Embracing Our Role in God's Story

Good morning once again, welcome to Calvary Baptist Church! I'm so glad you guys are here this morning. It is good to see each and every one of you smiling.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there. Let's see if this explodes all over me, we'll see. Oh, that's good. So for each of the guys, we have a dad's root beer for you. Pick it up on your way out; we got them all in a cooler out there, and we'll be passing them out to you. It's not a Wabar, although Barq's is the best, right? But it's dads, so we have to do that for Father's Day.

Also, happy Juneteenth! We get a holiday weekend, which is pretty cool. How many of you have Juneteenth off? Only the guy who works for the government and our friend back here. You're missing out. It is a national holiday, right? I'm all for having excuses to celebrate Juneteenth.

Juneteenth is actually a really cool thing. The Emancipation Proclamation had already happened; the slaves were free, but the news had not reached Galveston, Texas, yet. It celebrates and commemorates the day that the news reached Galveston, Texas, and they realized that all this time they had been enslaved, they were now free.

I think it's a really cool gospel picture because sometimes when we are struggling with sin in our lives, we don't realize that we've already been set free in Christ. There are a lot of cool pictures to it, a lot of cool stories to it. So, um, it's an interesting part of our history. I'm all for celebrating the moments when we made good decisions as a country, where we walk towards justice and grace. So I think that's cool.

Happy Father's Day, happy Juneteenth. Today we're going to be in the big story in Genesis; we're going to talk about the Tower of Babel. But before that, I want to talk about the main character.

There's this meme about the main character, and how many of you have ever seen someone taking a selfie of themselves in public and thought, "Oh my gosh, yeah, yeah, right? Like, are you serious right now?" Like, they're blocking the aisle at Target because they're trying to get the perfect light, you know? And you're like, "Can you please just get out of the way so that I can get my Nerf gun?"

Or, you know, they're at a national area, and they're just blocking all the space because they want to do some crazy dance or something. You think, "Really? Is it all about that?" I relate to this; I've been doing this since before social media, um, because that's my wife. I tend to be guilty of this sometimes, being the main character in public.

But I want to show you this TikTok because it has a message, and I want us to think about what the message means. I want us to think about how we think about being the main character. So check this out. Hopefully, we'll have sound. Um, okay, I'm gonna go back a little bit so we can get the first part of that.

"Life in your life will continue to pass you by, and all the little things that make it so beautiful. Because I was romanticizing my life, I was the main character in my own story."

As a teen or an adolescent, it is so easy to be pulled into and empathize with the characters and messages we receive from culture and start to live that way. We have to remember that the emotional center of our brains develops way faster than the logical center, which makes for a lot of powerful feelings and emotions.

It is important to take a second and look around and realize that it is a blessing to be here right now. We have to start romanticizing our life and thinking of ourselves as the main character, or else life will continue to pass us by, and all the little things that make it so beautiful will continue to go unnoticed.

What do we think about this idea? What feels true about it? We have to be careful not to take upon ourselves a message that we hear from culture and start to live that way. We should look at it through the lens of who Christ is. When we read the scripture, we are being discipled by the text, and when we are on social media, we are being discipled by the messages that we receive all around us.

We are watching movies or TV and being discipled in some way, but the narratives and stories of that. As a young person, I often fantasized about what it would be like to be an adult—to have a job, a career, a life, and to be a dad, a husband, and a father. All of these things felt big and exciting. But when I became an adult, I sometimes felt like I wasn't living up to my potential, that I was missing out on something. I wasn't feeling the same emotions I had when I was younger.

This message is that if you don't start romanticizing your life, if you don't start thinking of yourself as the main character, life will pass you by, and you won't notice all the little things that make it so beautiful. There is more to life, but you're missing out on it because you have settled.

This leads to the most important question: what does "more" mean? What is the strategy we should use to get more? Our answer to this question determines who we become because it determines what we are aiming for. Our answer to this question each day, when added together, becomes the sum of our life's meaning and purpose.

Is more money, sex, love, achievements, or prestige? What does more mean to you?

The deviation from God's plan and God's will and God's purpose for them, so God comes down and confuses their language and scatters them over the face of the Earth. He says, "You're not going to be the main character; I'm the main character, and I'm going to be the one that's going to be glorified."

After the flood, the people of the Earth had one language and one culture. This was extremely powerful, as it allowed them to scale their operations and manage complexity more easily. They decided to build a city and a tower with its top in the heavens in order to make a name for themselves and become the main character.

However, this was a deviation from God's plan and will, so God came down and confused their language, scattering them over the face of the Earth. He reminded them that He was the main character and that He would be the one glorified.

I put in, and you start to feel like you're not important, and you start to feel like you're not being recognized, and so you start to want to be the main character in your life.

Noah was told by God to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the Earth. He was also told that the fear of him and the dread of him shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea; into your hand, they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you, and as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. God said to us all, "Yours, and I want you to build, I want you to multiply, I want you to spread."

However, Noah and his people decided to stay in one place and start building, but they were building to make a name for themselves. This is the normal regular temptation for every single one of us.

1 John 2:16 says, "Don't love the world's ways, don't love the world's goods. The love of the world squeezes out the love of the Father in practically everything that goes on in the world."

This temptation shows up in our hearts as wanting our own way, wanting everything for ourselves, and wanting to appear important. This has nothing to do with the Father, and it just isolates us from Him. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out, but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.

This is the answer to our first question: what does "more" mean? When we want to be the main character in our lives, then we want our own way, regardless of what our wife wants, what our kids want, what our boss wants, or what culture wants. We want it right now. Wanting everything for ourselves and wanting to appear important has nothing to do with the Father, and it just isolates us from Him.

John is writing in the church here, and he explained to them that the pursuit of being the main character ruins our chances of finding real meaning and purpose in life. This is so crazy because if I embrace these things, I will lose out on everything that matters, that's important. I can have all the stuff, and I could get my own way, and I could feel really important, but at the end of life, when I'm on my deathbed, none of that stuff matters. This isn't a legacy; it's temporary.

It doesn't feel like it in the moment, does it? Back to 1 John, he says, "Don't love the world's ways, don't love the world's goods. The love of the world squeezes out the love of the Father."

What this means is we don't see God's love; we don't feel God's love, not because God's love goes away, but we squeeze it out, and we can't see it, we can't value it, we struggle to experience it, we struggle to rightly understand what it is.

And when we don't feel God's love, we don't become conduits for God's love; we don't learn, we don't desire to be like Him, and it just isolates us from God. Not only does it isolate us from God, it isolates us from real relationships with each other.

That's exactly what happened in Genesis 11. They're trying to build a tower to heaven for a couple of reasons. Different scholars have different ideas; either they're trying to build the tower so that God will be able to come down and be with them, they want to create stairs for God, or they're trying to build the tower to get to God so that they could take over heaven. So they could get to Him.

Isn't that crazy? We know if you build something high enough, you're just not going to be able to breathe. I climbed Mount Fuji in Japan; I don't remember how tall it was, but it was tall enough that it was hard to breathe. So, my God, you know, the little oxygen up there, it's crazy.

So they're trying to build a tower to heaven and either make a way for God to come down or assault the heavens and take the throne. Either way, it's just silly, and they're spending all their resources on this futile task.

Look how God responds in Genesis 11. The Lord came down to see the city. Well, isn't that great? You know, they're trying to build stairs, and God comes down; he's like, "Let me look at your little tower. Oh, how cute."

Now, does God need to come down from heaven to see the tower? No, no. So it's really just the kind of in-your-face like, "Oh, isn't that, you know," to show them, "I could come down; I don't need your steps."

You know, the Lord said, "Behold, they're one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do, and nothing that they can imagine will be impossible for them."

I propose that what we will do now is impossible for them. We should not gloss over the fact that they are one people, united and capable of anything. We need to take this seriously and realize our accountability as human beings on the planet.

We have the resources to eradicate world hunger, yet there are still hungry people. We can be better at administering justice and restoration, helping people find meaningful work and purpose, strengthening families, and helping kids grow up with a father and a mother, and protecting the sanctity of human life before, during, and after birth.

We can be fathers that are in our kids' business without becoming the main character. We can follow Jesus and help someone else follow Jesus. There is nothing we can't do if we put our minds to it, and we will give an account to God for what work we do in our generation. We need to be careful about what we build up and what we tear down.

In the Bible, the creative construction of the people was destructive to their hearts, so God intervened and confused their language so they may not understand one another's speech. Therefore, the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the Earth.

Now, in our culture, we have technology where we can instantly know what everybody in our country thinks at any given second. Has this been constructive or destructive? It has been really bad for us all.

When the internet came along, many thought it would bring us all together and we would do great things, but it hasn't quite turned out that way. This is because we want what we want for ourselves, and we want to feel important. The pursuit of wanting to be the main character, wanting to be big, and wanting to be known has been destructive.

1 John 2 reminds us that the love of the world alienates us from the love of the Father and isolates us from God, who is our life. To prevent us from building a great monument to ourselves, God confused the languages so that we would spread out and fill the Earth.

This leads us to ask ourselves, what does "more" mean to us? What is our strategy to get it? When we wake up in the morning, we may say to ourselves, "I want more." But what do we mean? It's always sleep. After the sleep and the coffee, we may still want more.

This question determines how we organize our day and how good we become at the strategies we use to get what we want.

At 42, the more I want is to be more human. This is because God created us to be human-sized people in a garden. We need to know our limitations and trust God to do what we cannot. We need to be aware of our obligations and trust God to help us meet them.

We need to know our skills and build as an apprentice of the Creator God. We need to make sure that what we build honors God. When it gets tough, we need to work hard and push through, or realize that God is the main character and not us.

Jesus was the only perfect human and demonstrated what it means to be human and live, die, and sacrifice. We need to be disciples of his life and teachings. We need to realize that we are not big enough or strong enough to be the main characters of the universe or even our homes.

We need to accept our role as supporting characters in God's story of putting His family back together again. To do this, we must ask ourselves, what does "more" mean to me?

Why do I get up in the morning? Well, because I have to. Why? Well, because I got a job to support my family. Why? Because I value providing. You keep asking why, and you'll get to some core values of why you do what you do. You might get to a core value that you think is trying to impress a person who's dead or trying to live up to an expectation that's not even real.

What strategies am I using to get more? Am I manipulating people, losing my temper, throwing things, lying, cheating, and stealing? In those moments, if you're using those things, then maybe these things are not God-honoring.

Maybe the core thing isn't God-honoring, or maybe the core thing is God-honoring, but the strategies you're using to get it are not. If those don't align, that's called disintegration, and that's a lack of integrity. Integrity is when my heart, my mind, and my body align with God's will and His desire.

What am I building? I'm not building anything; I'm just consuming. Rethink your purpose. What are you building? Are you building a family, a business, a community, a small group, or disciples in the kingdom of God? What are you building that has value, purpose, and meaning? It's part of who we are.

Does it honor God as the main character? Ask yourself these questions. Give somebody a phone call this week and talk about them. These are really tough, but they will help us to dig into our hearts and realign them with who God is and His desire for us.

Church Center is a really cool app that you can use to find Kyle, sign in, and register for VBS. You can also set up your giving and get an email the next morning thanking you for your donation. You don't have to remember or forget to give; you can also give in the offering plate as it comes around.

Let's all stand together and close with the verse and chorus of "How Great Is Our God."

Rejoice, for He wraps Himself in light, and darkness shines too high. Tremble at His voice, tremble at His voice.

How great is our God, sing with me, how great, how great is our God. Amen, take that with you. Thank you.