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Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the journey. To all my fellow pastors, I've got a question for you. Does your city know that your church exists? Listen, I get it. You're preaching, you're leading, you're discipling, you're doing ministry. We are in the same boat. And let's be honest, social media and marketing, not your strong suit. Not mine either. And that's probably the last thing on your mind. And that's why we chose to partner with Church Candy Marketing for our church. Plant the garden. We out here, y'all. They help churches get more actual guests walking through the doors on Sunday without your eye having to stress over ads or algorithms or trying to crack the social media code. Right now, Church Candy is helping nearly 400 churches reach their communities with simple invite ads. And it works. It's super effective. I can tell you from firsthand experience. So if you're tired of being your city's best kept secret, how about you do this? Go to churchcandy.com Manny and book a free consultation book a discovery call. Their team will break it all down and show you how to start seeing new faces at your church this Sunday. I'm in the trenches with you trying to grow the church. And how about we just start a whole campaign? No more empty churches. So let's partner with Church Candy and get our churches full. The glory of Jesus. Let's go. We got Genesis, chapter 11 through 14. We got a good chunk. Finally going to meet Abraham. Love the story of Abraham, or as I should refer to him, Abram. When we meet him, he is Abram. But before we can jump into Abram, we got the Tower of Babel. Classic Bible story. Let me just go ahead and I'm going to give you a context clue in a minute. Hey, if you have not done the reading, skip this. Pause this, don't watch this, don't read this. Don't, don't, don't listen to this. Go do the reading. Come on back. If you've done the reading, then come on, let's go. We're going to go on a journey. I want to show you this. This is an easy way to remember the entire book of Genesis. All you gotta do is just hold up four fingers. On your left hand, four fingers on your right hand. And Genesis is about four events and four people. Okay, four events and four people. The whole book of Genesis is about creation, fall, flood, Babel. Okay, Creation, fall, flood, Babel. Okay, so Genesis chapters one through eleven have a distinct. What would be called prehistoric, okay, like prehistory. These are these four events, and then four people, Abraham or Abram kind of marks the hinge point of the book. So you get to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph are the four people, dominant people that we get to. And so we are going to dive in. We got a lot to cover. Let's do some context clues. Okay, chapter 11 is. This is our last story in this section of the book. So it says the whole world had one language and a common speech. Now, they say as people moved eastward, they found a plane in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly. So there's technology at work here. Okay? This is the first time bricks are going to be baked and used. They used brick instead of stone. Okay, so the Bible's telling us about some technology and tar from mortar. Here's a little clue that you may not. You may not know. In different translations, you can really see this clearly because you're going to get this ingredient called bitumen, which is actually the same stuff that Noah uses to. To coat the ark. So this is essentially like ancient waterproofing. So what's actually happening here is that the. The people are scared that there may be another flood. Okay? So they're building a tower so that in the event that there's another flood, that the human race won't be. Won't suffer judgment. Okay, let's keep moving. It says this. Then they said, come, let us build ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves. Therefore, we will be scattered. Otherwise, we'll be scattered over the face of the whole earth. Let us make a name for ourselves. This is actually the thing that is the problem here. Let's make a name for ourselves. Not let us receive, adopt, believe, the identity, the name that God has for us. We are going to make a name for ourselves. Well, God actually hears this, and God is not happy about this. The Lord came down to see the city and the tower that people were building. The Lord said, if as one people speak in the same language, they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down. So there's a juxtaposition the people say, come, let's break. Come, let's bake bricks. Come, let's make bricks. Here's what Yahweh says. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other. Now, here's what's fascinating. There's so many things God could have done. He could have came down and Hulk smashed the tower. He could have came down and done a whole bunch of things. How does he know that confusing their language will actually work? Because if you ask me, you know, it would have took them a couple of years. They could have just learned each other's language. But remember, they are not interested in diversity. They are interested in making a name for themselves. And they can only make a name for themselves if they exist in uniformity. They are not interested. And God knows this. That is why this solution actually works. The solution actually works because God knows the secret motives of their heart. Let's just think, it would have taken them a couple years. The guy who knows English could have learned Spanish, the person who knows French. But no, they weren't interested in collaboration. They weren't interested in cooperation. They weren't interested in multiple names making a name for multiple peoples. No, they. They were interested in making a singular name for a singular group with a singular identity. This is what I would call the original echo chamber. And we can see the nature of humanity. We still create echo chambers to this day. And so now, up until this point, God has essentially, if he could find Noah, right? If he could find a person, then he can minister to everybody. Now the nations are scattered, and so now he's got to find a man from a nation, create a nation, separate that nation, and from that nation now reunite all the nations. Okay, so chapter 11 is actually really pivotal for the entire arc, the narrative arc of scripture, that what is going to happen from this point on is we have to reverse Babel. And what is the reversal of Babel? Oh, it's Acts, Chapter two. It's Pentecost. You see how they're building a tower to be at an elevated space? What does Acts, Chapter two say? They're in an elevated space called the upper room. The reason that they were in an elevated space, I'll give you context. Okay, the thing that they were building over here in the tower of Babel is called a ziggurat. A ziggurat is an elevated space because they believe that when the wind of God blew, it would fill the ziggurat, it would fill the temple with the presence. And what Happens in the upper room. The wind of God, the fire of God begins to shake the place. And here's what happens. If you compare the table of nations that we have here in Genesis chapter 10. If you go and compare the list of people who are actually in Acts chapter two, it is representative of this exact same table of nations. In Genesis chapter 11, God confused languages, therefore causing people to scatter. And now in Acts chapter two, the gift of tongues gets dispensed so that we can get the ingathering of the nations. So we have the scattering of the nations. And now we have the recollection of the nations in Acts Chapter two, which means that the gift of tongues, it's an amazing gift. I'm Pentecostal. I love speaking in tongues. It's good for personal edification. You know what it's even better for? To break your echo chamber. To allow for true unity. Because true unity requires diversity. True unity is not found in uniformity. It's easy to be united when everybody agrees. When everybody's a Republican, when everybody's a Democrat, when everybody's Baptist, when everybody's feminist, when everybody's progressive, when everybody's, you know, cessationist, when everybody's Pentecostal, easy to agree. You know what's hard when there's diversity, to maintain unity. To say, we're not making a name for ourselves. We're not making a name for the upc. We're not making a name for the Assemblies of God. We're not making a name for whatever the branding is. We're making a name for the kingdom. And that means, even if I have to learn your language, I will. If I have to learn something about how you see God, I will. The reason that this solution that God comes up with actually works is because there's something on the inside of us that doesn't want to be named. We want to make a name for ourselves, and we want to be named after the stuff we accomplish, after what we do. Now, this is juxtaposed with the next story. God now finds a man by the name of Abram. And there. There is a tiny little detail here in the genealogy that comes before the story of Abram that actually tells us about Abram's brothers. It says this in verse 27, Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. So three brothers, Abram, Nahor and Haran. Haran became the father of Lot. While his father, Terah, was still alive, Haran died. And what happened? Abram and Nahor both married. The name of Abram's wife was Sarah. And the name of Nahor's wife was Milcah. She was a daughter of Haran, the father of both Milka and Isca. Now there's. It would take me probably 30 minutes to show this to you, but there's tons of rabbis that believe that Sarai and Isk Yiskah are actually the same word. Because what do we see is that Nahor marries his dead brother's daughter. And a lot of scholars believe that that actually when it says Abram and Nahor both married, it means they, they did it together. And it looks like in the same way that when, you know, you get a kinsman Redeemer, you get all these stories through the Old Testament where if a widow is left behind, it's a brother's responsibility to produce heirs for your. Your widowed sister in law and to produce heirs for your brother. It seems like something very similar is happening. It actually, the text would suggest that Abram is married to his. To his dead brother's daughter. Okay. Which is why it's almost like verse 30. Now, Sarah was childless because she was not able to conceive. Wait a second, how do we know that? Like, how do we know that information? It seems like we know that information because that is information that she's already come into the picture with. It's information that the text is giving us. It's not as if what happened here is like Abraham marries Sarah and they can't get pregnant. No, there's no attempt to even try to get pregnant. The text just tells us when it introduces Sarah to us, that she's childless and not able to conceive. Which means it seems like what Abram is doing is he. He realizes that the lineage of his brother is going to stop. But he's not obsessed with making his name great like the tower builders. He's obsessed with trying his best to try to produce heirs for his brother. Because he cares more about the team on the front of the jersey than the name on the back of the jersey. In a world of people who want to build towers to make great names for themselves, insert a character, Abraham and his brother, who are both saying, we want to produce heirs for our deceased brother. This is a reversal of Ham, Shem and Japheth, Noah's sons. Remember, you get three boys and three boys. Terah is the new Noah and Abram. Nahor and Haran are the new Shem. Ham and Japheth. Shem, Ham and Japheth. And what you get is these two brothers. They allowed their father to curse their brother. They didn't step up. They didn't say anything. They. They just allowed this curse to happen. But these two brothers, the biggest curse happened to their brother, which is death. And they've decided, let us take his daughters so that we can produce heirs for our brother. Because we don't care about our names. We care about our brother's name. And even though Sarai is barren, I will take this barren girl and I'll believe by faith that God can provide an heir not for me, but for my brother. And what does God say to someone who doesn't care about their own name? Oh, I'll tell you exactly what God says. Look at Genesis, chapter 12, verse 2. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. See there? This is a juxtaposition. The tower builders want to make a name for themselves. Abraham cares more about making another person's name great. And that's the kind of person that God can use. That's the kind of person that can attract a great name blessing from the Lord. It's counterintuitive that by wanting a name and striving for a great name, I actually don't get that. Actually, what I get is God confusing my language. But here on the other side, when I care about my brother, when I'm selfless, that's when God steps in and says, oh, I'd love to give you a great name. We look back at the story of the tower of Babylon. We go, I thought you didn't like when humans had great names. And God goes, aren't you. You silly? You're insecure. You think I'm insecure? No, the issue is not having a great name. The issue is how you attained that great name. Bible nerds, I have an announcement. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos, releases may of 2025 in pre. Orders are officially open. When I began to learn Genesis in its proper context, I learned that the creation account is not primarily about God creating something out of nothing, but rather God bringing divine order to the chaos of the cosmos. That one nugget was a game changer for me because I've been preaching to all the kids in my youth group that peace was a solution for their anxiety. But really, God's solution to cave chaos is never peace, but rather order. Peace isn't something that you stumble into. It's something that you intentionally step into. And that starts with aligning your life with God's order. I think that this book is a game changer. It's nerdy, it's practical, it provides a very contextual understanding of the book of Genesis. And if you grab a copy, you'll learn why there's a huge dragon on the COVID Head to the link in the show notes to pre order or head thecrushingchaos.com to see the really dope trailer that we made for this book. I think it's time for you to crush the chaos in your life. And that starts with grabbing a copy of this book. Now back to the podcast. We get Abram down in Egypt and think about this. This makes it so helpful now, because verse 13, say you are my sister so that I'll be treated well for your sake. My life will be spared because of you. When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that Sarah was a very beautiful woman. And when Pharaoh's officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh and she was taken into his palace. Now, I need you to see this. Okay? It's. It's kind of a. It's not a full lie. It's a deception because she really is related to him. And this is like, this is where we get into gray, ok? A lot of us don't fall into temptation when it comes to black white. We fall into when it comes to gray, where it's like, ah, it's kind of true. She's kind of my sister. Here's what I think Abram's trying to do. I think Abram is going to get a bride price for Sarah and then leave in the middle of the night with everybody's money. I actually think Abram's trying to pull a fast one on everybody. But who doesn't need to provide a dowry or a bride price? You guessed it, Pharaoh. Pharaoh doesn't need to do that. So. So Pharaoh takes her and now. This is a wicked thing. Okay? Finally leaves Egypt, and he has to actually separate from Lot. Now the separation from Lot is finally him obeying what God said at the beginning. Because what God said is, hey, leave your father's household and leave your family. But his Lot has a father who's deceased, and Abram can't have kids, so. So they have a good desire. Abraham has the desire for a son, Lot has a desire for a father. And so they kind of try to become for each other what they need. But unless God has provided the thing that is the desire of your heart, then it's outside of his will. And so they finally have to separate. Now, when Abram goes to rescue Lot, this is gonna be one of the key images. This is a nerdy nugget. This is gonna be one of the key images for the word redemption. Okay? So when we think about redemption, typically, because we're Westerners, we think about a concept. We think about the concept of redemption. In the Old Testament, they would have thought about stories of redemption. And the three stories of redemption would have been, number one, Abraham going out to fight a battle to physically rescue Lot and bring him back into the family. The second story that they would have thought of is Ruth and Boaz, where Boaz becomes a kinsman redeemer who doesn't fight a military battle, but creates economic structures whereby the family can operate in prosperity. And then last, the third story or narrative or image of redemption would have been Hosea and Gomer, which is marital language, prostitution, adultery, idolatry. This is the cocktail of ideas for the word redemption. So when Paul says redemption, he doesn't mean that Jesus has redeemed us as a concept. He means that Jesus has fought a battle to get us back, that Jesus has rescued us from spiritual poverty, and that Jesus has rescued us from adultery and idolatry and has paid a price for that which he already owns. So in the Old Testament, redemption is not a concept. It is a series of stories. And this story with Abraham and Lot is the first. Let's move into our timeless truth as we wrap up our time today. Abraham tithes to Melchizedek. So anyone who says that tithing is based on the Old Testament law, that's not true because the law is given on Mount Sinai through Moses. Tithing predates the Mosaic law. Tithing is an amazing thing to do. I've been tithing since I was 13 years old. It means that every time I get paid, 10% of what God has blessed me with goes to God's house, goes to God's kingdom, goes to God's work. That I don't hoard everything or keep everything to myself, but I am a generous giver. This story of Abram giving a tenth of everything to Melchizedek is actually a phenomenal theological brick in a house that we can build so that people can have faith in this thing that we're doing called tithing. The church gets a bad rap because of prosperity, preachers, and all the rest. And I think it's when we come across passages of scripture that just make it really theologically clear that that generosity in giving is something that should mark the life of a believer. I think we should take a time and mention that so this is timeless. The Mosaic Law is not timeless, but this institution of tithing, this is timeless, and it's why I'm a tither. All right, next we got Genesis, chapters 15 to 17, really, really good chapters, and we'll cover that tomorrow. Hey, if you're on a streak, don't break it. I'm so. I'm super, super proud of you. I'll see you right here tomorrow as we continue this journey to read the Bible together. I love you guys. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show@thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram hebibledepartment. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library, of course, courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.