Genesis 11:1-9
The Tower of Babel
11 At one time all the people of the world spoke the same language and used the same words. 2 As the people migrated to the east, they found a plain in the land of Babylonia[a] and settled there.
3 They began saying to each other, “Let’s make bricks and harden them with fire.” (In this region bricks were used instead of stone, and tar was used for mortar.) 4 Then they said, “Come, let’s build a great city for ourselves with a tower that reaches into the sky. This will make us famous and keep us from being scattered all over the world.”
5 But the Lord came down to look at the city and the tower the people were building. 6 “Look!” he said. “The people are united, and they all speak the same language. After this, nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them! 7 Come, let’s go down and confuse the people with different languages. Then they won’t be able to understand each other.”
8 In that way, the Lord scattered them all over the world, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why the city was called Babel,[b] because that is where the Lordconfused the people with different languages. In this way he scattered them all over the world.
““Look!” he said. “The people are united, and they all speak the same language. After this, nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them!”Genesis 11:6 NLT
There is power in unity. In this story, we see men and women come together with one heart and one vision. They work together, each using their gifts to build something incredible. God looks at what they are building and says, nothing is impossible for them!
When we are united, we become more than the sum of our parts. We can achieve amazing things as churches and communities. We can dream big dreams and see God move in incredible ways.
However, God then separates the people and scatters them across the world. Why? Because they were uniting around the wrong things. We need to be careful that what we unite for is God’s will and not our own selfish ambition.
This is the final fall of mankind.
They sought to be wise as God and left the garden.
They sought to transform their bodies to become like Gods and God flooded the world.
They sought to be admired like God and he scattered them across the world.
The more that we sought to become God, the more that we lost who we were created to be. We lost our connection with God, we lost our eternal life and we lost our unity.
However, the good news is that God had a plan. The rest of the scripture is God showing us how he will rescue and heal the lost and broken. How we will restore us to our purpose and reunite us with our broken relationships.
