Staircase of Humility and Pride pt.1
Humility • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 8 viewsNotes
Transcript
Tower of Babel
Tower of Babel
The first 11 chapters of Genesis are what scholars call etiological, meaning that they describe the origins and causes of the world.
The first creation story explains how the world came into order.
Genesis 3 explains why work is backbreaking and childbirth is painful.
While there is a lot, the flood story is about bloodguilt and the origins of sacrifice.
And the story of the Tower of Babel explains why people speak multiple languages.
Of course, I am oversimplifying and leaving a lot out. However, I share all this to point out that the Tower of Babel is the capstone of a series of stories before Genesis transitions to Abraham and the Covenant.
While Genesis is one book, it is helpful to understand this breaking point to read the story as a conclusion. Not THE conclusion, but a conclusion to the end of etiological stories that establish the ground for everything that comes after it.
Think of this as the final scene in a movie. But the starting point for the sequel.
So the story begins with the world in unity.
The flood story tells us that God regretted creating humankind because all their thoughts had become wicked. The problem here is not so dire, but it is getting there.
Genesis 11:1 says
1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.
The Hebrew word behind one and same is the same word, echad, which means one. This means they all spoke the same language and believed the same things. There was no disagreement among them.
We often like to think that if we all agreed and believed the same things, then we would have harmony. But it seems that when there is no dissent in thought error, vice, and sin become difficult, if not impossible, to stop.
There are certain species of animals that function this way, in a hive mentality or hearding, without a specific leader.
Some fish, like sardines, anchovies, and herring, swim in large schools with no designated leader. Instead, movement decisions emerge from simple behavioral rules, like keeping a certain distance, matching direction, or speed. Leadership is fluid and momentary, often based on who turns first or spots a threat. In fact, predators often rely on this instinct to eat them.
It is the same with pigeon flocks. Similar to fish, they follow local interaction rules, creating the illusion of coordinated movement. Leadership may switch rapidly and unconsciously based on proximity.
Ants are the same. While there’s a queen, she’s not a leader in the behavioral sense—she doesn’t issue commands. Most ants operate through decentralized decision-making, pheromone trails, and foraging feedback loops, to determine group behavior without hierarchy. That is what makes the movies A Bug’s Life so funny, because ants do not dissent from the group, which is why it’s easy to manipulate and kill them.
In our religious communities, we like to think that unity is when we all believe the same things, in the same way, to the purity that we assign to it. There is a lot to say here, but it is not relevant to our discussion now, so we will table it.
But the point I want to make is that often, we think that if we simply agreed and believed the same things, we would succeed. But when we all feel the same, we become like a mindless hive that is hard to hold accountable.
We see this in politics, church communities, families, and internet subcultures. Unity is less about beliving the same things than holding space for each other in diversity.
In the Tower of Babel we have a group of people that are in complete unity with no bbarriers, they speak the same language and believe the same things.
The question is, what do they believe? What do they desire?
We are given the hint in the next verse,
2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
East is an important direction in Genesis because it always marks events of separation in Genesis. The separation always goes further and further east.
In Genesis 2:8 planted a Garden in the “east in Eden” (2:8).
At the expulsion of Adam and Eve, cherubim guarded the entryway to the garden, facing the “east side” (as the tabernacle, Exod 27:13; 38:13).
Lot departs Abraham and journeys eastward (13:10–12), where he ultimately meets with disaster in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Also Abraham’s sons by Keturah are dispersed “to the land of the east” to detach them from the elect Isaac (25:6),
and deceitful Jacob flees his homeland to live among the “eastern peoples” of Aram (29:1).
Here we have the final rupture of this section in Genesis. The people moved as far east as they could to convey that the Babelites were outside and as far away from God’s blessing as they could be.
And I wonder if the outcome would have been different if one person had dissented. But instead they all said,
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.”
When we began this journey, we studied Proverbs 29:23, which says,
23 One’s pride will bring him low, but he who is lowly in spirit will obtain honor.
In other Pride is lifting ourselves to be seen or seeing ourselves above others.
The question then is: why are things lifted?
Why do we raise flags? Why do students lift their hands in class? Why are stages elevated?
The answer is the same reason the serpent was lifted up in Numbers 21:4–9 and why Jesus said He must be lifted up in John 12:32:
To be seen!
This has terrible consequences. We can see this in the story of the Tower of Babel. The tower of Babel wasn’t merely a construction project; it was a monument to visibility. They said,
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.”
The Babylonian ziggurat, known as Etemenanki, is often considered the “real” Tower of Babel. The name means “House, Foundation Platform of Heaven and Earth/Underworld”
The Babylonians believed that the ziggurat's foundations were in the underworld and its top in the heavens. Babylon claimed to be the gateway to the divine, the place where the underworld and earth touched glory.
But from God’s perspective, the tower wasn’t impressive because it wasn’t even close. So far down was the tower that the next verse says
5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built.
God had to “come down” just to see what they were so proud of (Gen. 11:5).
Okay, let me help you catch the humour.
Etemenanki was the tallest ziggurat the Babylonians ever built—only 300 feet tall. That’s shorter than the Great Pyramid of Giza, which was built over a thousand years earlier and stands at 480 feet. So even in the ancient world, Etemenanki wasn’t breaking any records.
And when you compare it to modern structures, it gets even more underwhelming. I took this screenshot from Skyscraper.org—yes, apparently there are people whose hobby is tracking the history of tall buildings.
According to them, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, completed in 2010, is 2,722 feet tall. And even if you ignore the Burj, there are at least a dozen other towers before it that were taller and more impressive than Etemenanki.
There’s even a tab on the site called “History of Height.” It makes a passing mention of the Tower of Babel—as a kind of footnote about humanity’s obsession with building up—but no mention of Etemenanki.
Imagine claiming your tower connects heaven and the underworld… and you don’t even make the list.
Verse five is where human endeavor is matched by divine deed. Verses 1-4 are mirrored in reverse in verses 5-9. And at the center is the fulcrum, verse five. And this fulcrum highlights the irony of the story. Despite their monumental efforts to reach the heavens (v.4), the Lord “came down (v. 5) just to see it.
And so the text continues
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.
God ultimately scrambled their language not because they had built something impressive to him but because their pride and unity had produced something unstoppable on earth that was “only the beginning.”
Once pride gets going, it really is unstoppable unless God confuses it.
The story then redefines Babylon's name. In Babylonian literature, the name Babili (Babylon) in Akkadian meant “the gate of God,” but in Hebrew, it sounds like the word babel, which means 'confusion.' The author masterfully uses wordplay, taking the Hebrew word babel and its verbal form, balal, to create a pointed pun.
Babylon is not the gate of God but a place of confusion.
The sarcasm of the story is that the Babylonians' whole purpose for the endeavor was to make a name for themselves. And they got what they wanted, but it wasn’t the name they wanted.
From the perspective of the Hebrews, they got a stupid name.
What was meant to showcase greatness became a monument to folly. They were brought low in their quest to rise above and be seen as supreme.
The desire to be elevated always ends the same way:
Pride always ends in with confusion, division, and collapse.
And so, how do we come down? Today, I intended to share with you the staircase of humility and pride, but I ran out of time in my preparation. So, I will make this a two-parter. I’ll share the skeleton of what I do not have time to share today.
Humility and pride are virtues that cannot be separated. The best way to think of them is like a staircase.
Every step toward pride is the same step you take down to humility.
And when you understand the staircase, it is easier to determine where we are on the ladder.
Think of a staircase with four steps. It’s actually taller, but for now, let’s say it’s four. Pride first begins
• Before Yourself
• Before Equals
• Before superiors
• Before God
Thinking on this paradigm, search deep with yourself and ask yourself:
1. How do I feel toward equals?
2. How do I feel toward superiors?
3. How do I feel toward God?
Questions
3. What part of you insists on being admired to feel secure?
4. What parts fear being unseen, and what do they need from you?
5. What are the prideful parts of you protecting?
