Story 20 Babel Part II
God saw all that was happening with the people he created. He watched as they moved eastward, and he watched as they boasted and built their mighty tower. And then God came down. Imagine this! The Almighty Lord reigns in glory on his exalted throne in Heaven. Yet he chose to look upon these utterly foolish, proud people with care. As they swarmed around like ants, God came down to their puny little tower. He came down to bring an end to their rebellion once again. What a patient God of grace! Even when they were still bathing in their sin, he acted on their behalf to keep them from getting even worse.
The Lord had an amazing plan. He knew that if he let the people of the world stay together, they would do everything they could to disobey God. Together, they would constantly break the good and right boundaries that he had set for them. They would be united in finding ways of deeper and deeper sin and rebellion. So God decided to split them up. Listen to what the Bible says:
“The LORD said…‘Come, let us go down and confuse their language
their own territories.”
The Tower of Babel was the beginning of all of that, and it started with giving them different languages. When we read the Table of Nations, we were reading about the places that God scattered them! Yet God’s blessing to be fruitful and multiply was still on all the nations, and each of them grew into large societies with their own culture and way of life.
The rebellion and sin of humanity continued. The arrogance and pride that the people had shown towards God at Babel would soon be turned against each other. Their selfish hatred of God turned into a selfish hatred of other humans. Tyrannical leaders like Nimrod, the descendent of Ham, would battle, kill, and destroy the people of other nations and language groups to create an empire and build cities for his own glory. Most people would never have the power to do what Nimrod did. Their selfishness would show through their hatred against their neighbors and their family members and themselves. The tyranny of sin was alive in every heart.
Because of this sin, this horrible deformation of the heart, human society will never be perfect and stable until the curse is removed. Humans will cling to each other in unity for protection. But they also selfishly take from each other, and that brings anger and hostility. Do you have a brother or sister or a friend that you love to play with? Do you still fight with them over toys? Do you still get angry if they get to do something that you don’t get to do? Do you get into trouble for arguing with them? If you said yes, that is because you are a human in a cursed world. All of us want to be close and to have unity with other people. But we are all very sinful, too, and so we selfishly battle to truly love each other the way God loves us.
Your family is just a small picture of how this happens in the rest of the world. Without faith in God and his strength to love one another, the government systems of the world are doomed to fail. We can see this in the long history of humanity and the constant wars and battles between the nations. Humans cannot turn away from God’s love and powerful peace without losing peace and love. Anything that is truly good and right in the universe comes from him. It is his gracious gift. A man named C.S. Lewis explained that turning away from the only true Source of goodness in the world is like refusing air. Air is the only way we can breath and stay alive. The Creator of the universe is the only source of love and good. Rejecting his ways means turning towards works of evil. It will always end in wickedness, violence, and suffering.