Right after Babel and the call of Abraham that sets the stage
for the rest of the Old Testament, this is why it's Israel against the nations,
and the nations against Israel.
And it's why it's Yahweh against the gods and the gods against Yahweh.
We've had a fall in Genesis 3.
We've had a second rebellion in Genesis 6, that was so bad,
that permeated humanity so deeply that God sends a flood.
After the flood, Noah and his sons emerge from the ark and God says to them,
"Okay, we're going to try again."
God repeats the original Edenic mandate, to go forth, be fruitful and multiply,
fill the earth.
There's a reference in Genesis 9 to humanity still bearing the image of God,
you're still my images.
I want you to go out and do the original job of Eden.
We're going to start over again.
So do that; spread out, populate and spread my goodness,
the knowledge of me throughout the world, and this is what I want done.
So what do they do? They congregate at Babel.
And at this point God has had enough.
This is why I refer to the Tower of Babel as the Romans 1 event of the Old Testament.
If you read Romans 1, it talks about God giving humanity up to their sin.
Just okay, this is the way you want to live? Have at it. We'll see how that goes.
God has had enough at Babel. He divorces humanity.
He disinherits them from being in his family, he cuts them off, he abandons them.
He's angry.
Now, we know it's not permanent, because what he does next tells us that:
God divorces humanity and says, "okay, you don't want me to be your God.
I'm still interested in you because you are my imagers. So I'm going to allot you."
This is the language of Deuteronomy 4. Let's just go to Deuteronomy 4.
This is the parallel to Deuteronomy 32:8-9, Deuteronomy 4:19-20,
where Moses is warning the people against worshipping
the sun, moon, and stars, the host of heaven.
Don't "bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God
has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.
But the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt,
to be a people of his own inheritance, as you are this day." You see that?
The similarity and the language, the words for allotment.
The words for inheritance.
Okay, you go to Deuteronomy 17, we find out that this host of heaven,
they're actually gods, they're actually elohim.
Again, people are getting blamed,
they've "gone and served other gods and worshiped them,
or the sun or the moon or any of the host of heaven, which I have forbidden."
they've served other right here, let's open up our interlinear other "elohim".
It's not just astral stuff, okay, this is the way other gods are described.
You got to Deuteronomy 29. This is all in Deuteronomy.
Deuteronomy is actually good for something. It's good for a lot. But here we go.
So this is talking about, Hey, you know, if Israel ever gets kicked on land,
people are gonna say, what happened?
Verse 24, "all the nations will say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land?
What caused the heat of this great anger?’" Why is he so mad?
"Then people will say, ‘It is because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord,
the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them
out of the land of Egypt, and went and served other gods and worshiped them,
gods whom they had not known and whom he had not allotted to them."
Okay, this is a whole system of theology.
What happens at Babel, is God says, Look, I'm done.
I am done with you people.
But you're still my images.
And so I'm going to assign you to lesser elohim of my Council,
and I'm going to assign them to you.
You know, Deuteronomy 4, Deuteronomy 32. It's two sides of the same coin.
And what I want, is, there going to be sort of placeholders.
I want them to rule you nations, even though it's not going to be me.
I'm out of the picture here. You're getting stepdads now, stepgods.
But I still want you people to be ruled, according to my good character,
my justice, my righteousness.
You say, Well, that wasn't in any of those verses. You're correct. It wasn't.
But if you go to Psalm 82 where these gods are being judged
by God in a divine council meeting and God is really angry there.
He actually sentences these other gods to death.
You know, I said, verse 6, Psalm 82:6, I said to all of you, you are elohim, all of you,
the pronoun is plural too, you're elohim, you're all sons of the Most High,
but you're going to die like men.
Why are they being judged? Verses 2-5,
for injustice, corruption, for sowing chaos in their nations.
And also if you go back to Deuteronomy 32, they accept worship,
they encourage idolatry, which was a problem that we began with Genesis 6.
Okay, we're back there again. So they do a miserable job.
And this is a judgment. This is a judgment against the world, against humanity.
God wants these people still govern well, because when he calls Abraham
and makes Israel his own inheritance,
when he makes a covenant with Abraham in Genesis 12, what does he say to Abraham?
it's through your seed that all of these nations are ultimately going to be blessed.
God still has the nations on his brain as it were.
But right now his relationship is with Israel.
It will be through Israel that the Messiah is raised up,
that will bring all of this full circle and bring the nations back into the fold.
This is why we have Paul. Okay, this is why we have an apostle to the Gentiles.
Now, if you were a member of one of these other nations, you could join Israel
in the Old Testament. Rahab did it.
Okay, we had others that joined the nation, they forsook other gods
and came into the fold. But it didn't happen in mass.
They were mired in idolatry, and wickedness.
So this is why Israel has to be set off and set apart.
They are to be a conduit of blessing and an example of blessing to the other nations,
so that the lights would go on. And they would say:
Man, what makes these people so different? They're prosperous, they're happy.
They got some strange beliefs like they don't have idols
and they pray to some invisible God. But I mean, you know what's up with that?
And it was a means by which to have those conversations
and bring people back into the fold.
And ultimately what's going to accelerate that is the coming of the Messiah,
God as man.
But in the Old Testament, what this does is creates a worldview circumstance,
and this is it; right after Babel and the call of Abraham that sets the stage
for the rest of the Old Testament.
This is why it's Israel against the nations, and the nations against Israel.
And it's why it's Yahweh against the gods and the gods against Yahweh.