Building Into Heaven In Disobedience – The Tower Of Babel - Genesis 11 Series

Those on the plain of Shinar had not obeyed God’s command to expand or to utilise the abilities God had supplied. Do we use the abilities God has given, even in part? It must have a personal application. In verse 4 further reasons are given for their decisions. Their stated aims were clear.

Top to the heavens

Make for ourselves a name

Live in disobedience

This was man’s religion on his own terms. He will establish his own form of worship and his own worship centre, triumphs to the human mind. Of course, God is excluded. The post-diluvians knew what God had commanded and that is why they said this, “lest we be scattered abroad,” and that was nothing but defiance.

VERSE 5: THE BUILDERS AND PEOPLE FAILED THE INSPECTION!

{{Genesis 11:5 “And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built.”}}

God was aware of all that was happening. He knows the thoughts and intents of the heart. The skeptics who love to think they have found contradictions in the bible, try to claim that if God was God, He would have been aware of what was happening so He would not have “come down” to look at it. The Lord knew perfectly well, but this account is written by God for men, and in terms men would understand readily. Bishop Ellicott says it this way –[["The narrative is given in that simple anthropological manner usual in the Book of Genesis."]] In other words, “God reviewed what man had done”. (The Lord knew all about the Samaritan woman before she had arrived).

We will look at this “tower”. “whose top will reach into heaven,” . . . . The following is recorded by Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges – [[Probably the words are intended quite literally to suggest the endeavour to “reach unto” Heaven, which was regarded as a solid vault. As the highest stage in an Assyrian or Babylonian pyramid, Ziggurat, was surmounted by a shrine of the deity, there is perhaps more meaning and less fancifulness in these words than has often been suspected.

The famous tower at Borsippa, on the left bank of the Euphrates, whose ruins now go by the name of Birs Nimrud, was a temple dedicated to Bel-Nebo, and rose in seven tiers or stages, representing the seven planets. This building, having fallen into ruins, was restored by Nebuchadnezzar. A similar building, E-sagil, dedicated to Bel Merodach, the patron god of the city, must have been one of the most enormous structures of ancient Babylon. The fame of temple towers or pyramids, Ziggurats, of this description was doubtless widely current throughout Western Asia, and may have given rise to strange legends concerning their erection in primitive times.]] (end of quote).

VERSES 6 - 7: WORLD SOCIALISM AND THE FRUIT OF HUMANISM

{{Genesis 11:6-7 And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language, and this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”}}