David is saying here, within the Songs of Ascents: God will send the promised son. God will make a restored, new Jerusalem. I can calm and quiet my soul by remembering that God will do what he has said.

Solomon turns away from the vanity of self-salvation and he looks to children, namely, he looks to the promised offspring who will come after him to reign as king forever. And God loves to do it this way, you know.

It would be like God to put the hope of the world in the hands of a baby...

These psalms are called the Songs of Ascents — that’s “Ascent” as in “to ascend.” And they’re called that because they’re connected to God’s people ascending up to Jerusalem. Jerusalem was higher in elevation than the places around it. So to go to Jerusalem means that literally you are ascending. You’re going up.

God does not leave us to ourselves to work our way out of the mess of our own making. He doesn’t leave us to rescue ourselves, to help our own selves into qualifying for restoration, but he saves us utterly through faith — through relinquishing our own attempts to work our way to him, and acknowledging that we ultimately are powerless, and ready to receive his help.

Babel gives us another lens through which to view idolatry. We often talk about idolatry as what we place our hope in, or where we find our greatest and deepest satisfaction. Idolatry is seeking the satisfaction that we ought to find in God in created things. And that’s true. But Babel also poses other questions about how to discern idols.

He’s going to rule over all the nations on the earth, and all the nations on the earth are going to be blessed by his rule. It’s going to be a good rule. He’s going to be a good king. But how’s this work?

Noah does what God says because Noah trusts God, and this actually says more about God than it does Noah. We tend to admire Noah for his faith, and that’s legit. Hebrews 11 commends him for it. But something else to consider in this passage is not that Noah trusts God, but it’s that God is found so trustworthy.

What Genesis has been doing in chapters 4 and 5 — going back to the curse of the serpent in Genesis 3:15 — is setting up a tale of two cities: the city of man and the city of God. This is, in a sense, the great story of all of history: the story of two “offsprings.” Remember what God said to the serpent in Genesis 3:15.

So before we get into Chapters 4–5, let me just state again the main message in Genesis 3:15 we need to see and settle on. It’s that:

God will ensure that the dragon-slayer, head-stomper, serpent crusher will come, but he will come with a war waged against him.

This is judgment mingled with mercy. The ultimate judgment here is exile from the garden of God. Broken relationships, painful labor, war with the serpent—all of these are awful. But the worst consequence for man’s rebellion is that he is forced at sword-point to leave paradise. The loss of Eden. This too is mercy; God refuses to let us live forever in our sin and brokenness. But the loss is real. We lost God.