The Tower of Babel

Genesis 11:1-9 (ESV)
1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.
2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.
4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”
5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built.
6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.”
8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.
9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

Now to understand this passage, we need to remember where we are in Genesis. We've just witnessed God's judgment through the flood, and then he followed this up with a covenant with Noah. And then in chapter 10, the last bit we looked at, we see the table of nations. That is God's plan for humanity to spread across the earth and to fill it. But then we get here to chapter 11, which reveals how humans respond to God's command to fill the earth and subdue it, and its deliberate disobedience.

Notice the contrast here. Back in Genesis 9 verse 1, God blessed Noah and his sons and he commanded them to be fruitful and to multiply and to fill the earth. This is the same divine mandate that was given to Adam and Eve. Now to spread out, to multiply and subdue the earth for God's glory. But then what do we find in chapter 11? Well here humanity is saying, well let's not do that lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth. There's this conscious rebellion against God's explicit command. And the Hebrew word used here for scattered is the same word that God used when he commanded them to spread out, to disperse. And so they're directly contradicting God's will.

But this passage shows us a deeper reality too. What do the people say? They actually mirror God's own words when he created the world. They say, come, let us build for ourselves a city with its tower to the top of the heavens and let us make a name for ourselves. There's this repeated emphasis on the us and ourselves. This is people trying to establish their own kingdom, their own kind of creation, their own glory apart from God.

It's interesting that they use the phrase, let us make a name for ourselves, because in scripture it is God who makes people's names great. We can think of his promise to Abraham in just the next chapter in Genesis 12. But here, fallen humanity is looking to manufacture its own greatness.

This tower was to have its top in the heavens. It's an ambitious architectural feat. And in the ancient Near Eastern context, towers like this were often associated with religious practices. And so they're trying to reach into the heavens, reach the divine realm, if you like, through human effort. Humanity wants to ascend to become God in their own terms. They want to reach back into the heavens through their own works. And from our perspective, from perspective, we see here the fundamental error of all of human religion, right? Of all of human philosophy. This belief that we can somehow work our way into heaven, somehow create something that will reach us into the divine realms to justify ourselves before God, to make our own name great through our own efforts. This is the essence of what works-based righteousness is. And Paul throughout the New Testament combats this through almost all of his letters. We think, of course, of this is salvation by grace through faith, not by works so that no one may boast. But that's what these people in Babylon wanted to do. They wanted a name for themselves based on their own works so that they might boast.

Now notice what God does in response in verses 5 to 7. The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of man had built. There's a kind of beautiful irony here. They are building a tower to reach up all the way into heaven, but God has to come down in order to see it. The greatest achievement of humanity at the time is barely visible from God's perspective. He has to come down, not because he has to investigate and he doesn't quite understand what's going on. He knows all things after all. The text, I think, is emphasizing the fact that God is so far above human endeavors that it doesn't matter how big the tower is or how amazing the technology is at the time. He still is so far above all of those things.

Now when God looks at this, he gives kind of a sobering judgment or assessment of what's happening. Behold, the people are one and they all have one language and this is only the beginning of what they will do and nothing they propose to do from now on will be impossible for them. So God here recognizes that a unified humanity in its fallen state is just going to multiply evil again and again. And so to prevent humanity from kind of living up to its evil potential, God does something which is both miraculous but also merciful and ultimately just. He scatters them by confusing their language. The word Babel sounds like the word for confused and mixed up. And so this limits the scope of the kind of pride and evil that humanity can do because he's breaking up their rebellion, the unity they have in rebelling against him. It also ultimately serves to act out God's true purpose for humanity to fill the earth. And it sets up God's redemptive plan, ultimately that culminates in Jesus, by fulfilling this idea that the nations would fill the earth.

God's sovereignty is perfectly displayed here. Human rebellion is right there happening, but it doesn't stop God's plan from happening. It actually serves to push God's plan moving forward. Ultimately, Christ would come because the people in Babel refused to fill the earth and to spread out through it. And because of that, God scatters them ultimately to become the nations which would give rise to Israel and finally to Jesus himself.

Now what does this all have to do with us? Well, I think we need to recognize that the spirit of Babel, if you like, appears right throughout our modern world. We see it in our pursuit of technology. We see it in sort of secular humanism. Every attempt to build a utopia through human wisdom and technology and political systems really is just doing the same thing as what the people of Babel tried to do back here just after the flood. The underlying assumption is still the same. We can build a heaven for ourselves. We can build a way into heaven. There's a kind of false religion happening here, a religious system that teaches us that salvation, from whatever it might be, is available to us through our works and through our own human efforts. that our human effort can bridge the gap between us and the divine world, whatever we think that is.

Every time we want to make a name for ourselves, apart from God's glory, we're really trying to climb the Tower of Babel. Whether that's career ambition or social media influence or academic achievement or ministry success or financial success, if it is pursued for self-glory rather than God's glory, we are doing what the people of Babel were doing here. So this passage forces us to check our motivations, to again examine whether what we are building in this world is to build for God's glory or for our own. Are we seeking to make a name for ourselves or are we seeking to magnify his name? Are we working to establish our kingdom or are we working to advance his kingdom? Something to think about.

Let me pray.

Lord, we recognize that you are the sovereign King and Lord over every language and every land. We pray that you will forgive us when we have chased our own fame and our own great name rather than yours. Please pull down the bricks that we've stacked around our hearts like this tower. Help us instead to see the cornerstone of Jesus as the one whose kingdom truly matters. Help us to make your name great. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.