The story of the Tower of Babel is a sad description of breakdown of fellowship, growing isolation and confusion. It all results from human beings’ failing to live in dependence on God, becoming proud of their achievements and determined to be the source of their own security. That was the root cause of the chaos they brought on themselves.
After the Flood the population had rapidly multiplied at God’s command to Noah to ’Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth’ (Gen 9:1). God had blessed mankind in its fresh start, confirming His covenant to Noah. But mankind continued to be a disappointment to God. One particular group migrated to what is now known as Iraq. It became the centre of civilization of the ancient world. Babylon was the summit of human achievement. It became the most influential city on the plain. A stepped pyramid in the form of a tower, called a ziggurat, was built, honouring the god Marduk, although nothing of it remains today.
The people of Babel, several generations on from Noah, had developed technical skills. The builders of the Tower had gained sufficient architectural and mathematical knowledge to undertake a large construction project. The Creator God had endowed mankind with intelligence. This was good and fine, using their God-given gifts. They had also developed as a community, for we find them saying, ’Let us build.’ But they were sadly lacking in several ways. In the first place there was their:
POVERTY OF SPIRITUALITY
God had allowed the development of mankind because He had given it the priceless gift of freewill but, because of man’s fallen nature, the bias towards sin is clearly seen. The statement ’Let us build’ is incomplete. Its real form is ’Let us build ourselves’. Their project was theirs alone. They had left behind the spiritual heritage of Noah and forgotten their Creator. They were building according to human wisdom. It reminds me of the verse, ’Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labour in vain’ (Psalm 127:1). They were like the builder in the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Builders (Matt 7:24-27). Jesus highlighted the contrast between the two types when He said that the wise ’hears these words of mine and does them’.
The builders of the Tower knew what God’s standards were but decided they knew best. We can either build on Him and His teaching, which we will find as solid as rock; or else we can build on any other religion or philosophy that the world offers, and we will find that it’s sand, and in the last day it will spell ruin. I recently read a book entitled ’Discerning the Spirit of the Age’. The writer, Derek Tidball, illustrated his expose of the 21st century culture, often alien to God, by observing the slogans and values by which several global brands market their products. Obviously, there were some positive things in them but the downside revealed the superficiality of today’s culture. I’d like to share with you some of the points he made.
He mentioned Nike, the sports shoe manufacturer. Nike’s marketing symbol, the ’swoosh’ - <______ - is easily recognised. The slogan is ’Just do it!’ It invites people to take control of their lives; to break out of the dullness of the mundane and achieve. It’s a rallying cry to motivation and to action. Of course there’s nothing wrong with that in the correct context. The work ethic is good. For the Christian it’s a sound principle.
There are times as Nike tells us, we should ’just do it!’ As a piece of secondary advice it’s good but it can be wrong if becomes the main idea of life. Nike’s philosophy is that we already have within us all the resources we need to be achievers. We’re self-sufficient; we have the capacity within ourselves to reach life’s goal. It’s all there. Our works can save us. So what’s stopping us - ’Just do it!’ The non-Christian way of salvation is ’the self-movement of man’ towards God. Martyn Luther called it ’climbing up to the majesty on high.’ The human spirit can ’soar aloft towards God.’ It’s the self-confident optimism of ’the ascent of man’, the goal of evolution. But what has it achieved? It certainly hasn’t outlawed crime, war, selfishness and all the other ills that beset our poor planet.
According to Jesus, such a line of argument is deeply flawed. It’s not those who are rich in their own spirits, or think they are, who are blessed. It’s those who are poor in spirit - those who know how spiritually bankrupt they are and recognise their inability to make up the shortfall themselves, who are blessed. It is they who will enter the kingdom of God and not those who think they can make it by their own efforts. At the heart of the gospel is the fact that we can only get back in touch with our Creator through what Jesus has done for us. It’s not a self-help gospel. It’s about Jesus supplying what we lack. He made the connection we couldn’t make ourselves. It’s not ’Just do it!’ but ’Jesus did it!’ - that’s the slogan that counts.
’Come,’ said the people of Babel, ‘let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens.’ The Tower wasn’t designed to reach heaven literally, but to gain spiritual resources for themselves. Their vision to reach heaven was a human attempt to cross from ’man’s place’, the earth, to God’s. Heaven isn’t to be grasped at by human ambition. Heaven is found only as a gift of God’s grace. Only Jesus could make the connection we couldn’t make ourselves. He did that by coming down to this earth. He alone could offer the perfect life to God that we, as fallen beings, are incapable of offering to God. He alone maintained an unblemished relationship with His Father. It led Him to the Cross, where, in apparent defeat, He made possible the restoration of the broken connection with God. As St Paul tells us, it’s ’through His poverty’ that we ’become rich’ (2 Cor 8:9).
The builders of the Tower of Babel did the opposite. They wanted to go upwards by their own efforts. It was an expression of the proud. They didn’t stop to consider if that’s what the Creator God wanted them to do. They believed themselves to be free agents. Freedom of expression and action is a paramount objective of this age. Politicians have recklessly been travelling down this road. There’s a one-way street of deregulating practically everything in the moral sphere – alcohol, drugs, the sanctity of life of the unborn and at its end. The lifestyle values defined in Scripture are discounted or rubbished. What matters is personal freedom of choice. The slogan is: if it’s right for you, it’s all right! This is the post-modern way of thinking.
There’s the tendency to pick and choose the bits of the Bible that suit us, rather like as we ’pick and mix’ from a range of toffees in a sweet shop! The way of least resistance to the challenge of the Christian life is to read it selectively and interpret it to our own advantage, ignoring the uncomfortable bits or write off those parts that jar with contemporary culture. We have to ask ourselves if our spiritual foundations are other than God’s revealed Word. As Christians we’re called to be disciples of Jesus Christ. It may mean that we have to take the unpopular stance of standing in contradiction of the culture of the present world.
The early Babylonians had burdened themselves with a wrong set of values. They were living in a world of fantasy, of make-believe. It’s a bit like a visit to Disneyworld. Yes, it’s colourful and pleasurable for a day’s outing if you like that sort of thing. But it’s all stage-managed. The sun shines perpetually, smiles never dim and the music never stops. It’s a matter of ’follow that dream’ but in reality it’s a sham. I understand that those who go on the ride called ’The Space Mountain’ get the feeling that they’re falling uncontrollably through space, but in fact, the ride is highly controlled and the wall is just a metre away! It’s total illusion. The reality of earth is different.
When Jesus came to earth as a human being He entered life in all its brokenness and suffering. He not only encountered evil but He genuinely overcame it. He did more than merely express sympathy with those who were suffering because their world was such an awful place to live in. He didn’t just make them feel good, just like a visit to Disney but doesn’t change anything. He took action that effected a genuine change in their situation. The storm was calmed. Devils were expelled; disease was cured and even death was defeated. Jesus never invites people to enter an escapist world where we simply pretend that the harsh realities of life don’t matter. He goes right into the thick of all the ugliness and pain of our lives and meets it head on. We’ve looked at the builders of Babel’s Poverty of Spirituality but it was also compounded by their:
PRIDE OF LIFE
The motivation of the builders of the Tower of Babel was ’so that we may make a name for ourselves...’ They were out to build a reputation for themselves, to be lords of the earth. Why was their ambition doomed to failure? It was a manifestation of pride but pride goes before a fall. Sinful man isn’t capable of ’making a name’. It’s only God who can do that. Sin’s great trick is to create in our minds an illusion that we can distance ourselves from God. Not, of course, to forget Him entirely, but to keep Him in His place as a kind of chaplain. He’s fine if all He’s allowed to do is merely to sanction our schemes and rubber-stamps our decisions. But that’s what God won’t do!
The early Babylonians’ ambition of ’making a name’ for themselves was to ’build ourselves a city’ but it was only an earth-dream. From the second generation onwards of the human family mankind had been moving this way. Due to their sinful nature, although they were outwardly self-confident, they were essentially insecure. They wanted to create a city as a divine gateway to an earthly paradise. Superficially the great cities of the world express the glory and power of the world - but it’s a fallen world. J B Priestley wrote a powerful play, ’They Came to a City’ in which he portrayed the disillusionment of those who entered it.
The city’s splendid buildings dedicated to commerce and the arts celebrate human genius and human glory. They look fine on the glossy pages of books that tourists take home for their coffee tables. But those outward images don’t tell the whole story. They are all part of the ’Babylon’ of this world. Behind the gleaming facade is the decay and squalor of a shantytown made of plastic and cardboard shacks, with chaos, violence and drug abuse. What an illustration of people who have been mislead by the devil into accepting his values rather than the claims of Christ!
This was reflected in the name they gave it, ’Babil’, meaning ’the gate of the gods’. The people of Babil thought their grandiose project of a city ’with a tower that reaches to the heavens’ would ensure the preservation of their identity and control their fortunes. They were sadly mistaken, as they hadn’t reckoned on the all-seeing eye of the Creator. The writer of Genesis tells us ’But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building.’ The whole scheme was a shambles. There’s a delicious irony here. The Tower isn’t the gate of the gods: it’s so small that God has to come down to see it!
And as for the building materials themselves, there’s a scornful reference to them: ’They used bricks instead of stone, and tar instead of mortar.’ The Mesopotamian plain lacks the stone deposits the Egyptians used effectively for their timeless pyramid monuments. The very materials the Babylonians used were bound to decay. Just think what the summer temperatures of 50 degrees centigrade would do to tar! No wonder there’s nothing left of the Tower today! This serves as a reminder that when technology ceases to be our servant, it quickly becomes our master, and human communities and human values are all too often the casualties. There’s a hint of mockery in God’s description of the Babylonians’ feeble attempt to scale the heavens: ’They have begun to do this; then nothing they plan will be impossible for them.’
It’s true to say ’Man proposes but God disposes! Psalm 2 asks ’Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? ... The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them’ (1,3). That’s how He reacted to the Babylonians feeble attempt to dethrone Him. God saw that He was no longer the centre of their lives and in judgement He decreed that, as the apostle Paul would write to the Romans: ’Since they did not think it worth while to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind’ (1:28). Isn’t that just what’s happening in society today? If it lives without God as the centre, there’s no central binding force at all. If it breaks the bounds of God-given order, the results are only disintegration and frustration.
’Come,’ said God, ’let us go down and confuse the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.’ And what was the result? ’They stopped building the city.’ From this point on in the Bible, Babylon represents the anti-God world system which, in its pride and arrogance, leads man to think that he can dethrone God and has no need of His laws and commandments. We see it rearing its ugly head in Daniel where the statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream is brought crashing down by the rock ’not cut with human hands’ (2:34) symbolising the kingdom of God. He always has the last word.
There’s a further picture in Revelation of God’s final judgement upon Babylon and the anti-God culture she represents: ’Woe! Woe! O great city, O Babylon, city of power! In one hour your doom has come!’ (18:10). What a sad end - and yet it’s not the end because God hadn’t finished with His damaged creation. God’s grace wasn’t exhausted. In His mercy He chose Abraham through whom He would start the process of accomplishing His saving purpose for mankind, ultimately through the Cross of His Son and our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Thank God we’re still living in the Day of Grace. If our trust is in Jesus we can be confident that the day will dawn when the redeemed, liberated from the language barrier and drawn ’from every nation, tribe, people and language’ will stand before God’s throne in heaven and acknowledge in praise, ’Salvation belongs to our God’ (Rev 7:9,10). But until that great day, let’s not forget the lessons of the Tower of Babel. Our hope and trust must be in God alone.
