Genesis 11:1-9 Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke
Build on the Rock Summer Series 2 June 10, 2018 “The Tower of Babel”
God had a plan, but the people had a different plan. That describes a pattern that we find repeatedly throughout the Bible. And it starts very early in the history of the world God created. He created a perfect world. Everything fit together and worked together. The two perfect people were united to each other and to God. They lived in a paradise, a perfect paradise. God had a plan for the perfect paradise to continue. But the people came up with a different plan. No, it was not originally their idea. It was a plan hatched by Satan himself. But the people went with that plan, the eating of the forbidden fruit, instead of sticking to God’s plan. Many years later, the people of another time had a plan that they would continue in their wickedness. They would do whatever they wanted, whatever felt good to them. And they wouldn’t worry about what anyone else thought, least of all about what God thought. Their plan was different from God’s plan, and so he intervened by sending a flood that destroyed a world full of wickedness and rescued only a small handful of faithful followers of God, Noah and his family. God had a plan, but the people had a different plan. That describes the account before us today as well. The second building project that we consider in our summer series is one of the very first building projects mentioned in the Bible. It is the Tower of Babel. God had a plan. Even after the flood had wiped out the earth, God had a plan. He wanted people to multiply and to settle over the earth. Just as he had once shared the plan with Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, God wanted the people in the post-flood world to do the same. God had made the world for people. They were to have dominion over it, and according to the plan of God even after the flood, people would be found all over the earth where they would live, marry, raise families, and worship God. But the people had a different plan. They found a nice place to settle down, and they decided to stay there. Why say any painful good-byes? Why leave friends or relatives behind? Why go off to new and different places when you can settle down together? And then came the next phase of the people’s plan. “Let’s build a tower. But we won’t make it just any tower. We will build a tower that will reach up to the heavens. We’ll build a whole city, but the tower will be the centerpiece of it all. It will stand tall in the plain and proclaim to everyone that we have accomplished something. We will be famous, just like our tower!” So the people got to work, carrying out their plan instead of God’s plan. It is bad enough that the plan the people were following was not God’s plan, but if we think a bit deeper than that, we find the real problem with the people’s plan. It’s a problem that we call sin. And this is just one of many episodes that demonstrates so clearly just how insidious, just how dangerous, just how sinister sin really is. The problem is that sin is turning one’s back on God to be concerned only with oneself. That was the way it was when sin first entered a previously perfect world. Adam and Eve, tested and tempted by the devil’s whispers, concluded that God was withholding something from them. In spite of being set in the middle of paradise itself, they came to want the one thing that they weren’t supposed to have. And Satan convinced them that what God was withholding from them was something that they would really want. And want it they did, so they took the forbidden fruit, and they ate it. The pattern was set. And so many sins follow that same pattern. Fast-forward again through several intervening generations and the devastation of the flood, and look at what happened around the Tower of Babel. The people thought that God was trying to withhold something from them. If they would scatter, they would miss out on something. They wouldn’t be happy with God’s plan. They wanted what they wanted. They wanted what God told them they should not have. Don’t you see that same pattern playing itself out in your life, too? The problem of sin really hasn’t changed that much, has it? God tells us that we should help others and serve others, but we figure that will take away from our enjoyment of life. We want to help ourselves. God assigns us important roles and gives us responsibilities, maybe as parents or as children or as employers or employees. There are any
number of them. But how often do we try to avoid or ignore those responsibilities and instead do what feels good to us? God invites our regular and generous offerings, but we crave financial security and think that the way to achieve it is to hold back our offerings. Whatever it is, and maybe it’s something completely unrelated to the issues I have mentioned, aren’t there times when you have said, “I am going to make a name for myself?” Sin is a powerful force in our lives. It means that often our plans simply do not line up with the plans that God has for us. God had an answer when the plans of people didn’t match his plans on the plain in Shinar. The people had been working together and needed to in order to carry out their plan. So God made it impossible. He confused their languages so that they could not understand each other. Suddenly the building of the city and the building of the tower stopped. And God’s plan won out. The people scattered. They apparently found those with whom they could still communicate and they settled together in a new place and others somewhere else. Now some people would look at this and say, “That’s an interesting story. That’s an interesting explanation made up to tell us why there are so many different languages spoken.” It is an interesting story, but it is not a myth or a legend. This is not “once upon a time.” It is, “people gathered at a particular plain in Shinar.” This is the true account of God punishing people for their sinfulness and stubborn refusal to obey and through it accomplishing his purposes. So is that the only answer that we have? When we look at our own lives and find the same pattern of sinfulness, do we just wait for God to punish us? Thankfully, the answer is “no.” Now we find a new pattern. God intervenes. God steps in when he determines it is necessary. He stepped in to send a sinful Adam and Eve out of the garden. He stepped in with a mighty flood and a boat for safety. He stepped in at the Tower of Babel. He “came down to see” is the way Genesis describes it. He did something. He acted. God certainly doesn’t only act in punishment though, does he? Just as he once came down to see such wickedness, he has also come down to save from such wickedness. God’s pattern of intervention doesn’t only mean punishment. It also means salvation. He came down, true God, as a human baby. He saw and he lived with wickedness as gruesome as anything that happened at Babel. And in this intervention, God himself in the person of Jesus Christ lived a life that was perfectly in line in every aspect with the Father’s plan for him. God carried out his plan to undo all the other, all the evil plans that people have planned and carried out. At Babel we see sin causing separation, separating people from God and from each other. But God intervened to bring people back to him and back to each other. Just three weeks ago we celebrated Pentecost. One of the great miracles of that day was when people who spoke all sorts of languages, who came from their homes that were scattered throughout the world, came together to hear and to understand God’s Word in their own language. What God had once confused at Babel for a brief time at Pentecost he undid. As powerful and prevalent and terrible as sin is, our God is stronger. He is more powerful. He makes plans, and he makes them succeed. And the greatest plan of all was the one that he made to save a world of sinners from their sin. So there are things about our building project today that are not fun to think about. What happened at the Tower of Babel is difficult because it demonstrates just how powerful sin is. But that is exactly what we need to hear to appreciate why God went to such lengths to forgive sin. And in response to his powerful love for us, now we have a new plan. Now we will strive to make all our plans match God’s plans revealed to us in his Word. We will praise him for carrying out his plans for us and trust that he will continue to help us by his power and his grace.
The Text: Genesis 11:1–9 (NIV) 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.