Building our Tower of Babel
Do you ever feel stressed out? Anxious? Is everybody in your way, and going slow? Do you ever think you finally have a handle on the anxiety, and then one little thing sets it off again?
If you are like me, (and we all have the same makeup) your stress just might come from trying to build a tower of Babel. It takes a lot of work to make such a huge monstrosity! It doesn’t help when thousands of people are building one too, but no one communicates.
Why do I say “Tower of Babel” and not Eifel Tower or Washington Monument or Sears Tower? One monument to man is the same as another, I suppose. But the Babel Tower was the first of all the monuments, and full of significance.
We all know the story. About a hundred years after the great flood, Nimrod organized the children of Noah to build a city and a tower that would reach up to heaven. They were building it for a place to save themselves in case of another world-wide flood. But they were also building it as a trophy of human ingenuity. It was the first project which God wasn’t allowed to be part of. He wasn’t invited, neither did they want Him there.
So, He came down uninvited to personally confirm the rebellion and to personally crash the party. Who gave Him the right to crash the party? When people who profess righteousness stray from their King of righteousness, their King has the right to work to bring their loyalties back to Him. Also, He outright owns Earth and its future, despite Satan’s claims to it and its inhabitants.
In reality, the people willingly accepted slavery to Nimrod because they trusted his magnetic persona. They thus disconnected themselves from God, the God of peace, and the natural result of that disconnect with their loving Father would be unrest, anxiety, and the propensity to be quickly and easily frustrated. So, the Lord God confused their languages. Such a simply solution to inhibit rampant self-exaltation.
Immediately, the builders reached the boiling point and tempers flared. The apparently moral project suddenly showed its true colors. The people who professed dependence on God were really depending on self, running on their own steam, in full control, gods of their individual universes. Soon angry sinners splintered into a thousand directions.
Why do we stew? What causes that unnamed dread that steals our peace and happiness? What is it that saps us of our day’s energy by mid-morning, and leaves us weak and needing a picker-upper of some kind? It is that we are attempting to construct our life without God. We are on our own, either doing what He doesn’t want and going where He can’t go, or we are trying to be moral and ethical without Him.
Yes, it’s possible to be religious and still be living apart from the Lord. It happens to the vast majority of religious cases. In fact, the Bible says that the whole world will be building up Babel just before Jesus comes to destroy it all. “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.” (Rev. 18:2).
The achievement-oriented, the ambitious, self-advertising, working hard to accomplish big things for the boss—most of these seem good, but even the best of them is self-exalting if a relationship with Jesus isn’t the big reason for doing it. If we are achieving just for the sake of achieving, our sinful fallen natures default to achieving for the sake of self-exaltation. Ambition and even the seemingly benign “do hard things” leads straight into self-worship if we aren’t doing it to gain a closer communion with Jesus. The Lord would rather us do small things for God with Him, than big things for God without Him.
He is the only good reason to work hard at anything—all for the purpose of walking with Jesus, cooperating with Jesus, leading others to Him, and sharing His love and righteousness. The battle is His. Sanctification is His work. Accomplishment is His work. Life is His work. Thus, we can rest.
Otherwise, life is full of frustration, anxiety, disease, misery, and then death.
“He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” (Jn. 3:36).
“I have set the Lord always before me: because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved...my flesh also shall rest in hope.” (Ps. 16:8,9).
If you are like me, (and we all have the same makeup) your stress just might come from trying to build a tower of Babel. It takes a lot of work to make such a huge monstrosity! It doesn’t help when thousands of people are building one too, but no one communicates.
Why do I say “Tower of Babel” and not Eifel Tower or Washington Monument or Sears Tower? One monument to man is the same as another, I suppose. But the Babel Tower was the first of all the monuments, and full of significance.
We all know the story. About a hundred years after the great flood, Nimrod organized the children of Noah to build a city and a tower that would reach up to heaven. They were building it for a place to save themselves in case of another world-wide flood. But they were also building it as a trophy of human ingenuity. It was the first project which God wasn’t allowed to be part of. He wasn’t invited, neither did they want Him there.
So, He came down uninvited to personally confirm the rebellion and to personally crash the party. Who gave Him the right to crash the party? When people who profess righteousness stray from their King of righteousness, their King has the right to work to bring their loyalties back to Him. Also, He outright owns Earth and its future, despite Satan’s claims to it and its inhabitants.
In reality, the people willingly accepted slavery to Nimrod because they trusted his magnetic persona. They thus disconnected themselves from God, the God of peace, and the natural result of that disconnect with their loving Father would be unrest, anxiety, and the propensity to be quickly and easily frustrated. So, the Lord God confused their languages. Such a simply solution to inhibit rampant self-exaltation.
Immediately, the builders reached the boiling point and tempers flared. The apparently moral project suddenly showed its true colors. The people who professed dependence on God were really depending on self, running on their own steam, in full control, gods of their individual universes. Soon angry sinners splintered into a thousand directions.
Why do we stew? What causes that unnamed dread that steals our peace and happiness? What is it that saps us of our day’s energy by mid-morning, and leaves us weak and needing a picker-upper of some kind? It is that we are attempting to construct our life without God. We are on our own, either doing what He doesn’t want and going where He can’t go, or we are trying to be moral and ethical without Him.
Yes, it’s possible to be religious and still be living apart from the Lord. It happens to the vast majority of religious cases. In fact, the Bible says that the whole world will be building up Babel just before Jesus comes to destroy it all. “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.” (Rev. 18:2).
The achievement-oriented, the ambitious, self-advertising, working hard to accomplish big things for the boss—most of these seem good, but even the best of them is self-exalting if a relationship with Jesus isn’t the big reason for doing it. If we are achieving just for the sake of achieving, our sinful fallen natures default to achieving for the sake of self-exaltation. Ambition and even the seemingly benign “do hard things” leads straight into self-worship if we aren’t doing it to gain a closer communion with Jesus. The Lord would rather us do small things for God with Him, than big things for God without Him.
He is the only good reason to work hard at anything—all for the purpose of walking with Jesus, cooperating with Jesus, leading others to Him, and sharing His love and righteousness. The battle is His. Sanctification is His work. Accomplishment is His work. Life is His work. Thus, we can rest.
Otherwise, life is full of frustration, anxiety, disease, misery, and then death.
“He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” (Jn. 3:36).
“I have set the Lord always before me: because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved...my flesh also shall rest in hope.” (Ps. 16:8,9).
posted by David | 8:08 PM
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