Babel & Us
In the Beginning: A Study in Genesis • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 29:46
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If you have your Bible (and I hope you do), please turn to Genesis 11. If you are able and willing, please stand for the reading of God’s Holy Word. Genesis 11:
1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
May the Lord add His blessing to the reading of His Holy Word!
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We find the setting of the story in verse 1:
1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.
That single language is significant. It allows for perfect communication and cooperative work projects.
For anyone who has traveled to another country and attempted to work on a project with people who speak Spanish or Creole or Arabic, the language barrier can be a real frustration; it can make a shared task almost impossible.
The people speak the same language, and they’re on the move, further and further away from Eden. When Adam and Eve received permanent out-of-garden suspension, they headed East. Now, again, we read of the peoples’ eastward movement. What are they up to now?
The people find themselves all speaking the same language, cooperating together nicely, innovating new technology. They invent the brick, probably baked in a kiln or over a fire. It’s an incredible technological advancement for them. They’re used to building with stones; bricks are a big step up.
With this, the people are able to go about building whatever they’d like.
They together decide to build a city for themselves. This is the part of the story I seem to forget. We talk about the tower, but not the city. They, with their fancy technology, are going to build and build and build.
The centerpiece of their city will be the (now infamous) tower. A tower that reaches to the heavens. It’s ambitious, but with shared language and better building supplies, anything’s possible.
They want to build this tower for two reasons:
The first is telling—so that we may make a name for ourselves.
Wow. I mean, there it is. That’s it. That’s the arrogant pride of Adam and Eve. “Eat that fruit. You’ll be like God. That’s what you really want. Do it. Eat up. Do it. Do it now. Don’t you want to be like God?”
So that we may make a name for ourselves. Whew. This is man’s clearly expressed sinful desire for themselves, for their own glory.
A tall, fancy tower is one thing. But notice what they say about the tower (v. 4). They want a tower that reaches to the heavens. They don’t want just any tower; they want a celestial tower, a tower that links heaven and earth.
This is the people’s expressed desire to defy God, to dethrone God. They lust for fame, for power, for world renown, for independence.
Before this, God gave the names. He called the light “day” and the darkness He called “night”; He called the vault “sky”, the dry ground “land” and the water “seas”.
The human desire here to make a name for themselves suggests, not only a desire for reputation— “Look at this tower we built! — but also suggests their desire for autonomy, for freedom. They want to be in God’s position. They want God’s job. They think they belong where He is. “Let’s build ourselves…a tower that reaches to the heavens.”
The people’s second motivation for building the city and the tower even more clearly shows their defiance of God. If they don’t make a name for themselves they’re afraid they will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.
But, here’s the trouble. God’s intent was that human beings would be spread cross the earth. From creation, before the fall, God created human beings in His image, blessed them, and told them to be fruitful and multiply, and to fill the earth and subdue it.
God desired His image bearers to represent Him in the whole world. They were to spread God’s kingdom far and wide. What was true before the fall was true after the flood: God’s people were to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
At Babel, with their special city and impressive tower, the people seek to disobey God’s design to fill the earth. They are concerned for their own security. They think their staying together will save them. They want what they want, not what God wants.
The initial lesson for me, for you, in the Babel account is this:
You are NOT self-sufficient.
You are NOT self-sufficient.
You aren’t. I’ll say it. The people in Babel thought they had it all together. They worked well together, communicated well, invented well, built well. They thought themselves pretty hot stuff:
“Look at our city! Our great tower! We made bricks, all by ourselves mind you. No more stones—bricks! Look at us! We really are something!”
The people are pretty impressed with themselves. They believe they have it all together. Even more, they believe that they can get themselves to where God is.
Impressiveness is subjective. We are often quite impressed with ourselves; God is not.
They’re just gonna build their tower until they reach to the heavens, make a name for themselves, become so great that they won’t need anything from anyone. They’ll be famous, safe, happy, all on their own.
God is not pleased by this. He knows what the people are doing—they’re trying to live without Him. And in so doing, they will destroy themselves.
Just like people throughout time. Everyone thinks there’s happiness to be found outside a relationship with our Heavenly Father. Any happiness or security or fame or notoriety we experience apart from God is temporary, fleeting, a vapor—just like our earthly lives.
You cannot do it yourself. Like watching the toddler trying to put shoes on the right feet or get themselves dressed, so is our effort and our doing in God’s eyes.
Our striving for independence and self-sufficiency and security and praise and self-confidence is an exercise in futility.
God will break down our self-confidence and self-security at every opportunity, because He knows we will destroy ourselves by depending upon ourselves.
You are not self-sufficient.
Even with all of our technological advancements and high intellects, we’re still scrambling to find paper goods and hand sanitizer.
We aren’t self-sufficient. “We haven’t lost control of our lives, we’ve lost the illusion we were ever in control.” That’s what’s so uncomfortable in all this. It’s off-putting and anxiety inducing. We are not in control; never have been. We are not self-sufficient.
Good thing for us, our God—the Maker of Heaven and Earth—neither slumbers nor sleeps.
A song of ascents.
1 I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
where does my help come from?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
3 He will not let your foot slip—
he who watches over you will not slumber;
4 indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The Lord watches over you—
the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
6 the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.
7 The Lord will keep you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;
8 the Lord will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.
You and I are not self-sufficient. Even as much as we’d like to believe we are, we aren’t even close.
You are not self-sufficient.
You can't work your way to God.
You can't work your way to God.
Probably my favorite line in the Babel account is verse 5.
5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building.
The Lord came down to see what these people had been working on.
I love that! I think it’s hilarious. Here the people thought they were really something, they believed they had done something absolutely astounding, absolutely groundbreaking. They invented the brick and built a city. “Come on, guys, you’ve gotta check out this sweet tower. Look how tall it is!”
The people thought they would reach to the heavens, when, in fact, the Lord had to come down to take a look. So far away they were from making it to God, that God had to take a trip to see how they were doing.
Of course, the all-knowing God could see and was well-aware of what they were doing. But the author here wants us to see the absurdity of the peoples’ plan. They think they’ve almost made it, they’ve arrived. But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building.
That’s such a good reminder.
It’s cute, really, the peoples’ self-assessed grandeur. The people probably thought they were getting somewhere. Little did they know, they could build for the rest of their lives and they’ve never get to God.
You can't work your way to God.
You can't work your way to God.
God has to come down see what they were building. They thought they were reaching the heavens.Even with their best effort, their grand attempt, they’ve not even come close to attaining the height they dreamt of.
In Mesopotamia, the people built what are called “ziggurats”—towers with stairs all the way to the top. These weren’t shaped like the towers we might think of; don’t picture the Leaning Tower of Pisa or something like that. Picture a pyramid, only a little different.
Pyramids were hollow in places for burial spots. Ziggurats were filled with dirt. Ziggurats always had a stairway. Every ziggurat discovered has stairs. They also had a room at the top. Think 5-star hotel, a really nice, fancy room where the people believed the gods would come down and stay in the room built for them. It was some sort of divine manipulation.
“If we can build this tower, our gods will come down and stay in this nice room we’ve built for them. Maybe, if they like this tower, maybe just maybe our gods will bless us now.”
So, it’s quite possible, even likely, that the people here in Genesis 11 built this tower, this structure, to manipulate God.
There is, understand, no blessing when you try to manipulate God, when you try to play Him, work Him, coerce Him; when you treat God as if He’s just like all the other manmade gods of the peoples around you.
You cannot work your way to this God.
God sees what the people are doing. With some stated irony, the narrator points out the necessity of the Lord coming down to see.
But the Lord sees what the people are up to. What’s more, the Lord knows the hearts of the people, He knows the innermost parts of His creation; God knows that every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood (8:21).
God has seen before the rebellion of His image bearers. Before the flood, we read “God saw the earth was corrupt.”
The Lord here is quick to respond to this human rebellion at Babel—that’s what this tower-business is: rebellion.
The people believe that their human technology and advancement will save them. Far from it, actually. God will step in and stop their foolish plan for attaining their own salvation.
They can’t do it. It’s not possible. They need God.
You need God.
You need God.
The people are one, all in agreement, united in their defiance against God. If the people are successful in defying God now, who knows what they will propose next.
“If the whole human race remained united in the proud attempt to take its destiny into its own hands and, by its man-centered efforts, to seize the reins of history, there would be no limit to its unrestrained rebellion against God. The kingdom of man would displace and exclude the kingdom of God.”
For the sake of His kingdom and His creation, God steps in. God intervenes, for His glory and the good of the people. God knows the people were headed to their own destruction.
Left alone, the people perish. Without God, the people rebel against and continue to sin against God. Without God, the people face the wrath of God.
So God steps in. The Triune God goes down and confuses the peoples’ language. The Lord breaks up Babel, in order to build His Kingdom—starting with Abraham and Israel, leading to Jesus and His Church.
The people of Babel, defiant and self-sufficient, desperately need the Lord. They believe they don’t, but that’s foolish. For the creature to divorce the Creator is pure lunacy. It’s completely upside-down and backwards.
We can do some incredible things, you and me. The Lord has blessed us with incredible talents and abilities. We are crazy capable. There’s very little we can’t accomplish. We can build cities and towers and quantum computers—but to believe we can do so without God’s help or to do so in an attempt to subvert God, well, that’s the sin and rebellion and pride of Babel all over again.
We need God, and desperately. It’s the height of hubris, the pinnacle of pride, to believe we can operate all on our own.
With some more irony, those who want to make a name for themselves do receive a name—Babel (meaning “confuse”). And then they’re scattered.
God scatters the self-reliant; He scatters those who believe they don’t need God. Those fools come to understand, and quickly, what God can do. He takes the one language and turns it into thousands. He takes one home and moves the people miles away.
To believe you don’t need God, well, that’s silly and sinful.
You need God. And here’s the incredible, good news:
God comes down to you.
God comes down to you.
In the time of Babel, God came down to save the people from themselves. The same was true many millennia later—Jesus came down, took on flesh and walked among us. The second person of the Godhead came down. God with us.
Next in Genesis, God is going to make a promise to a man named Abraham—a promise to bless all the families of the earth through Abraham.
This blessing doesn’t refer to a people, to a nation. This is not a reference to Israel. This—the blessing of Abraham, is a reference to One Person—One who would come from Abraham’s line. God’s promise finds its fulfillment in Jesus.
When Jesus died, He took away the sin of the world. When Jesus rose again, He commanded His disciples to make disciples of all nations.
After the Lord ascends into heaven, He pours out the Holy Spirit. On the day of Pentecost, Jesus’ followers were filled with the Holy Spirit and all of them began to speak other languages as the Spirit enabled them.
On that day, God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven heard their own language being spoken. Astonished, they said, “We hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own languages!”
At Pentecost, God enabled people to “hear” each other again, resulting in unity among people from different nations.
Pentecost reversed the judgment of Babel and began to form for God a people from every tribe, language, nation, and tongue.
God has come down, for your sake and mine, to solve the problem we created for ourselves.
We, like Babel, are not self-sufficient.
We, like Babel, cannot work our way to God.
We, like Babel, need God.
And in our deep need, God comes down to us. He came to save, to rescue, to redeem.
As Sally Lloyd-Jones puts it in her incredible work:
“God knew however high they reached, however hard they tried, people could never get back to heaven by themselves. People didn’t need a staircase; they needed a Rescuer. Because the way back to heaven wasn’t a staircase; it was a Person.
People could never reach up to Heaven, so Heaven would have to come down to them. And one day, it would.”