Building up to God
Genesis 11: 1 –
9.
Introduction
Our
Scripture this morning is one of those familiar Old Testament stories that many
of us remember from children’s Sunday School or from a childhood Bible “picture
book.” It is the story of the Tower of
Babel.
One
of the things that separates the story of the Tower of Babel from other
biblical stories we learned as children is the fact that we don’t often hear
“grown up preachers” preaching sermons about this story. (Of course, I prefer you to keep your
opinions to yourselves about whether or not we have a “grown up preacher.”)
We
hear sermons about David and Goliath; Jonah in the belly of the whale; and even
Noah’s Ark; but we don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the Tower of
Babel. And when was the last time you
heard a sermon on Sunday morning about this biblical story?
I
think there are some important lessons we can learn from this story…
Genesis
11: 1 – 9…
What’s
the big deal about building a tower? Why
would God get so concerned about what the people were building? If building towers is so bad, then cities
like Houston, Dallas and New York City must be in big trouble with God.
Preparing
for this sermon led me to do a quick Internet search on the world’s tallest
building. When I was a child, the
tallest building in the world was the Sears Tower in Chicago. Today it is known as the Willis Tower. It has 108 floors and stands 1,450 feet tall.
The
world has come a long way since I was a child.
The world’s tallest building today is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, United
Arab Emirates. It has 163 floors and
tops out at 2,717 feet tall!
I
wonder how the Tower of Babel stacks up to the world’s tallest building today…
More
than likely, the biblical story refers to a Babylonian ziggurat. It was a kind of pyramid with seven
“floors.” The bottom floor was the
widest. The floors were built like stair
steps leading up to a temple on the top floor.
Ancient
people often worshipped their gods on the tops of mountains. They thought they could get closer to the
gods by getting higher off the ground.
When people lived in low lands, they built their own mountains with a
temple on the top. Again, they hoped
they could get closer to their gods by climbing higher above sea level.
This
biblical story functions on several different levels. One of the basic meanings of this story was
to explain why there are so many different languages in the world. You can imagine a child asking her father why
people from different lands spoke different languages. The father could tell the story of the Tower
of Babel. And, everyone is satisfied. (The child gets her answer, and the father
gets to tell a story.)
Another
basic meaning stems from God’s actions at the end of the story. In verse 8, we read that God “scattered” the
people. God confused their languages and
scattered the people all over the earth.
This is the fulfillment of God’s command to Adam and Eve in the Garden
as well as God’s command to Noah after the flood. God commanded that the humans should “be
fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.”
In Genesis 11, we see that the humans had only upheld two-thirds of
God’s command. They were fruitful and
multiplied. But they had not filled the
earth. The Tower of Babel explains how
God achieved his purpose to fill the earth with people. God scattered them across the face of the
earth.
But
there is another way to read this that goes beyond the basic ideas of languages
and filling the earth…
This
sounds like a very innocent verse. It
almost sounds like a geography lesson to help us locate the Valley of
Shinar. But, there is a very important
spiritual lesson in this verse. In the
Book of Genesis, east was a very important direction.
When
Adam and Eve sinned against God, they were kicked out of the Garden of
Eden. Do you remember where they
moved? They moved east of Eden.
When
Abraham and Lot grew too large to live comfortably in the land they had to
separate. Abraham gave Lot the first
choice of where he wanted to live. Do
you remember where Lot moved? He moved
to the east to Sodom and Gomorrah. (And
you know what Sodom and Gomorrah are remembered for.)
In
the Book of Genesis, when people move to the east, they are moving away from
God. With this in mind, I think we can
read something about the spiritual condition of the people as they settled in
the Valley of Shinar. They were moving
away from God.
This
is not an innocent story about people who simply wanted to build a city with a
tower in it. They were moving away from
God and their efforts to build a city and a tower were signs that they didn’t
want to live according to God’s will and purpose. They wanted to live their own lives and to be
free from God.
Genesis
11: 3… 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.
Notice
how this verse contains a quote and an explanation.
One
way to look at this is that the narrator is helping his audience understand
what is going on. The people who would
have read this originally would not be familiar with the concept of building
with bricks. They didn’t build with
bricks, because they didn’t need bricks.
They lived in a region of the world that was filled with rocks and
stones. Why go to all the trouble of
making bricks when all you have to do is gather up stones for building
material?
Another
way to look at this is that it shows how the builders relied more on themselves
than on God. God doesn’t make
bricks. God makes rocks and stones. People make bricks.
In
the ancient world making bricks was a technological breakthrough. If people ran out of rocks and stones, they
could still build houses and towers as long as they could make bricks. Or, if they lived in a region of the world
where there just weren’t enough rocks and stones, they could just make bricks.
Don’t
get me wrong. Technology is a wonderful
thing. I love having central heat and
air at home and at church. I enjoy
having a cell phone that is smarter than I am.
(Sometimes I enjoy it more than at other times.) I like having a computer that gives me access
to hundreds of years of human knowledge at the tip of my fingers. However, there is a huge drawback to
technology.
No
matter how simple or complex the technology is, technology brings a
temptation. When people learned how to
make bricks (and today with access to human knowledge on the Internet), we felt
tempted to think we no longer needed God.
We have deluded ourselves into thinking that we have advanced beyond
God. We think the concept of God is
outdated and old fashioned. We think
that we have reached a level of self-sufficiency that excludes our need for
God. This self-sufficiency was just as
incorrect in Genesis 11 as it is today.
Technology
and scientific discovery can be good.
They have accomplished a wonderful quality of life that exceeds anything
our parents and grandparents ever imagined.
But we still need God, because we did not create ourselves; we cannot
meet our own needs; and we cannot resolve our basic sin problem on our own.
Genesis
11: 4… 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 and not be scattered over
the face of the whole earth."
In
verse 4, we read the fundamental motivation for building the tower. The builders wanted to “make a name for
themselves” and to guarantee their own futures.
The
Bible uses the word “name” very similarly to the way we use it today. To make a name for myself means that I want
to establish my reputation and to leave a legacy. It is an almost universal desire. Most of us want to make a difference in the
world. We may act humble around our
friends and family, but we would love to have something named after us so that
we know our lives were not lived in vain.
People give money to universities so they can have their names put on
buildings and scholarships.
But
the Bible also uses the word “name” to refer to a person’s character. That’s why the Bible tells us about several
individuals who had their names changed.
But in each of these stories, God changed their names. When God changed their character, God also
changed their names. Abram became
Abraham. Jacob became Israel. Simon became Peter.
Despite
our very best efforts, we cannot change our own character. Only God can change a person. Only God can “make our name great.”
The
reason we cannot change our character is the fact that we are sinners. Our very basic nature is sinful, and the
individual things we do are unrighteous, unholy and sinful. As sinners, we cannot fix our sin problem or
pull ourselves out of sin.
Perhaps
you have heard the statement that religion is the primary cause of all the
suffering and wars the world has ever faced.
This was certainly not true in the Twentieth Century. The biggest perpetrators of suffering and
death in the Twentieth Century were Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Hitler never claimed to be a Christian and
merely tolerated the presence of the church in Germany. Ironically, the Soviet Union was formed in
reaction to the role of Christianity and the church in Europe. Its founders believed that they could create
an atheist state more peaceful than any “Christian” state. But, when the Soviet Union fell, the rest of
the world discovered official records detailing over 3 million executions! (These 3 million “official” executions do not
include deportations, imprisonments, forced labor camps and artificial famines
inflicted by the Soviet regime.
Ultimately, the Soviet Union was responsible for over 20 million deaths![1])
The
primary source of suffering and war is not religion. It’s people.
People have a fundamental sin problem and when people are left to live
according to the rules we create for ourselves, the result is suffering and
war.
Don’t
miss the humor of this verse. The
builders used the very best of human knowledge and character. They had access to the very best
technological advances of their day. And
they built the largest tower anyone had ever seen. Standing on the ground, it appeared that the
tower stretched into the heavens…all the way up to God.
But,
when God wanted to get a look of this human creation…God came down. God couldn’t even see it without coming down
from Heaven.
Conclusion
I
wish this had happened to me, but it didn’t.
It happened to a woman named Kelly Fryer who serves as a Lutheran
minister. (I found this story thanks to
technology and the wonders of the Internet.)
When
Kelly Fryer was in seminary, she had to go to class on a day that everyone
wanted to be outside. It was a beautiful
day. Everyone was daydreaming and not
paying attention to the lecture. The
seminary professor figured out that no one was paying attention and that he was
wasting his time teaching the class.
The
professor closed his book and announced that he wasn’t going to waste another
breath on this class. Then, he went to
the chalk board and drew an arrow pointing straight down. He told the class, “If you understand that,
you understand everything you need to know about Christian theology.” And left the room.
Kelly
Fryer says that the first thing she thought was, “He thinks we are going to
Hell.” But, the professor explained it
in the next class…
He
drew a similar arrow on the board and said, “God always comes down. There is nothing you can do to turn that
arrow around and make your way UP to God.”
Our
greatest efforts aren’t good enough (or tall enough) to reach God. Technology will never reach the point that we
no longer need God. Character
development will never be good enough to achieve God-like character. Perhaps we can add here that religion and
religious activity can never get us into Heaven. The only hope we have is for God to come down
and rescue us…to save us from sin…to change our character.
Ultimately,
this is the story of the Bible / the Gospel / the Good News. God comes down to us. God came down and made himself known. God broke into Abraham’s life and called him
to go to the Promised Land. God spoke to
Moses on Mount Sinai and gave him the Law.
God spoke to the Old Testament prophets and revealed his will for his
people. God spoke through the life,
death and Resurrection of Jesus.
We
would never know God on our own…Unless God came down to us.
[1] Statistics from The
Black Book of Communism in Alister McGrath, The Twilight of Atheism: The
Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World (New York: Doubleday, 2004), pp.
231 – 237. Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Book_of_Communism
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