I love to tell the story. I've entitled the message for
this morning, The Rise of False Religion. Now, let me remind
you that the Bible claims to be inspired All scripture is
given by inspiration of God. Peter said holy men of God spake
as they were moved by the Holy Ghost and this passage of scripture
I just read, the Holy Spirit moved Moses to record this. You know, we have a tendency,
I'm afraid, in some of these long chapters, like Genesis chapter
10, to just try to get through it and get on to the next. But
this is just as inspired as the Gospel of John, the epistle to
the Romans, just as important. The rise of false religion. Now, it didn't begin here in
Genesis chapter 10. It began with Satan tempting
our first parents in the garden. Yea, hath God said. It was carried on by Cain when
he tried to approach God apart from the blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ. He tried to come on his own. And here we have the story of
a man named Nimrod. Now this was less than 100 years
after the flood. The population of the earth by
the greatest predictions at this time was between 30 and 40,000. Some say as low as 1,000, but
it couldn't have been coming from Noah after this point more
than 30 or 40,000 people. That was the population of the
earth. And we read of a man named Nimrod. More attention is given to him.
This has been called the Table of the Nations. All the descendants
of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, repopulating the
earth. And the only time we're given
any detail in chapter 10 is about this man named Nimrod. Look in
verse eight once again. And Cush begat Nimrod. He began to be a mighty one in
the earth. As a matter of fact, he's called
the Mighty Hunter, and I don't think that's talking about game.
Maybe it is, perhaps, but I think that's talking about his influence
over men. He became mighty in the earth. He used men. He manipulated men. As a matter of fact, He is mentioned
in extra biblical history or the history of the Assyrians
and so on as this powerful man, but that doesn't matter because
we don't need to look outside of the Bible for information.
Anytime you got to look outside of the Bible for information,
I don't trust it. So he is mentioned, but so what? What does the Bible
have to say about this man? Well, he was the founder of Babel. You can read about it in chapter
11. Babylon, that's when the whole earth was of one language,
and they started to make a tower that would reach heaven. Thank you, Duane. They started to make a tower
that would reach heaven, and God came down and confounded
the languages. That is when there were different
languages. Babylon. Now, would you turn
with me to Revelation chapter 17? This is typical. Revelation
chapter 17. Verse one. And there came one of the seven
angels which had the seven vials and talked with me, saying unto
me, Come hither. I will show unto thee the judgment of the
great whore that sitteth upon many waters. with whom the kings
of the earth have committed fornication. And the inhabitants of the earth
have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. So he
carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness. And I saw
a woman sit upon a scarlet colored beast, full of names of blasphemy,
having seven heads and 10 horns. And the woman was arrayed in
purple. and scarlet collar and decked
with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup
in her hand full of the abominations and filthiness of her fornication.
And upon her forehead was a name written, mystery, Babylon, the
great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.
And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints and with
the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I wandered
with great admiration." Now this is Babylon the Great, the mother
of Harlot's false religion. Now why do you say that? Well,
we'll see in Genesis chapter 11, the founding of Babylon were
men building a tower with their own bricks, man-made bricks,
it's pointed out, and slime. I know that's a petroleum substance,
but I like the way the Bible calls it slime. That's man's
attempt at salvation by works. Man-made bricks that'll bring
it up to heaven. Now, did they actually think
it would go into the outer atmosphere? I doubt it. But this is symbolic. This is the way we reach God.
This is man's attempt to reach God. And I think it also is a
way of trumping God's judgment. If he floods the earth again,
we'll be safe. We'll have this big tower. And
isn't that what false religion does? It tries to escape God's
judgment. Now, Babylon, this man Nimrod
was the founder of Babylon. And you know what Babylon means?
To mix. To mingle. To confound. That's what man's religion does.
It mixes truth and error. It mingles. It confounds. It's complex. It's a corruption
from the simplicity that is in Christ. Now, this 10th chapter
of Genesis has been called the Table of the Nations, and it's
about the repopulation of the earth. Remember, only Noah and
his family were preserved from the flood, and they were to repopulate
the earth. Look in chapter 9, verses 18
and 19. And the sons of Noah that went
forth of the ark were Shem and Ham and Japheth. And Ham is the
father of Canaan. These are the three sons of Noah.
And to them was the whole earth overspread." Look in chapter
10, verse 1. Now, these are the generations
of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Unto them were born
sons after the flood. This was the repopulation of
the earth. Look in verse 32 of the same chapter. These are the
families of the sons of Noah after their generation in their
nations. And by these were the nations divided in the earth
after the flood. Now this is talking about the
different nations that came after the flood. Now the scripture
says God has made of one blood. Acts chapter 17. God has made
of one blood all nations of men. Now listen real carefully. There
is only one race, the human race. There are not races. There is
only one race, the human race. We're all descendants of Adam.
We're all descendants of Noah. One race, there are not different
races. Where you have different races,
you will have racism. You can count on it. Somebody's
always thinking our race is superior or that race is inferior. But there are not different races. There is one race. the human
race, we all came from one blood, and we are all brothers and sisters,
all of us, one race, the human race. Now, there are different
ethnicities, there are different colors of skin, there are different
cultures, there is diversity, but there is only one race, and
truly we are all brothers. We're all descendants of Noah,
every one of us. We're all descendants of Adam. And you know, really, we all
have pretty much the same genetic makeup, whatever the case is,
whatever our ethnicity is, we have the same genetic makeup,
and The very thought of racism is foolish and evil in the sense
that there's only one race. If there's only one race, you
can't have a superior race or an inferior race. We are one
race made of many nations. Now, let's read about Nimrod
once again, verse eight, Genesis chapter 10, verse eight. And
Cush begat Nimrod. Nimrod means rebel. That's what his name means. And
he began to be a mighty one in the earth. Now, evidently, he
was the first one. Now, like I said, the population
couldn't have been more than 30 or 40,000 at this time. And he began to try to manipulate
men. He began to try to control men. He began this kingdom of Babel. It all began with him. As a matter
of fact, I think chronologically, chapter 11 takes place before
chapter 10, because in chapter 11, they were all of one language.
all of one language, and that's when God came down and confounded
the languages, and that's where we have these different languages
in Genesis chapter 10. Can you imagine when God came
down to confound the languages and somebody you'd known all
your life, all of a sudden you couldn't understand a word they
were saying? God confounded the language, so men couldn't understand
one another, so they couldn't go on with this attempt at building
this building. But his name means rebel, he
was a mighty hunter before the Lord, and that's not talking
about game. And when it's talking about before
the Lord, it's talking about before the Lord's face. He was
a mighty manipulator of men, a mighty controller of men. He used men. He tried, he didn't
care. He had the spirit of Abel. Am
I my brother's, I mean the spirit of Cain, am I my brother's keeper?
What does he have to do with me? All he cared about was his
own power and founding this kingdom called Babylon. Now the word
Babylon means confusion, mixing, mingling. It comes from the word
to mingle, and 44 times, it's used in the scripture, 37 is
mingle, mix, confound. It also means to temper, temper
your words, temper your speech, don't be quite so plain. That is the language of Babylon. Now look in chapter 11, verse
one. And the whole earth was of one
language and of one speech. And it came to pass as they journeyed
from the east that they found a plain in the land of Shinar
and they dwelt there. And they said one to another,
go to, let us make brick and burn them throughly. And they
had bricks for stone and slime had they for mortar. And they
said, Go to, let us build a city and a tower whose top may reach
unto heaven. And let us make us a name, lest
we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And
the Lord came down to see the city and the tower. Now let me
say this, that's just given to accommodate our weakness. humanness,
the Lord saw the tower without coming down. But this is language
given to us so we can understand what's taking place. And the
Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children
of men built it. And the Lord said, behold, the
people is one and they all have one language. And this they begin
to do. And now nothing will be restrained from them, which they've
imagined to do. Go to let us go down there and
confound their language that they may not understand one another's
speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad
from thence upon the face of all the earth, and they left
off to build the city. Therefore, the name of it is
called Babel. Confusion. Mingling. because the Lord did confound
the language of all the earth, and from thence did the Lord
scatter them abroad upon the face of the earth." Remember,
they wanted to, let's stay together and make something. God scattered
them by confounding their language, and actually chapter 10 is the
history of what took place after this. Now, the next time Babel
is mentioned is in Joshua chapter 7. I'm going to give you the
stories real quickly so you can see how the scripture presents
Babylon. Joshua and the children of Israel
were overtaking the land of Canaan, and they battled a little town
of Ai, and Ai destroyed them. They went back. What happened? They found out somebody was keeping
something that was under the curse of God. It's what Moses
called the accursed thing. And there was a man by the name
of Achan who had what is called a goodly Babylonish garment and
a wedge of silver and a wedge of gold, the commerce, the currency
of false religion. Now this Babylonist garment,
a garment of confusion, it was made out of filthy rags, the
filthy rags of human righteousness. And God called it the accursed
thing and they stoned Achan and killed him because he held on
to this Babylonish garment. Why did the Holy Spirit call
it a goodly Babylonish garment? Because it's letting us know
this is the human righteousness, this is false religion. The next
time the word comes up is in 2 Kings chapter 17, and you can
read this on your own, but let me briefly give you the story. Israel had been taken out of
Israel and planted into Babylon during that Babylonian captivity.
And the king of Assyria, over all of Babylon, took some people
from Babylon and put them back into Israel and put them to live
in Jerusalem. And the Israelites were all gone,
and you have all these heathen living in Jerusalem. You can
read about this once again in 2 Kings 17. And the Lord sent
lions into the city, and they started
killing the people. And they get hold of the king
and said, we're in trouble, we don't know the God of this land,
we don't know his manners, and he's killing us, we gotta do
something. And they obviously didn't understand, but the king
of Syria took one of the Hebrew priests and sent him back there,
and he taught them the ways of what they call the God of the
land. And you know what those fellas did? The scripture says
they feared the Lord and served their own gods. They feared the Lord and served
their graven images. Now this is the religion of Babylon.
They brought the two things together. Okay, we can keep the lions from
eating us if we sacrifice, but we're going to keep our other
gods too. And it was a combination of bringing
together of the different religions, which is nothing less than Babel. Now, I turn once again to that
woman that's decked out so beautifully. We read of in Revelation chapter
17, there's a great appeal to the flesh in false religion. An appeal to my flesh, an appeal
to your flesh. Don't think this is something
that you're immune to. As a matter of fact, we're going
to consider this in a few moments. On the Mount of Transfiguration,
Peter tried to introduce Babylon religion when he said, let's
make three tabernacles. Three tabernacles. If Peter can
do it, me and you can do it. And that's why don't think, well,
I don't need to hear this. Yeah, you do. Yeah, you do. We
are all in danger of this if the Lord leaves us to ourselves. This is the warning against false
religion, the religion of Babylon. Now, it's been said that you've
all heard of this, the five solas of the Reformation. These were
supposedly brought about during the times of Luther and Calvin
and the Reformation. And the five solas are called
scriptures alone, Christ alone, grace alone, faith alone, and
the glory of God alone. And those were said to come about
in the Protestant Reformation. Now, that's foolishness. They've
always been. They've always been. They didn't
come around the Protestant Reformation. It's always been the Scriptures
alone. What sayeth the Scripture has always been the only issue. The Scriptures alone. It's always
been Christ alone as the only ground of acceptance before God.
That's not something that came about in the Reformation. Maybe
it was brought to the light more than it had been through the
darkness, but it's always been that way. It's always been grace
alone. That's the way Abel was saved.
That's the way Moses was saved. That's the way Abraham was saved.
Anybody that's ever been saved has been saved by grace alone.
It's always been faith alone. Abraham believed God. That was
before the New Testament. It's always been faith alone. And it's always been God's glory
alone is the only proper. That's God's agenda, his own
glory. That's his purpose to glorify
himself. And we're to give him all the
glory because he deserves all the glory. It has always been
that way. Now to say scriptures and To
say Christ and to say grace and to say faith and to say the glory
of God and is Babylonian religion. It's false religion. It's the corruption of the truth. Now I want you to turn with me
to second Corinthians chapter one. 2 Corinthians 1. Verse 17. When I therefore was thus minded,
did I use lightness? Or the things that I purpose,
do I purpose according to the flesh that with me, there should
be yay, yay, and nay, nay, yes and no to the same state. But as God is true, our word
toward you was not yay and nay. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ,
who was preached among you by us, even by me and Silvanus and
Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in him was yea. For all the promises of God in
him are yea, and amen to the glory of God." religion. Most of the stuff that
goes on under the name of Christianity is yay-nay. Now, what do I mean
by that? Well, I believe scriptures alone. I
do. Well, can you go to me and show
me from the scriptures what you believe? No, I can't do that. I know it's in there somewhere.
Somebody said that to me recently. We were talking about the notion
of free will. I said, show me in the Bible where the Bible
teaches that man has a free will. He said, well, I know it's in
there somewhere. No, it's not. No, it's not. That's called yea, nay. Yes,
I believe in the scriptures alone, but no, I can't go to the Bible
to verify what I believe. It's just my tradition. Somebody
else says, well, I believe in Christ alone. Yes, I do believe
in Christ alone, but no, I believe you've got to accept him as your
personal savior before you can be saved. He can die for you
and pay for your sins, but if you don't do your part, it won't
do you any good. That's a denial of Christ alone. Now listen to
me, Christ alone is everybody he died for must be saved. If I add anything to that, yay
nay. Yay nay to Christ, what about
grace alone? Yes, I believe in grace, I believe in grace alone. As a matter of fact, I've never
heard anybody say they didn't believe in grace. Not one time
has somebody said, I don't believe in salvation by grace. But no,
I don't believe in election. You can't believe in grace and
not believe in election. God chose who'd be saved. That means
salvation begins with God. Somebody says, I don't believe
in election. Well, you don't believe in grace then. Yes, I do. Yes and no. Yay, nay. Somebody says, well,
I believe In faith alone, yes, I do. Salvation's by faith. It's through faith. But I believe
you also have to have works that prove that you're really saved. And the only way I can really
feel any assurance about my salvation is because of how my life has
changed and how good I'm doing. And that's the only thing that
gives me assurance, how I'm living, not faith alone. That's yay and
nay to the same thing. Well, I believe in the glory
of God alone. Yes, I do. I believe God gets all the glory.
And I believe that we're going to be rewarded in heaven according
to our works. And we're just going to get a little smidgen
of glory. Just a little bit, not a whole lot, maybe 1% out
of 99%. Yay and nay to the same thing. That is the religion of Babylon. Turn with me to 2 Corinthians
chapter 11. We're there in 2 Corinthians,
look in chapter 11. Before I read the third verse,
let me read verses 13 through 15. And this gives us some idea
of the deceitfulness of the religion of Babel. Look in verse 13, for
such are false apostles. deceitful workers transforming
themselves into the apostles of Christ. They don't come in
a red demon suit with a pitchfork and
a pointed tail. That's ridiculous. The devil
comes as an apostle of Christ. That's the way he presents himself. Verse 14, no marvel for Satan
himself is transformed into an angel of light. You know, people
call him the prince of darkness. Um, well he is, but that's not
the way he comes. He comes as an angel of light,
aligning himself with the truth, seeking to deceive. Verse 15,
therefore, it's no great thing if his ministers also be transformed
as the ministers of what? Righteousness. They come promoting
righteousness, whose end shall be according to their works.
Now that lets us have some idea of the craftiness and the deceitfulness
of Satan and Babylonian religion, the harlot of Babylon, confusing,
mixing, bringing two things together. Now look back in chapter 11,
verse one, would to God. You would bear with me a little
in my folly, and indeed bear with me, for I'm jealous over
you with a godly jealousy. For I have espoused you to one
husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ,
but I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through
his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the, what's that word? Simplicity. It's not complex. The onlyness of Jesus Christ. Now, one of the things I love
about the truth is it's not multiple choice. We're not given two things
to make a choice between. the simplicity of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Christ is all. Now, I've already brought this
up. Peter didn't know what he was doing, but you'll remember
on the Mount of Transfiguration when the Lord was transfigured
before The three, Peter, James, and John, and the scripture says
his face shined like the sun. His clothes became bright white,
and at this time, his divinity burst through his humanity. I
don't know what I'm talking about when I say that. I realize that.
I'm, you know, that's, but that's as close as I can come. And Peter,
old Peter, he's gotta answer. Nobody asked him anything, but
he answered. Lord, let us make three tabernacles, one for you,
one for Moses, one for Elijah. Peter at that time was introducing
Babylonian religion. If he can do it, don't dare think
you and I can't do it. He was introducing Babylonian
religion at that time. A bright cloud overshadowed them. They hit the dirt and a voice
comes from that cloud. This is my beloved son in whom
I am well pleased. Hear ye him. And those fellows got up and
the scripture says they saw no man Save Jesus only. Now there is two words that go
together perfectly. Jesus only. That is what we would call the
simplicity of the Lord Jesus Christ. Where does all the fullness of
the Godhead dwell? Jesus only. How can my sins be purged? Jesus only. Hebrews 1.3 says, when he had
by himself purged our sins. What makes you think that you're
saved? Jesus only. How can your sins be forgiven? Jesus only. How can you be one of the elect? Jesus only. What is the ground of your acceptance? Jesus only. How can you think that you stand
before God just justified without sin? Jesus only. How can you be sanctified? Jesus only. He is made unto us wisdom, righteousness,
sanctification, and redemption. How can you believe God loves
you? Jesus only. What is the ground of your assurance?
What makes you think you're saved? What's the ground of your assurance?
Jesus only. What's your hope? Jesus only. What is the object of your faith? Jesus only. What is your reward? Jesus only. only. Where do you want to be found
when God comes? Jesus only. What is your personal righteousness? Jesus only. What is your great desire? Jesus only. All that thrills
my soul is Jesus. He is more than life to me and
the fairest of 10,000 in my blessed Lord, I see. What is this book
about? Jesus only. What is God's agenda? Jesus only. That in all things, he might
have the preeminence. What is the message you preach? Jesus only. What is the message
you want to hear? Jesus only. What is the message the world
needs to hear? Jesus only. What makes you think you'll be
in heaven? Jesus only. Jesus and, is Jesus not at all? Jesus only is everything in salvation. Paul put it this way in Colossians
3.11, Christ is all. He's all. And the introduction
of the word and is the religion of Babylon. It's the confounding. It's the mixing. It's trying
to bring things together. Grace and works, faith and law. Jesus only is the truth. Babylon. The religion of Nimrod
is a lie. God hates it and so does every
believer. Thank the Lord for Jesus only. Let's pray.