Trump Tower rises 58 storeys, 664 feet, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City: a silent testimony to one man’s megalomania.

I don’t mean to single out Trump.
Since the beginning of time many men (in this case, it is principally males) have sought to raise edifices as a witness to their, or their offspring’s, greatness.
As well, men who rebelled against believing in a God “who is, and who is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (Heb 11:6) tried hard to perpetuate their immortality without diligently seeking Him by raising lasting monuments to themselves.

Cain was the first: “He built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son—Enoch.” (Gen 4:17) But he was not the last.
After Cain, men boasted: “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves” (Gen 11:4) – and raised up the Tower of Babel, rivalling even Trump Tower.

The Edifice Complex

Here, in Australia we name our cities after famous men:

• Brisbane was named for Sir Thomas Brisbane, Governor of New South Wales at the time a penal settlement was established here.
• Sydney was named after Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney, who was the home secretary back in Britain at the time.
• Melbourne was named in honour of the British Prime Minister of the day, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne – notable not only for mentoring a young Queen Victoria, but also for being cuckolded by the “mad, bad and dangerous to know” Lord Byron.
• Darwin, in the Northern Territory, was named for Charles Darwin – which is ironic, since his views on evolution led to aborigines of the Northern Territory being regarded as an inferior race, that could therefore be exterminated if troublesome.

All our capital cities are named after famous (or infamous) men – and one after a famous woman. Only our national capital was spared.
If you want to be famous, or ingratiate yourself with a famous man, name a city (or some other landmark) after him.
The person you aim to honour need not have visited the city, landmark, or other monument you name for him. None of our Australian capitals was ever visited by their namesakes.

He need not even have any particular interest in what is named for him.
Here in Queensland, Lamington National Park was named for Charles Wallace Alexander Napier Cochrane-Baillie, 2nd Baron Lamington. Educated on the other side of the world, at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford, he was appointed Governor of Queensland in 1895.
But his only contact with the National Park that would later bear his name was a brief visit in 1899, where he took a moment to shoot a koala, before retreating back to the comfort of Government House. He got little comfort though from bagging that cuddly critter: it is said that the koala’s “dying cries were terrible…they haunted [him] for years”.
Nor did he get much comfort from the other enduring monument that bears his name, the coconut-coated sponge cake named in his honour, the “lamington”; he abhorred these culinary delights and denounced them as “[ expletive ] poofy woolly biscuits”.

Others have looked elsewhere – apart from building cities, or having a national park or national biscuit named after them – to perpetuate their immortality.
Horace, the Roman poet, sought it in his poetry – of which he wrote:

I have built a monument more lasting than bronze,
higher than the Pyramids’ regal structures,
that no consuming rain, nor wild north wind
can destroy…

Maybe Horace was onto something.
After all we are still reading his poems at University 2,000 years later.
He is famous, at least to the few who read his poems; he has achieved immortality of sorts.

Which brings me to…

Abraham

After the Tower of Babel, “Terah begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Haran begot Lot.  And Haran died before his father Terah in his native land, in Ur of the Chaldeans.” (Gen 11:27-28)

Then “Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot, the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife, and they went out with them from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan; and they came to Haran and dwelt there.” (Gen 11:31)

Terah’s son, Haran, had died.
Terah moved on; he dwelt in a city – a city named Haran.
What is going on here? Did Terah rename, or even build, this city in honour of his deceased son?
We don’t know for sure.
We do know for sure he was an idolater who “served other gods” (Josh 24:2,14). And we do know he was immersed in a culture, shaped by Cain and the men of Babel, that had an edifice complex when it came to seeking immortality.
Abraham grew up in the midst of this culture.

Then God appeared to Abram/Abraham, saying: “Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation…” (Gen 12:1-2)
Abram had grown up in the midst of a culture – much like ours today – that had an edifice complex: If you want to be honoured, or have someone else honoured, you build something (like a city) – and name it after yourself, or whoever you wished to honour.

But God promised Abram, not just a city, but a whole nation!

So Abram journeys to the Promised Land.
“Abram departed as the Lord had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran…
^“So they came to the land of Canaan.” (Gen 12:4-5)

But, when he arrives, what does he build?
“There he built an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.” (v 7)
No city? No monument?
No. “There he built an altar to the Lord…”

Journeying on he arrives at (what will later be called) Bethel.
Again, “there he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord.” (v 8)
Abram doesn’t build a city or a monument to himself like his contemporaries.
He builds altars.
His principal concern was not to seek his glory. But, God’s!

A hundred years later Abram is still in the Promised Land when he dies.
How much of the Promised Land did Abram own when he died? Just one small burial plot, that he had bought from the inhabitants of the land when his wife, Sarah, had died.

Kent Hughes sums it up well:

The truth is, Abram never did build a home in the Promised Land. The only land that he owned was a cave he purchased as Sarah’s grave.
But he did become a builder – building not a tower, nor a city, nor a house – but altars for worship across the land.
How beautiful: the only architecture that remained after Abram’s life were altars to the LORD, the artefacts of a worshipping heart.

Heb 11:9-10 tells us:

“By faith [Abraham] dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”

God promised Abram, “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12:3) – and they were. Through Abram, the gospel eventually reached the nations.
But before Abram would be used to reach the nations with the gospel, he first and foremost was a worshipper of God.

The Challenge for Us Today

We want to see the gospel go to all nations, starting with those on our own doorstep.
But we can’t hope to achieve this if our priorities are wrong.
What are we building upon this earth?
What will you be building in the year ahead?

Are we building monuments to ourselves, to be remembered once we are gone?
Or are we building altars to worship God?

We are first and foremost worshippers.
I love that “working definition” of a Christian in Phil 3:3, i.e. one who “worships God in the Spirit, rejoices in Christ Jesus, and has no confidence in the flesh.”
First and foremost we are worshippers.
It is only those who give priority to the worship of God that are qualified to take the gospel to others.

This is what Abram’s altars were all about.
This is what his life was all about.
His altars laid the foundation for the future spread of the gospel.

Is this what your life is all about?
Are you seeking to spread the gospel as a worshipper of God who “seeks first the kingdom of God and His righteousness” (Matt 6:33)?

Again, Kent Hughes:

Father Abram personally understood and believed that ‘this world is not my home, I’m just a passing through.’
What a challenge to the dominant earth-bound ideologies of our age!
Faithful Abram worshipped wherever he went. Today, ‘if you are Christ’s, then you are:
– Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise’ (Gal. 3: 29)
– pilgrims who are called to build altars not of stone, but of the heart,
– wherever you are, to ‘present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship’ (Rom 12: 1)