Our Beliefs : Sermons : Sermon Archive - 2007 : May 27, 2007

Theme: The Arrow Always Points Down

Church year occasion: Pentecost

I recently came across an interesting account of a seminary class being held around this time of year. It was a beautiful day, and unfortunately everyone in the class was wishing they were outside instead of in the classroom. The professor realized that nobody was paying attention, so he suddenly closed his notebook, stopped talking, and got ready to leave. But before he left the classroom, he drew a huge arrow on the chalkboard pointing straight down. He told the class, "If you understand that, you understand everything you need to know about what it means to be a Christian," and then left the room.

All the students stayed in their seats for a while staring at the arrow pointing downward. Most of them thought, "He thinks we're all going to hell." But the next time the class met, the professor began his lecture by drawing that same arrow on the board. This time he had everyone's complete attention. "Here's what this means," he told them. "God always comes down. God always comes down. There is never anything that we can do to turn that arrow around and make our way up to God. God came down in Jesus. And God still comes down, in the bread and in the wine, in the water and in the Word. God always comes down."

The people on the plain of Shinar tried pointing the arrow the other direction. They thought they could go to God. But they couldn't. God came down, as he always does, to make sure his will was done.

This account in Genesis 11 is a pivotal point in human history. God had just destroyed the world with a flood because of the wickedness of man. Only eight people, Noah and his family, believed in the true God and were saved from the raging floodwaters. After the flood, God told Noah and his sons to "fill the earth." He wanted them to go throughout his creation and live their lives in glory to God wherever they went.

But we read, "As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there." The Ark came to rest in the mountains of Ararat which is in modern-day Armenia, and from there Noah's descendants traveled east. So far so good -- they were filling the earth. But when they came to the Tigris-Euphrates river valley, modern-day Iraq, they looked at the beautifully watered lands, and said, "We're done filling the entire earth. We'll stay here and make a permanent city." Now building a city isn't wrong in and of itself, but it is when God specifically tells you to go throughout the whole earth. They meant it to be permanent by what they built with -- fired brick and not just stone or sun-dried clay, and tar instead of less-permanent mud. And their hearts are revealed for what they were in verse 4: "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 and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.' " There is no mention of giving glory and thanks to God; that was the farthest thing from their minds. They wanted to join together and be so independent that they didn't need God. They themselves could reach the heavens -- what did they need God for? They wanted to make their own names great, not glorify God's name -- the God who had saved their ancestors in the flood. And they expressly said they were doing it not to be scattered over the face of the whole earth. They knew God's command, and they were directly disobeying it.

We build towers today as well. If you go to the downtown of any major city, you will see buildings reaching up into the heavens all over the place. Does anyone know what the tallest skyscraper in the world is today? It is the Taipei 101 in Taiwan. In 2004 it beat out the Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia for that honor. And before that it was a skyscraper in Chicago that held the title for 25 years -- the Sears Tower. The Taipei 101 stands 1,667 feet high. That's the equivalent of five football fields stacked end to end, or 11 Statues of Liberty piled on each other, or the Washington Monument stacked on top of the Space Needle stacked on top of the St. Louis Arch. Now that's pretty high! But the Burj Dubai skyscraper should be completed in 2008 which will surpass Taipei 101 by more than 500 feet. And already there are plans to build the Murjan Tower on the tiny island of Bahrain that will reach 3,350 feet -- more than doubling the height of today's tallest building! And for what? Basically bragging rights -- showing what man can achieve if he just puts his mind to it.

Bragging rights for what man can do without God -- that was the problem with the Tower of Babel, and it's still the problem today. Living our lives without God. The world is good at it, and we can be sucked into that thinking and forget God and what he's done for us and what he wants of us. "Why should I have to give a generous offering to the Lord? And why does it have to come from the first of what I get in my check? I see my friends and how they live. They go on vacation to exotic places all the time. I want that for me." We wouldn't say it as crassly as that, but our attitude can easily follow the thinking of the world because we live in the world. But the world in which we live has no place for God. Just look at the space race. Its primary objective -- to prove that evolution is right. And if evolution is right, then God doesn't exist. And if God doesn't exist, there is no will of God we need to follow. The world has no place for God. It has no place for God's will. So our offerings to our Savior will be very lacking when we follow the thinking of this world. Our responsibility to help others and take care of those who can't care for themselves can come down to a pat answer: "That's why I pay taxes." Now I understand not giving someone money so it enables them to be lazy, but Jesus did say, "When you help one of the least of these brothers of mine, you have helped me." And the list goes on of how we can leave God out of our lives and follow our own will instead of his. Not looking at sharing our faith as a privilege but seeing it as more of a chore. Instead of looking at all the blessings God showers on us every day we can focus on the bad things, and even blame him to some degree for how horrible our life is. It can be as simple as fighting over the remote control -- so I get my way instead of loving others above ourselves. It's all too easy to get God out of our lives, to go with the crowd instead of going with God.

Once, God decided to destroy the world because of that kind of thinking. He tells us that, because of that kind of thinking, we deserve nothing but his wrath. But remember what we learned earlier? The arrow always points down. God always comes to us. When the people on the plain of Shinar would have continued to go away from God and his will, God came down. He took note of their tower, and he wasn't impressed. "The LORD said, 'If as one people speaking 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 and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.' " The fact is, man can do amazing things. Just think of these huge skyscrapers and other man-made wonders. But if they are done to glorify man, they need to stop. What "towers" have you built in your life? They can be things that you've done or even the way you think and approach life. Do they give glory to God or to you?

If God is out of the picture, you need to stop building them and see what God has built. On a hill outside Jerusalem, God built the most amazing monument to his love that the world has ever seen. It was made of roughly-cut wood. It had ugly nails hammered into it. It had unsightly blood running down it. It had a body hanging on it -- the body of God himself in the flesh. The arrow always points down. Jesus saw the many times you've only wanted to give glory to yourself and keep him out of the picture, and he came down anyway. In fact, he came down to wash all of our ugliness away. Now he has built us into his own Church, his holy temple. God built us to be his holy people, free from any stain or wrinkle or any kind of blemish, but holy and blameless.

The arrow pointed down when the Lord changed their minds about following their own will and not his -- whether they liked it or not. "So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city." The arrow pointed down when ages later he sent his Son into the world. The arrow pointed down when on Pentecost he changed a rag-tag bunch of uneducated Jews into those who would turn the world upside-down by the message of the gospel that burned in their hearts. Now the world would hear the great work God had done in saving the world from sin. And the arrow continues to point down today as the Holy Spirit uses us to spread the good news which changes people's hearts to trust in Jesus as their Savior and Lord and to live for him instead of themselves. The arrow continues to point down as God through his Word and sacraments enables you now to stop living for yourself, but instead to live for him who died for you and was raised again. This coming week, think of how your life will be different from the lives of the people of this world because you know the great work God has done in Christ. This week, think of how the Holy Spirit has changed you because the arrow of God's good and gracious will has pointed down from heaven all the way to you -- and it always will. Amen.