Chuck Larsen

The citizens on the plains of Shinar built a great city and a tower to reach up into heaven. Genesis 11:5 tells us that God “came down to see the city and the tower.” Here again, God speaks to us in human terms. It’s a figure of speech called anthropomorphism. God didn’t literally come down because He’s everywhere! It’s used to arouse attention to the fact that as man wanted to reach God’s abode, heaven, no matter how high he might build God would always have to look down upon it. Boice says, “Here were men attempting to build a great tower. The top was to reach to the heavens. It was to be so great that it and the religion and defiance of God it represented would make a reputation for these citizens of Shinar. There it stood, lofty in its unequaled grandeur. But when God wants to look at it, he comes down. He has to stoop low to see this puny extravagance.”

Flying home from Israel, we saw the huge cities below us. Philadelphia, with its man-made skyscrapers, looked so puny from several thousand feet above the earth. I remember seeing the Twin Towers once flying home from overseas and noticing they looked like a couple of small dominoes from the airplane window. The great pyramids of Egypt are specs in the sand at a certain height. It’s so for all human constructions. This is the metaphorical truth that the Tower of Babel story serves to teach us.

Boice goes on to observe, “So also with our intellectual or spiritual achievements. The greatest is nothing compared to the immensity of the universe, not to mention the universe’s Creator. The only truly significant accomplishments are God’s (sometimes in and through us), for only these partake of the nature of God and endure forever, as God does.” But God, from His vast perspective and power, looked down on us tower builders, condescended to our needs, and took the body of flesh upon himself. He became the sacrifice that would pay the penalty for our own rebellion against God. No one can reach God by any human effort. No one can satisfy the longings of the soul through any religious practice. But the Lord Jesus Christ, in His divine intervention, came down to us in order to lift us up to Him.

I’ve spent some time searching for Jesus in the book of Genesis.  I’ve reached Chapter 11, where the events on the plains of Shinar take place. The people attempted to work their own way to heaven by building this huge tower called the Tower of Babel. You glean their intentions from their comments. They say, “Come, let us make bricks…” Then again, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heaven” (Genesis 11:1-4). It’s let us, let us. We learned that although Noah built an ark, he did it after God’s design and at God’s instruction. It was a response of Faith in God and trusting His word about the coming judgment and the provision for escape from that judgment. Although there is nothing wrong with building anything, cities or towers included, the heart’s intentions matter most to God.

Man is always devising his own ways of reaching heaven. It’s just our nature to want to earn or deserve a place in heaven. Unfortunately, even in the Christian Evangelical community, there is much confusion about the true nature of the Gospel. A survey by the Barna Research Group suggests widespread confusion about the gospel – even among churchgoers who feel responsible for spreading the gospel. Almost half of the respondents (46 percent) say they are responsible for explaining their beliefs to others. Most of those “evangelizers” (81 percent) believe that the Bible is accurate in all its teachings and that Jesus Christ was crucified and resurrected (94 percent). However, 48 percent of the evangelizers also believe that “if people are generally good or do enough good things for others…they will earn places in heaven.”

When Jesus’ listeners observed his miraculous works on earth, they asked Him what they needed to do to do such things themselves. In John 6:29, He answered them, saying, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.” The question is, shall we be saved, i.e., reach heaven, by faith or by works? R. A. Torrey puts this into several questions. He says righteousness is essential but, “Shall it be homemade, or shall it be of God and from above? Shall I go about to establish my own, or shall I subject myself to God’s? Shall salvation be of works, or by faith? Is Christ to be a Substitute for the sinner, or will the sinner be a substitute for the Saviour? Shall the altar smell of sacrifice, God appointed and God-provided, or will we prefer to deck it with flowers that wither and with fruits that shrivel, howsoever fair they seem at first? Is personal goodness, or is God’s grace, as revealed in Jesus Christ, to bring us to the world where all is well? The one is a ladder that we ourselves set up, and painfully ascend; the other is an elevator which God provides, into which, indeed, we pass by penitential faith, but with which the lifting power is God’s alone. Salvation by works is the choice of the Pharisee, salvation by Grace is the hope of the Publican.”

Ptolemy dominated the scientific world up to the sixteenth century. He insisted that the Earth was the center of the universe and that all the planets and stars rotated around us. We, on Earth, were the center of the universe. It was all about us! However, a rebel named Copernicus came along, showing that the movements in the skies did not support his ideas. Rather, the truth is that it was the sun that all the planets revolved around. The sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe. If you look up “the Copernican Revolution” on Google, you’ll find hundreds of thousands of articles about it. Many people still subscribe to the Ptolemaic theory of the universe; everything revolves around them. The world needs another Copernican revolution where we all learn and live out the truth that it’s not really about us, but rather, it’s about God! We’re not the center of the universe. God is!

In Genesis 11:1-4, we read about the descendants of Noah living on the plains of Shinar and deciding together to build their lives around themselves. They say, “Let us make…” or “Let us build…” and “Let us make a name for ourselves.” The construction of the tower of Babel proceeded out of a self-centered focus of making life all about “us.” God told Noah and his descendants to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” But nooooooooo! We’d much rather make our own little hovel where we can simply sit back, relax, and feel good about ourselves! They weren’t interested in doing what God had instructed. Instead, they said, “Let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” But that was exactly what God wanted! He had a plan and purpose for his people, but they chose a different path.

Please notice that when God called Abram to leave his family and move on to a promised land, he said to him, “I will make you a great nation! I will bless you and make your name great. And you will be a blessing to others.” The call of Abram was the Copernican revolution! It’s the call to leave the geocentric world view where everything is all about me, to a heliocentric world view where everything revolves around God. With nearly 42,000 religions in the world, each with their own instructions on building a tower of babel, there is still only one Son! There is still only one righteous and just and still only one “name under heaven given by which we may be saved!” It’s not our works, it’s not our righteousness, it’s not our religion, it’s not our efforts of any kind. It’s not a religion at all. It’s a person who saves us! He exchanges our sinful rags for his glorious robes of righteousness. It is by grace we are saved through faith in the Son of God: Jesus Christ. Paul summed up His centrality for us in Romans 11:36. He writes, “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.”

The community on the plains of Shinar that organized to build their own way to “the heavens” was a society organized around the rejection of God’s plan and purpose for their lives. Organizing is one of the key features of God’s people. The New Testament frequently speaks of the need for God’s people to be so well organized that they function like a body; each piece plays a significant part in the overall function of the organization or organism. The failure at Shinar was not about the organization; it was about the purpose of the organization. Its purpose was to defy God’s intended purpose of going forth and filling the whole earth. “Let’s make a name for ourselves,” they said. But God’s call on Abraham was that He would be the one to make Abram great. He would make from one man, Abram, a great nation! That nation consists of those who trust God – and according to Paul, it includes us through our faith in Christ. We, too, are heirs of Abraham.

The difference between Cain and Abel is starkly illustrated in Genesis 4:1. It says, “Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground.” Cain, a ‘worker,’ and his descendants were focused on their worldly pursuits, producing implements and inventions and using advances in technology. In 4:17, Cain’s son Enoch was said to have built a city. The point isn’t that they shouldn’t have exercised their dominion over the physical world, God wanted them to do that, but again it’s a matter of motive. In the line of Cain, the focus is on finding significance and meaning in their work rather than in a loving, trusting relationship with their creator. We’ll find our own significance in the world in which we live! Yet, God created all mankind with a yearning for more than meets the eye. No one will find ultimate significance in the things of this world.

Solomon, in the book of Ecclesiastes, spent much of his life searching for meaning and significance in the things of the world. He wanted to investigate and study every area in which things are done under heaven (Ecclesiastes 1:13). The words “to seek” and “to search” indicate the seriousness of his efforts. He wanted to master and understand life. In short he wanted to experience everything that could be experienced. His conclusion was that there is no meaning and purpose “under the sun.” Jesus’ frequent call to all mankind is the call to come to Him and find true life, real meaning, ultimate satisfaction, and eternal life. In Him is the only “fullness.” Apart from Christ, the philosopher Jean Paul Sartre is right. He says “Life is an empty bubble on the sea of nothingness.”