Genesis 11.
You may wonder why we have skipped Chapter 10. In fact Chapter 10 contains a long list of names as you should be aware as does Chapter 11. But sandwiched in between these lists is the story of the Tower of Babel or Babylon as it is called in the GNB. This is the amplification of the events mentioned in passing at verse 10 of Chapter 10. It is for us as it was for Moses the really important incident during this long long period of time.
There are several points about the story of the tower of Babel that we must address. In essence here we have the story of the confusion of languages. Of men and women no longer able to understand one another. We have the reversal of this situation in the Book of Pentecost when God descends on the early Church in the power of the Holy Spirit. In ACTS 2v4 we read "they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to talk in other languages". And then after a long list of places from all over the world we read at verse 11, "yet all of us hear them speaking in our own languages about the great things that God has done!" This then is the reversal of the events portrayed in the 7 verse of Genesis Chapter 11, "Let us go down and mix up their language so that they will not understand one another."
Having established its connection with the salvation story we must now dig a little deeper into the passage in order to understand what is going on here. The first thing to note is that there is play on words here. The word Babel actually means "The Gate of God" which might also give us a clue as to what is going on here. The word Babel also sounds like the word Balal which means "confused" and so there is this play on words aboutthe languages being confused.
Now the first thing that is going on here even before the tower is built is that the people far from having learned the lesson from their forefathers about God are actually intent on disobeying his command to spread out and populate the earth. They want to stay in one place, they want to build themselves a huge tower, a gateway to God, a landmark. A monument to their ingenuity and strength. As we read at the end of verse 4 they didn't want to be scattered all over the earth.
Now this is a group of people who know the power of God, they know from Noah what can happen when God judges the world. And yet still they carry on and disobey. It seems to be an almost universal law that each generation refuses to learn from the mistakes of their elders. It was John Calvin I think who said, "we perceive the greatness of mens obstinacy against God and the little profit they receive from his judgements."
He also said, "to erect a citadel was not in itself so great crime, but to raise an eternal monument to themselves, which might endure throughout all ages, was a proof of a headstrong pride joined with a contempt of God." In other words they engaged in a war against God.
So the Lord dealt with the situation incisively - he causes a confusion of tongues so that they could no longer cooperate and then forces them to scatter to the four corners of the globe.
Now this incident appears in the scriptural narrative between the events surrounding Noah and Abraham to illustrate to us that even when the people were aware of the reality and majesty of God they still continued to rebel openly and wilfully against the creator and refused to learn the lessons of the past. The other thing we might want to note here in passing is the steady shortening of the time they lived as the effects of the FALL became more and more pronounced.
And so the scene is being set for the beginning of what we might call God's rescue plan. The plan of salvation that we dealt with in great depth in Holy Week this year.
We have laid before us in these first chapters of Genesis the salient points we need to know about ourselves and about God. We have seen the goodness and mercy of God our creator laid before us. We have seen how mankind from the first moment of rebellion continued to defy God at every turn. There was not the slightest sign of repentance or a willingness to try put things right. We had fallen from grace and as the Lord had observed in dealing with Noah, "I know that from the time he is young his thoughts are evil."
The gulf is now a chasm. We are separated from God and there is literally no way back. There can be no return to the garden of Eden. And as I said at the beginning of our study we would see in Genesis a portrait of ourselves that would explain the origin of the way the world is - we have seen the root causes of evil, we have seen why there are wars and violence and chaos on every side. We do not need to look at our world and shake our heads and wonder why - we know why! We don't need psychologists and psychiatrists and and excuses about environmental factors to know the root causes of our problems. All of the problems we face cone from our open and willing rebellion against God. We have taken every good virtue and character and reversed it into something nasty and evil. We have become proud and arrogant and think we know best. There are even those who want to rewrite the Bible to suit themselves, to justify their own course of action.
We can, I hope, see quite clearly what the Bible teaches us about ourselves and about our societies and about our culture and condition. But there are two rays of light in all of this. The first is the abundant mercy of God that we can see quite clearly in all of this. The second is that in each generation there have remained a few who were willing to walk in this world in the ways of God. And so we come at the end of Chapter 11 to Abraham. It is with Abraham that the story of salvation begins to unfold. it is to Abraham that we must look first of all if we are ever to get beyond the Christmas Trees and Easter Eggs and discover the real meaning of the coming of Jesus. It is true to say that without Abraham there would have been no Jesus. Without Abraham there would have been no Mure Memorial. Without Abraham we would not be here. But that is to begin to encroach upon the subject matter of the next chapters. And so for this week let us leave ourselves with this picture of a rebellious people moving ever further from God, descending into cruel perversions of religion and walking ever further into the darkness of sin that masquerades as light.