in those days.
“They said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.” And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. They said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” The Babylonians were afraid God would come again to destroy the earth but they thought that if they remained unified they could survive such an attempt. They thought they could build a tower as high as Heaven and compete with God (Satan’s purpose). However God had other ideas: “The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. The Lord said, Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. [God said] “Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, [Babylon cf Heb balal, “to confuse”] because there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth” (Gen 11:1-9).
Abraham; Isaac; Jacob; Joseph
Shem and his descents eventually birthed Terah, the father of Abram. In the story of Abram (later Abraham) we have the birth of the family of God and the nation of Israel who would become God’s chosen people until Christ’s coming. They began the physical blood-line of the coming Messiah. Abraham is the Father of the faithful and the first to receive the following promise from God: “Then he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness” (Gen 15:16). Paul quotes the case of Abraham, who ‘believed God”, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’, to prove that a person is justified through faith without works (Rom. 4:3ff.; Gal. 3:6; quoting Gn. 15:6). In Rom. 4:5, 9 (cf vv. 22, 24) Paul refers to the Genesis text as teaching that Abraham’s faith was ‘reckoned … as righteousness’. All he means, however, as the context shows, is that Abraham’s faith — whole-hearted reliance on God’s promise was the occasion and means of his being justified. This covenant between Abraham and God remains in effect today and is a basis of the New Covenant of Christ wherein our faith in Christ as Lord is the source of our righteousness.
This promise was confirmed by the ministry of Christ who taught that righteousness was the result of faith in Him and not by human works designed to please God. Those who rely on human works to please God are ineffectual; as faith is the only thing that pleases God. As Isaiah said: “But we are all like an unclean thing, And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; We all fade as a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind” (Isaiah 64:6). Anything we do as humans to please God are rejected as “filthy rags”. Only through the promise of Abraham, and later Christ, can we be truly righteous. Abraham was a type of Christ who laid the foundation for His future coming.
The interesting thing was that Abraham was nowhere near perfect in his actions yet he was honored by believing God. For instance during a famine in Canaan he went into Egypt and took Sarai (later Sarah) with him. He thought he could protect Sarah by passing her off to the Egyptians as his sister. However Pharaoh desired her and attempted to take her as his own. When Abraham found out he had to tell pharaoh she was his wife. The Pharaoh backed off but kicked Abraham out of the country. He also acted in unbelief towards God in fathering Ishmael from Sarah’s maid (see below).
Later God promised Abraham an heir, a Son. However as time went along, and both he and Sarah became old, past child bearing age, Abraham, upon advice of his wife, had relations with Sarah’s maid Hagar. Hagar gave birth to Ishmael. So the couple, in unbelief as to whether God would fulfill His promise, took matters into their own hands and produced a son that would cause them and succeeding generations great suffering. Sarah despised her maid and made things so difficult for her. So Hagar, pregnant with Ishmael, fled. “Now the angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to Shur. He said, “Hagar, Sarai’s maid, where have you come from and where are you going?” And she said, “I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress Sarai.” Then the angel of the Lord said to her, “Return to your mistress, and submit yourself to her authority.” Moreover, the angel of the Lord said to her, “I will greatly multiply your descendants so that they will be too many to count.” The angel of the Lord said to her further, “Behold, you are with child, And you will bear a son; And you shall call his name Ishmael, [God hears] Because the Lord has given heed to your affliction. “He [your son] will be a wild donkey of a man, His hand will be against everyone, And everyone’s hand will be against him; And he will live to the east [in defiance of] all his brothers” (Gen 16:7-12).
What actually happened is that Ishmael eventually became a great nation in what would be considered Arabia. His life was filled with bloodshed as the Lord had predicted. The Muslim religion adopted Ishmael as their child of promise instead of Isaac, the Christian child of promise. Muslims have clashed with Christian over the ages, probably stemming from the time of Abraham, Hagar and Ishmael. There are many reasons why today there still exist conflicts between the two peoples but certainly, the birth of Ishmael, an act of unbelief by Abraham and Sarah, is one of them. There are many similarities between Christian and Muslim beliefs but the differences are wide and significant. Muslims don’t believe Christ was the resurrected Son of God and they believe that Ishmael (the child of unbelief) is the child of promise. Isaac went on to establish Christ’s lineage but Ishmael’s descendents became a thorn in the side of Israel and Christendom today. “They settled from Havilah to Shur which is east of Egypt as one goes toward Assyria; he settled in defiance of all his relatives” (Gen 25:18). He and his settled basically in Arabia where he became a great nation (for a list of Ishmael’s descents see Gen 25:12-18). Note that they were all enemies of Israel before the Muslims.
Abraham went on to Father a son Isaac, born by Sarah who by all accounts was in her 90s. So Isaac was the miracle son born according to God’s promise when fulfillment of the Promise seemed impossible. According to one great man of God many times God makes His promises impossible before they happen so there can be no question it was God doing the fulfillment, not man. “It has to be Impossible before it happens” (Stevens, John Robert: This Week, Volume XIII (1982). North Hollywood, CA. : Living Word Publications, 2007, p.. 505).
Abraham had gone to Canaan with his nephew Lot and his family. Eventually the two split up due to lack of adequate resources for their flocks and Lot had gone to live in the city of Sodom, a settlement along the northern end of the Dead Sea. There were several settlements there including Gomorrah and Zoar. God told Abraham he was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of their wickedness. Fearing for his nephew Lot’s life Abraham bargained with God to save the cities if there were as few as 10 righteous men in them. The Lord sent two angels to Sodom to access the situation. But after the townspeople tried to rape the angels God had seen enough. The next morning the angels dragged a reluctant Lot, his wife and daughters out of the town prior to the destruction.
Lot, his wife and his daughters fled to a cave, away from the God wrought destruction. God has warned them not to look back on the destruction of Sodom. However Lot’s wife looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt. Lot and his daughters went on and the following occurred: “Lot went up from Zoar, and stayed in the mountains, and his two daughters with him; for he was afraid to stay in Zoar; and he stayed in a cave, he and his two daughters. Then the firstborn said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come in to us and have sex after the manner of the earth. “Come, let us make our father drink wine, and let us lie with him that we may preserve our family through our father.” So they made their father drink wine that night, and the firstborn went in and lay with her