Towers of Disappointment

Life with Jeannie Greene about a possible tower for ourselves for the glory of our name and it is from that all simple corruptions are going to emanate since wickedness begins not with the immorality of the act, but with the heart of pride behind the another day here on life pastor Judy Greer and as always I'm your host Molly that events were so glad you're back with us today. This ever happens to you, you start something new like a marriage or new career and there's a bit of a honeymoon phase when all of your dreams seem to be coming true and everything seems just right. But eventually the excitement wears off and you find it's not as perfect as you initially thought. How are we supposed to handle those disappointments. What do you do when you think you've been dreaming about doesn't feel he like you thought it what Pastor JD addresses those questions today with a message called powers of disappointment. Your pen and Bible to Genesis chapter 11 and let's get started. Such was some proficiency I speak to languages besides English with some level of proficiency.

I will probably write three or more besides English, but of a grand up when I got my PhD I had to be reading proficient in for research languages, Greek, Hebrew, German and Latin. Do not be too impressed by that because if you put sentences in all four languages now in front of me. I could probably defy which language was which. But that is about the extent of what I remember, the only language that I really know, besides English is Indonesian and that is gotten pretty rusty over the years I lived in Indonesia for two years I got told you before that I had right next to zero language training before they drop me off in a place where I was 100 miles from the nearest English speaker when I landed there when I added two afternoons a kid you not like maturing those two afternoons meant that I could say hi name is JD bathroom. My house is on fire. That was the extent of my knowledge, language, the kids told me the language which is great because kids are so patient and make fun of me a lot but it also meant that I made a lot of mistakes because the kids that I give you vocabulary quizzes so it led to situations. For example like I was in a restaurant and I've sleeps four times I'm starting to make a mess so I knew the Kleenex I did know the word for Kleenex in Indonesia and that's a rather technical word. If you asked me, so I did the worker sneeze and so I said to the waitress she was probably 2025 feet away from me.

Excuse me I need to sneeze, but the scene except for busing which means fornicate fornicate so it's not good in any culture to yell the waitress that across the restaurant. It is especially not good in a Muslim context. When you are in America all that, confusion all that frustration all that you know humor goes back to Genesis 11. According to the Bible, the multiplicity of languages was God's response to one of mankind's most spectacularly simple displays.

It's an event that occurred really relatively early in recorded human history on the plains of Shinar, or modern-day Iraq. It was the building of the Tower of Babel.

Now, on the surface. When you read Genesis 11. It doesn't look like they'd done anything horrifically evil, they just build a tower, what's wrong with that, but it's going to give you a glimpse into the root causes of sin and show you what makes them simple to show you why Santa has such power over you ever wonder that by the way, why is it that Sam seems to control you so much that even when you decide you want to do it anymore. It's like you can't stop doing it.

This story will give you some of the answers to that question you use my friend Matt Carter's title here and call the story towers of disappointment because that's exactly what these towers are there towers of disappointment you ever felt like life was disappointing anyway. Maybe if your marriage is been disappointing. Or maybe it's your job or the stage of life that you're in retirement dollars go look different. I think you find an explanation for why that is. In this story. I hope you'll see that what God was doing here. The Tower of Babel.

He continues to do today in your life which is one of the reasons why. Genesis 11 is in the Bible, Genesis 11 verse one walk you through here the whole earth had one language of the time in the same words as people migrated from the East. They found the plane and the land of Shinar. Again, modern-day Iraq and they settle their they said to one another, let us build ourselves on stuff in the Bible.

This would be good. I like the city and a tower stop in Evans, let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. Now two comments I want to make here.

First, the fact that they wanted to stay put in this one area and not go anywhere is itself an act of disobedience. God had commanded them three times in Genesis to be fruitful and multiply all over the earth for his glory. I read I think you would not want to obey that be fruitful and multiply. Sounds like have sex and travel also plan to me. But here's a little throwaway lesson for you.

God always pushes his people to look our multiply toward sin the giving and generosity.

Simple man always looks inward toward gathering and building for his security and for his glory. Throwaway lesson here is the more important lesson.

Second thing right what is it specifically that they want.

They want a city. The city as a whole were a place to belong. They want a tower whose top reaches the heavens think about is significant. They want to do something that matters.

They want some level of permanence in their lives like her doing something that is going to endure a great name they want to be connected to greatness.

These are the three desires that they have now if you read the book of Genesis of this point, you know that ironically God had given them all those things in the garden every city.

God was to be their home. It was in fellowship with him is where we got our sense of belonging tower. We got our significance from doing his will. We were sons and daughters. We were servants and emissaries of the King of Kings, a great name the greatness we sought was supposed to come from being connected to God.

But now mankind is rejected God and so having rejected God date feel this boy this vacuum where there created for the things they don't have the first emotion, the man felt after having sent after that sensation. The thrilling sensation of taking up a midden through the first sensation that they thought after that was a sense of shame over their nakedness. The irony is there naked before they said their nakedness didn't bother them. Why not what's because they felt closed in the love and the acceptance of God without having strip themselves about love and acceptance. Their heart has this gigantic document it and so they begin to reach out for other things to replace what God had once played in their heart. Sin is an attempt to find something or someone else. Something that you should've found the God sin is. That's why it says that this tower reached out toward the heavens trying to get back what they once had a got a call this tower Babel Babel, which means literally the date of God. So there's your first point of your writing things down number one sin, attempts to build towers.

Devon said attempts to begins as an attempt to build a tower to heaven.

Their desires for belonging for security for greatness. Those desires are not role. That's where they're choosing to look for them is where it's wrong or we are several thousand years later people haven't changed that much. We still desire the same things that we want to city we will place we really feel safe want to group that we really felt like we belong to. What were cherished and loved and respected my family so important to many of us, or maybe it's it's is why you want so badly to be accepted by the right group at your school. Maybe it's that it's your peers in your career you really want their respect. Maybe it's the academic community respect what you want because you want to belong. You want to be accepted.

You want to city. We want security we want something that guarantees our safety and not what insurance is $1 trillion industry in our country now centers on what insurance I have a habit of course, but sometimes you get the idea that people are looking to insurance to remove any possible danger from their lives. I saw a while back that for $118 a year hundred $90. Here you get alien insurance. That's not a joke. You look it up now.

If you have a look in insurance management offends you more power to you, but you get the idea that were trying to say to insurance. I can be totally secure and up back in a rabbit to me. We want security will. We want our lives the matter is why some people stress out so much over their careers or lack of progress in their career. We want to be connected to greatness. You are that's what you name drop whatever you met somebody famous or you're in the same room with somebody famous I want the loan like to show you recently a friend to me this picture see this established former presidential candidate.

That's me. Photo bombing Jeb Bush. That picture sends it to me. How long do you think it took the time that landed on my phone to the time I tweeted out for the entire world to see circuits is how long it took, because I want to be connected to greatness. I want to be important. Now there's nothing wrong with the desires for security and for belonging even significance and greatness. It's where we chose to look for them primarily, that became wrong dollars, and one of the greatest and most liberating discoveries of my life was realizing that all my life all my life I've been reaching out for and yearning for God even when I didn't know what I was looking for those this yearning.

I experience when I was a kid I did not know how to articulated man, but I yearn for something that I tasted in the security of my parents old and that I tasted in the affections of their love for me it was why I was terrified at the thought of them dying or or or that the thought that somehow be taken away from them. I feel this kind of death of the sternum yearning again and my desire to meet that special somebody who would just think the world of medium will make you the center of their world not be the center of her that would make them the center of mine, I sometimes experience that yearning in the adventure of foreign travel, because no foreign travel is never as good as the excitement and anticipation leading up to it. Sometimes I feel that yearning when I met a church service and will be speaking here in the dispute. The worship and I just yearning for something like I'm not quite there yet.

I cannot all or when I see the sunset over the seemingly endless horizon of the beach. These experiences are all great you're like my favorite things in life but if either calling out to me reaching it or something beyond them, but am just yearning for as usual. CS Lewis is it much better than me and you can make an argument that night, sermons or report rephrases what sales also said somewhere but here it is.

Here's what he said look at this. The books of the music in which we thought the beauty was located. Will Butch pray S if we trusted them. It was never in it was never in them and only came through them your sin. That's a huge distinction.

The beauty we yearn for was never in the romance was never in the art. It was never into him in the end the sunset interest came through and what came through them was longing these things, the beauty, the memory of our own past the cherished memory we have with their parents or one of our parents are good images of what we really desire but if they are mistaken for the thing itself.

They turn into dumb idols. Idle means replacement for God dumb needs.

He can't even speak breaking the hearts of their worshipers.

They are not the thing itself. There only the scent of a flower.

We've not found yet, but the act over to we've never heard the news from a country we've never yet visited Lewis said that when you experience the blessings of the necromancer even said good food. If anything, a ray of sunshine that's warming your face and you feel the warmth of you since the light you look back up along the rate of the sun from which it emanates is all these things that you love in life are our messages to you of a God from whom they emanate like rays of the sun.

He said marriage is the Ray God's love is the ocean a good marriage.

That is the stream God's love is the fountain a good marriage is a drop God's love is the ocean a good marriage is the shadow God's love is the substance I'm telling you it would absolutely revolutionize your life if you realize that every tower you ever built in your life whether your career were the romance with your self image was an attempt to regain something that God is designed to give you and himself. I recently read that even pornography is driven by this desire to dig beauty into ourselves. Yes, it's just loss but it's more than that. I want to process beauty, sin, attempts to build towers that have an that's number one. Let's keep moving. Verse five. So the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of Minna Bill by the way that's in a play on words and in Hebrew because came down you the build the tower up came down as a very condescending, it's very like a diminutive term like the Lord is saying oh they're trying to build a tower to heaven let's go down and see what the little gerbils are up to. So ET warrior down to see with the children and Bill verse six of the Lord said, behold, there one people and they all have one language, and this is only the beginning. What they will do nothing that they propose to do now will be impossible for them what he saying is from this from this heart that is expressed in building this tower is going to come every kind of corruption every kind of wickedness, every kind and evils on rollout of this so there's your second point, there number two. Since roots all sends the route is by my will and mustering for my glory since route is by my will and mustering for my glory again with the looking for security significance.

Greatness is not wrong.

This is what they were supposed to get those things they depending on God. But now, instead of depending on God for the things they want to do it for themselves in their own way by their own strength and so they get the glory. Let us build a tower for our selves for the glory of our name and it is from that attitude that all simple corruptions are going to emanate sins. Wickedness begins not with the immorality of the act, but with the heart of pride behind the act.

That's why God says this tower to become a source of immeasurable amount of said Revelation at the end of the New Testament Babylon in the morning. The battle of Armageddon is to be the symbol of man's united front against God after the battles over Angel stands up and says fall and fall at his Babylon battle same word the great she's become a dwelling place for demons for all the nations have drunk a lot of the action of her sexual immorality. Genesis 11. There's nothing about demons or sexual immorality. But these are things these are demon to influence things violent suppression, sexual immorality, are all fruits of sin, but is this heart of pride that is the root of sin like Genesis 11 you Dragon one here I was on a revelation can be a wickedly confusing book. So if you try to read before you lost a locus of the bowls of blood. I'm a professional. Which means I can take you in safely and out so that you don't get left behind. Okay that's what I do, but what you what you got to know his other two cities be built in the book of Revelation.

Once the city of man Babylon by my will and mustering for my door. The other is this it is legal by God.

Okay, so the heart behind all sin goes back to this posture about Satan himself as they become Satan's also became Satan. Isaiah tells a good question.

You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven, Satan above the stars of God I'll set my throne on high all sit on the mount of the assembly in the far reaches of the North. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will make myself like the most. Not what phrase you your repeated over and over and over again to other I will Satan become Satan because he chopped up baby copy angels and you don't drink the blood say became Satan because he said I want to do. It's by my will and my strength for my glory, so is ask you for a minute to the core of your heart.

I'm not asking if your religious. I'm not asking for moral that's what people always go to and it's totally the wrong question because it is possible to be very religious and to be very moral and have a heart that is dominated by by my will and mustering for my glory. It is possible for you to get really good grades but do it by your will and your strength and for your glory and by the way, the straight a student who is very moral, who is doing it by his will in his drink and for his glory is closer to the heart of Satan and the God is knocking on the door. The prostitute is very possible for you to build a business.

A good business and equitable and fair business in your strength by your will for your glory.

It's very possible to be religious in your strength by your will for your own glory and how you can know that you're dominated by that heart of I will and pride. CS Lewis said that there is one telltale sign brought you there is one litmus test that will every single time. Tell you but you walk in pride.

You would do it is jealousy toward others is always comparing your tower to their town. Pride is Lewis says in its very essence competitive.

That's why he said proud people can never get along is that people with other sins and vices like to hang around people who do the same sins drunk like going out together and will be glad to get together and swap stories, drug addict like to hang out together people who are proud Lewis says always hate each other because their pride is always in conflict with somebody else's pride to pride.

It does not matter that I'm smart that I'm smarter than you.

It doesn't matter if I'm athletic or good-looking. It only matters that I'm more athletic and better looking and richer than you are. CS Lewis says the quickest way to tell that you have pride is that somebody else's pride bothers you. Because pride is always in competition. That's why they're project you want. It works you when that person that other person gets the good grade or they get the new car or there to go to school in scholarship because a whole.

Now you know that they just think of something anybody else thinks or something that they think there's something means nothing but your something you really want to be something, but that there some major lesson something and they think something is away from you and that actual right you can articulate it that way but that's essentially what going on in your heart is that I really want it to be by my will and my strength for my glory to get it. Really what's going on in your heart.

Do not ask how moral you are or how religious you are. That's completely the wrong question is will you live in by yours or God's strength you attempt the meeting today with you attempt the beach that we door strength of God. Three glory. Are you more concerned about your glory or God when I was in Sunday school of thought it this way in every heart there is a throne and across if you're on the throne. Jesus ago have to be on the cross what Jesus is going to be on the throat. You're to be on the cross in your heart.

There's only one person to call the shots. There's only one person who strength is making it happen. Only one person whose glory is being pursued yours or Jesus is, which is what key moves the reader now in verse seven, let us go down and confuse their language so they may not understand one another's speech to me to match. When this happened, what chaos you were the words altering their meanings oversight Lord disperse them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Number three sin leaves rotting towers of disappointment in your life interesting to me that God does not tear down the tower. I thought I would on a 20 down the God leaves that their decaying falling apart rotting as a message now match your question this deal here were he scatters them and leave their towers to the Cape is that judgment or is that mercy both its judgments, but it's a judgment with ounce of judgment with how the mercy is what God is doing to try to wake them up before they make decisions that they can never come back from and that are eternally dealing understand that every judgment before the ultimate judgment is actually mercy is what God is trying to do is when you log off of a path to get you to come back from them before you and that when change in how you solve a lot of what happened in your life if you started to see that the towers and women in your life were left there by God as monuments and no you don't go down perspectives.

Learning to see towers of disappointment as monuments of warning.

If you happen to join the program. Like today, you can hear the full Senate life broadcast again online.

Just go to Judy Greer.com will be just a little over a week into our new study here on the program called the whole story and there's a lot more restored the book of Genesis that over the next few months will be going all the way to Revelation alongside the teaching this month will also be talking with Pastor JD about the topic of prayer select start on very practically JD will help your prayer life.

The next verses have a consistent times for prayer need a lot of people get overwhelmed thinking about like a model of the bridge for hours, you do it five minutes and always pray out of the Bible.

We always teach people to read the Bible with your method which stands for highlights examine, apply, respond. I like means take whatever your reading the Bible that is sustaining out to you that you thought God might be speaking to you and let that be the first thing you respond back to God. When the Bible is a book of promises more than 3000 promises. Don't just read to the Bible, pray for the Bible I wrote just asked to try to help you actualize those promises and in turn that into a daily discipline prayer time.

You can check out that book. Just ask JD Greer.com. Be sure to get in touch today to get you a copy our way of thinking. When you donate to support this ministry.

Would it be possible when generosity of friends like you were so grateful to call you are partners request. Just ask my JD Greer when you give a donation today of $25 or more. You can also request about when you join our team of monthly gospel partners. It's quick and easy to sign or just call 866-335-1520 866-335-5020 or you can get and request online JD Greer.com if you'd rather mail your donation addresses JD Greer ministry, PO Box 12293, North Carolina 277.

Make sure you know I'm only minutes inviting you to join us Thursday after getting explained all the good thing is discovered only true source of security and significant story Thursday. JD Greer JD Greer ministry