The Tower of Babylon and the Judgment of God

Genesis Series

Genesis 11:1–9 (ESV)

1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.

2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.

3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.

4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”

5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built.

6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.”

8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.

9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

The structure discussed in this story has traditionally been called the “Tower of Babel.”

That name is a transliteration of the Hebrew name for the tower: babel.

That same Hebrew name babel is used in the rest of the Old Testament to refer to the city of Babylon, home to enemies of the people of God (2 Kgs 20:17; 24:1; Jer 21:7; Ezek 17:12).

It is, in fact, the earliest people of Babylon who are building this tower.

We will gain a deeper understanding of this event by connecting it to the rest of the history of the city of Babylon (Gen 10:10; Dan 4:30; also 1 Pet 5:13; Rev 14:8; 17:5; 18:10, 21).

The building of the tower at Babylon is a picture of humanity’s continuing rebellion against God.

In the Bible, “Babylon” is more than a city or an empire; it represents a system. It is God’s name for Satan’s system in this world.

Warren W. Wiersbe

If the presentation in Genesis 10 helps establish the idea of unity in the human family, Genesis 11 is a story of division.

In it we see humans seeking to elevate themselves and acting dismissively toward God.

And as a result, this civilization that starts out aligned and united quickly becomes a place of confusion and division.

It is sobering to realize our contemporary American culture has much in common with Babylon.

During the Babylonian exile, God's people found themselves surrounded by a culture that aggressively pursued pleasure and power. Today, we are similarly immersed in a society rich with distractions and temptations—materialism, instant gratification, and moral relativism. Like the people in Babylon, we must hold tightly to our faith and identity, even when the surrounding culture pulls us in the opposite direction.

We have a generation that has been educated passed their intelligence

and its created confusion and division regarding everything from politics, to what constitutes a certain gender, to race relations, to whether abortion should be a right reflects their story.

In the early colonial days, Puritan ministers like Jonathan Edwards and Cotton Mather dedicated their lives to preaching and church governance. They believed their responsibility extended beyond the pulpit to the entire community, tackling issues like education and moral governance. This serious commitment to their ministry often placed them at odds with more lax societal norms, teaching us the value of steadfastness in our own faith and duties. Their works reflected a deep understanding of the interconnectedness of faith and community action.

Because where the church isn’t working, where the church lets things go, that's where the enemy will go because there is no resistance.

If we can understand how Babylon collapsed, then perhaps it can shape how we live in an American Babylon today.

And ultimately, they bought into there own hype. and they stopped making God a priority.

In ancient Babylon, the people built a tower reaching for the heavens, fueled by pride and self-importance. Their ambition blinded them to their purpose, resulting in confusion and division. This serves as a poignant reminder for today's church. When we become consumed by pride and our own successes, we risk losing sight of Jesus’ mission—to love, serve, and spread the Gospel. We must continually humble ourselves, remembering that our strength lies in unity and purpose, not in earthly achievements.

and if the church won’t disciple people, the world will disciple them. Thats why I believe it is so important for Christians to go out and be the salt and light of the earth.

That should infect every aspect of our life.

Think of the flu- symptoms of the flu.

If you are a true bible believing Christian there will be symptoms of that.

The Power of Pride to Undermine God’s Design (11:1–4)

Why did Babylon’s project unravel?

Because of the soaring heights of their pride.

The Tower of Babylon narrative, in fact, is primarily a story about the power of pride.

What is pride? It is one of those concepts that is easy to understand but harder to define.

But for our purposes, pride is the decision to put self at the center of the story instead of God. It is being more concerned with fulfilling our own desires than with honoring God’s design.

At the heart of pride is a selfish answer to this question: Who will be the center of my life, God or me? Pride is thus the soil of our sin, the roots of our rebellion.

Pride turns inward instead of upward to find satisfaction, success, and significance.

Before you think a Bible passage on pride does not apply to you, just remember that pride can show up in our lives in more than one way.

Of course, pride can show up in arrogance, as we visibly think of ourselves more highly than we ought and seek to elevate our status in the eyes of others.

But pride can also show up in self-pity, as we think of ourselves in a lesser way than we should.

In those cases, we want others to find ways and words to help us elevate our status in our own eyes.

Pride turns inward or outward instead of upward to find satisfaction, success, and significance. And such is the widespread state of affairs behind this story of early Babylon. They aim to put themselves on higher ground because they think of themselves more highly than they ought.

If you don’t know the end of the narrative, what unfolds in Genesis 11 does not seem so bad at first.

After all, people are being fruitful and multiplying and seem to be taking dominion over the earth by imaging God through their creative abilities.

So, what is the problem? The problem in Babylon is not what they are doing but why they are doing it.

A careful read of the passage makes clear that things are not as they should be.

For instance, they are not building a tower because one is necessary. And they are certainly not erecting it to make a name for God but to make a name for themselves.

Their motivation is not praise but pride, not humility but hubris, not virtue but vanity. It is a perfect picture of humanity’s ongoing rebellion against God rooted in pride that continues even today.

How does their pride make itself apparent? First, pride seeks satisfaction through self-provision.

And in verse 3 they leverage God-given resources and God-given creativity not to honor God but to benefit themselves, to satisfy their appetites, and to meet their craving for renown.

Whereas in Genesis 3 humanity tries to become like God by seizing fruit, in Genesis 11 humanity tries to become like God by seizing the opportunity to make bricks that might withstand the test of time and catastrophe.

Second, pride seeks success through self-promotion. Verse 4 reveals that is just what the builders wanted, saying, “Let’s make a name for ourselves.” People today often desire to do the same. Only now, it isn’t through the size of our towers but through the size of our social media following or our bank account or our job title.

Third, pride seeks significance through self-protection. In a time so close to the terrible events of Noah’s day, it might make sense for people to build tall towers out of fear of another flood. But that’s not the driving factor behind this particular construction project.

The real motivation behind it surfaces in verse 4: “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky.… [O]therwise we will be scattered throughout the earth.”

So they want self-protection against being dispersed. Separating, after all, might lead to feelings of insignificance and irrelevance. Pride’s pull toward self-protection causes them to seek self-centered community. What brings the people of Babylon together, then, is not a common focus but a shared fear.

The result of doing this is having proximity but lacking intimacy.

We face the same danger of establishing self-centered community today, and it leads to the same results. This may be why it sometimes seems that while our lives have never been closer in some ways, our hearts have never been at risk of being further apart.

Tony Evans, and i know he stepped down in disgrace but this is a great analogy about how the church.

In the same way that no one has ever died of AIDS or HIV does is they take out the immune system, and once the immune system is down, the body can die of anything.

The church is the immune system of the culture. So whenever the church gets neutralized and refuses to speak into an arena, that what just happened is the society had AIDS now, because the immune system of the society is down. When that happens, society can die of anything.

This society is going to die because of pride. Its the same thing happening in our society today. We have a whole pride month so folks can loudly vocalize there own way of life in opposition of God and His perfect Word.

Pride cometh before the fall.

1500 Illustrations for Biblical Preaching Pride

Muhammed Ali spoke of himself before his 1971 fight with Joe Frazier thus:

There seems to be some confusion. We’re gonna clear this confusion up on March 8. We’re gonna decide once and for all who is king! There’s not a man alive who can whup me. (He jabs the air half a dozen blinding lefts.)

I’m too smart. (He taps his head.)

I’m too pretty. (He lifts his head high in profile, turning as a bust on a pedestal.)

I AM the greatest. I AM the king! I should be a postage stamp—that’s the only way I could get licked!

P.S. Ali lost to Frazier!1083

Pride cometh before the fall

The biggest lie we tell ourselves is “I got this.” We don’t got this.

In C.S. Lewis's "Screwtape Letters," a senior demon instructs a younger demon on how to sidetrack a Christian’s faith. Screwtape advises that the man’s thoughts should be turned towards the mundane rather than the heavenly. This can happen in our lives as well; we may find ourselves consumed by earthly concerns, neglecting our spiritual journey because we got this. Are we allowing the distractions of daily life to cloud our devotion to God? Let’s reflect on what Screwtape might say to us today and how we can refocus our hearts back to Christ.

The pride of Babylon stands in stark contrast to the way of Jesus.

In the wilderness temptations (Matt 4:1–11), in fact, Jesus experiences the same pulls from pride mentioned but resists them. Just as the people of Babylon turn mud into bricks in an effort at self-provision, a hungry Jesus gets tempted to turn stones into bread.

Yet he will not.

Just as the people of Babylon hope to ascend to the pinnacle of the tower to deliver themselves from danger, even as they draw attention to their own greatness, Jesus is tempted to ascend to the pinnacle of the temple to deliver himself from danger through an act of self-protection that would highlight his own greatness.

Yet he will not.

And just as the people of Babylon seek self-promotion through building, Jesus gets tempted to build a kingdom for himself apart from the cross. Jesus succeeds where humanity fails by resisting the pull of pride.

Jesus doesn’t just combat the pride common to Babylon in his daily life, however.

He also crucifies it in his death. When Jesus is on the cross, for instance, he resists the prideful pull of self-provision.

The religious leaders mock him, saying, “He saved others, but he cannot save himself” (Matt 27:42).

Nevertheless, he refuses to pursue his own deliverance outside God’s perfect plan. Also, when Jesus is on the cross, he resists the pull of self-protection. In Matthew 26:53 Jesus had informed his disciples that he could have requested twelve legions of angels to defend him.

Yet he refuses to do so. When Jesus is on the cross, he resists the prideful pull of self-promotion, too. Paul describes how Jesus emptied himself, humbled himself, and sacrificed himself so that, ultimately, God could highly exalt him (Phil 2:1–11).

Even in his dying, then, Jesus resists Babylon’s deepest problem and also makes a way of salvation through self-sacrifice.

The Power of the Gospel to Overcome Our Pride (11:5–9)

Proverbs 16:18 ESV

Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

As the pride that built Babylon collapses under the judgment of God in Genesis 11, that maxim is proven true.

The hopeful news is that the Tower of Babylon account is not just a warning story about the power of human pride.

It is pointing to the power of the gospel.

The pattern of how God responds to the pride of the people is much the same way he still confronts pride today.

First, God personally recognizes the pride and the harmful effect it can have.

He doesn’t just let it unfold outside his notice as if it didn’t matter. In verse 5, “the LORD came down to look over the city and the tower that the humans were building.”

The phrase “came down” is both an echo of what God does after Adam and Eve sin in the garden and a preview of what he will do later in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah (18:21).

He takes an up-close look at the builders’ sinful solidarity and knows it signals only the start of even greater rebellion (v. 6). The planned height of the tower, after all, reveals the the depth of their pride.

Second, God reckons with their pride.

In the days of Noah, God’s judgment came in the form of sweeping destruction. But in the days of Babylon, God’s judgment comes in the form of disruption.

God’s reckoning with their pride shatters one language into many, with the result of scattering family groups to their new locations on the world map. In verse 9 the name Babylon (Hb. babel) sounds like the Hebrew word for confusion (balal). Imagine the mass confusion arising right after God shatters the unified language!

When God scatters their location, he doesn’t send a flood upon the people of the world to destroy them. Instead, God sends a flood of people into the world to disperse them.

True, their fear of being scattered and vulnerable (v. 4) becomes a reality, but so does their obedience to God’s plan for humanity to spread and fill the world.

Just as with Adam and Eve in the garden, God, in his mercy, prevents them from continuing in their sinful behavior by saving them from themselves. And he does the same thing for us. God casts us out of the towers of our own strongholds to sin so that we might be brought into his kingdom.

Third, God reverses their pride.

Acts 2 reveals that Genesis 11 is not the end of the story for how God confronts our pride. P

The Day of Pentecost, as described in Acts 2, marks a significant event. It occurred fifty days after Passover and is characterized by the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples.

There’s a really story about the great Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, the first to discover the magnetic meridian of the North Pole and to discover the South Pole. On one of his trips, Amundsen took a homing pigeon with him. When he had finally reached the top of the world, he opened the bird’s cage and set it free.

Imagine the delight of Amundsen’s wife, back in Norway, when she looked up from the doorway of her home and saw the pigeon circling in the sky above. No doubt she exclaimed, “He’s alive! My husband is still alive!”

So it was when Jesus ascended. He was gone, but the disciples clung to his promise to send them the Holy Spirit. What joy, then, when the dovelike Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost. The disciples had with them the continual reminder that Jesus was alive and victorious at the right hand of the Father. This continues to be the Spirit’s message

Pentecost is a reversal of Babylon.

In Acts 2:4–6 God reverses the shattering of the languages by restoring them from many unintelligible conversations back into one clear message.

In Acts 2:5 God reverses the scattering of their location by gathering together the many nations that were dispersed. In Acts 2:6 God reverses the confusion of their lives by providing clarity. In verse 11 God reverses the pattern of humanity seeking to make a name for itself.

The gospel proclaimed at Pentecost doesn’t just confront us in our sin. It challenges the pride underlying it. That pride may show itself following a presentation of the good news. It can appear as either a self-righteousness that says, “I don’t need Jesus,” or a self-pity that says, “I’m not good enough for Jesus.”

What happened at Babylon addresses the former: we cannot find salvation by climbing to the heavens through our own efforts.

It doesn’t matter how many good works we do, how much money we give, or how many times we go to church.

Even if we pile our good deeds as high as the sky, they will just collapse like a house of cards should we try to stand on them.

But God doesn’t require us to make a way to him, which is excellent news for those who fear they’ll never be good enough.

Instead, the truth of the gospel is that God has come down to us sinners.

Those who spurn the gospel challenge not the power of the church but the sovereignty of God.

R. C. Sproul

Jesus took on flesh and dwelled among us so that he could make a way through his death and resurrection to bring us to God (John 1:14). All he asks of us is that we repentantly believe.

When the Titanic sank in 1912, a young man named Thomas Andrews, the ship’s designer, displayed extraordinary bravery. As chaos ensued, he could have saved himself; instead, he helped others into lifeboats, urging them to accept safety. Ultimately, he did not survive. His selfless sacrifice mirrors the ultimate example of love and salvation through Christ, showcasing how one person can lead many to safety, even at the cost of their own life. Andrews' actions highlight a powerful legacy of salvation through selflessness.

Unlike the Babylonians who amassed bricks to build a tower of pride, God is gathering and assembling living stones as he builds his humble church (1 Pet 2:5).

The Church isn’t the building. The Puritans didn’t call the place they worshipped the church. They called it the meeting house because the church is the body of believers.

The meeting house is the building. The place were God is worshipped and where ministry takes place.

If God is the builder and we are his servants in the building of his church, it is presumptuous to build without prayer.

Ben Patterson; David L. Goetz