Genesis 11:1-9
1Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
3They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4Then 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.”
5But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6The 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. 7Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9That 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.
In a Battle of Wills, God Always Wins
What would you think if you were hiking in the mountains and you suddenly came upon a sight like this? Or what if you were bushwacking in the jungle and saw ancient buildings overgrown with centuries of vines and roots? Or what if you were trekking through the desert and you stumbled across the remains of what was clearly once a vast and glorious settlement but now is little more than a pile of rocks and sediment?
Maybe you’d ask, like many would, “What happened here?” “Who were these people?” “What was their story?” “What went wrong?” Something must have gone wrong, otherwise they’d still be here, right?
Well, this is the picture of Genesis 11. Moses takes us on a tour of these ruins and tells us the story of what happened at Babel – one of the most ambitious but, in the end, foolhardy construction projects never to be finished.
We don’t know exactly when these events take place. The words we read today follow immediately after the story of the Flood. But we do know from context that this didn’t happen the day after Noah and his family got off the ark. There were only 8 of them. The story that Moses records for us includes hundreds of people – enough people to justify the building of a city and to begin construction on a project of this magnitude. So, this probably took place a couple hundred years after the Flood.
When Noah and his family got off the ark, God put a rainbow in the sky as an eternal promise never to destroy the world by flood again, but God also gave Noah and his family a command: “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.”[1]
So God’s vision for the next several generations after Noah, is constant expansion. But what do these people say? “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.”[2]
“A tower that reaches to the heavens.” That sounds more than just ambitious; that seems ostentatious, i.e. boastful. “So that we may make a name for ourselves.” That’s bald-faced pride. “Otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” They know what God wants them to do; they just don’t want to do it. They are taking active steps not to do what God wants them to do. They are in open and direct rebellion against God’s clear command.
It reminds me of the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done…”[3] These people got it backwards. They wanted to make a name for themselves, to make a kingdom for themselves, and to do whatever they wanted to do regardless of what God wanted them to do. Their prayer sounded more like this: Hallowed be my name, my kingdom come, my will be done… And, as sad as it is to say, the spirit of the proto-Babylonian is still alive and well in us today.
“Hallowed be my name.” You know that temptation, don’t you – to confuse the success or failure of your schoolwork, your work-work, your family life with your personal worth or reputation, i.e. to want things to go well so that people look up to you, so that your parents can be proud of you, your classmates can envy you, your friends can appreciate you. I want to be the smartest, funniest, sweetest, nicest, best (you fill in the blank).
But that’s not what our goal in life is supposed to be. Paul reminds us what is: So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.[4] God’s name is the one we’re supposed to hallow, not ours.
“My kingdom come.” The proto-Babylonians reached Shinar and asked, “Why would we go any further? We have everything we could ever want right here.” They had made it their life’s mission to seek security and stability.
And let’s be honest, who doesn’t want that? It’s not bad to desire security and stability, but at what cost? At the rejection of God’s plans for us that often differ from our plans for ourselves? At the exclusion of seeking his kingdom first? We can be so busy building a life for our families that we don’t have time worship, Bible study, devotion, prayer. Are we so busy building a little kingdom for ourselves that we don’t take time to advance God’s kingdom on earth?
“My will be done.” In the end, this is always what it’s come down to – a battle of wills. Whose desires are most important – God’s or mine? Who wins if those wills don’t line up – God or me? If we’re honest, God usually takes a backseat. If I want something different than he wants, I usually find a way to get what I want.
The bad news is that you don’t have to build a tower that reaches to heaven to be in open rebellion against God. You just have to be human. But here’s the good news: even if we (sinfully) get our own way for a little while, God always wins eternally.
Think about this scene from God’s point of view. If the proto-Babylonians had continued on this path, they would have recreated the conditions that necessitated the Flood – this rampant and willful disobedience and rebellion against God.
And if that happened again so soon after the Flood, what’s to say that it wouldn’t happen again after a worldwide fire or plague or asteroid-strike. God had to break the cycle to preserve his promise – to make it possible for his Son to born so that his Son could save us from our sin. So he confused their languages and scattered them over the face of the earth.
And this is important. The sacrifice of Jesus is very different than these acts of judgment like the Flood or the Tower of Babel. Those things were temporary measures meant to halt the progression of sin for a little while. Jesus’ death would bring the permanent resolution. It wouldn’t put an end to sin – not by a long shot. It would do something better. It would forgive sin and bring about the inevitable reversal of the Tower of Babel the way God had always planned.
Scripture is full of promises to that effect. We read it repeatedly in Revelation: After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before they throne and before the Lamb… They cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”[5] No more division in heaven. No more hatred, discord, envy or slander. No more rebellion or sin. Just perfect unity among people from every corner of the globe, reunited in praise at the salvation that is ours through Jesus.
We saw a preview of that promise at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit empowered Peter and the rest of the apostles to speak all kinds of different languages to the wonderment of the crowd: “How is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs – we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”[6] God overcame the natural boundaries and divisions of this world by proclaiming the good news of Jesus in words that everyone could understand. He brought a piece of heaven to earth for the disciples to enjoy even now.
And while it may not look exactly the same as it did at that Pentecost, that’s the same miracle that continues to take place today. Again from Revelation: Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth – to every nation, tribe, language and people.[7] That’s you and me, and all the people we’re privileged to meet – whether they’re members of our congregation or visitors to our Open Air Fair, whether they’re from Canada or the US or the Ukraine, Nigeria, Haiti, or Brazil. God continues to unite us to himself and to each other through the proclamation of the salvation won for us by his Son and worked in us by his Holy Spirit through faith.
Here's the good news of Pentecost: In a battle of wills, God always wins. No amount of human interference can disrupt his plan of salvation. No amount of your sin can hinder his grace. And when God wins, so do you. His victory means forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life for everyone who believes – whether that’s the 3,000 who believed on Pentecost, the 144,000 we read about in Revelation, or you hearing these words today, because God’s promise is true for you just as it was 2,000 years ago or 3,000 years before that: everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.[8] Thanks be to God! Amen.
[1] Genesis 9:1
[2] Genesis 11:4
[3] Matthew 6:9,10
[4] 1 Corinthians 10:31
[5] Revelation 7:9,10
[6] Acts 2:8-11
[7] Revelation 14:6
[8] Acts 2:21