Why was God so concerned about the Tower of Babel? So what if they can accomplish whatever they want to do? Why is God standing in their way? And why does God stand in our way sometimes when we want to get things done?
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Hi! I’m Miss Tyler and welcome to another episode of Context for Kids where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel.
Parents, all Scripture this week comes from the CSB, the Christian Standard Bible, and we will be in Genesis 11 again.
The whole earth had the same language and vocabulary. 2 As people migrated from the east,[a] they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make oven-fired bricks.” (They used brick for stone and asphalt for mortar.) 4 And they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky. Let’s make a name for ourselves; otherwise, we will be scattered throughout the earth.” 5 Then the Lord came down to look over the city and the tower that the humans were building. 6 The Lord said, “If they have begun to do this as one people all having the same language, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.
So, every week we just keep adding to this story, right? We’ve studied verses 1-4 and now we are going to tackle 5-6. Are you beginning to see how much there is to this story when we know about the context? I hope you are also understanding how much we don’t know even when we think we know things that aren’t really there at all. Remember, there is nothing wrong with all the “what if” stories out there as long as people know they are just guesses (and some guesses are better than others) and that they aren’t used to hurt people. And we’ve already talked about how some people took Nimrod and also Ham, and made up stories about them to hurt other people. So, we have to be careful about what we think we know because people do some rotten things with Bible stories in order to do what they want or get people to hate one another.
But this week we are going to start out with a joke that’s right there in the Bible because the people who gathered in the valley of Shinar decided to build a tower that was so big that its top would reach the sky. It was going to be so big that they would be famous and probably rich too. And do you remember the name of the ziggurat tower that Nebuchadnezzar built thousands of years later? It was called Entemenanki, the foundation of heaven and earth because it was seven levels tall and reached up higher than any other ziggurat, all the way up to where they believed the sky stopped and the heavens began. It was really huge. But how about the tower here in Shinar? How big do you think it was? Huge? Like a New York City skyscraper or maybe the Dubai tower? Well, not so much. Here’s where the joke comes in—they wanted to build a huge tower but it is so teeny tiny that God actually had to come down to look at the city and the tower because it was too puny for Him to get a good look at it from heaven. Of course, it isn’t saying that God actually has to come down to earth to look at things but this is called irony. Irony is when you say something in such a way that it means the opposite, like if you do something nice for someone and they don’t say thank you, so you say to them, “Gee, don’t get so excited about thanking me.” It can also mean that something happens that shouldn’t happen, like a fire department burning down or the police station getting robbed or maybe your English teacher makes a ton of spelling mistakes and doesn’t notice. They are things that, when you think about them, they are kinda funny in a weird way.
And while we are on the subject, there is this song by Alanis Morisette called “Ironic” but nothing she says in the song is actually ironic, like she says, “it’s like a traffic jam when you’re already late” for work or whatever and that isn’t ironic at all, that’s just a total bummer, a drag, really unfortunate or unlucky but it isn’t ironic. It would be ironic if she got up, had an easy time getting ready, every traffic light was green, no one was in front of her at the coffee shop, and she got to work only to find that they were closed for a holiday and she has to go back home and it was ironic that on the one day she had no trouble going to work, there is no work!!! So, if you ever hear the song and she’s saying all these things are ironic, listen closely and when she says, “Isn’t it ironic?” you can say, “No, not really but it is ironic that you wrote a song about irony that has nothing ironic in it.” And maybe that was her diabolical plan all along! But, I digress…we aren’t here to talk about that.
So, the irony of the story is that they built a big tower that was so small that even God couldn’t see it from Heaven. And you might be tempted to say that it means the Bible is lying about God or saying that He needs to be right next to something in order to see it but then we would be missing the point because it is supposed to be funny and we are supposed to laugh at the clever joke. And there are a lot of things like this in the Bible if we look carefully—they aren’t necessarily meant to teach us something about God but, in this case, something about the tower that wasn’t really so amazing in God’s eyes as they thought it would be. Compared to Him and the universe He created, nothing we do is really very impressive. I mean, can you make a ladybug or even a blade of grass? Nope, the only things we can make are made from things that already exist. We can bake a cake but we can’t make wheat out of nothing, or get milk without a mamma animal, or get eggs without a chicken. So, what’s more impressive—the cake you made or the chicken that God made out of nothing? Definitely the chicken!
What were we talking about? Oh yeah, the Tower of Babel—and the Bible actually doesn’t even call it that but that’s okay too. 5 Then the Lord came down to look over the city and the tower that the humanswere building. 6 The Lord said, “If they have begun to do this as one people all having the same language, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.” So, wait a minute, we had this joke about how small the tower was but somehow God is taking what they are doing very seriously and in the next verse He’s going to come up with a plan to stop them. What on earth is the big deal about this puny tower? And why does it matter that they can all speak the same language? Doesn’t being able to accomplish anything they want seem like a good thing? Well, the strange thing is that nowhere in this story does God talk about why that is a bad thing or how it would be a problem. He could have said, “Oh no, they are building this tower so that they can worship other gods,” or “Do they honestly think they can get me to show up just because they build a ziggurat so they can serve me when I don’t need anything from them?” How about, “This is really bad because they are building a military tower and that means they are going to be violent and start killing each other!” Nope, none of that—all we see is that God is concerned about what the consequences will be if everyone is able to work together and do what they want. I mean, before the flood, maybe they had the same language too. Maybe they could also accomplish whatever they wanted to. And maybe that was the problem and maybe the things they accomplished led to a lot of evil. We just don’t know. But we could talk about some “what if’s” and maybe by doing that we can learn more about God and His plans for us.
If they could accomplish anything they want to, then they would just do everything their own way and back in Genesis 9, God said that all of our thoughts are evil from the time we were born. And there is another way to read what the verse says. We can read it that nothing they would ever want to do in the future would be impossible for them, or something worse. Maybe it is saying that what they are planning to do right then wouldn’t be impossible. What did they have in mind? We don’t know. But whatever the reason was, it was serious enough that God wanted to stop them. Was it to protect them? Was it like when adults separate kids who are up to no good when they are together? Was it maybe because they would be able to do too much too fast before they could really deal with the consequences? Let’s talk about that one because isn’t that what Adam and Eve did in the Garden? They wanted to be like God, knowing good and evil, but they wanted it right now and they weren’t willing to ask God for it or to wait. God created humans in His image, so Adam and Eve were both His image-bearers, there to show the world what God is like and how He would rule if He was there and so we know that He wanted them to be like Him but that takes a lot of time, more than a lifetime, really—although maybe they could have done it if they had been in the Garden for 900 years instead of dying at that age out in the wilderness where they had to work super hard at staying alive instead of learning to become like God. You know, technology is really a very good thing but what if all of a sudden you have too much technology and you aren’t ready or mature enough or experienced enough to use it?
What if you gave a knife to a little baby? Nothing good would happen, of course. The baby would either cut themselves or whoever tried to take the knife away or a pet or whatever. If you got lucky then the baby would drop the knife before anything happened. And so, we don’t give sharp things to babies but teenagers can have them, right? Cars are good but someone with a license shouldn’t drive one. Things that we aren’t ready for can get us into really big trouble and God knows that, so He will often put roadblocks in front of us so that we have to take the long way around before we can get to something. And I know that can be very frustrating. I think of Adam and Eve, outside the Garden, and now they have all this knowledge and awareness but they aren’t able to really deal with it, and that can be a big problem. We need to have knowledge, information—you know, we need to know stuff, but when we know it too soon or in the wrong order it can really make us confused and get us into trouble. I think that Adam and Eve were not only ashamed, but really confused and in the Garden, because life was so easy, it might have gotten them into a whole lot of trouble and maybe they wouldn’t even be satisfied with keeping and working the Garden of God. When God moved them out of the Garden, where life was easy, and into the outside world where everything was a wilderness where they had to work very hard all day every day to just survive, they didn’t have the time to get into nearly as much trouble with everything they knew. They had to make or find a place to live. They had to find and grow food. Getting into trouble is most often something that happens to people who have way too much time on their hands, and when they had kids, they had even less time for thinking deep thoughts. They probably worked hard all day and then fell right to sleep at night because they were so tired.
And what about the Tower of Babel? What might have happened if everyone was gathered all in one place and able to speak the same language? When you have people all in one place and someone invents something, someone else is going to see it and think of a better way to make it or will think up some improvements and before too long, people can do some really amazing things. That’s why companies put all of their scientists and researchers all together in one place so that they can work together and when one person accomplishes something, someone else can make a suggestion to make it even better, or if one engineer is struggling to make something work, another one might be able to figure out what to do. Now, right now we have companies in so many different countries and they don’t want other companies to know how to make their products or to do what they do and so they are very secretive about it. Back then, there was no way to keep a secret from anyone and especially not if you were all gathered into one place and you all spoke the same language. Whatever they decided to do, they could eventually figure out how to do. And God had to do something drastic before that happened.
Have you ever really wanted to do something, but it seemed like everything and everyone was getting in your way? Have you ever seen a grownup really angry about being stuck in a traffic jam when they want to get somewhere? I bet David was really irritated about having to hide in caves because King Saul was trying to kill him! And Joseph had those dreams—but then he got sold into slavery and then on top of that he was put in jail! Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah, and Elizabeth all wanted children but all they got for a long time was disappointment. The Bible is full of stories of people who were promised this or that but had to wait so long that they lost hope. But delays and waiting can be a really wonderful thing. An adult might be angry about traffic but maybe because they were stuck, they didn’t get in a car accident! Or maybe they weren’t at the intersection when the child chased after their ball because they were held up in traffic instead. David had a lot of growing up to do, and while he was on the run from King Saul, he was learning how to be a leader by first leading a small group of men and then larger groups. And David was also learning how to talk to the kings of other kingdoms. Joseph was kind of a spoiled brat who would tattle on his brothers, but not all of his brothers, only the brothers who he would have seen himself as better than. So, Joseph felt he could pick on them. But when they turned around and sold him to the Midianites and Joseph was taken from his family to Egypt, he had to work very hard but just when everything seemed to be going as good as possible for a slave, he was accused of something he didn’t do and got stuck in jail for a long time. And when someone could have gotten him out, they forgot about him and left him there. But by the time he got out, he was a grownup and had learned to be humble instead of prideful. He had become the kind of man that God could use to save people from starving, including his own family.
And, of course, we know about Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah, and Elizabeth! None of them could have babies. Sarah waited until she was ninety years old! Rebekah couldn’t have a baby for forty years after she was married. Rachel had to watch her sister have a whole ton of babies before she could have one. Hannah was so desperate for a baby that she told God that he could have her first born for Temple work if only she could have a baby and not be sad anymore. Elizabeth was extremely old as well. But the thing is that most of the women in the Bible who have babies are never even named! We have no idea who David’s mother was, or Noah’s mother or hardly any mothers at all. But we all know the names of the children of Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah, and Elizabeth—can you name them? Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Samuel the prophet, and John the Baptist! Wow. Maybe the other women having all the kids didn’t have to wait for them, but they sure didn’t have babies who were that important to the Bible story! Did they know that while they were waiting? No way! Sarah was so desperate for a child that she gave her own servant to her husband so that they could have a baby to give to Sarah. Rachel told her husband Jacob that she would die if she couldn’t have a baby when her sister had so many. Hannah was ashamed by Peninnah, who had a ton of kids. And there is no way that they could understand just how important it was for them to have the right kid at the exact right time but God knew. And even though they were sad for so long, when God gave them children and those children turned out to be important people in God’s story, they knew it was worth it.
And maybe it has happened to you too and you were so angry and frustrated and then, all of a sudden, you got what you wanted and you realized that it was a really good thing that you didn’t get it right away like you wanted to. And adults often aren’t any more patient than kids. On social media and actually throughout my life I have seen Christians who were shouting about how the Devil is holding them back just because they can’t get something done that they want to do. But my experience is that its very often God holding me back from doing something, even though I want to do it and I think it is a good thing to do, because even though it isn’t sinful or wrong or a bad idea, it isn’t what He wants me to do right now, or yet, or ever. I don’t even know how many times that has happened. But later on, I am really glad that God did stop me in my tracks because, oh my goodness, it would have been a total disaster. But maybe a few years later, when I know more and maybe some things I thought I knew were actually wrong, and I am more patient and wiser than I was, it goes really well because God made it so that I jumped out onto the crosswalk when there was no traffic instead of jumping out in front of a bus like I would have if I had done what I wanted when I wanted.
And what if, when I couldn’t do what I wanted, I had blamed the Devil for getting in my way? Well, I’d be calling God the Devil and that is never a good thing. One time, the Scribes who came down from Jerusalem saw Jesus’s miracles and said that he got his power from the Devil. Uh oh. Jesus got His power from God, not the Devil, so these Scribes were totally insulting God! They thought they were just insulting Jesus but they were wrong and so we all have to be very careful about what we say the Devil is doing—if we assume that every time something doesn’t go our way, that it’s the Devil, then we are making the Devil more important than God. More than that, we are assuming that we are way more important to the Devil than we actually are. There’s just one of him and he is not as powerful as God, no way, and he can only be in one place at a time. And if he is going to focus on one person, I can guarantee you it isn’t you or me but I will tell you that God is very focused on you. Just like He was focused on those people who wanted to build that tower for whatever reason they thought it was so important. And because God was focused on them, next week we will see that He stopped them. He stopped them from making a terrible mistake or from getting on the wrong track or getting in over their heads. God’s going to do something that is going to lead Him to choose one man and one woman for a very important job—making a Messiah who would someday save the world and will someday come back as the King over all the world.
So why does God stand in the way of the things we want to do? Sometimes it is because He loves us and is protecting us from what will happen to us if we do what we want. Sometimes it is because he wants to teach us to be patient and trust Him. Sometimes it’s because He wants to protect other people from what we might do if we get our way. Sometimes there is something much better just around the corner, something that we can’t see, and He wants something better for us instead of whatever it was we were going to settle for. Sometimes we aren’t ready for what we want to do. Sometimes we think God wants us to do one thing when He really wants us to do another or maybe He wants us to do something, but not the way we want to do it. There are probably millions of reasons why God might stop us or stand in our way—oh yeah, I forgot to tell you about Balaam, a very odd fellow.
We won’t get to Balaam until we hit the book of Numbers and by that time I will probably be teaching your children! Balaam really wanted to do something wrong because some people were willing to pay him good money to do it. They wanted him to curse the children of Israel out in the wilderness. And he really wanted to go but God said no and so he didn’t go. I know, it’s really weird that a guy who wasn’t an Israelite could talk with God, but anyway…they asked him several times and finally God relented and said, “Okay, you can go but only if they come for you and even then, you have to say exactly what I tell you to say.” And Balaam is like saying to himself, “Dude, they are obviously going to come again so I will just ride out and meet them. Show me da money!” So, he gets onto his donkey and is riding out to them and all of a sudden his donkey just flat out stops and no matter how much he whips his poor donkey, she won’t budge and she ends up crushing his foot against a wall. And he beat her even more and she started talking to him, which for some odd reason didn’t phase him at all. I mean, me? I would run away screeching, “DEMONIC DONKEY!!!!!”
But anyway, she starts asking him why he is beating her and he actually answers—I know, right? She says, “Why are you hitting me?” And he says, “You made me look like a fool.” Dude, talking to a donkey makes you look like a fool, m’kay? But then he sees why she was so scared—a big honkin’ angel blocking the way because he went without waiting for them to come for him. And if they had run into the angel’s sword, it would be bye-bye Balaam. God even prevents disobedient people from messing everything up sometimes! He’s so awesome.
I love you. I am praying for you. And I hope you have a wonderful time this week talking about God with the people who love you.