Everyone, it seems, has an opinion these days of what is
needed to make our world a better place. Perhaps what we need is a more perfect
environment? Maybe changes in the educational system will help us? Perhaps a
coming together of the nations under some new system of cooperation and
alliance will rid the world of its troubles? However, as Donald Grey Barnhouse
wrote in the middle of the last century, “God has tested man under every
conceivable condition and found him wanting.”[1] We
must remember that human history began in the perfect environment of Eden , and even there, man
still rebelled against God. It is hard to imagine a more complete education
than Adam had, yet man’s state only
spiraled in decline. And we come to this scene on the plains of Shinar where
the whole of humanity coexisted together in a singular community with one
government and one language, only to find that even under these conditions,
humanity strived for greatness and sank into an even deeper level of rebellion.
In these verses, we see a true picture of man at his best
and worst. As a result of the divine image in which man was created, he is
capable of extraordinary things! But because that image has been marred by
human sinfulness, those capacities are extraordinarily corrupted. As man
exercises these capacities in the world, God observes and intervenes in such a
way that nothing thwarts His sovereign plan for the world and for the people
who bear His image. It was true in the days of Genesis 11, and it is still true
for individuals, for nations, and even for churches. Therefore, while this text
explains how the planet came to be filled with such a diverse population of
humanity, it does more than this. It speaks to us even now of mankind at our
best and at our worst.
As we dive into our text, we will observe first of all …
I. The Industrious Resourcefulness of Man
One of my earliest memories of childhood is sitting on my
father’s lap as he read to me the story of the Little Engine That Could. You
remember that story. The little train comes to a seemingly insurmountable hill
and says to himself, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.” And he did
it! Parents and teachers often shower this kind of encouragement on young
people. “You can be whatever you want to be.” “You can do whatever you put your
mind to.” “If you can dream it, you can do it.” And we find that it is often
true. Human beings have been created with amazing potential and capabilities to
be, to do, and to make.
We see this industrious resourcefulness of humanity on
display with the people of our story in Genesis 11. By God’s design, they had
all they needed to do great things. They had the gift of communication. Verse 1
says that “the whole earth used the same language and the same words.” You will
recall from the creation account that of all that God made, only mankind was
blessed with the ability to speak. Because God is a speaking God, those who
were made in His image were blessed with the gift of speech that they might
live in communion with Him and with one another. Because every person on the
earth after the flood descended from the sons of Noah, it is not surprising
that they were bound together by a common language. With that ability to
communicate, there was no limit to the plans that could be conspired and
carried out by men and women.
We also observe that human beings had the gift of
creativity. Just as we speak because God speaks, so also we create because God
creates. Creativity is part of His image within us. We do not create in the
same sense that God creates, for in His infinite and omnipotent nature He is
able to create something from nothing. Yet, man has the unique ability to take
of what God has created, and create something fresh and new with it as we carry
out our God-given commission to exercise dominion in the world. Francis
Schaeffer observed, “We never find an animal … making a work of art. On the
other hand, we never find men anywhere in the world or in any culture in the
world who do not produce art. Creativity is a part of the distinction between
man and non-man. … Creativity is intrinsic to our mannishness.”[2]
This creativity most often finds expression in our efforts
to solve problems. That’s what we find the people of Genesis 11 doing. As the
human race began moving away from the mountains of Ararat where Noah’s ark came
to rest, they journeyed east. The word used here for “journeying” speaks of
Bedouins moving from place to place, packing up their tents as they went along
each time. Coming to the plains of Shinar , they made the decision to
“settle” there. This is part of that region known as the “fertile crescent”
which became the cradle of civilization. No longer a people on the move, there
was a need to establish a more permanent kind of dwelling place. So they said
to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.” In the
asphalt pits that are abundant in the Tigris-Euphrates valley, they found tar
that was suitable for joining those bricks together to build things.[3] And
so they began to build homes. Several homes built become a village. Several
villages built, and soon enough there is a need for a larger structure of
society.
Here we find man’s industrious resourcefulness employed once
again, exercising the gift of civilization. They said, “Come, let us build for
ourselves a city.” Because God is a God of order, His image in man imparts to
us a desire for orderliness and an ability to create and maintain it. So, these
industrious folks began to orchestrate their building into a well-organized
city. There were systems of government and public administration necessary to
run this city, goods and services that could be provided to meet the needs of
the people. And man’s innate ability to order and organize came together to
create a civilization – a city from which nearly every known civilization of
the world today can trace its roots. When you study the history of world
cultures, invariably the study begins with the Mesopotamian society of Sumer . There is
a linguistic connection between Sumer
and the word found here in verse 2, Shinar
So, we see here the industrious resourcefulness of man. It
is a glimpse of mankind at his best: exercising his God-given abilities of
communication, creativity, and civilization as a reflection of His divine image
in which he was created. This industrious resourcefulness is so admirable when
it is employed for the God-given task of exercising dominion on the world as
God’s steward. It brings glory to God when it is carried out in the right way.
But as is so often the case, when mankind is at his best, it is not a far step
for him to degrade into his worst. That industrious resourcefulness can be set
to motion by entirely wrongheaded motivations, and that brings us to consider …
II. The Relentless Rebellion of Man
One of the strongest motivators in human achievement over
the course of history has been the desire to prove wrong those who say
something cannot be done. Tell me I can’t do it, and it only makes me want to
do it more. Some might say that this sense of indomitable drive, this defiant
spirit, is what makes us human. But that defiant spirit first made itself known
in humanity in our relationship with God when Adam willfully disobeyed the
Lord’s singular command. That led to the corruption of our entire race. By the
time of the flood, God evaluated humanity with this sobering indictment: “every
intent of the thoughts of his heart is only evil continually” (Gen 6:5). And
the situation was unchanged after the flood. After a life of God-honoring
obedience and service, Noah’s story ends with him naked, drunk, and shamed in
his tent.
Adam and Noah are great-grandfathers to us all, and the
apple has not fallen far from the tree. We bear the strong family resemblance
when we exercise our defiant sense of indomitable drive in rebellion to the
Lord. And it is in us from birth. Children do not need to learn how to disobey,
for they are born with a mastery of that deformed skill. Tell a child not to do
something, and it awakens an unquenchable desire to do that very thing! And as
adults, we seldom fare better.
Notice that the disobedience of the Shinar settlers
was deliberate. The operative word in verse 2 of our text is the word
“settled.” Now, there’s nothing wrong with being a settler, unless your calling
is to be a pioneer. These people had not been called to settle but to pioneer.
Remember that the Lord gave explicit instructions to Noah and his sons upon
their emergence from the Ark :
“Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” (9:1, 7). But this generation of
pioneers determined it was better for them to settle. With deliberate intent,
they disobeyed the Word of the Lord and put down roots in once place instead of
carrying out the Lord’s commission.
Not only was their disobedience deliberate, it was
determined. Once they settled, they began to conspire ways to remain settled.
“Let us make bricks,” they said, which led to, “Let us build a city.” And the
motive behind all this is spelled out in the final words of verse 4: “otherwise
we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” But that was the
very thing that God had told them to do! Their deliberate and determined
disobedience to the Lord provoked them to dig in their heels and raise up their
fists to God and say, “We have come this far and no further! We shall not be
moved!”
This willful rebellion has played itself out over and over
again throughout human history. I dare say that most of us have observed it
playing out even in our own lives. We are all well and good to say to the Lord,
“Thy will be done,” so long as His will coincides with our own. But when His
will beckons us beyond our comfort zones, when it threatens to inconvenience
us, when it lays the axe at the root of our deepest personal desires and
devotions and bids us to chop, our natural inclination is to sink in our heels
and raise up our defiant fists to God and say, “No! My will be done!” And
rather than yield ourselves to the kindness of God which leads us to repentance
of our deliberate disobedience, we are more inclined to persist in determined
disobedience until at last we are ready to make that final leap of unreasonable
faith in which we say, “OK, then, I will just consider God to be nonexistent!”
This is what Paul speaks of in Romans 1 as “suppressing the truth in
unrighteousness.” However, we cannot escape the nagging awareness, though we
dare not admit it publicly, that God’s existence is not dependent on our
acknowledgment of Him.
C. S. Lewis said,
When we want to be something other
than the thing God wants us to be, we must be wanting what, in fact, will not
make us happy. Those Divine demands which sound to our natural ears most like
those of a despot and least like those of a lover, in fact marshall us where we should want to go if we
knew what we wanted. … A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to
worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word
‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.[5]
And so these settlers of Shinar have reached that point in
their relentless rebellion. Crayon in hand, they prepare to scrawl God out of
existence in a demonstration of our next observation, which is …
III. The Arrogant Idolatry of Man
It’s been almost 20 years since the mass suicide of the
followers of the Heavens Gate cult in San
Diego . Do you remember those guys? Their bodies were
all found wearing matching sweatsuits and Nike shoes, having been convinced by
their leader that their spaceship was coming with the Hale-Bopp comet to take
them to a new level of existence. I remember a news commentator saying these
profound words: “When people stop believing in reality, they don’t believe
nothing. They will believe anything.” That’s not new. That’s been true since
the beginning.
Having determined that they would not yield to the word and
will of God, the settlers of Shinar
determined that they could get along just fine without Him. Rather than
worshiping and serving the God who made them in His image, they began to craft
for themselves a religion made after their own image. Thus arrogance is always
at the root of idolatry, because it is always ultimately a worship of self.
Verse 4 shows us how it took shape at Shinar .
It began with the pursuit of heaven without God. After
determining to build for themselves a city, they began to build “a tower whose
top will reach into heaven.” There are many scholars who believe that it was
not a literal heaven that they hoped to attain by their tower, but a
representative one. That is, atop this tower would be a temple where acts of
worship and divination could take place, perhaps in devotion to the star
patterns or something. And so this tower began to rise. All across the
Mesopotamian region, archaeologists have uncovered the efforts of those who
followed in the footsteps of these tower builders. The ancient ziggurats, a precursor to the pyramids, were
built with ramps and stairs leading up to the central shrine on the pinnacle.
And the names of almost all of them speaks of something to the effect of “The
Link Between Heaven and Earth,” or similar. The tower in Genesis 11 was the
prototype of them all.
We see their ambition clearly in their own words. Having
rejected God’s word and God’s will, and determined to live this life in this
world on their own terms, they concocted a system by which they hoped to attain
the next life in the next world on their own terms without God as well. All
that was necessary – climb that tower! We will apply all of our effort to build
it, and then apply all of our effort to climb it in order to get to heaven. Who
needs God? We can do it ourselves!
This arrogant idolatry has persisted in false belief systems
throughout history. Work as hard as you can! Apply your own effort! Build as
high as you can build, and climb as high as you can climb! That will get you to
heaven! So says every religious system apart from biblical Christianity in the
world to this day. From the false gospel of prosperity televangelists, to the
homespun mythology of folk religion, to the pantheons and pagodas of Hinduism
and Buddhism, and at all points in between, the common thread running through
all these systems of belief is that you can get to heaven on your own merit and
effort if you work hard enough.
Not only did they seek heaven without God, they also sought
glory apart from God. They say, “Let us make for ourselves a name!” Standing on
plains of freshly deposited soil and sand that had buried generations of
nameless, forgotten people who perished in the flood, these people wanted to do
something great that would give them fame and notoriety! What’s so wrong with
that? Well, in fact, there could be a great deal wrong with it. You see, in the
Bible, the right to “name” something implies authority over it. God names
things with symbolic names of what He is going to do with them or make of them.
So He named the first man Adam. He changed Abram’s name to Abraham. He changed
Jacob’s name to Israel. And so on. And He gave man authority over creation, and
man exercised it in Genesis 2:19-20 as he gave names to all the animals. But God
did not give man the right to make a name for himself, as if man was the sole
authority over himself. Contrary to Henley’s famous poem, Invictus, I am not the master
of my fate: I am not the captain of
my soul.” Man brings glory to God by living out the purpose for which God
creates us and names us by His sovereign authority. But these people wanted to
bring glory to themselves and make a name for themselves apart from God. Oh,
they earned for themselves a name, alright. Verse 9 says, “Therefore its name
was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the whole
earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the whole
earth.” The name that they made for themselves lives in infamy, an epitaph of a
civilization bent on godless corruption, which resulted in confusion and
dispersion.
John Calvin exposes this arrogant idolatry to which we are
all disposed by contrasting it with genuine faith in God. He says, “What is
more consonant with faith than to recognize that we are naked of all virtue, in
order to be clothed by God? That we are empty of all good, to be filled by Him?
That we are slaves to sin, to be freed by Him? Blinded, to be illumined by Him?
Lame, to be made straight by Him? Weak, to be sustained by Him? To take away
all occasion for glorying, that He alone may stand forth gloriously, and we
glory in Him?”[6]
Heaven cannot be found apart from Him. Glory is nowhere to
be attained except for in Him. And with mankind demonstrating the use of his
best abilities to carry out his worst designs, divine intervention is
unavoidable. And so we come at last to …
IV. The Surprising Condescension of God
There are some poor, unfortunate people who believe that God
does not have a sense of humor. How dull their lives must be! God has a
remarkable sense of humor, and He is not opposed to showing it off from time to
time. How does he respond to man’s attempt to build a tower as high as he can
build it, all the way to heaven? Verse 5 says, “The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had
built.” So infinitesimal was this monument to man’s own greatness, it was barely
visible from God’s throne in heaven. So He had to come down. He condescended to intervene in humanity’s
endeavors, and He did so in surprising ways.
We observe His patient condescension. He knew what these
people devised to do before they did it. And at any point in the process He
could have put a halt to it. But He waited patiently, and He allowed them to
finish the project, giving them time all along to come to the end of themselves
and repent of the folly of their rebellion, or to be ensnared by their own
vainglory. It is as though He gives mankind enough rope to serve as a lifeline
or a noose, and He leaves the choice to man what to make of it. How patient has
He been with you and me? In His kindness, He’s leading us to repentance, not
wanting us to perish, but wanting to rescue us before we destroy ourselves in
persistent rejection of Him.
We see His merciful condescension. Just as the eviction of
Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden may have seemed harsh but proved to be for
man’s own good, so here, the Lord came down to chasten humanity, but it was a
compassionate chastening. Verse 6, He says, “Behold they are one people, and
they all have the same language. And this
is what they began to do?” In other words, with all that man had going for
him, he chose to use it to destroy himself in rebellion. The Lord says, “Now
nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them.” In other words,
“If they think they can get to heaven without Me, and make a name for
themselves apart from Me, there’s really no limit to the depths of their
depravity!” And so He says in verse 7, “Come, let Us go down.” Notice the
parallel expression. Twice the builders said to one another, “Come, let us,”
and a third time, “let us.” Now God says with the final and authoritative word,
“Come, let Us go down and there
confuse their language so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”
Why not just topple the tower? Because they would just build another. God’s
chastening goes deeper. For man’s own good, God must make more difficult for
them to conspire themselves together to their own demise. How merciful it is
when God takes from us that which we love, that to which we aspire, but which in
the end would destroy us! As I look back on my life, I count few days happier
than the day in which the Lord toppled the tower of my own making and delivered
me from the name I was seeking to make for myself! How miserable I would have
been had He let me succeed! It is His mercy which we see in His condescension.
And we also see His sovereign condescension. Verse 8 says He
scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth. That’s what
He told them to do in the first place, and it was the very thing that they
refused to do, the very thing that they tried to prevent from happening! But
God has the final word! His will cannot be thwarted and will be done at the end of the day. I read these words and I wonder
how many churches in our day can be likened to these Shinar settlers? Concerned
only for their own institutional preservation and the making of a name for
themselves, they build and maintain and manicure their facilities, to the
neglect of the commission by which the sovereign Lord bids us go into all the
world making disciples for Him! God forbid that it ever be so of this body of
believers! May we never prioritize the preservation of our name or our building
project over the mission of God in Christ! If it were to happen, we would
deserve and invite upon ourselves the toppling of our building and the
scattering of our people.
All around the world, all throughout history, all around us
today, there are individuals and institutions, cities, countries, and cultures –
people made in God’s image and blessed with remarkable gifts that could be
employed in the service of God for the betterment of the world according to His
will. But time and time again, those capabilities are exercised in persistent
disobedience to Him, and those individuals, institutions, cities, countries and
cultures go about seeking a heaven of their own making and the glory of their
own name. But it is not in the building up of towers of our own effort that
heaven is found, that glory is attained, or that a name is made for ourselves.
It is in the coming down of the Lord. The Gospel of Jesus Christ does not tell
you to build your own way to heaven and climb as hard and high as you can climb.
It says that God has come down to rescue you – to live for you and die for you
in the Person of Christ. It is in Christ that the confusion and scattering of Babel begins to be
reversed. On the day of Pentecost, the Spirit of God began to unite the
languages of men again and gather a people together for God’s own glory and in
the name of Jesus. He is building for Himself a church, a family, a kingdom
into which those of every tribe and nation and tongue are gathered as one body
in advance of the day when we will behold the glory of God face to face. And
so, the Proverbs tell us, “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous
runs into it and is safe” (18:10).
[1] Donald
Grey Barnhouse, Genesis: A Devotional
Exposition (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1971), 1.70.
[2] Francis
Schaeffer, Art and the Bible (Downers Grove , Ill.
[3] Henry
Morris, The Genesis Record (Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1976), 268.
[4] Victor
P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis:
Chapters 1-17 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 351, esp. fn. 9, pp 351-2.
[5] C. S.
Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York:
Macmillan, 1962), 47.
[6] John
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian
Religion (ed. John T. McNeill; trans. Ford Lewis Battles; Philadelphia :
Westminster ,
1960), 1:13.
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