In
this week’s reading through the Old Testament, which brought me through Genesis
6 – 12, Psalm 6 – 12, and Joshua 6 – 12, I found a passage that confounded me a
little. I was half-tempted to just look
past it and move into a different passage to write about this week, but
something about it wouldn’t let me.
You’ll see why in a minute. The
passage in question was Genesis 11:1 – 8 …
At one time all the people of
the world spoke the same language and used the same words. As the people migrated to the east, they
found a plain in the land of Babylonia and settled there. They began saying to each other, “Let’s make
bricks and harden them with fire.” (In this region bricks were used instead of
stone, and tar was used for mortar.) Then
they said, “Come, let’s build a great city for ourselves with a tower that
reaches into the sky. This will make us famous and keep us from being scattered
all over the world.” But the Lord came
down to look at the city and the tower the people were building. “Look!” he said. “The people are united,
and they all speak the same language. After this, nothing they set out to do
will be impossible for them! Come,
let’s go down and confuse the people with different languages. Then they won’t
be able to understand each other.” In
that way, the Lord scattered them all over the world, and they stopped building
the city. That is why the city
was called Babel, because that is where the Lord confused the people with
different languages. In this way he scattered them all over the world.
The
part of this that I struggled with a little was where God says, “After this, nothing
they set out to do will be impossible for them!” And then he causes the people to speak
different languages so they wouldn’t be able to understand one another. I read this a couple times and also looked at
different translations and still couldn’t shake what God was saying … or why He
said it or why it was concerning.
Basically,
I was thinking, why would God be worried about what the people would set their
minds to? Why would He say that if they
spoke the same language that they’d be able to have nothing be impossible for
them? Was God worried about the people
being able to accomplish anything, and hence be on equal par with Him? I couldn’t imagine that to be the case. But I really couldn’t figure out what the
issue was here. I sought the Lord on it
a little more, and read some commentaries on the chapter to see what I could
find, because frankly, this was confusing to me.
Here’s
what I’ve come up with and how it pertains to us.
God’s
observation in this endeavor was NOT that the people would, by virtue of
building the tower, become omnipotent somehow like He is omnipotent. People can never become omnipotent. But that doesn’t stop us from believing that
we can be. I think that’s the heart of
the matter here.
God
understood that the people who were trying to build this tower were beginning
to develop a bit of a mob mentality that would ultimately have led them to the
prideful thought that nothing would be impossible for them. In other words, the sin of pride would have
begun taking root, leading them to believe that they could themselves accomplish
anything. We know from experience that
this isn’t the case … as much as the bubble-gum-flavored motivational phrases
today might tell us otherwise. “You can
do anything you set your mind to,” popular culture wants us to think. Well, I’ve never been able to dunk a
basketball on a regulation hoop, and no matter how much I set my mind to it, it
ain’t gonna happen. 8-)
Now,
I understand the importance of believing in the impossible from time to time,
and my point in this isn’t to deflate us.
Rather, let’s get back to the tower.
The people here had already begun letting the drug of pride traverse
their veins, and God saw the danger in it.
What was the danger? Well, the
more the people might have thought they could do anything, that nothing was
impossible for them (despite the factuality otherwise), the less they would
rely on God and the less God would have preeminence in their lives. How many times in our life have we allowed
the same type of dangerous thoughts seep in?
For me, too many times to count … and the slippery slope in the thinking
is real. The more we arrogantly believe
in our own ability being the key to achieving something, even mundane and
minor, the more we’re apt to attribute to ourselves the key to life,
fulfillment and success. Anytime we push
ourselves to the front, there’s no room for God to occupy that place.
So,
was God being mean-spirited and jealous in this situation? Not at all.
In fact, He was being gracious and merciful. How? He
foresaw the perilous situation and intervened directly … not by wiping out the
masses, though this would have been warranted, but by creating variation in
their language and removing their ability to speak to one another. God jumped in the way, and took away their
opportunity for a woeful cascade of sinfulness and evil decision-making.
How
I wish God would always
impede our ability to sin to the same degree!
Don’t get me wrong, the Bible is clear that God always provides a way of
escape from sin (1 Corinthians 10:13), but He allows us the opportunity to
choose to avert ourselves from bad choices.
In this case, He jumped right in and stopped them from a life-altering
blunder. Think about the amazing mercy
of His action! He stopped them from
essentially destroying themselves eternally.
We
must always be very careful of the type of thinking that led to the potential
building of the tower of Babel. We’re
all susceptible to it … every one of us ... to thinking that our own efforts
are all that are needed to help us succeed, or achieve whatever end WE decide
for ourselves. Thinking of this type is
nothing short of pride, arrogance, and sin.
The consequences of this, as Paul points out in Romans 6:23, is
spiritual eternal death. That’s because
the logical progression of this thinking is to minimize and marginalize God.
Let’s
prayerfully ask God to reveal any areas of our lives that we placing ourselves
in headship for, or where we are shoving God aside. Let’s ask him to remind us that He created
all things, owns all things, controls all things, and determines all
things. Since that’s all true, it must
hold that we did and do none of that and therefore we must trust God for all
things. Once we do, then He can work
to bring about the ends He alone knows are best for us. In other words, let’s let Him be God, since
we’re NOT.
Be
blessed this week!
MR
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