Genesis 11

Making A Name

Let us make us a name. Genesis 11:4.

The people of Babylon wished to make themselves a name. There might be nothing wrong in that; most people would like to make a name for themselves. But what kind of name, and how was it to be made? The Babylonians were a great and powerful people. They grew proud and arrogant and selfish. And when they were at the height of their power, when they thought they were making a name and an empire that would last for ever, God overthrew their kingdom, and broke down all their ambitions. They had very large cities, with great walls, and huge palaces. These are now just heaps of trash, and only of some of them are even the names known. The empire which thought nothing could overthrow it was brought to nothing. It is God who rules the kingdoms of the world. One after another the great kingdoms have risen and passed away. They made a name and then God gave their power to another, and they sank almost out of memory.

1. It is the same with people as with nations. What strange, and sometimes foolish things men do to be famous, to make themselves a name! One man works night and day and grasps at every dollar, because he wants to be known as a very rich man. Another starts to walk round the world, or to cross the Atlantic in a small boat. These are poor ways of being famous. Others long to gain an honored name as great painters or musicians.

Napoleon was one who was determined to make himself a name. He did it. From an unknown boy he made himself an emperor. But he did it without concerning himself about God's will at all. He thought God was on the side of the largest army. To gratify his own pride and ambition he plunged all the great countries of Europe into war. Thousands and thousands of soldiers were killed, and lands were laid desolate where his armies passed. Women and children lost their husbands and fathers all that he might make his name. Nothing could stand before him so he thought. He was like the people in Babel who thought they could build a tower to the sky. But God saw the empire he built, and that it was built with pride, and selfish ambition, and without any regard for the good of God's other people in the world. And so, at the height of his fame, God stopped his building, and the emperor died a prisoner in exile.

Is ambition wrong then? Is it wrong to wish to do something great and to be remembered by it? There are different kinds of ambition. Without some kind of ambition a man is a poor creature. He is careless about what he does, and aimless in his life. All the best men have had a high ambition, but not merely an ambition for fame.

When Abraham Lincoln was a great ungainly boy of fourteen or fifteen, people used to ask him what he meant to be. And the boy would reply with a chuckle, “I am going to be President of the United States.” Everyone thought it was a good joke. What could the shabby, awkward boy living in the backwoods know about the ruling of a great nation? Yet, not forty years later, the people of the United States were mourning the loss of the greatest President they had had since the days of Washington.

There is a noble kind of ambition, an ambition to work with God, and build along with Him; not only to get fame and pleasure for ourselves, but to make the world a better place for others, to bring knowledge and happiness to them, to lessen their pain, and to bring nearer the time when God's kingdom will come, and everybody will know and love Him. That is the best ambition we can have.

2. We are all making a name of some kind. It is very unlikely that any of our names will be remembered in history, or that books will be written about us. Yet we are making a name and building a monument for ourselves. That building is just all that we have done the good and the bad. Our thoughts and our actions are the bricks in our building, and when the monument is finished it will be seen what we have made, and whether or not it is good.

Long, long ago, there lived in India a very rich and powerful king. Now this king knew that some day he must die, and he wished to leave behind him something that people would remember him by. So he determined that he would build somewhere in the mountains a palace more beautiful than any that had ever been erected in the history of the world. Accordingly he sent for his builder Jakoob, and he gave him a great deal of money to go to the spot he had selected, far away among the hills, and there build him a marble palace.

Now, when Jakoob arrived at the place the king had chosen, he found that the people were wretchedly poor, and were dying of hunger. So first he spent all his own money, and then he spent all the king's money in caring for the sick and feeding the hungry.

Later the king came to the mountains to see how his palace was progressing. And he found that there was not one stone laid upon another. Then he sent for the builder and inquired the reason, and Jakoob confessed that he had spent all the money on feeding and caring for the poor and the sick and the hungry. Thereupon the king struck him with his sword and cast him into a dark prison. And he vowed a solemn vow that Jakoob should die on the morrow.

But that night the king had a strange dream. He dreamt that he had gone to heaven, and there the angels showed him a wonderful palace. It was the most beautiful palace he had ever seen, far, far more beautiful than the one he had planned to build in the mountains.

The king asked whose palace it was, and how it came to be so beautiful. And the angels replied, “This is the beautiful palace of beautiful deeds which was built for you by Jakoob, the wise builder. After all the buildings of the earth have vanished away, this one will still endure.”

God grant, boys and girls, that you may each and all build such a palace of beautiful deeds, that you may make yourselves a name that will endure in heaven.