Gomorrah, all in their own ways, mighty, powerful and prosperous, and yet all alike in their evil and sin and depravity.

If God has plans to save people from sin, he'll have to contend with these wicked powers, which is what he'll do.

Through the line of Shem.

The descendants of Shem in general head east and south into the Arabian peninsula and also to the mountains around modern Iran.

Later on in history, though, some will drive back into Mesopotamia.

There are less familiar names.

Among Shem's descendants, Aram stands out, which is another name for Syria later on, but it's quite a flexible name and can be used for a large area.

Ophir and Havilah are associated with land where there's gold.

But what's most important about Shem's family isn't what we read here, but what's to come.

I mean, it sounds like it's finished at the end of the chapter.

Verse 32 says these are the clans of Noah's sons, according to their family records, in their nations.

The nations on earth spread out from these after the flood.

After a brief detour.

In chapter 11, though, we're going to follow one of Shem's family lines down to one of the most important men in all of history, not because he's great, but because God's going to do great things through him.

Chapter 11 begins by telling us something

that seems obvious, but which is so

far beyond our experience.

Chapter 11, verse 1, says the whole Earth had the same language and vocabulary.

It's obvious, because when you think about it, the population of the whole Earth had been reduced to eight people, all from the same family.

Of course, they all spoke the same language.

In chapter 10, though, as people multiplied and spread, we're told that all those different nations and peoples had different languages.

So what happened to bring about that change?

That's what we're about to find out.

The people are travelling east and they find a good valley in the land of Shinar, an area around central and southern Iraq.

Today, these must be the descendants of Ham.

Being led by the mighty hunter Nimrod, they decide to settle in this Valley.

And they come up with a new technology, the oven fired brick.

You need them in Shinar because there's a lot more dirt than stone.

Unlike in Egypt where you could build massive pyramids out of stone, these people in China also figure out how to stick their bricks together with mortar.

With this technological advancement, they say to themselves in verse four, come, let's build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky.

More important than what they're going to do is why they're doing it, what their motivation is.

They say, let's make a name for ourselves, otherwise we'll be scattered throughout the earth.

It may sound fairly innocent, but actually it speaks to the sinful pride and rebellion deep in the human heart.

Names from the beginning of Genesis are things that are given.

God gave names to the day and night and sky and dry land and sea.

The man gave the name Eve to his wife, and he named all the animals.

Eve gave her son Seth his name.

There's an authority in the name giver, and the name is a gracious gift.

Now these people want to take that authority into their own hands.

Just like Adam and Eve tried to take equality with God.

Rather than accepting the gift of being made in the image of God, they want to decide their own destiny.

They want to be masters of their own fate.

And you see that in the fact that they don't want to be scattered throughout the earth.

God had sent the humans to spread

over all the earth so they could

rule it and subdue.

Was his good plan for humans, his good plan for the Earth.

He gave exactly the same command after the flood.

But these people don't want to fit into God's good plans.

They want to make their own plan.

They want to be in charge.

You can see it in what they want to build as well.

A city with a tower that reaches to the sky.

They're reaching up to heaven.

Almost like they want to communicate with God rather than let God set the agenda for when he communicates.

Make no mistake, these people have rejected God's plan for them and are trying to make their own sinful rule for life.

Their efforts though, are puny, pathetic, miniscule.

To see this massive, mighty city and tower, the Lord God actually has to come down to it.

It's like he has to get down on his hands and knees and then get out his magnifying glass.

Remember, this is the God who constructed the universe.

It shows how ridiculous human rebellion is.

We think we're powerful because all we look at is ourselves, but next to God, we're nothing.

Yahweh's response is gracious and kind.

It may sound like a punishment, but it actually has a more merciful intention than that.

In verse six, he says, if they have begun to do this as one people, all having the same language, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.

Come, let's go down there and confuse their languages so they will not understand one another's speech.

The problem is not that God's threatened by them.

How could he be threatened by their hilariously tiny works?

No.

The problem is that when they're united, their sinful hearts unite in evil.

It's so different to how people often think about it.

Now.

Having different languages causes all sorts of problems for us, and that's led people to think, if only we could find a way to unite humanity, bring us all together, then we'd have peace.

There'd be no more war, no more waste, no more violence.

But actually, if we were more united, we'd just be more efficient at being evil.

Unity doesn't solve the problem of sin in the human heart.

Sin will use whatever the circumstances are to control our actions.

And so by God dividing us, he's having mercy on us so that our sin is limited.

So God confuses their languages and they stop building the city and they scatter across the earth, just like he'd planned.

Their evil plans have come to nothing.

As for making a name for themselves, well, they do get a name.

The city is called Babel, from which

we get the word babble because they all sounded like they were babbling to each other.

It's a word that means confused because God confused their language there.

And Babel, of course, is Babylon or Babylon.

After this time, the history of Babylon continued to be one of rise and fall, rise and fall.

It was conquered multiple times by different rulers, but those rulers always respected it.

They knew it was super old.

And even when it wasn't powerful, it represented the sort of powerful prestige that the rulers wanted.

Occasionally, it would break free and exert its dominance again.

Almost 1800 years after it was first built, Babylon was under the thumb of the mighty Assyrian Empire.

But its kings were always looking for an edge, a way to break out and re establish their power and prestige and autonomy.

King Meroduk Baladan heard that the King of Judah, King Hezekiah, had been sick and then recovered.

And so he sent messengers with friendly words.

It's a clever way to potentially gain an ally.

And King Hezekiah's flattered and proud.

Isaiah 39.

2 says Hezekiah was pleased with the letters, and he showed the envoys his treasure house, the silver, the gold, the spices and the precious oil and all his armoury and everything that was found in his treasuries.

There was nothing in his palace and in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show them.

You can almost imagine the lapel cameras of these Babylonian messengers, spies, clicking away as the men salivated at the wealth hidden in this tiny backwater city of Jerusalem.

Hezekiah wasn't acting like a king of Jerusalem who knew that the city's strength lay in her God.

He was acting like a king of

Babylon who found power in his own wealth and strength.

The prophet Isaiah comes to Hezekiah after the men have gone, and he asks in chapter 39, verse 3, what did these men say and where did they come to you from?

Hezekiah replied, oh, they came to me from a distant country, from Babylon.

Isaiah asked, what have they seen in your palace?

Hezekiah answered, they've seen everything in my palace.

There isn't anything in my treasuries that I didn't show them.

Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, hear the word of the Lord of armies.

Look, the days are coming when everything in your palace and all that your predecessors have stored up until today will be carried off to Babylon.

Nothing will be left, says the Lord.

Some of your descendants who come from you, whom you father, will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.

About a century later, the Babylonians rose up against their Assyrian overlords, and joining a coalition with the Medes destroyed Assyrian power forever.

That led to Babylon's greatest time of power and strength and wealth.

Under King Nebuchadnezzar especially, she conquered all before her, including that little rich city of Jerusalem, just like God had said.

It was at this time that the psalm we started the episode with was written by the rivers of Babylon.

There we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion.

They'd seen such horror in the capture of the city.

The Babylonians had taken their little ones and dashed them against the rocks.

The temple of Yahweh, the Lord God

Almighty, was in ruins, and the Babylonians basked in their glory and power and independence.

It was like Babylon had finally fulfilled her sinful destiny of godlike rule and power.

King Nebuchadnezzar, walking on the roof of his palace and reflecting on the empire he had built with his own hand, described his achievements to himself.

It sounds so much like what the original builders of Babylon had desired to build a city and make a name for themselves independence by their own hand.

In Daniel 4:30, the king suddenly bursts out, is this not Babylon the Great that I have built to be a royal residence by my vast power and for my majestic glory?

He'd reached the pinnacle of self centred God.

Rejecting sin, he'd placed himself at the centre of the universe.

But just like God had come down to look at the ant like creatures when the city was first built, God came down again and showed Nebuchadnezzar how pitifully weak he was.

God says to him, king Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is declared that the kingdom has departed from you.

You will be driven away from people to live with the wild animals and you will feed on grass like cattle for seven periods of time until you

acknowledge that the Most High is ruler

over human kingdoms and he gives them to anyone he wants.

At that moment, the message against Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled.

He was driven away from people.

He ate grass like cattle, and his body was drenched with dew from the sky until his hair grew like eagle's feathers and his nails like bird's claws.

Nebuchadnezzar himself tells us in verse 34.

But at the end of those days, I, Nebuchadnezzar, looked up to heaven and my sanity returned to me.

Then I praised the Most High and honored and glorified him who lives forever.

For his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation.

All the inhabitants of the Earth are counted as nothing.

And he does what he wants with the army of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth.

There is no one who can block his hand or say to him, what have you done?

At that time my sanity returned to me and my majesty and splendor returned to me.

For the glory of my kingdom, my advisers and my nobles sought me out.

I was re established over my kingdom and even more greatness came to me.

Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise, exult and glorify

the king of the heavens.

Because all his works are true and his ways are just, he is able to humble those who walk in pride.

Back in Genesis, we return to the

family line of Shem.

This time we focus on the most significant line.

Just like earlier in Genesis, where we

followed the line of Seth that eventually

led to Noah, we're now told the ages of the men involved.

So in chapter 11, verse 10, we're told these are the family records of Shem.

Shem lived a hundred years and fathered Arpachshad.

Two years after the flood, after he fathered arpakshad, Shem lived 500 years and

fathered other sons and daughters.

As you go through the list, you

notice something quite significant.

Life expectancy starts to decline.

So Shem lives 600 years, which you

might say is a fairly long time, but not as long as his father Noah, who lived 950 years.

I won't read out all the names in the list, but their ages are 4384-334642-39239, 230, 148.

It seems like the effects of the fall are getting a stronger and stronger grip on humanity.

Each generation is born closer to their death than the one before.

Even as humanity spreads and their technology increases, they're also becoming far more limited in what they can do in their short lives.

Is there anyone or anything that can stop this relentless march of sin and death?

The genealogy brings us down to a man named Terror.

Verse 27 says these are the family records of Terah.

Terah fathered Abram, Nahor and Haran.

And Haran fathered Lot.

We're given a small piece of information about each of terah's sons.

Verse 28 says Haran died in his native land in Ur of the Chaldeans during his father Terah's lifetime.

Ur was a city that sat near the mouth of the Euphrates river as it poured into the Persian Gulf.

Weirdly, today the site is actually much further inland, as 4,000 years of silt have extended the land out further.

The fact that Harran dies explains why his son Lot becomes very important to Abrum.

Later on, Lot first gets taken under the wing of his grandfather Terra, and then his uncle Abram.

The surviving brothers Abram and Nahor both take wives.

The interesting thing about Nahor's wife, Milkah is that she's his niece, the daughter of his dead brother Haran.

The interesting thing about Abram's wife Sarai is far more tragic.

We're told that she's unable to conceive.

She can't have children.

This is both personally sad, but it's also sad on a grander scale.

It means Abram and Sarai can't participate in God's great plan of filling the Earth with ruling humans.

Even though everyone else seems to be getting on and making babies.

Abram and Sarai are left out in the cold.

And while we've seen extensive genealogies of families that are establishing cities and peoples and nations, Abram and Sarai are a genealogical dead end.

Their line is doomed to destruction.

Their family will be the family that never was.

For whatever reason, Terah decides to leave Ur and travel to the land of Canaan.

He takes with him the people of tragedy, the orphan lot, and the childless couple, Abram and Sarai.

Partway along the journey though, in the land of Harran, they stop.

Harran is right on the southern tip of modern Turkey.

They decide this is a pretty good

spot and they settle there.

Instead of heading south down to the land of Canaan, Terra lives to the ripe old age of 205 and dies there, in Harran.

And from an outside perspective, there shouldn't be much more to the story than that.

Abram and Sarai aren't going to make too much mark on history.

They'll sit at the end of their family line and die, unmourned by children or grandchildren and unknown to the rest of the world.

Except.

Except God has a plan.

He does something that'll transform the fortune not just of Abram and Sarai, but of the whole world.

This world we've been watching in the last 11 chapters from the moment of creation.

The world that had started with so much promise, but which was ruined because of the rebellion of humans against their creator.

A world where people are using their power to kill and conquer.

Where every thought of the sinful heart is only wicked all the time.

Where death is getting more and more of a stranglehold on the population.

Back in chapter three, God dropped a hint that he had a good salvation plan.

He promised that a descendant of Eve would come to crush the head of the snake who led humanity into sin.

So far, all the contenders for this amazing role have failed.

The first descendant, Cain, turned out to be a murderer.

Seth's family looked promising, but ultimately led to evil marriages, violence and death.

Noah, despite being the godliest man on the planet, couldn't remove sin from his own heart or the heart of his offspring.

As humanity spreads around the world, desperately trying to establish their rebellious independence against God, you have to wonder, is there ever going to be any hope?

Well, now hope arrives in the form of a new promise.

At the perfect time, God steps in to make a promise that'll shape the course of world history.

A promise of hope.

A promise of joy.

Let me read the promise to you and then we'll talk about it.

In chapter 12, verse 1, Yahweh says to Abraham, go from your land, your relatives and your father's house to the

land that I will show you.

I will make you into a great Nation, I will bless you.

I will make your name great.

And you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you.

I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt.

And all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

Notice right away that the promise is an invitation to trust God, to believe that he's faithful.

God's calling Abram to stick his neck out here, to leave his land, his relatives and his father's house, give up everything and everyone he knows.

You'd only do that if you believe that the one making the promise can deliver.

And the promise is amazing.

In a sense, it's a promise to give what the Babylonians had wanted.

The difference is they tried to grasp it for themselves in sinful independence.

For Abraham, it's being given as a gift.

God says, I will make you into a great nation.

I will bless you.

I will make your name great.

The Babylonians had said, let's make a name for ourselves.

God says to Abram, I will make your name great.

And how amazing that he's going to make this man whose wife is barren into a great nation.

The blessing God gives to Abram isn't just for him.

Though it's outward looking.

He'll actually be a blessing to others.

And as God's representative, God will treat people based on how they treat Abram.

He said, I will bless those who bless you.

I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt.

This blessing isn't limited to a single nation or a single geographical area.

No, this is where we see how

central Abram and his promise is to God's big plans.

Because of the last line of the promise, God says, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

People have been dividing and conquering and killing.

The divisions among humanity just seem to be getting wider and wider.

But God hasn't forgotten his plans.

God still loves these people who keep fighting against him.

God still loves the whole world.

And through Abram, he's going to bless the whole world for a long time.

Though that seems ludicrous.

Abram listens to God and goes where he's told.

But as he gets older and older and still has no children, as he lives as a foreigner in a strange land, you have to wonder, how on earth is God going to bless the whole world through him?

Eventually, when Abram is a hundred years old and his wife is 90, he has one son, Isaac.

Isaac grows up and has two sons.

Hardly a great nation.

One of those sons who gets given the new name of Israel has 12 sons.

An improvement, but still by that Time, they still only own one field in the land God promised to give them.

Everywhere they go, they're outsiders.

And by the end of Genesis, they're not even in the land, they're in Egypt.

In fact, it doesn't really feel like the promise is coming to fruition until the reign of King Solomon about a thousand years later.

By that time, they're a great nation, the nation of Israel, living in the land of Canaan, honoured by all the people around them with the wisest king, whose wisdom is a blessing both to Israel and to the world.

The high point comes when King Solomon's visited by the queen of Sheba.

Sheba is a land in the south of the Arabian peninsula.

Word of Solomon's wisdom had spread even to her faraway country.

And it's like she's a representative of the world coming to be blessed by this nation that God's blessed.

But just like with Adam's family, just like with Noah's family, Abram's family is completely undone by the problem of sin.

That constant striving for independence from God, the God who offers blessing and life and joy.

They can't stand to live under his rule.

And so Solomon falls.

The nation divides into two Israel in the north and Judah in the south.

Both decline until eventually the north is wiped out by Assyria and the elite of Judah are taken into exile by Babylon.

And they sing those mournful words by the rivers of Babylon.

There we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion.

The weeping doesn't just come from the pain of defeat and exile.

It comes from knowing what Jerusalem stood for, knowing that it was meant to be the world centre of blessing from God, knowing that it was meant to proclaim the power and greatness of God and his great nation, knowing that from there the world was meant to be blessed.

Ultimately, though, Jerusalem couldn't hold that burden.

The people of Jerusalem were so sinful, they had trusted in the fact that they had Jerusalem, presuming that God would be happy with them and ignoring the words of the prophets who told them, you're going to be punished for your sin.

The prophet Jeremiah was stuck in Jerusalem as it was under siege by the Babylonians at a time when the people of God had been rejected by God and the enemies of God looked like they were winning.

Jeremiah makes it clear, though, that far from being out of control, it's actually God's plan that the Babylonians will win.

He's doing it because of the sinful hearts of his people.

In Jeremiah 17:1, we're told the Sin of Judah is inscribed with an iron stylus with a diamond point.

It is engraved on the tablet of their hearts and on the horns of their altars.

The same heart problem that had led to the curse in Genesis 3 and the flood in Genesis 6 and the scattering at Babel in Genesis 11 was just as present in the hearts of the descendants of Abraham as the Babylonians were raging and breaking into Jerusalem.

Though God was making another promise, a new promise that meant his original promise to Abraham could finally be fulfilled.

A promise to give his people a new heart.

God was actually going to make them want to do good, want to obey him, want to reject sin.

In Jeremiah 31:31, God says, Look, the days are coming.

This is the Lord's declaration when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

This one will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors.

I, on the day I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt.

My covenant that they broke, even though I am their master.

The Lord's declaration.

Instead, this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, the Lord's declaration.

I will put my teaching within them and write it on their hearts.

I will be their God and they will be my people.

No longer will one teach his neighbour or his brother, saying, know the Lord, for they will all know me, from the least to the greatest of them.

This is the Lord's declaration, for I will forgive their iniquity and never again remember their sin.

So how will this new heart come about?

How will the descendants of Abraham become a true blessing to the world?

Well, the answer is not so much in descendants plural.

It's in a single descendant, the true descendant of Abraham, the seed that came from Eve, the one through whom all of God's promises come to fruition.

I'm talking, of course, about the Lord Jesus Christ.

When Jesus began his ministry, he did a very strange thing.

He was baptized by John.

It was strange because John's baptism symbolized repentance from sin.

But Jesus had never sinned.

He was being baptized, though, to show how he was taking Israel's place, taking their sin on himself, but also taking on himself the hope that they represented as descendants of Abraham.

That hope only increased at the last supper.

On the night before he died, Jesus took the cup and in Luke 22:30 said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.

The new covenant that God had promised through Jeremiah, the new covenant that would finally solve the problem?

Holding Abraham's family back from being a blessing to the world.

The new covenant that would take out the old heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh eager to do what's good.

About 50 days after Jesus died and rose again, about 10 days after he'd returned to heaven, the world was in Jerusalem.

Jews, that is, the physical descendants of Abraham and also converts to Judaism.

When you read the list of where all these people have come from, it sounds remarkably like the table of nations listed in Genesis chapter 10, the spread of humanity after the flood.

In Acts 2.

9, we're told there are Parthians, Medes, Elamites, those who live in Mesopotamia, in Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt, and all the parts of Libya near Cyrene.

Visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts, Cretans and Arabs.

All these people are there, and something very strange happens.

The followers of Jesus are gathered together,

and suddenly the Holy Spirit rushes on them and fills them.

And the first thing he gets them

to do is speak about Jesus, not

in their own language, but in the languages of all the different people who'd gathered there, the languages of people from all over the world, in other words.

On that day, the Holy Spirit undoes what he'd first done at the city of Babel.

That had been done to disunify humanity so that their sin would be limited.

Now he's undoing that work so that people can be unified in their salvation from sin, unified in the Lord Jesus Christ, the true descendant of Abraham.

People had come to Jerusalem from the world and they received a blessing, but that wasn't how things were normally going to operate from now on.

That was an Old Testament way of operating.

Now, instead of everyone coming in towards Jerusalem, it was time for the blessing to go out.

Just before Jesus returned to heaven in Acts 1:7, he said to his disciples, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

And that's exactly what happened.

The good news about salvation in Jesus burst out from Jerusalem.

Now a new great nation was being created.

Not the physical descendants of Abraham, but people all over the world joining the spiritual family of Abraham united with him in faith through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Faith is the key, whether you're a Jew or a Gentile.

If you want to join in this blessing, then have faith in Jesus, because he is the true Israel.

As this blessing burst out into the world.

Though Babylon fought back.

Just like with the new Israel, it was no longer the physical Babylon.

By New Testament times, the physical Babylon had become an unimportant backwater, never to rise again, just like ancient Israel.

But the name Babylon came to represent those most opposed to the Lord Jesus.

So in 1 Peter, the apostle Peter passes on a greeting to the recipients of his letter.

In chapter five, verse 13, he says, she who is in Babylon chosen together with you, sends you greetings.

He's probably, probably talking about the church in Rome.

But that's not to say that Rome itself was now Babylon.

Rather, it was a Babylon, one of many Babylons.

Perhaps even more interesting is how Peter addresses the people he's writing to.

In chapter one, verse one, he says to those chosen living as exiles, dispersed abroad in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia.

None of them are in Rome, but they're all exiles.

Exiles from where?

Not from the physical Jerusalem here on earth.

No, they're exiles from the new Jerusalem, the new creation that Jesus will bring when he returns.

And where do exiles live?

According to Old Testament imagery, exiles live in Babylon.

That's where we are right now.

We live in the place that set itself up as the tower of opposition against God.

Here in Australia, and I know it's true, in Britain and America and other Western countries, there are Christians, and perhaps you're one of them who want to cling to the idea that this is a Christian nation.

But none of those countries have ever, ever been a Christian nation.

They've always been Babylon.

And Christians have always been exiles in Babylon, waiting not for Jerusalem on earth, but for the new Jerusalem.

In this time of exile, we're calling people, inviting people into the blessing promised to Abraham that through him the whole world would be blessed.

And so people of every nation, people, tribe and language can be blessed by coming to Jesus by abandoning Babylon and joining Abraham's spiritual family, by enjoying the relationship with God that was abandoned in the garden.

Right now, Babylon looks strong.

It always looks like it's winning with its power and greed and lust, fighting against God and reveling in its own independence.

But when Christ returns, all that will be over.

In Revelation 18:2, an angel announces it has fallen.

Babylon the Great has fallen.

She has become a home for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird and a haunt for every unclean and despicable beast.

For all the nations have drunk the wine of her sexual immorality which brings wrath.

The kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality with her.

And the merchants of the earth have grown wealthy from her sensuality and excess.

Later on in verse nine, we're told the kings of the earth who have committed sexual immorality and shared her sensual and excessive ways will weep and mourn over her.

When they see the smoke from her burning.

They will stand far off in fear of her torment, saying, woe, woe, the great city, Babylon, the mighty city.

For in a single hour your judgment has come.

The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her, because no one buys their cargo any longer.

Cargo of gold, silver, jewels and pearls, fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet, all kinds of fragrant wood products, objects of ivory, objects of expensive wood, brass, iron and marble, cinnamon spice, incense, myrrh and frankincense, wine, olive oil, fine flour and grain, cattle and sheep, horses and carriages and slaves.

Human, human lives.

The fruit you craved has left you.

All your splendid and glamorous things are gone.

They will never find them again.

The merchants of these things who became rich from her will stand far off in fear of her torment, weeping and mourning, saying, woe, woe, the great city, Dressed in fine linen, purple and scarlet, adorned with gold, jewels and pearls.

For in a single hour such fabulous wealth was destroyed.

And every shipmaster, seafarer, the sailors, and all who do business by sea stood far off as they watched the smoke from her burning and kept crying out, who was like the great city?

They threw dust on their heads and kept crying out weeping and mourning, woe, woe, the great city, where all those who have ships on the sea became rich from her wealth, for in a single hour she was destroyed.

Rejoice over her heaven and you saints, apostles and prophets, because God has pronounced on her the judgment she passed on you.

So if that's what will become of Babylon, what of those who join the blessing promised through Abraham, who reject the sin of Adam, who throw themselves on the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ, who are given new hearts that actually want to follow God?

Are there many of them?

Will they truly come from all the world as God promised?

Will the spiritual nation God promised to Abraham and brought about through Jesus be truly great?

Or will Babylon have done such a mighty work of crushing God's people that they'll just be small and scattered and weak?

Well, when the apostle John was given a glimpse into the future and saw those people gathered before the throne of God, here's what he saw.

Just be aware, as I read it,

that Jesus is called the lamb.

In Revelation 7, 9, he says, after this, I Looked and there was a vast multitude from every every nation, tribe, people and language which no one could number, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.

They were clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands.

And they cried out in a loud voice, salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb.

All the angels stood around the throne.

And along with the elders and the four living creatures, they fell face down before the throne and worshiped God saying Amen.

Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and strength be to our God forever and ever.

Amen.

Then one of the elders asked me, who are these people in white robes and where did they come from?

I said to him, sir, you know.

Then he told me, these are the ones coming out of the Great Tribulation.

They washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

For this reason they are before the throne of God and they serve him day and night in his temple.

The ones seated on the throne will shelter them.

They will no longer hunger, they will no longer thirst.

The sun will no longer strike them, nor will any scorching heat.

For the Lamb who's at the center of the throne will shepherd them.

He will guide them to springs of the waters of life and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

Do you remember the tears we started with?

With the people of God sitting by the rivers of Babylon, exiled, weeping, remembering Jerusalem at that time when it seemed like evil had won.

Well, that is not the end of the story.

The end is an end of victory and comfort and joy.

Not just victory over Babylon, but victory over the sin that's dwelt in our own hearts.

Victory over all the evil we've seen in its earliest form, as we've looked at the first few chapters of Genesis.

A victory that means we discover the truth we doubted and lost and forgot.

The truth that God truly is the God who blesses.

He truly is the God who loves and gives us what's best.

The God who's so astoundingly faithful, he keeps his good promises across the entire history of the world.

Of course, as we've looked at these

first few chapters of Genesis, that's only the beginning.

The small scene you see in the movie before the music plays and the opening credits roll.

The story of Abraham is filled with faith and fear, celebration and sadness, wonder and weirdness, as Abraham discovers just how wonderful his God is.

But that's a story for another.

Thanks everyone for listening.

It's a real joy to be able

to share with you God's big picture across the Bible.

If you want to support me to make more content like this, please head over to the donate page@faithfulgod.net and become an ongoing supporter.

Also, would you consider sharing the podcast on whatever social media you use?

Get the word out there so more

people can grow in their love of our faithful God.

Keep trusting Jesus.

Bye for now.