English
Korean
Spanish
SPECIAL REPORT: Preaching Genesis 1-11
FORT WORTH—Studying the language, background and theology of the Tower of Babel account makes sermons on it comes to life, David Allen said Sept. 26 at the Advanced Expository Preaching Workshop at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth.
“If I can get you when you preach on passages like this to pay the price of digging into the background a little bit, looking at the more technical commentaries, reading articles about this and learning about this kind of background, then a thousand different creative insights will generate and germinate in your mind as to how to preach this to keep people on the edge of their seats,” Allen, dean of the school of theology and professor of preaching at Southwestern, said.
Speaking from Genesis 11:1-9, he summarized the setting, meaning and structure of the passage.
The most significant divisions among people are linguistic, he said, not racial or geographic, and they originated at the Tower of Babel. Those who reject Genesis 1-11 have never been able to explain human language satisfactorily, Allen said.
“It is some kind of difficult to explain the origin of human speech and language on an evolutionary model. You’ll find tons of attempts to do it. But you will also find in the literature, when you begin to read about this, that the honest evolutionist will tell you, ‘You know what, we just don’t know how … this occurred,’” he said, adding, “Apart from revelation, which is what you have in Genesis 1-11, you can’t really account for the origin of language.”
Genesis 11 uses an array of literary devices, Allen said. He noted that alliteration, plays on words, irony and sarcasm are all present. For example, it is ironic that God came down in order to see a tower that the builders thought reached Heaven. And the builders sought a great name for themselves only to receive a humiliating name—Babel sounds like the Hebrew word for confusion.
Another Hebrew word play occurs in the phrases “let us make bricks” and “let us go down.” Each phrase translates a single Hebrew word, and the two words have the same consonants in reverse order, he said. The inversion highlights the fact that God’s will was the opposite of sinful humanity’s plan, Allen argued.
Such literary devices are inspired by God, but English speakers will miss them without a preacher willing to study and explain the Hebrew text, he said.
“Preaching is the communication of God’s truth. All the time the content is excellent, but sometimes the communication is not so great. When that’s going on, the problem is not the text. The problem is the preacher,” Allen said.
The Tower of Babel account is rich with theology, he said. Among its most important themes is the need for humans to let God make their names great rather than seek their own glory. He noted the contrast between the failed attempt to make a great name in Genesis 11 and God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12 to make a great name for him.
Another contrast between the sinful builders and Abraham is that Abraham sought a city whose architect and builder is God, Allen said, citing Hebrews.
The Tower of Babel is also important background to the Day of Pentecost, he said.
“What happens at Pentecost? A reversal of Babel in one sense. At Babel you’ve got one language confused to many languages by God himself,” he said.
“In Acts 2:1-18, what do you have? You have bunches of different languages … and God reverses all that multiplicity of languages.”
Among other important themes in Genesis 11 are God’s mandate to fill the earth and his sovereignty over all human affairs, he said.
A key to preaching on the Tower of Babel is communicating the literary and theological themes in a manner that engages listeners, Allen said. He added that all sermons on the Old Testament must point to Christ.
The Tower of Babel points to Christ by foreshadowing God’s judgment on all secular kingdoms at the second coming and illustrating the way Jesus breaks down worldly structures to establish his kingdom, Allen emphasized.
“We’re Christian preachers,” he said. Preaching Jesus “is what we ought to be doing when we preach the Old Testament. Spurgeon said, ‘When I preach from the Old Testament, I make a beeline to Jesus.’ So we’ve got to get Christ there.”
With hard work, any preacher can present dynamic sermons on the Tower of Babel and any other passage in Scripture, he said.
“It is my judgment that any man called to preach is ipso facto gifted by God to preach. And number three, on the basis of those two, if he will work at it, he can learn to do great preaching,” he said.
RELATED STORIES IN SPECIAL REPORT:
Noahs Flood foreshadows judgment and safety by grace
The Nephilim OT scholar gives his perspective
Sound biblical interpretation must fuel expository preaching
Genesis 1 foundational for all of biblical theology, prof says
