Thank you.
Hymn number 15 will begin tonight.
Hymn number 15, lead me to Calvary.
Hymn number 15.
Once you've found your place, we'll sing it out.
On that first verse together.
King of my life, I crown thee now.
Hymn number 15.
Sing it out together now.
King of my life, I crown thee now.
God shall glory be.
Lest I forget thy warm crown crowns.
Lead me to Calvary.
Lest I forget this harmony.
Lest I forget thy agony.
Lest I forget thy love for me.
Lead me to Calvary.
Shall be the tomb where thou wast slain.
Ten early morn and bled.
Angels and rogues of light await.
Pardon me while south slept.
Lest I forget Gethsemane.
Lest I forget thy agony.
Lest I forget thy love for me.
Lead me to Calvary.
Calvary.
Lead me, my fairy, through the gloom.
Come with a gift to thee.
Show to me now the empty tomb.
You lead me to Calvary.
Lest I forget Gethsemane.
Lest I forget thy agony.
Lest I forget thy love for me.
Lead me to Calvary.
May I be willing, Lord, to bear.
They lead my cross for thee.
Even thy cup of grain to share.
Thou hast borne all for me.
Lest I forget Gethsemane.
Lest I forget thy agony.
Lest I forget thy love for me.
Lead me to Calvary.
Lest I forget thy agony.
Lest I forget thy love for me.
Lead me to Calvary.
Thank you, Lord, and thank you for all the souls that were saved this week.
Thank you that we get to come to your house. Please be with those who can't make it tonight.
Lord, please bless the service, and in your name, in your son's name we pray, amen.
Amen. Up to hymn 27, hymn number 27,
the old rugged cross, hymn number 27.
Hymn number 27 begins,
on a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,
hymn number 27. Sing it out together now.
On a hill far away
stood an old rugged cross
the emblem of suffering
and shame.
And I lie at a cross
where the dearest and best
for a world of lost sinners
was slain.
So I'll cherish the old rugged cross
till my trophies
at last I lay down.
I will fling
to the old rugged cross
and exchange it
someday for a crown.
Oh that old rugged
cross so despised by the
world has a wondrous attraction
for me.
For the dear Lamb of God
left his glory above
to err into dark
Calvary.
So I'll cherish the old rugged
cross
till my trophies at last I lay
down.
I will fling to the old rugged
cross
and exchange it someday for a
crown.
In the old rugged cross
stay with blood so divine
the one who's beauty
I see.
Lord what's on that old cross
Jesus suffered and died
to pardon and sanctify me.
So I'll cherish
the old rugged cross
till my trophies
at last I lay down.
I will fling to the old
rugged cross
and exchange it someday
for a crown.
To the old rugged cross
I will ever be true
in shame and reproach, gladly
bear. And he'll
follow me someday to my home
far away where his glory
forever I'll share.
So I'll cherish
the old rugged cross
till my trophies
at last I lay down.
I will fling to the
old rugged cross
and exchange it someday
for a crown.
So I'll cherish
the old rugged cross
till my trophies
at last I lay down.
I will fling
to the old rugged cross
and exchange it
someday for a
crown.
Alright, this time we'll go ahead and go through our announcements. If you don't have a bulletin
slip up your hand nice and high. We'll get to you with one. On the inside we have our service time.
Sunday mornings at 1030 is our preaching service. Sunday nights at 6.
Wednesday nights at 7 is our Bible study. This week we'll be in Deuteronomy
chapter 31. We've got the soul winning times listed there below
as well as salvations and baptisms. Congratulations to the newlyweds
of course, Anselm and Eileen. All the ladies are invited
to a baby shower in honor of Amanda Coleto. That's this Saturday
February 17th from 12 to 3. A catered lunch from Olive Garden will be served.
Nurslings only please. And please RSVP to
Mrs. Gayla Coleto. Keep praying for our pregnant ladies
that they would have a safe and healthy pregnancy and delivery. Note that next
week's small town soul winning trip that was going to take place on the 16th and
17th has been canceled. But we do have some small town soul winning coming
up in Eloi on February 24th. Speak to brother Alex
Larsen for details on that. We've also got some trips coming up in March
to Dripping Springs and Coolidge Dam.
And so the details for those things are typically over here to my right. Sign up sheets
schedules and so forth. And then the men's preaching class is every
Tuesday. This is open to all men who go soul winning.
No spectators allowed. So only those who are participating in the class
can show up and attend. And you're going to want to see brother Segura if you have
any questions about that. That is about it for announcements. Let's go ahead and count up
the soul winning from the past few days. Going back to Thursday the 8th. Anything from
Thursday? Okay. Anything else from Thursday?
How about Friday? Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha.
Okay. Anything else from Friday?
How about Saturday?
Okay.
Alright. And then
Okay. Gotcha. Alright. And then
anything from today? Brother Scott? Four for the main
group with brother Scott. Two over here.
Boom. Alright. For the week of
North Phoenix. Gotcha. Alright. Anything
else? Very good. Keep up the great work on soul winning. With that let's sing our next song. Come lead us.
Alright you should find the insert in front of your hymnal of Psalm 139.
If you don't have an insert please raise your hand.
Psalm 139.
Now we'll slay the wicked. Nice and slow on that first.
Do not I hate them
O Lord that hate me and them not I dream
With those that rise up against me
Do not I hate them O Lord that hate me
For they speak against
me wickedly
For they speak against me wickedly
And thy enemies
take thy name in vain
Do not
I hate them O Lord that hate me
Do not I hate them O Lord that hate me
And them not I dream
With those that rise up against me
Do not I hate them O Lord that hate me
I hate them with
perfect hatred
I hate them with
perfect hatred
I doubt them my enemies
Do not I hate them O Lord that hate me
And them not I dream
With those that rise up against me
Do not I hate them O Lord that hate me
Do not I hate them
O Lord that hate me
Amen. Good singing everybody. Go on your hymnals
now to hymn 292. Hymn 292
His way with thee. Hymn 292
Hymn 292. Would you live for Jesus and be always
pure and good. Hymn 292. Sing it out now.
Would you live for Jesus and be always pure and
good. Would you walk with him and live in the
narrow road. Would you have to bear your burden
carry all your load. Let him have his way with
me. His power will make you what
you want to be. His blood will
bless your heart and make you free. His love can
fill your soul and you will see
who was best for him to have his way
with me. Would you have him make you free and follow
at his call. Would you know the peace that comes
by giving all. Would you have him say you know
that you can never bear. Let him have his way
with me. His power will make you
what you want to be. His blood will
bless your heart and make you free. His love
can fill your soul and you will see
what's best for him to have his way with
me. Would you and his people find a place of
constant rest. Would you prove the truth in
providential death. Would you and his service
labor always at your best. Let him have his way
with me. His power to make you what
you want to be. His blood will bless your heart
and make you free. His love can fill your
soul and you will see
what's best for him to have his way
with me.
Alright, this time we'll pass our offering plates around. As the plates go
around let's turn our Bibles to Genesis chapter 11. Genesis
chapter number 11 and as we always do we'll read the entire chapter beginning
in verse number 1. Genesis chapter number 11
follow along silently with brother Dan as he reads. Genesis 11.
Genesis 11 the Bible reads
and the whole earth was of one language and of one speech and it came to pass as they
journeyed from the east that they found a plane in the land of Shinar and they dwelt there
and they said one to another go to let us make brick and burn them thoroughly
and they had brick for stone and slime had they for mortar and they said go to
let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven
and let us make us a name lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole
earth and the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men
builded and the Lord said behold the people is one
and they have all one language and this they begin to do and now
nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do. Go to
let us go down and there confound their language that they may not
understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the
face of all the earth and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it
called Babel because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth
and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
These are the generations of Shem. Shem was a hundred years old and began
Arphaxad two years after the flood and Shem lived after he begat
Arphaxad five hundred years and begat sons and daughters and Arphaxad
lived five and thirty years and begat Selah and Arphaxad lived after
he begat Selah four hundred and three years and begat sons and daughters and
Selah lived thirty years and begat Eber and Selah lived after he begat Eber
four hundred and three years and begat sons and daughters and Eber lived four and thirty
years and begat Peleg and Eber lived after he begat Peleg four hundred
and thirty years and begat sons and daughters and Peleg lived thirty years and begat
Ryu and Peleg lived after he begat Ryu two hundred and nine years and begat sons
and daughters and Ryu lived two and thirty years and begat Sarog
and Ryu lived after he begat Sarog two hundred and seven years and begat sons and daughters
and Sarog lived thirty years and begat Nahor and Sarog lived after he
begat Nahor two hundred years and begat sons and daughters and Nahor lived
nine and twenty years and begat Terah and Nahor lived after he begat Terah
two hundred and nineteen years and begat sons and daughters and Terah lived seventy
years and begat Abram, Nahor and Haran. Now these are the
generations of Terah. Terah begat Abram, Nahor and Haran and Haran
begat Lot. And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his
nativity in Ur of the Chaldees. And Abram and Nahor took them
wives. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai and the name of Nahor's wife
Milka, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milka and the father of Iskah.
But Sarai was barren and she had no child. And Terah
took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran his son's son and Sarai his
daughter-in-law his son Abram's wife and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees
to go into the land of Canaan and they came unto Haran and dwelt there.
And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years and Terah died in Haran.
Father in heaven thank you for this beautiful day and
Father your children that have believed in your son Jesus Christ, they are undergoing
persecution some of them. I pray that you please deliver them from the hands of their
persecutors and help them in their service unto the end. Please fill Pastor Anderson with the fullness and the power
of the Holy Spirit as he preaches their word so that we your children would grow
in grace and in the knowledge of our savior Jesus Christ with every passing day. In
Jesus name I pray, Amen. Amen. Genesis chapter number 11
contains the famous story about the Tower of Babel and that's what I'm preaching on
tonight. The Tower of Babel verse number one the Bible reads and the
whole earth was of one language and of one
speech. Now if you remember before this of course God has flooded the
entire world and killed everyone who was inhabiting that first
world and then when Noah and his three sons
and their wives get off of the ark the Bible tells us that the whole
earth was overspread from the descendants of Noah's
three sons and so some time goes by we don't know
exactly how long goes by but we have a
pretty good idea and I'll show you why in just a moment
but a certain period of time goes by and the whole earth is
still all speaking the same language and I'm going to show you it's about a hundred years that goes by
and so it makes sense that if they get off the ark they're all in one family
that a hundred years later they're all still speaking the same language of course.
Languages do change and evolve and drift over time
but if they're all living together and it's only a hundred years of course they're all still
speaking the same language. The Bible says in verse number two it came to pass as
they journeyed from the east that they found a plain in the land of Shinar
and they dwelt there and they said one to another go to let us make brick
and burn them thoroughly and they had brick for stone and slime
had they for mortar and they said go to let us build us a city and
a tower whose top may reach unto heaven and let us make us a name
lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
Now this is an act of rebellion against God
God has told them to be fruitful to multiply to replenish the earth
and it's God's will it's God's desire that they would be spread
abroad and cover the face of the whole earth but instead they decide that they want to stay
together in one place. Now what's wrong with this and
why did they have this desire? Well one thing that
could be going on here because the Bible does talk about in chapter 10 how
Nimrod began to be a mighty one in the earth and his kingdom
was you know started at Babel and so forth
it's possible that there were leaders that basically
just want to have power over the whole world so think about it if people
are scattered all over the face of the whole earth then you can't control all of them
whereas if everyone is concentrated in one place then one person
or one group of people can have total world
domination because everybody is there in one place
so they have this agenda of keeping everyone in this city
and they say let's build a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven
and let us make us a name that we may or sorry lest we
be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. Now when it
talks about them building a tower that reaches to heaven you could really interpret this two different ways
because the heaven is referring to the sky
but heaven is also referring to the place where God lives which is beyond the farthest
star and so what are we talking about here? Well it could be
that they're literally just building a tower to reach to heaven saying hey
we're going to build a really high tower that goes up into the sky but
symbolically this represents man making his own
way to heaven right? God has provided us for a way to go to heaven
through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and man is trying
to earn his own way to heaven through good works. Even in the book of Genesis
this truth is constantly being hammered because even in the very
first sin in the garden of Eden we have Adam and Eve
try to cover their own nakedness with animal
or excuse me with plant based textiles right?
They are sewing together fig leaves into an apron
and it fails to cover their nakedness so God makes them coats
of skins. So notice their attempt to cover their sin
is plants that they make themselves. They weave it themselves.
The covering that God has provided for their nakedness
is actually something that he makes. It's not something that they make
he makes it and it's an animal based
product because of the fact that an animal had to die
in order for that coat of skins to be produced which pictures
the fact that Jesus Christ died for our sins. Jesus Christ
is the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world
and so they had to have that coat of a skin representing
the slain lamb providing a covering, providing
a robe of righteousness, providing atonement for our sin. Then we move
on to Cain and Abel right? And of course Cain offers the sacrifice of
fruits and vegetables. Again plant based, representing the fruit of his
labor, the works of his own hands. Whereas Abel
brings of the first slings of the flock.
He brings again the blood of the lamb. He brings the animal sacrifice
picturing the Lord Jesus Christ's sacrifice. God accepts
Abel's offering and he rejects Cain's offering.
So over and over again we have these pictures of faith based salvation
because the Bible of course says about Abel, by faith Abel offered unto
God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, Hebrews chapter 11.
And so we have this picture that shows the difference between a faith based
righteousness and a works based righteousness right? And here again we have
man desiring to work his own way to heaven, build
his own way to heaven instead of relying on God to
supernaturally take him to heaven through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Obviously
they did not know the name of Jesus Christ at this time but
already in Genesis 3.15 the Savior is being
promised and they are calling upon the name of the Lord with the knowledge that they
have back then starting even in Genesis chapter 4. And so
the Bible says in verse 5 the Lord came down to see the city and the tower
which the children of men builded and the Lord said behold the people is
one and they all have one language. This they begin to do
and now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined
to do. Go to let us go down and there confound their language
that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord
scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth and they left off to build the city.
Now the way that God accomplishes scattering
the people, dividing them, forcing them to spread out upon the face
of the earth is by, according to verse 7, confounding
their languages, right? So he's confusing their languages, confounding
their languages. Meaning that originally as they began to build
the Tower of Babel every one of them is speaking the same language. But
then God supernaturally mixes up their language. So
basically in a moment they go from being able to understand one another
to just speaking completely different languages and
if you can't communicate, if you have that language barrier, it's going to be pretty hard
to live together and stay united and so they end up splitting
up and going off their separate ways into various nations which was God's
plan in the first place. Now here's the thing about
this. A lot of people will claim that this is just a legend or some kind
of a myth or just it's just figurative, it's poetic,
it didn't really happen. But yet I believe that this
actually really did happen and that the book of Genesis is actually giving us
a history of the early days of our planet
and when God describes the creation in Genesis 1
and 2 and describes Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, I believe that that all really
happened. I believe that that is all literal truth and that when we get to the Tower
of Babel story, this actually explains a lot about the world that we live
in. Now what's funny is that linguists and scientists
and various experts are always trying to get at the roots
of our human languages and of the various language families of
the world. And when you stop and think about the languages
of our world, they're grouped into these really big language families.
Now of course the biggest language family in the world is
Indo-European. And Indo-European is the biggest language
family in the world. About 46% of the world's population
speaks an Indo-European language. So even though there are lots and lots
of families, one of them is the big one. And it's
the one that we're a member of. It's Indo-European. It's almost half the
planet is speaking an Indo-European language. Of course English alone is
a huge language that's extremely important all over the world.
But Indo-European goes way beyond just English because the
vast majority of the languages in Europe are all Indo-European.
So everything pretty much in Europe except for Hungarian,
Finnish, Estonian, Basque, you know there's just a few
examples of little pockets of non-Indo-European. But all of your
Germanic languages, Slavic languages, Romance languages,
those are all Indo-European languages. You get into
Central Asia and Armenian is also
an Indo-European language. But then not only that, you go to India
and it's not just European, they're called Indo-European languages because
Northern India, which is of course home to a massive population
of hundreds of millions of people, they also speak Indo-European because
languages like Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi,
Marathi, Awesomese, and that's not a surfer language
from California but rather a Northern Indian language, they
all speak an Indo-European tongue. And that's why
when you listen to people speak something like Hindi, you can see how
it's really not that different from English. Whereas when you listen to someone speak a language
from Southern India, that's a Dravidian language family and it just
sounds like blalalala, you're like whoa, what in the world?
I mean it's way harder to learn those Dravidian languages than Indo-European.
You know you ask someone to count to ten in one of those Dravidian languages
and it's just all these bubbling, gurgling sounds and you're like
man, I don't even know what you just did. I don't know what you just said. Whereas if you
think about in Hindi, counting ten, I've got Varun
here to fact check me because he actually speaks the language, but you've got
ech, do, tin, char, ponch. Alright, I'm in
the ballpark. So you can already see right away
ech, one, do, dos, anyone?
Espanol, right? Do, tin, three,
char, four, ponch is like
penday, pentagram, pentagon, right?
So you can see their connections. So it's way closer because of the
fact that the ancient language of Northern India, Sanskrit,
was brought there by people called the Aryans who spoke
an Indo-European tongue and they ended up bringing their language
into India and so you know we're talking about a huge
section of the world speaking this family of Indo-European languages, but that's
not all because obviously you have other families because you have the Sino-
Tibetan languages, right? You have the Semitic languages.
But here's what I've noticed about these different language families is that each
language family tends to have its quirks.
Obviously to us, everything about our languages is normal to us.
But these families do tend to have their quirks. Like for example,
when you think about Chinese for example and the languages
that are related to Chinese, one of the quirks
that they have is being tonal. They're just totally
different than Indo-European languages because of the fact that they have all these really
short words. Like the words are just really short. They're just
all these little one syllable words. So pretty soon you're going to run out of words
when you're making them that short. So what they end up having to do
is say, okay, we're going to take this same syllable and we could give it
four different tones. Hey, maybe we'll even give it six different tones. You know, some
dialects of Chinese could even go beyond six tones. They have eight different tones.
So that there's a difference between ma, ma,
ma. You know, like all the different ways you could say mar.
Wa, wa, wa.
So you know, there's all these different things. And then what's interesting too, even
Navajo, right, Navajo has also
four tones. There's a rising tone, there's a falling tone,
high tone, and a low tone. Even in the Navajo language right here in Arizona.
But again, where did the Navajos come from? Northern Canada. Where did they come from
before that? They probably came across that land bridge, right, came across
or came across in boats from, you know, Russia to
Alaska or whatever. But the point is, you know, you have this big group of languages
that have this tonal thing going on with all these really short words. And that's
kind of like their quirk. And even all these different Chinese languages
that are so different that they can't understand one another, but they all
have this tonal thing going on. They all have a bunch of short little words and so forth, right?
Then you get into like the Pacific Islands.
You get into like Fiji and, and uh, Tuvaluwa
or like the native Hawaiian language and all those. And they have these really
long words, but here's what's interesting about them, is that they only have
eight consonants usually. Some of them have seven consonants, some of them
have nine, but they have like eight consonants. I mean, think about our language, you know, we have
26 letter alphabet and five vowels, sometimes
Y. But, you know, we have a lot more than eight consonants, don't we?
But man, you drive around Hawaii or one of these places for a while and you're going to
start just noticing, man, I'm just seeing the same couple letters, a lot of L's,
a lot of H's, a lot of K's, and you're like, where's the rest
of the alphabet? So then they have to make, because they have so few consonants
they have to have these big long words and it's just like, what in the world?
Okay, and so that's that quirk of that family. And, and all
these different languages, all these different islands, they all kind of have that same quirk going on.
Right? Then you can go into Africa and get into certain
areas where they have all these click languages going on. Right? Why aren't the Europeans
clicking? You know, why aren't we clicking in Japan
or Korea or China? You know, but then you go to Africa and it's a bunch
of clicking. Now, Navajo does have a single click
in it, okay, as well. But in general, you have
first of all these languages that are just total, you know, like
like the Kalahari Bushmen, like super click languages. But then you have other languages
that seem pretty normal, but then they'll throw in like two, three clicks
into the mix. Okay? And so
I could go on and on, but I think you're getting the point. Right?
Semitic languages, you know, one of the quirks about Semitic languages, of course their writing system
is that it's the only language family in the world where they write
horizontally from right to left instead of from left to right. Okay?
So your Semitic languages are Hebrew, Arabic, Amharic,
you know, Ethiopic languages, Aramaic, whatever. Those
languages, you know, they have their certain quirks. Oh, actually, here's a good
quirk. Every word in these Semitic languages
is pretty much based on a three-letter root. So basically everything at its
root is a three-letter word. Any time you're reading Hebrew and there's a word
that's not a three-letter based word, it's because it's a foreign word.
Like, you know, to telephone someone or something. That's a four-letter root.
But in general, the languages are just
you look at a list of verbs in Hebrew and it's just like everything's three letters. There's thousands
of words. There's just three letters long. So that's kind of their quirk.
So here's what linguists have realized is that, hey, if we have
all these people spread out in a certain area and they're all speaking a language
with this one quirk, it kind of seems like they all go back to one starting language
that they all share a common ancestor
and then they kind of diverged over time as they went their separate ways
and developed different dialects. Makes sense, right? Like, hey, if all
these Indo-European languages are similar, then they have hypothesized
well maybe there was this original language that we'll call
Proto-Indo-European and then this one language
Proto-Indo-European then basically fanned out
and became all these other languages. Same thing with all the other
language families. Well doesn't that fit perfectly with the Tower of Babel?
I mean think about it. At the Tower of Babel, basically you got one clique guy.
You got one tonal guy. You got one guy that only
knows eight consonants. You know, you got another guy that talks like us.
Which is just normal. And then you've got another guy where
everything's a three letter root. You got another guy over here, you know, and
on down the list. And so you can see how there were these like
original languages, these starting languages at the
Tower of Babel, which is going back say approximately
4,500 years ago or so. You have just like this one
starting point and then there's one guy who's
speaking that Indo-European language. Over time it diverges into languages
like Hittite, Sanskrit, Latin,
Greek, and on down to our modern Indo-European
languages. You got one Chinese speaking type guy
et cetera, et cetera. Now there are probably a lot of language families
that came out of the Tower of Babel that have just totally died.
And there are others that have become really small where you have like this one language and it's
just a few hundred thousand people and it's like we can't find anything that this language is related
to. It's just an isolated language, right? It's
just, you know, that one guy at the Tower of Babel just wasn't super productive
or at some point his posterity pretty much got wiped out or whatever.
So, does everybody see how what we see in reality
actually points us to the reality of the story?
Because of the fact that it does seem like our languages on this world
came from single ancestors. Because if you stop and think about it
you know our world right now is more united
technologically than it ever has been. I mean communication is easier
than it ever has been. Okay, so you would expect
that as you went back in time there'd be more diversity
of language. More diverse. But yet it seems like everything kind of goes back
to a single language in each family. Because at the
Tower of Babel I believe God created each language family when he
split people up. So basically they're working on the Tower of Babel and from
one day to the next or one moment to the next, we don't know exactly how this happened,
but they're just not able to communicate because all of a sudden somebody
just starts talking Chinese and to him it just
feels natural as rain. He just feels like he's been speaking that his whole life.
You know, for him it's like nothing changed. God just flips a switch in his brain
and all of a sudden he's speaking Chinese and he's always spoken Chinese and he doesn't
understand what this guy's clicking about over here.
And so that's, you know, God somehow
miraculously, supernaturally confounded the languages
and that forced them to find all the other clique people and all the clique
people kind of stick together. The sing-song
people kind of stick together. And the, you know,
big Kahuna, Kahlua kind of people, they kind of stick to Mahalo,
Aloha kind of people. They all get together
and basically, you know, they go their separate ways. And then
that accomplishes this thing of breaking people up, splitting them up.
God said, let us go down and they're confound their language. You know, who's the
us here? Well, God calls himself
us in Genesis chapter 1, Genesis chapter 3 because it's the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Ghost. Now they don't necessarily understand that back
when this was first written, but of course we with the luxury of having the New Testament
explaining the nature of God and that God eternally exists as three persons
then we can understand why God would say let us make man in our image.
Because that's the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost because the Bible says Jesus is the
express image of God the Father's person.
So they share that image. And so he says let's make man in our image.
And then if you get to chapter 3 he even says the man has become like unto one
of us. Right? And again we're talking Father, Son, Holy Ghost.
And so he says let's go down and they're confound their language
that they may not understand one another's speech so the Lord scattered them abroad from thence
on the face of all the earth and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it
called Babel because the Lord did there confound
the language of all the earth. So that's what that word originally
meant. Something about confounding, mixing up, confusing.
Okay? And so does our English word Babel
come from that? Perhaps. But you know you definitely can't say that this
place is called that because of the word Babel. It's the other way around because obviously the English
language came way later. And we're probably calling it babbling
because it's kind of like what's going on at the Tower of Babel. Somebody's talking.
It's not making any sense. They're babbling. Right? So it's possible that that's where that word
comes from. I'm not 100% sure on that. That could be a folk etymology
which is when people just kind of make stuff up and guess because things
sound similar. Verse number 9 it's called Babel because
the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth and from thence
did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all
the earth. Now why did God want them to be separate in the first place?
Well, let me explain it to you this way. Okay. Throughout history, nations have
gone bad. Leadership has gone bad. Governments have gone bad.
And here's what people typically do when their government goes bad.
When a country becomes evil and corrupt and they can't
live a righteous life, they get out of there. They go somewhere else.
And in fact, if you think about the founding of our country, many of the
people who came over here from places like England or the Netherlands
were actually coming here because they were sick of
religious persecution in Europe and they were sick of the Roman Catholic Church
and they're trying to come somewhere where they can worship God and not
have to worry about getting in trouble for the preaching and so forth. So they
came over here to actually serve God in the
way that they believed was right. And so therefore, you can see how if
a country becomes corrupt and you can't practice your religion and
you're being persecuted in various ways, you would flee that country and go somewhere else
that's better. Leaving a country that you don't want to
be in and going somewhere else. And that's what
people have done throughout history. And I mean look, if let's say America just became so
corrupt where I just can't even preach the Bible, I just can't even serve
God, I just can't even raise my family or even function here as a Christian, you know what
I would do is get out of here. I'd go somewhere else. You know, and I've said before, I'm never
going to go underground. You know, if I can't go
soul-winning openly, then I'm just going to go somewhere else.
I'm not going to live somewhere where I can't function and serve God.
But here's the problem. When you have a one-world government, a one-world system,
when things go bad, there's just nowhere to go. When it's
corrupt, when it's wicked, it's the only option. And so this
is a bad place to be. And in fact, one of the reasons why
God didn't want them to have the Tower of Babel is the same reason why we are
an independent Baptist church. Why are we independent?
Why does that matter? Why aren't we part of some big denomination like the
Southern Baptist Convention or the North American Baptist Association or
the General Association of Regular Baptists or whatever? The reason why
is that if we were to yoke up into some denomination of thousands of churches,
well then what happens is the denomination will go
bad and then it'll take us down with it. It'll drag us down with it.
The corruption will filter through to us. Whereas now, let's say Faithful
Word Baptist Church goes bad, it just goes somewhere else. Right? You're like,
oh, Faithful Word is not true to the Bible anymore? Get in the car, drive across the
town, go to a different Baptist church. And here's the thing. The other independent Baptist
churches throughout Phoenix, they're not connected to us financially,
legally. We don't control one another. So therefore,
if you left our church and went to another church, it's not going to be the
same thing. It's going to be different. That's why you're here, amen?
But I'm just saying, like, and if you left that church and came here, it's going to be different.
The point is that we're all independent and so when one church goes
bad, one church goes bad. Whereas when the denomination goes
bad, everything goes bad. You know, so the devil, all he has to do is just attack a few
people at the top and he can just corrupt the entire
thing. And that's what's been happening throughout history. I mean, look, I was out soul winning one time in
Tempe and there was a church and I ran into the pastor of the church and he was talking about how
he just had to pull the church out of their Baptist denomination. It was one that I
hadn't heard of. I don't remember which one it was. He had to pull the church out of his denomination
because they just started accepting homos into the
church and, and, and as members in good standing and whatever. And he
said, we couldn't stand for that. But he said it was a really hard decision for us
because by pulling out of the denomination, I lost my pension. I lost
my, my parsonage that I was living in. Like all these financial
ties were there just to make it super hard to leave. So guess what?
A lot of churches, they're just going to stay in and just kind of go with the flow because
they, they've got an ulterior or they've got a conflict of interest is what they have
because they have financial reasons to stay in and spiritual reasons to
get out. You know, I'd rather just get up every week and just preach what
the Bible says and not worry about what some guy in some headquarters
is thinking about what I preach. It's why I'm not Presbyterian.
You know, I don't want to be one of these Presbyterian pastors. They get up and, and
you know, accidentally preach hard one time and then they get called before some
Presbyterian get disciplined for actually preaching a spirit filled sermon for once in
their life. You know, no way, man, I'm independent.
I don't want you to say, Oh, you just don't want any oversight.
Well, I want the oversight of Jesus Christ and that's it. We've all got the Bible.
We've all got Jesus. We've all got the Holy Spirit. We don't need some headquarters
in some other state that's telling us because let's face it, folks, there is
no headquarters in the world that would approve of this church.
There is not a headquarters on this planet
that would let what we're doing here stand and would let my preaching stand.
I'd be, they'd all discipline me. Have fun
finding a denomination that would not discipline me.
Have even more fun finding one that wouldn't discipline Pastor Shelley
or that wouldn't discipline Pastor Jimenez. You know, we have to be independent
because no, no corporate model would ever put up with this.
And so we are independent Baptist by conviction.
Christ is the head of the church. We don't need some other denominational
headquarters telling us what to do next to them.
Why? Because they're corrupted because they're the ones who would be telling us,
Hey, you can't preach against the homos like that. Hey, you know, you've
got to do this. You've got to do that. No, we're going to, we're going to do
what the Bible says. We're going to be spirit led. We're going to be
We're going to be spirit led, not denomination led.
And so it's the same thing with nations. It's the same thing with churches.
We want to have separate nations, separate churches, separate families
so that if you, because if you put it all together, it's sort of like if you put
all your, your apples in the same basket, one of them
is going to go bad and it's going to corrupt the whole thing. If you have the apples stored
in separate places, if one of them goes corrupt, it's not going to spoil
the whole barrel of apples, right? You don't want to put all your eggs in one basket,
my friend, because it's too easy for that one basket
to become corrupted. And that's what we see going on in
Genesis chapter 11. The whole world is all united together
under this one leadership, which seems to be the leadership of the sons of
Ham, right? Seems to be Nimrod and
others perhaps that are the movers and shakers. And this is not
God can see where this is going. He's already destroyed the world once. He doesn't
want to destroy it again yet, okay? He will eventually, but he wanted to wait
many thousands of years to do that. He doesn't want to just keep destroying it.
He only destroys it twice. So let's go back, if you would, to
Genesis chapter 10. And here's what you have to understand about
reading the book of Genesis. Obviously the book of Genesis in general is in chronological order,
telling a story from the creation of the world all the way up
through the 12 patriarchs going down into Egypt. But what we need to
understand, though, is that interrupting the narrative are these
genealogical sections. And these genealogical sections are not part
of the story. They're providing supplementary information
or overviews. Like, for example, there's a whole chapter that says, hey, these are the
kings of Edom. These are the dukes of Edom. And it just explains
a bunch of genealogies and a bunch of kings
and dynasties. And so it's covering like hundreds of years in one chapter.
Same thing with these genealogical chapters like Genesis chapter 5,
Genesis chapter 10, et cetera. So this
is not part of the story. It's a separate section
that's just breaking down all this genealogical information. So Genesis chapter 10
says in verse number 1, now these are the generations of the sons of
Noah, Sham, Ham, and Japheth. And none of them were sons born after the
flood, sons of Japheth, Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and
Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras, and the sons of
Gomer, Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah, and the sons of
Javan, Elisha, and Tarshish, Kitim, and Dodonim.
And here's the part I want you to see here, verse 5. By these were the
isles of the Gentiles divided.
Notice that statement there. By these were the isles of the Gentiles
divided in their land. And how were they divided? On what basis
were they divided? Everyone after his tongue
after their families and their nation. So notice you have them being
divided based upon their languages, okay? And then we have
the sons of Ham, and it lists the sons of Ham. We talked about that the other night.
Then we have the sons of Sham listed out and so
forth. But jump down if you would to verse number 25. This is in
the genealogy of Shem. It says in verse 25 unto Eber
were born two sons. The name of the one was Peleg,
watch this, for in his days was the earth divided.
Okay, so notice God talked about dividing the
nations, dividing the lands in verse number 5. Now
he talks about the earth being divided specifically in the days of Peleg, and again if you do the math
I'm not going to do this for the sake of time, you'll find that Peleg is born
about a hundred years after the flood. So therefore the flood
happens and about a hundred years later the earth is divided
and to commemorate that this guy names his son
Peleg because that's what's going on in the world at the time.
In his days the earth was divided and so forth. Then it says in
verse 30, and that makes sense, that the Tower of Babel story would happen about a hundred years after the
flood, that actually makes perfect sense. Because that would give time
for the number of humans to multiply to be thousands of people.
And then it says in verse number 32,
these are the families of the sons of Noah after their generations in
their nations and by these were the nations divided in
the earth after the flood. So three times we have this idea of the earth
or the lands or the nations being divided
and then in chapter 11 we get the story of exactly
how that took place with the Tower of Babel. And the reason I bring that up is because some people
will take that statement in his days was the earth divided and
they'll basically say, oh it was Pangaea before that
and then basically like God just like broke apart the continents like
in one fell swoop and created the
layout that we have today and that's why he called his name Peleg.
Here are a bunch of problems with that. Number one, no.
Number two, also no. No but the point is that, you know, first
of all, if we get the context, God's talking about dividing
them in chapter 10 and chapter 11 according to
language. So that's the immediate context, number one.
Okay, number two, like that doesn't really track with what we see
actually in this world. We don't see evidence of them just being broken
apart all at once and just separated all at once.
That's not really going to hold up from a geological standpoint.
And then, you know, the other thing about that is how in the world
would this guy Eber know that? Like is he
looking at satellite images of the earth live on TV watching
the continents being ripped apart? I mean if this guy lives in one place, he's not
flying in an airplane, he doesn't have a helicopter, he can't ride the train,
he doesn't even have a jeep. This guy is living in
a time where traveling across the earth is very difficult. How does he know
that the earth is being divided like that? You know, and you could say
well, you know, he's just divinely inspired just so he could name his kid
Peleg. Well, you know what, that's kind of a wild explanation.
So I think it's a little bit simpler explanation to say that he was there at the Tower of Babel
when the earth got divided and he named his kid after what
actually happened. That makes about a thousand times more sense. So if
you believe in the, you know, that Peleg was named that because
Pangea was separated, I'm not mad at you, okay.
The Bible says, no, never mind. I'm not going to be rude.
So anyway, if you would flip over to Deuteronomy chapter 32.
Deuteronomy chapter number 32, but I think it's pretty clear that
what the division is talking about is just dividing people into language groups,
ethnic groups, breaking them up into different
families and tribes throughout the world. And by the way, this is why it is so
incredibly hard to learn a foreign language.
Folks, learning a foreign language is super hard.
It's incredibly hard. Who would raise your hand and say, pastor, I only speak
one language. Put up your hand. Now look, it's the vast majority of people
in this room. The vast majority only speak one language.
Now of course, a person who speaks two languages is called bilingual, three languages is called trilingual,
one language is called American. No, I'm just kidding. No, but honestly,
guess what? You want to go to a place where everybody only speaks one language? It's called Mexico.
Folks, people in Mexico only speak
Spanish. I mean, a lot of them only speak Spanish even when they live here
for crying out loud. But I'm saying, man, when you go to Mexico, they speak Spanish.
And unless you're in a touristy area, if you're in a really touristy area, they speak
English. As soon as you get out of that touristy area, you can go to a hotel.
They don't even know the word for room. They don't even know the word for
key and they work in a hotel. Okay, trust me.
If you get out of the tourist area, you better speak Spanish in Mexico
because they only speak Spanish. Okay, now why
do people in Mexico only speak Spanish? Why do Americans only
speak English by and large? Vast majority of people here tonight, vast
majority of people in our country. I'll tell you why, because it is super hard
to learn a foreign language. See, you pretty much only learn a foreign language
if you have to or if you grow up with it
and you grow up with both and you're raised bilingual. But I mean, for you
as a teenager or an adult to sit out and say, I'm going to learn
a foreign language, it's extremely hard. It takes thousands of hours.
And by the way, when you see these little ads about, oh,
15 minutes a day and I'm speaking Spanish, I'm speaking. It's a lie.
It's garbage. It's impossible. No one will ever learn
any language in 15 minutes a day. I don't care if you do it for 100 years
and you do it for 15 minutes every day for 100 years.
It's not enough. It just isn't. Sorry
to burst your bubble, but it just isn't. And look, I'm somebody
who learns a lot of foreign languages. That's like my biggest hobby. I love
foreign languages and I've been studying foreign languages for like 25 years.
But here's the thing about that. When I was a kid, I didn't learn any foreign languages. When I was a teenager
for most of my teenage years, I only knew English. I didn't start
learning languages seriously until I was about 16, 17 years old.
So I got kind of a late start. So I'm never going to have a perfect accent
in any of these languages because I didn't start until I was like 16, 17.
But since then, for the last 25 years, I've been studying
foreign languages. And let me tell you something. People are like, oh, you're gifted. You have a gift.
No, I have no gift. It's just that I just spend a stupid
amount of time studying foreign languages. I have no
gift. I mean, other people are way better at picking this stuff up than me.
And you say, no, I've seen you pick stuff up. Yeah, 25 years later, I'm starting to get the hang of it.
But the point is, though, that like, for example,
Greek, for example, okay, I literally
first of all, I studied Greek for years. Then when I was making that
documentary film called Going Back to the Greek, who's seen that film that I made, Going Back to the Greek?
Okay, when I made that film, I literally spent
just for the five months leading
up to that trip, I spent five hours a day, seven days a week
studying Greek. And I'd already been studying for years before that.
But then I got really serious about it because I'm like, I'm taking this trip, I
got to really study this stuff. So I spent five hours a day
religiously, on average, studying Greek leading up to that trip.
So do the math. That's like 150 days. That's like
750 hours of working on this just leading up to the trip,
let alone all the study that I did before that. And still when I'm over there, I'm stammering
and stuttering and struggling and whatever. I mean, and that's
not 15 minutes a day, friend. That's five hours every day.
And I'm stammering and stammering and stuttering and struggling and I got through it.
But it was hard. You know, and obviously since then, I've literally
since that trip studied Greek for literally thousands of hours.
But the point is that that's what it takes to learn a language. You know, those of you
who say, oh man, I want to go soul winning and speak Spanish and win people to Christ in Spanish.
Be prepared to put in thousands of hours of study.
Be prepared to put in time. You know,
even to just get to first base in a language, it's going to take hundreds of hours.
Now, I'm sorry to burst your, and you know what? Maybe I'm just stupid, okay?
Maybe I'm just really slow and have a learning disability, okay?
That's possible. But you know, I seem to find
that the people around me, when I'm doing a language venture, they seem to be going
through the same things that I'm going through. I haven't really seen people just blowing past
me in these things. And so it's just, I think it's just stinking
hard. And guess what? It's hard for a reason. God made it
hard. God did not make it easy.
God made your brain designed to just rebel and be like, I'm
not speaking another language if I don't have to. And that's why
if you raise your children, by the way, people are like, oh, raise my child bilingual. Okay.
If you raise your child and you speak to them in both, let's say, you know, in
our case German, because my wife's German. If we speak to our kids in both
English and German, they only want to speak English.
They'll just blow you off on German. They're just like, English.
The way that I've seen people successfully raise their kid bilingual is when they
speak 100% German at home and then they speak
English everywhere else. School, church, friends, neighborhood.
And then they learn both. But if you're doing both at home, we're human. We
take the path of least resistance. And so they just go English.
Because it's easy. And so that's
the way our brains work. You have to really make an effort to
go against that hard wiring of our brain that says speak
one language, maybe two or three languages. You know, if you grow up in a place like that.
You know, certain places where you're naturally going to learn a few languages. Like if we're in India right now,
most people are probably going to speak a couple languages. Am I right?
It's not going to be like here or Mexico or something. Pretty much most people are going to
speak. They're going to speak probably a really local dialect.
And then they'll probably speak Hindi. And then they'll probably speak English. So they might speak like three languages.
Or if we were in Nigeria, they'd probably speak like their local dialect.
And then they'd speak one of the three big Nigerian languages. And then they'll speak
English. And so, you know, certain places you're going to kind of grow up
with two or three languages. But again, that's two or three.
There are thousands of languages in the world. Maybe you'll grow up
with two or three. But most people are really only going to be good at one.
And your brain is hard-wired to just forget this other language.
And then you say, man, it's like I studied this language. I said so much. I forgot everything.
God literally designed your brain to do that. Because
the Tower of Babel. That's why. So, you know,
wanting to be a polyglot and speak a bunch of languages, be ready to paddle hard
upstream mentally. Okay.
And that was an encouraging message.
I want to encourage you to learn Spanish. No, I'm just kidding.
I'm just being real with you. You know what I mean? You want me to lie to you? Okay,
fine. Fifteen minutes a day. Look, hey, just keep your Duolingo
streak going and you'll be fluent. Yet I've
talked to people who have 60,000 XP on Duolingo and they can hardly
even say hi to you. You can't even have a conversation with them. And they have
60,000 XP. Now look, don't get me wrong. I love Duolingo.
Duolingo works. Duolingo is effective. But
you have to also actually practice the language in real life.
If you're only Duolingo, it's not going to work. But Duolingo is a wonderful supplement and this message is brought
to you in part by Duolingo. So that's why, in short,
learning a language is so hard because God purposely
altered. I mean, look, if he's going to change people's languages in a moment
or in a day or in a week or whatever, he had to do something in
their brains. Am I right? If God's going to
super, he went, he went and tweaked something in their brain. And while he tweaked something in
their brain, he put in this other little limiter that's just like, huh,
let's make it super hard to learn more than one or two languages. Okay, because
that's what he wanted because he wanted people to be separate. He wanted people to
go their separate ways. And why does he want them separate? Is it because
he's trying to separate people on race or something? No. The reason he wanted people
separate is so that when one nation goes bad, they don't all go bad.
That you can have good and bad pockets and if something gets bad,
you can flee to something good. It sort of, it creates competition, basically.
Like, think about when a country is really prosperous and doing well, everybody wants to
go there. And then when a country is going bad, everybody's trying to get out of there.
So it's sort of like business. If a restaurant goes bad, nobody's eating there.
Restaurant that's good, they start opening new branches because everybody wants
to go there. So it creates like a competitive system where
different countries are doing better than others and different countries are thriving.
Other countries are dying and so forth. I hope that that all makes sense to you.
I gotta hurry up for sake of time, but look at Deuteronomy chapter 32.
We have another reference to this story in Deuteronomy chapter 32.
It says in verse number 8, when the most high
divided to the nations their inheritance,
when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds
of the people according to the number of the children of Israel
for, what does for mean? Because, right?
For the Lord's portion is his people.
Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. Now the context here is
God telling the Israelites that they're his
special chosen people and that God has put all this thought
and planning into their very existence. He loves them.
They're the apple of his eye. It's gonna be great. Obviously this is back when that was true
in the Old Testament, okay? And so it says
when the most high divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam,
he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. Now when is
this? When did he divide the nations? When did he appoint the
bounds of their habitation? Well I believe this is a reference to Genesis
10 and 11. There are a few reasons for that. Number one, because obviously dividing the nations
is exactly what happened in Genesis chapter 11. But number two,
it says that he did it according to the number of the children
of Israel. Well here's what's interesting about that, is that if you count up that list
of nations in Genesis chapter 10, you'll find that he divided them
into 70 different groups just based
on that chapter. That kind of catalog of nations and that may or may not be
an exhaustive list because obviously it's just talking about
key groups of people and everything. But in any case,
Genesis 10 has a list of 70 different
places in that catalog of nations. And then if you think about the number of
the sons of Israel, 70 is an important symbolic number for the sons
of Israel. Because for example in Exodus chapter 1 verse 5 it says,
all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob, of course Jacob is Israel,
all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were 70 souls
for Joseph was in Egypt already. So you have 70
sons of Jacob, children, descendants of Jacob
going down into Israel in Exodus chapter 1 verse 5.
And then you have the catalog of nations when God divided the nations and it
also comes out to 70. So there's a symbolic connection
between these two. Makes perfect sense. Amen?
So that seems to be pointing us to the Tower of Babel. Here's another reason why it makes sense.
Because some people have pointed at this and said, well this doesn't make any sense because
when God divided the nations in Genesis chapter 10 Israel didn't exist.
So how could God divide the nations according to the number of the children
of Israel if Israel didn't exist? Well, did you forget that God knows
the end from the beginning? And so God
obviously knew that the nation of Israel is going to exist and he
divided the nations in such a way that Israel would
inherit the exact territory that he wanted them to inherit.
That they would have the right amount of land, the right quality of land. He had
a plan for them to inherit that land in the Old Testament that Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob dwelt in. He already knew that even when
he's dividing the nations he's thinking, okay, here's the number of the children of Israel
let's say there's going to be so many millions of children of Israel
well then this is the amount of land I'm going to give to them so it will be the right size for them.
Now, here's an illustration that I thought of to help
understand this. Okay, let's say that we were buying pizza for the whole church
right? And it's like, okay, we're buying pizza for the whole church
and we got hundreds of people that are going to be eating this pizza at a church event
and let's say I'm thinking in particular
about my children, right? Because obviously I love all the members of our
church but of course my family is a little bit more special
to me, closer to me. My children are more important to me than your
children, sorry. But obviously just, you know, just as a human being obviously
that's my family. I love the whole church but I especially love my family.
You love your family in a special way, I hope. I hope you don't love my family
more than your family because that'd be super weird. But anyway
there are people like that. Some creepy people. But anyway the point is
that let's say I'm, you know, allotting
pizza for the whole church. I'm saying like, how much pizza are we going to order, right?
Now obviously I'm ordering pizza for the whole church but what if I'm ordering in
such a way that I'm thinking to myself, I want to make sure that there's
enough pizza for my children to have
what they need. You know, I'm ordering for everybody but I'm
thinking about making sure that there's enough pizza, maybe the flavors
that they like are going to be there and maybe we're arriving a little bit late to the church event
and so want to make sure that there's still pizza when we get there
and so I'm ordering the pizzas according to the numbers of my own children.
And maybe that's a little bit of a crude illustration but it gives you the idea how God could allot
territory to the nations according to the number of the children
of Israel by thinking about the fact that hey, you know, the children of Israel are going to
need to inherit a certain amount of land so I'm going to make everybody else inherit
and be in such a way where they get what I want them to have.
Makes perfect sense to me with an omniscient God.
But again, people would scoff at this and say, well, how can
he divide it according to the nations of Israel when it didn't exist yet? Because
he knows the end from the beginning and he was already planning the nation of Israel
when he first divided the nations at the Tower of Babel.
And so it says when the Most High divided the nations of their inheritance
when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according
to the number of the children of Israel. So there's that symbolic correlation of the
70 sons of Jacob and the 70 nations cataloged in Genesis 10.
And then there's a literal interpretation of
he's thinking about, okay, there's going to be this many million Israelites
so I'm going to make sure they get this much land so that they get what they need.
Why did he do this? The Bible tells
in verse nine, for the Lord's portion is his people.
Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. Now, do you see a very strong connection between
verses eight and nine? Because eight tells us what happened
and nine tells us why it happened. Okay, not only that, but this is
poetry. This whole chapter Deuteronomy 32 is the
song of Moses. It is a poem. And what is the key
feature of Hebrew poetry? Parallelism. This
restatement of things a different way. And so there are all these parallels. For example,
verse nine, the Lord's portion is his people. Jacob
is the lot of his inheritance. So notice his people in the first half is replaced by
Jacob in the second half. Portion in the first half is parallel
with inheritance in the second half. Everybody see that? Okay, now
another thing that's interesting too is that this couplet
starts and ends on the same idea. Because in verse eight it says
when the most high divided to the nation is their inheritance, right?
See that word inheritance? And at the end of verse nine, Jacob is the lot of his inheritance,
right? In the Hebrew text, literally the first word
of verse eight and the last word of verse nine are a word derived from
you know, the root that means inheritance. So basically these are bookending
these idea of inheriting is bookending these two. They clearly go together.
They have a word that means because right in the middle, connecting them.
I mean, does anybody have any questions? This is a pretty
clear passage, am I right? And you say, well, there's nothing more to see here, Pastor
Anderson. Can we move on? Now, the reason I'm bringing this up is because right now
the new Bible versions are changing this verse right now.
Meaning that even the modern Bible versions had this right in the past, but
now they're starting to change this. There's a new move to change this.
The ESV changes this. The NIV still has it reading like
the King James, but then the NIV reader's edition has now changed
it. So it's literally a thing that's taking place
in our time to change this verse. And what they're changing it
to is they're changing it from children of Israel to sons of God.
So that instead of according to the number
of the children of Israel, which is what the traditional Hebrew text says,
now they're changing it to according to the number of the sons of God.
Now, what are they basing this on? What are they basing this change on? Well,
first of all, let me read for you some of these
versions, what they're doing to this verse, okay? And not only that,
they don't all say sons of God. Some of them change it to angels because
they're saying, well, sons of God, that means angels. Even though, of course,
the Bible said, unto which the angels said to you, any time, thou art my son, this day have I
begotten thee. Let's not let that bother you that God said he didn't say to any of the
angels at any time, thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. But whatever.
Or they'll just, so let me read you some of these, and I'm just
going to give you the abbreviation of these versions because I don't know what all of these
stand for. But like the CEB, which I
believe is the Common English Bible or something. CEB, it
says, when God Most High divided up the nations,
this is Deuteronomy 32.8, when he divided up
humankind, oh, thank you for that wonderful gender-neutral language,
humankind, he decided
the people's boundaries based on the number of the gods.
So you just count up the number of gods
and that's how many nations. Any questions? Because we all know there's
70 gods, right? No, there's one god. All the other gods
are idols, false gods. Okay, that's the CEB. How about
the CEV? Not B, V, now V isn't Victor.
The Most High God gave land to every nation. He
assigned a guardian angel to each of them.
This is not what the original Hebrew says, my friend. The original Hebrew reads exactly like
the King James. The ERV, he made as many
nations as there are angels. Now here's what's stupid about that. How many angels
are there?
I mean, the Bible talks about there being hundreds of millions of angels.
Ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands.
Ten thousand times ten thousand is a hundred million.
Are there a hundred million nations? Have there ever been a hundred million
nations? That's stupid. He made as many
nations as there are angels. Folks, the word angel is not in any
Hebrew text of Scripture.
Here's the easy version.
He did that. He decided where their border should be. He did that to match
the number of angels in heaven. Perfect match, folks.
Ten thousand times ten thousand and then, yep, that's how many nations. Perfect.
Perfect. The ESV, he fixed the borders
of the peoples according to the numbers of the sons of God. People would say, oh man,
the ESV is such a good literal translation. Yeah, literal translation of something that's
false. Because they said sons of God instead of sons of Israel.
Oh, here we go, the GNT. I thought this was the place where
you buy vitamins or something, but, or that's GNC,
sorry. He assigned to each nation a
heavenly being. The Living Bible.
He gave each of them a supervising angel. Now, even if it said
according to the number of the sons of God, how do you get supervising angel out of that?
But it's not. It's sons of Israel, my friend.
This is the message.
He put each of the peoples within the boundaries under the care of divine
guardians. These are basically like, I don't know, like
tricked out anime characters or something.
The NABRE. He set up the boundaries of the peoples after the number
of the divine beings. The NET.
According to the number of the heavenly assembly. Folks, there's no heavenly,
there's no assembly. That's not what it says. It says
the sons of Israel, and even in their spurious document that I'm going to show you in a moment,
it's sons of God in their fake wrong version.
Where do they get this stuff? NIRV. He did it
based on the number of the angels in his heavenly court.
New Living Translation. He established the boundaries of the peoples according to the number
in his heavenly court. NRSVA, when the most
high appointed the nations, when he divided humankind,
he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the gods.
A god for every nation, amen?
The RSV,
which is, I thought, a childhood disease that we don't want our kids to get.
He fixed the boundaries of the people according to the number of the sons of God.
The voice. He established the boundaries of the people as the number of the sons of God.
Okay, and then this one gets an honorable mention
because it actually says it right about Israel.
It says it both ways. But this one just was so weird,
I have to read it to you. When the highest
parted, folks. What is this, the deep south
version?
When the highest parted, folks,
when he separated the sons of Adam, what is that?
They're just like, it's like, well, we've got to come out with a version that sounds totally
different than anything else. So instead of dividing the nations, let's grab
the thesaurus and just kind of go wild with the thesaurus.
He parted, folks.
Folks, look down at your Bible. Look at the verse in front of you.
It really says, in verse 8, it's according to the
number of the children of Israel for
Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. Like, doesn't that make sense?
According to the numbers of Israel, because Jacob.
Israel, because Jacob. That's because Jacob is Israel.
The two work perfectly together. How could you say like, well, he did it according to the number
of gods. You know, because Israel is his inheritance.
Those two things don't have anything to do with one another. So why'd you
do it? Why'd you give them all a guardian angel? Oh, because Jacob.
It doesn't make any sense. It's absurd.
You say, yeah, Pastor Anderson, but they've got
some serious evidence. You know, the Dead Sea
Scrolls, Pastor Anderson, have really changed everything. First of all, if an
archaeological discovery can just totally change our Bible, leave it buried.
Because God has preserved his word to all generations.
If it's new, it isn't true.
Because God's word is already done a long time ago.
But you say, no, Pastor Anderson, the Dead Sea Scrolls, man, they changed everything.
So I actually went and I looked this up,
the evidence for this. You can go to the Wikipedia article for Sons of God.
And it has a whole section on this. And in the Wikipedia article, it claims
that there are two manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls that support the
Sons of God reading. Okay? That's what they're claiming.
It's false. They're citing a guy named Michael Heiser
who claims that in his article. And that's the only
citation that Wikipedia gives. You go to the Heiser article and Heiser
says, oh, yeah, these two articles support that reading. Or, excuse me,
these two manuscripts support that reading. Well, I went online and I actually
looked at the images of the Dead Sea Scrolls for those. First of all,
one of them doesn't contain any portion of Deuteronomy 32.8.
It contains another part of the chapter.
It doesn't even touch verse 8. So one of them is just
completely just a fraud. And yet, I said something about this
like five years ago in Wikipedia. Can somebody edit Wikipedia, please?
Because it's still making this false, lying claim
and citing this Michael Heiser article that isn't true when it says that there are two
Dead Sea Scrolls that have this reading. It isn't true. There's one Dead Sea
Scroll that has this reading. I got a picture of it right here. Okay, now
I know that you in the back, you know, you're not going to be able to see this. I'll set it up here on the organ if you want to
come check it out when you're done. But, you know, for those of you in the front row, I'm going to reward the front row
right now. Okay. First of all, this is the manuscript that this
reading's coming from. Okay. I don't know if you can see that.
Okay. So basically, it's about
90% or 95% is just
nothing. And it's just these little scraps, these little
fragments. Okay. Now, here's a zoomed in
picture of the scrap that contains the Sons of God reading.
Okay. So this is what we're, this is all the evidence.
Two manuscripts of Deuteronomy in the Dead Sea Scrolls read this. And then you
can actually fact check. And here's what you find. This scrap right here.
Okay. Now this scrap right here has 14 letters
on it. Three words.
Two of those words mean Sons of God and then one other word that's like
most of the word for inherit or divide the inheritance.
So we got three words,
14 letters on this little tiny scrap
of paper. That's their manuscript evidence
for the Sons of God reading is this scrap alone, which is
part of this bigger group of scraps that are, this is
laid out where they would be on the page. Now here's the problem, here's the
problem with this in case you're not sure what the problem is. Let me help you understand what the problem is.
Okay. Here's what the problem is. The problem is, first
of all, we don't even know, and by the way, this is that scrap on the page.
The scrap that we're talking about that has three words on it is this, it's one of the bigger chunks here.
It's one of the, it's like the, it's like the fourth biggest chunk.
So anyway, here's the problem
with this is that we don't know where this came from. We don't
know who wrote it. We don't know why it was thrown in the trash.
We don't know what it's doing in that cave. We don't know if it was ever
used or not used. We don't know who wrote this,
why, what they were doing. And here's the thing, how do we know how good of a job
they did at copying, or how do we know if they didn't make all kinds of other wild changes?
Because there are literally documents at the Dead Sea Scrolls, like there's a book
called the Genesis Apocryphon, where they just rewrite the Book of Genesis and make all kinds of
changes and add, you know, who knows? We just don't know. And we can't
really evaluate the quality because we can't read the whole thing.
Now first of all, even if it were high quality, I would
still say, well, it's junk because it's been buried for thousands of years and God already
preserved his word in every generation. But even from
their perspective, how are you going to evaluate the quality of something
like this? You can't even read one single complete sentence on this whole page.
There's not even one sentence here to even be able to read this and say
like, okay, yeah, here's what this scribe was like, here's what he was
copying, here's how well he did, here's how accurate he is, here's how inaccurate he
is. No, no, no. It's just a little scrap with a few words. This
is amazing. So right here, this right here, this, this alone
this little scrap with three words on it, don't you wish it would have just blown away
and gotten eaten by a moth or something?
But this stupid little piece of paper, this little tiny little piece of shrapnel
toilet paper, whatever it is, okay, literally is why
the ESV has changed this verse. Why
all these verses are changing this is because this finding changes everything, right?
I'm totally out of time, but let me just, let me just read you for a
couple quotes from the Heiser article. This will blow your mind.
Literary and conceptual parallels discovered in the literature of
Ugarit, however, have provided a more coherent
explanation for the number of 70 in Deuteronomy 32.8. Because remember
my explanation for 70 was like 70 sons of Jacob, 70
nations, boom, works. Now he's got a more
coherent from the discoveries in Ugarit.
Ugaritic mythology
plainly states that the head
of its pantheon, El, who liked the God of the Bible
is also referred to as El Elyon, the Most High, fathered 70
sons.
And thereby specifying the number of the sons of God.
An unmistakable linguistic parallel with the Hebrew text underlying
the Septuagint reading was thus discovered. Because the Septuagint, which is
also a corrupt Bible version, says angels.
That's why a lot of these versions are saying angels even though that's not in any Hebrew text.
The Septuagint is supposedly looking at sons of God and saying, oh that's angels or whatever.
But here's what I want to sink in with you for a minute, okay?
That Ugaritic mythology, you know the Bible has
a word for Ugaritic mythology, it's called the worship of Baal.
It's called Baal worshippers. And I'm not saying that in a figurative way.
I'm saying literal Baal worshippers. In fact,
Zondervan, the same company that publishes the NIV, puts out a book called
Basics of Ancient Ugaritic.
Okay? I read the book. And in this book on
Basics of Ancient Ugaritic, it says in the book that, oh they have this
God called Baal, and they have a God called El, and they have
a God called Ashtoreth, which is all mentioned in the Bible, right?
Ashtoreth. Okay?
And this is what it says in that book. It says that basically their God
El, because El is Hebrew for God. Sort of like
Islamic people will say Allah
or in the Bible Beth El, house of God, right? So El
is Hebrew for God. And basically what they're saying is, they're saying well El
in Ugaritic mythology, which is like the
all the stuff where God's telling them wipe out these pagans, these Baal worshippers,
tear down the altars of Baal. The Baal worshippers, they have
a whole bunch of gods they worship. They don't just worship Baal, they also worship their own version of El.
They're just like other false religions might have God, but it's not our God.
And so they're like, oh, you know, El
has a wife named Ashtoreth
you know Ashtoreth, whatever, because Ashtoreth is obviously
the plural of the singular, because in the Bible it just
uses like, you know, various Ashtoreth, you know, as just like false
goddesses or whatever. But the point is that their false god in
Baal mythology has God being married
to some goddess and having 70 sons.
That's paganism. You think that's biblical?
Did the Bible tell you that God has 70 sons? No, it didn't.
But, oh, but according to Michael Heizer
and you know what's so funny is that evangelical Christians just eat up this guy's
crap. They just love it. They love Michael Heizer.
You know, it's all these like Nephilim, Book of Enoch
people. They just eat it up. They, you know, once they run out of Star Wars episodes
this is where they go next. Michael Heizer
let's go. George Lucas, Michael Heizer, let's do it.
But the point is that basically the Bible's not saying
70 sons of God. Baal worshipers, literal Baal
worshipers are saying sons of God and they're like, sons of God?
And I mean, let's not forget about this. I mean, this is kind of hard
to ignore.
Oh, I'm so embarrassed that I'm
King James only, folks.
I'm so embarrassed. You know, I hang my head in shame.
I'm so un-intellectual by being King James only. Isn't it terrible
to be part of this dumb redneck hillbilly group called King
James Only-us? Don't you feel like a real dunce tonight?
You know, folks,
how can anyone be ashamed to be King James only when this is the kind of junk
in these modern versions? And folks, this is
one example. There are hundreds, yay, thousands of examples of just
dumb things in these new versions. This is just a little
sampling. That's why the window says King James only. And it doesn't
say King James sometimes. It says King James only.
Folks, because I'm telling you, these modern versions are garbage. And so I
make no apology. I'm not ashamed. You know what's so funny? Is that the King James Bible
is too hard to understand, right? But all the people who believe in it are dumb.
Says the people who think it's too hard.
So we read a book that's too hard for you, and we're dumb.
Because we read the hard version. And you're reading a version that's literally spelled
in capital E-A-S-Y. That's one of the ones I read to you.
You're reading the E-A-S-Y version because you're so much smarter than us.
Or they'll say this, well, the KJV is too hard. Learn Greek and Hebrew.
Oh, that's going to be way easier than the King James. That's
only going to take, you know, a few thousand hours each to learn those languages.
Folks, let me tell you something. The King James Bible is the word of God
without error, and the devil hates it, and the devil
is just assaulting it every which way, and coming
out with all the different version of the month, different flavors that come
out. And let me tell you something. We are going to stick to the King James. You need to stick to the King James.
You need to be dogmatic on this issue of King James, and not
just take it lightly and say, well, you know, my church doesn't use the King James. Then get a different
church. Then get in a church that's
actually preaching the Bible. Otherwise, who knows what they're reading to you?
And by the way, you say, well, I like the E-S-V.
Are you going to like it five years from now when it changes?
Which E-S-V do you like? The old one or the current one? Because it just keeps changing.
Because they keep making these new discoveries
of Baal worshiping texts, you know, that really shed light on the Bible.
Unbelievable. That's probably enough word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much,
Lord, for your word, Lord. Thank you for this story
about the Tower of Babel so that we could understand the dangers of centralizing
too much power, Lord. Help us not to have centralized government
or centralized church headquarters, Lord. Help us to
realize the evil that can come from that. And Lord God, you're the one who
divided the languages. Thank you for giving us your word in our language
and in other languages all over the world. Thank you that your word can be translated into any
language, Lord, so that we don't have to learn Greek and Hebrew to read the Bible.
We can read it in our own tongue. And Lord God, thank you for the
magnificent, wonderful, King James Bible that is
your word in our mother tongue English, Lord. Help us to read
it, study it, love it, and learn from it, and not to be tossed to
and fro with every wind of doctrine. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Men, take your hymnals. Go to 154. Hymn number 154.
Blessed be the tie that binds. Hymn number 154.
Sing this out and be dismissed. Hymn number 154.
Sing it out together. Blessed be the tie
that binds our hearts
in Christian love.
The fellowship of kindred
binds his light to
that above. Before
our fathers love, we
hold our heart in prayers.
Our fears, our hopes, our
aims, our want, our comfort
and our cares. We share
our mutual ones.
Our mutual burdens bear
and often for each
other close the sympathizing
tears when we
asunder part.
It gives us inward
pain, but we shall still
be joined in heart and
soul to meet
again.