Some of you may have read the Old Testament before and remember the story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11). To help you recall, this story comes right after the epic saga of Noah in Biblical sequence. What I have always found to be sad in this story is how in so few years after the flood, where we saw God destroy everyone and every thing because of evil everywhere on the earth (Genesis 6:5)… that here we see once again, the people of the earth essentially following the same path. When will they learn?
God had already promised to not destroy the earth again (Genesis 8:21) but when He comes down and sees what the people are doing and saying, I can only imagine what He was thinking, something like, “here we go again”. Possibly? But I would like to give you another perspective on this issue that I heard shared recently that I found enlightening.
All my life I just took this story at face value; In other words, God came down, saw these people full of themselves to the point that they decided to build a tower to Heaven. In their minds, they were working every day on this project and as it grew taller and taller, they hoped they would somehow meet God in the air? From our vantage point now, that idea seems extremely crazy but let’s go with it for a minute; In the meantime, God comes down, sees what they are doing and instead of wiping them out…again…He confuses them by changing their languages. In other words, one minute you can communicate with the guy next to you and the next minute he is speaking French. Very quickly after that happened, the people collected together in their language groups and then went off and settled elsewhere leaving the tower project unfinished.
I would like to submit the idea to you that on that day, when God confused them with different languages, He saved them from sure destruction. Think of this scenario this way:
- These people were doing what THEY wanted to do and NOT what God wanted them to do…
- By pursuing what they wanted to do, they excluded God.
- Because their pursuit was for their own glory and NOT Gods, this is a quick ticket to a very bad place.
Guys, I share this with you because I know it is easy to get sidetracked along the way in our lives. The pursuit of what we want to do is a very powerful thing and can or will overwhelm us to the point of complete exclusion from God. That is exactly what these people from the tower began to say:
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.” Genesis 11:4
I am telling you that God saved mankind that day by confusing them with different languages. They were on their way to sure destruction with the intent inside their hearts…
I am telling you the very same thing today. If your existence is to make a name for yourself at the exclusion of God, you too are on the wrong road and I caution you right now to recognize this and refocus back on Christ.
Let me leave you with this verse in Proverbs:
Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established. Proverbs 16:3
An easier way to look at this verse is simply this:
Commit your plans to God FIRST…and they will succeed…
Until next time Guys…
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I wanted to chime in and say: why would a God confuse man with the languages? Surely after allowing man to sink to such lows as are observed pre-Noah, it becomes clear that God is willing to allow significant tribulations to befall mankind as a whole. Without intervention.
Would allowing man to fail not make more sense? If a group of men attempt a great deed, their leader befalls a tragedy, and they fail, the question becomes “Did they fail from the tragedy or from their own hubris; was the deed possible or did they just suffer from bad luck?” A tower to heaven is impossible, we know this now. But it strikes me as odd that an omnipotent God would deny such a learning experience to his people in one year (XXXX BC), then allow his people to travel far beyond a tower, to the moon and planets beyond in another (1969). To read the transcripts of the astronauts and cosmonauts it is clear, they believed they were prodding god. Is this not the same hubris?
Despite my own beliefs, reading this article caused me to look at this tale in a purely analytical light. Unfortunately, it sounds more like one of the Roman’s or Aesop’s fables than a grand truth.
Yours in Pondering,
Sum Guy
In India
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