10.20.26 – Building with Bricks and Stones

At one point, the whole earth was of one language (saphah) and of one speech (dabar). The unified individuals journeyed from the East (miqedem) to a plain in the land of Shinar, where they would settle and make bricks to be burned, and mortar to replace stones (Gen. 11:1–3).

As we traveled through Pakistan, we noticed the frequent dotting of the landscape with brickyards. Men, women, and children perform back-breaking labor for small wages. Each time I saw this visual, my mind was reminded of Genesis 11 and the Tower of Babel story.

We are living in a WOKE world where every government is forcing us into building their infrastructure tower to reach the heavens while simultaneously removing God out of the picture. As in the Genesis story, the individuals were unified in their communication and their walk, for they were coming from the East (miqedem). This, by the way, is not a reference to direction but is a spiritual statement that they were walking away from the God of all creation and His ancient path (2 Kings 19:25; Isa. 46:10; Deut. 33:27; Ps. 74:12; Prov. 8:22; Mic. 5:2; Matt. 24:27; etc.).

We—speaking of me, myself, and I—would think that after the devastating worldwide flood (Gen. 6–9), they would have consulted God for guidance or discernment. Maybe they thought God did not care whether they used stones made by His hand or bricks made by man's hand?

What does Scripture mean when it tells us that they set out to make bricks to replace stone? As I have witnessed on multiple trips to Pakistan and India, bricks are made by man through sweat and back-breaking labor, while stones are made by God through natural processes.

Whether it is the Genesis story or 21st-century living, the brickyard journey begins when the hearts of the people turn from God and the ancient path that He has chosen for us. Then they choose to make bricks. Yes, that is right! They did not choose to build a tower; they unified over making bricks, and then the tower came into view. What??

Bricks are made by mixing clay, mortar, and water. Stones, however, are created by God. When man is finished with bricks, every brick looks pretty much the same. Stones come in all colors, sizes, and shapes, but yet they are all still stones, as Peter alluded to in his first epistle (1 Pet. 2:1–5).

We are living stones because Yeshua is the Stone (Even). Scripture does not focus on conformity like a bunch of lemmings following the crowd. God focuses on function, not form. Man's worldly bricks focus on what things look like, not how things function.

I would suggest to you that man's religious systems are no different. Whether it is one of the more than 42,000 denominations within Christianity, Hare Krishna, Buddhism, the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, Chasidism, Mormonism, Seventh-day Adventist missionaries, Islamic clerics... it is all a mixture of stone and bricks, bricks, and more bricks. It seems to me that our Father knew from the beginning exactly what we are and would be like. He knew that we would read His words, mix them with our various denominational interpretations and culture, and then—primarily through guilt and ecclesiastical cohesion—make everyone else conform to our interpretation rather than to the non-grievous commandments of God (1 John 5:2–3). All religious systems are about the business of conforming you to "the system" and not to the Messiah, or emphasizing that their system is the way to conform to the Messiah. This is primarily accomplished by convincing the masses to conform to form and not to conform to function and purpose.

Ironically, the next time we hear of bricks in Scripture is when God's people and the world are enslaved in Egypt under hard bondage to the tax collectors of their day. This great Egyptian nation had absorbed the exiled children of Israel and placed them into bondage, making bricks of straw and mud. When the leader of this greatest nation on earth sensed that the hardworking producers of this nation were becoming too numerous, he put them to task producing the same amount of bricks while at the same time taking away the straw. The producers and builders of this great nation had to come up with their own straw (Ex. 5:16–19).

The children are educated slaves to the system (religious, social, educational, and political systems) and are told they are to deliver the tale/token for a certain amount of bricks to build the great infrastructure of their kingdom. What is interesting is that this word for "tale/token" also means falsehood, a lie, and even gossip or spreading rumors. It comes from the root takan, which is what Yeshua spoke about when He condemned the Pharisees for their takanot (man-made traditions) that drove people eastward away from the Torah.

We have gotten so used to brick-making in every phase of life that most have forgotten to consider what it means to build altars out of stone.

Shalom,
Alan

www.lightintorah.org