Worship Service Sunday, September 29, 2024
We’ve been talking about Noah the last couple of Sundays, and when God blessed Noah and his sons after the global flood, he told them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. But only about a century later we see that man seems to have no interest in obeying the command to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The one thing I still don’t get about the people in the Old Testament is that they heard God’s voice, they saw God, but yet they continued to do this. Yikes! Did they not know?
The prideful people built a city with a high tower enabling them to remain together in defiance of God’s command. Ooh, what was God’s command? Be fruitful and multiply and fill the whole earth. The tower was composed of brick and mortar and was made like a fortress against any natural or supernatural attempts to knock it down. Where was the Tower of Babel located? No one knows for sure the exact location. However, some experts say that it is located at the very center of Babylon, which is now Iraq. So in my conversation with my son last night, who I run my sermons by, he of course was in Iraq. He saw where the Tower of Babel was or Babel was. It is still brick around it but it’s now a flower garden So he was actually in the very area and they have proven that’s where the Tower of Babel is. Now, if you go on the internet, many, many people on the internet will say there was no such thing. But I have an eyewitness to the Tower of Babel. So, that’s pretty interesting. He was right there.
What does Babel mean? At first the meaning of Babel meant the gateway to heaven. But God noticed the strong force of the people’s unity, pride, and disobedience. And so God stopped the construction of the tower. Thus the meaning of Babel was changed, or Babel, and means to confuse. We use that today, babble, confuse. This, according to the Bible, is how the different languages of the world started. Again, we have people saying, “no”. This was the prideful people’s way of staying in one place instead of going throughout the earth as God had commanded them. Of course, this was not pleasing to God. But in his infinite mercy he intervened by not bringing the flood, which he promised never to do again, and by not driving them out to be wanderers as he did with Cain. God and his infinite wisdom divided their single language into multiple languages. For the first time in Earth’s history there was a language barrier. Without a common language, the people who had been so prideful and so certain about staying together, were now unable to even understand each other. They no longer could continue constructing the city due to the fact that they did not communicate or could not communicate with each other. With this lack of communication, the idea of living together in one spot was no longer appealing. God and his wisdom, right? They also might have figured after what God had done that maybe something even worse would happen to them if they continued to obey God? You think? God’s judgment was effective. The attempt of one world kingdom fractured. People began scattering from the city.
This part of mankind’s history surely answers some of the questions and the problems that we are facing today. It challenges the idea of one world order. It also explains the diversity in languages and people’s groups that we see today. This story is also a history on how the various languages became part of our world. It also challenges the basis for racism. That one group of people is more intelligent and more advanced than another group of people because of their language, skin color, or way of life. The Bible’s account of the events of Babel confirms Babel confirms that all people are descendants from the people split at Babel who were all direct recent descendants of Noah and consequently from the first humans Adam and Eve. Therefore there’s no basis for racism as all people are related and made in the image of God. They are all equal and all equally human.
So you might ask why people from different parts of the world act and look different from each other. As the people were spread out and separated from each other, Babel from after Babel, their gene pools were largely isolated. The further apart they were, the more their features took on different eye shapes, skin tones that were dominant with each group. These minor genetic differences making up only a small percentage of the individual’s DNA are the natural result of the loss of genetic variability that occurs when people are isolated from one another. So it has nothing to do with a human being. It just has to do with your region, where you’re at, and being isolated, you take on different characteristics. What happened at the Tower of Babel is a lesson for us today. By causing multiple languages, God separated nations very effectively. Secular theories today always come up empty when they’re trying to figure out the evolution of the languages.
They don’t seem to be able to disprove the Bible from crediting God with the gift of diversity of language. The words language, tongue, speech, and word appear in the Bible at least 1,401 times. We as Christians believe that the diversity of language started with the Tower of Babel. In today’s world’s nations that once feared God, they now ignore him and despise his word. Not much has changed in the first 4,000 years since the Tower of Babel.
What are some things we can learn from the story of the Tower of Babel? Number 1, pride and disobedience should not be part of our life. The people of Babel built a tower to gain glory for themselves, which is in direct defiance of God’s will. The tower and city represented the sin of pride, which is an attempt to gain significance apart from God. Number 2 – humility. Humility before God is important and God will lift up those who are humble. Number 3 – trusting in God’s ways. These and commandments are higher than our own and building our lives in God’s word will help us through life’s ups and downs. We need to trust in his will. Number 4 – God’s awesome power. The Tower of Babel shows us that the only one who has the power in this world is God. We lack the awesomeness of God. The importance of obedience to God. Number 5 – Obedience. When we are obedient to God in his direction, then there is order in society. We see today the chaos that is being created from disobedience in God. Every human heart has a desire to belong, like in Cheers. We want and need a place to call home. The people of Babel wanted a place to call home, but they made one huge mistake. They were not building a home with God in it. They thought they were better than God, superior to God. They lacked humility. In today’s world, the problem is we as a people try to find our significance and sense of belonging in other people, jobs, and possessions, and not in the Lord. As Christians, our identity must be found as children of God because we are made in the image of God. Genesis 1:26-27 says, “then God said, let us make man in our own image, according to our own likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creepy thing that creeps on the earth. God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them.”
The failures that we see today in our world is because people leave God out. They try to do it on their own. Boy, that’s here. There is too much pride in our world today. People seek personal greatness just as the people of Babel did, but greatness is in God alone. 1 Peter 5:5 says, “You younger men, likewise, be subject to your elders and all of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another for God is opposed to be to the proud but gives grace to the humble”.
God always Always has the last word. We see this time and a time again throughout the Bible, especially when people are being disobedient and not following God’s words. In today’s society, people think that if they do enough good works, live a good moral life, or if they are religious enough, they can get to heaven. But there is only one way. And we know this as Christians. God has to come down to us. That is why Jesus came. We are all children of God. All nations are of one blood. God only separated the nations by location and language, not by blood. But we all come from the same parents, Adam and Eve. We all have the same problem – sin, but we all have the same hope, which is life eternal through Jesus. We praise and thank God that we can learn from those people in the Bible that have gone before us. We praise God that through Jesus we can be part of something greater than ourselves and we have the hope of eternal life. Remember God is just a prayer away. Amen.
