STAND FIRM: The Epic Story of Truth (Part 5): Disobedience, Disinheritance And the Lord’s Portion

      In continuing this overview of the single narrative running throughout Scripture — the true epic story — we are bouncing back to Genesis. We began with Creation and, after Adam and Eve were punished and the earth was cursed, God declared that a Promised One would come. This Promised One would defeat Satan and bring about the restoration of not just mankind, but the world. That led us to Revelation 19-22, where that hint in Gen. 3:15 is fleshed out.

      Next, we returned to Genesis and saw how, in the years after leaving the Garden of Eden, humanity continued in sin, which led to God’s judgment through the flood. His judgment wiped out mankind, but that horrific wrath was held at bay by God’s mercy for 1,600 years. Then, as God restored the earth through Noah and his family, God hinted to a future apocalyptic judgment. This led us to flip back to the end of the New Testament in II Peter and Revelation to see how God will destroy this earth by fire and will restore it. In this new creation, the earth returns to the Garden of Eden (not the Garden of Gethsemane like I had in a typo last week).

      We return now to Genesis to further look at the complete narrative of the Bible and following the flood the people returned to sin. That sin and disobedience builds to a crescendo, causing God to send judgment again. Today this judgment is referred to much less than the flood, but it impacts us daily. We still face the fallout of that judgment.

      Following the flood, the descendants of Noah began to repopulate the earth. Not only were they to repopulate the earth, they were instructed to spread out and geographically repopulate the earth. Noah’s descendants, the earth’s new inhabitants, disobeyed. Their account is found in Genesis 11.

      Instead of spreading out, the inhabitants of earth remained together, migrating from the region of Turkey (as we know it today) to Mesopotamia and what is Iraq today. Rather than turn to God, they turned to worship the sun, moon and stars, as well as other gods. In their sin, they followed the lead of a possible king in that day, Nimrod, who called upon them to build a tower that would reach the heavens. This would give them access to God on their terms, as well as make a name for themselves. Their tower is referred to today as the Tower of Babel.

      The account in Genesis 11 tells that God brought judgment upon them by coming down, scattering them throughout the earth and giving them different languages. They had previously spoken one language because they were essentially one family. In Gen. 10:25 (NIV), God’s judgment was summarized by saying, “the earth was divided.”

         “The Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said… ‘Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.’ So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel — because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth. (Gen. 11:5-9 NIV).

      It is from this historical moment that nations and languages were birthed and that is all we’re told in this Genesis account. But in Deuteronomy we’re given more details, and these details are essential to understand the dynamic at play in our world today, as well as the mission of Christ followers to make disciples from all nations.

      Deuteronomy means “a copy” or “repetition.” The idea behind the name is that before the Israelites go into the Promised Land, Moses gives them the law again. That makes the book a summary of the previous four books of the Bible. In the summarizing of Tower of Babel event, Moses provides more insight, and he ties in Genesis 11 with Genesis 12. Moses said: “Remember the days of old; consider the years of many generations… When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. But the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage (Deut. 32:7-9 ESV).

      This retelling of the Tower of Babel event and calling of Abraham is mind-blowing. Moses is saying beyond just scattering people and giving them different languages, God disinherited or gave away mankind to the sons of God. Then He took His own portion, His own inheritance, which was Abraham and his descendants. In other words, all of humanity was the family of God and heirs to His promises, but through the judgment at the Tower of Babel, God disinherited all of mankind. He gave them to the sons of God (angelic beings) and those became the Gentile nations, but God then created a new family that would be heirs to His promises.

      There’s a lot to take in with the additional understanding Moses gives us. The idea of the nations being given over to prince angels seems farfetched, but this would then help us understand what is going in Daniel 10 when the angel Gabriel tells of the battle between the angelic Prince of Persia and Prince of Greece.

      Like every other judgment given in Genesis, God drops a hint of a future fix. This deeper understanding of the Tower of Babel and the disinheriting of the nations is why Abram is promised that the nations would be blessed through him and his descendants.

      Dive into the Epic Story yourself by reading Genesis 11-12 and Deuteronomy 32.

      Note: One thing you will find as you read this is that most translations have the phrase “sons of Israel” rather than “sons of God,” but the ESV and translations that say “sons of God” are using the oldest and likely more accurate ancient manuscripts.

         — Jake is a state missionary and would love to share about the work in Northwest Arkansas and encourage your church to stand firm. (standfirmministries.com)