Let's read this very carefully,
paying attention, because it is an unusual event in the Scripture,
but it's an important event. So, let's look at the Tower of
Bible. Genesis 11, 1 through 9. And the whole earth was of one
language and one speech. The margin will say lip. And
it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found
a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. And they
said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them
thoroughly. And they had brick for stone,
and slime they had for mortar. And then they said, Go to, let
us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven. And let us make us a name, lest
we be scattered abroad on the face of the whole earth. And
the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the
children of men built it. And the Lord said, Behold, the
people is one, and they have all one language. And this they
began to do, and now nothing will be restrained from them
which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there
confound their language, that they may not understand one another's
speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad
from fence upon the face of all of the earth, and they left off
to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called
Babel, because the Lord did there confound the language of all
of the earth, and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad
upon the face of all of the earth." Let me begin by reminding us
that as we journey through our Bible and read through the Word
of the Lord, that there are certain events in history which are recorded
for us in the Scripture that have a great impact upon the
work of God in His providential guiding and governing and ordering
the history of the human family. Certain things there are that
stand out because they are very important when they are considered
in their context and considered then from the impact that they
have upon the history of the human family. As for example,
the sin and the fall of Adam and of Eve, when death passed
upon all from that sin of our first parent. Again, we could
think of the flood that occurred in the days of Noah. This reduced
the earth's population so greatly that but a mere eight people
were in the ark and remained alive. And it was, as it were,
a new beginning of the earth when Noah and his family came
off of that ark. It was a strong expression of
the wrath of God against sin in that He destroyed the old
world and all in which there was the breath of life." Another
great event that we might look at is the call of Abraham. When God called Abraham out from
among his people and his country, and said that he would be with
him, that he would bless him, and that his seed would be as
the stars of the sea. Still another great event in
the Old Testament was the deliverance of Israel out of their Egyptian
bondage and their transfer into the land of Canaan or into the
land of promise. And of course, the most important
event of all, the incarnation and the death, burial and resurrection
of the very Son of God. Now, our text today, however,
certainly qualifies as a great a significant, important event
as it deals with the spread of the enlarging human family, as
well as the dividing of them into different nations and distinct
people and such like, with diverse languages. And also, at this
time, it was that God not only divided them, but He also assigned
them their place upon the earth which He had created for the
habitation of man. Now in order for us to get a
grasp of this, or perhaps a better grasp, we ought to expand our
study, look backward as it were, so as to include Genesis chapter
9, 10, 11, and 12, all of them together
in this one study. Therefore, we can look at the
overall picture in a larger context in order to help us get our contextual
bearings as to where we have been and where we are going. Now, by the flood, as you well
know, The human family was squeezed down to but eight persons in
number. There was Noah's family. He,
his wife, their three sons, and their three wives in the ark. Eight souls were saved by water. 1 Peter 3 and verse 20. You have it also in Genesis 2,
verse 7, and again in verse 13. Now, when the flood was ended
and they exited the ark, I mean Noah and his family, they received
in Genesis chapter 9 and verse 1 through 3 the same essential
command that was given unto Adam and Eve in the garden in Genesis
1 and verse 28. Be fruitful, multiply, and replenish
the earth. We read in Genesis 10 and verse
1, that the three sons of Noah, Ham, Shem, and Japheth, were
sons born after the flood. And unto them were born sons
after the flood, that they began to procreate themselves again
and anew. And in Genesis chapter 9, And
verse 18 and 19, we are told that from these three couples,
the sons of Shem and their wives, the whole world was then repopulated. The command was fulfilled in
them. Multiply and replenish the earth. And in Genesis 9 and verse 19,
we read, and of them was the whole world over spread
of these three couples that came out of the ark. Something else
in Genesis 10 and verse 32, these are the families of the sons
of Noah according to their genealogy by their nation and out of these
the nations were divided in the earth after the flood. So that is very clear. We want
to note that the population of the earth after the flood only
came from the three sons of Noah and their wives. And Genesis
chapter 10 gives us the genealogy of those sons of Noah, tracing
out the threefold future development of the human family or the human
race. Now the three sons of Noah again
are Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Three of them. And there is an
incident in the end of chapter 9 that is very interesting. It
has a bearing on all of this, has a bearing on Noah's posterity. After the flood, it says that
Noah became a husbandman. That is, he farmed and scratched
in the earth. And he planted a vineyard. And
in the time of harvest, that Noah did absolutely overindulge
in the wine. And he became drunk, drunken. Not out in public, but in his
own tent. And while Noah lay there in his
tent inebriated, he was uncovered, the Scripture said, in his tent. And his mischievous son Ham saw
the nakedness of his father." Now this is just one example
of the many things that one might do, or something that they might
say, foolish under the power of strong drink. Ham must have
done something or acted in a way that Robert Candlish in his commentary
on the book of Genesis called, quote, flagrant palile irreverence,
unquote, towards his father. For his son Canaan, that is,
Ham's son who named Canaan, was put under a curse and was made
a servant of servant unto the others. When Noah had slept off
his drunkenness and learned what his youngest son Ham had done
to him, evidently he brought the two older brothers in to
see and to look and to snigger and to laugh or something of
that sort. Made some immodest remark of
some kind or another. When Noah awoke, and this is
amazing, There came a spirit of prophecy upon Noah concerning
his sons. Even as we read about with Jacob
in Genesis chapter 49, who just before his death made prophecy
concerning each one of his sons. Now he, that is Noah, pronounced
a curse upon Canaan, the son of Ham. And in Genesis 9 and
25, cursed be Canaan. And then, as someone said, he
is sentenced to a degrading servitude. That is, Canaan was. Saying,
a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. The lowest
and most degrading form of servitude or of slavery that one can imagine. But then, of the son named Shem,
Noah prophesied, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem. Now, it is not blessed be Shem
per se, but blessed be the Lord God of Shem. For God would be
the God of Shem. And this is very important for
us to grasp now that we might have it later. His descendants
were those that were blessed as a nation and as a people and
whose God was the Lord. Then there is Japheth. And in
Genesis 9.27, God shall enlarge the tents of Japheth. In other words, He would be multitudous
in the offspring and the progeny. Multiply. He would greatly increase
them. He would make the descendants
of Japheth to be very numerous. But watch this. Watch what it
said in the end of that verse. And he shall dwell in the tents
of Shem. There shall be some close connection
at some point down the line between the two. Now, since the human
family was, in the days of the flood, reduced again to but eight
souls, it must be so that all races and all nationalities descended
from these three sons of Noah. Some hold that the descendants
of Ham were the darker skinned races, the Africans, while Shem
was the progenitor of the people that became the seed of Abraham
or the Jewish nation, which the Lord Jesus descended from after
the flesh. Romans chapter 9 and verse 5. And Japheth, the third son, had
a posterity that would be principally Gentiles, Matthew Henry thought,
the descendants of Japheth, peopled such places as the descendants
of Europe and eventually America, that these were principally the
descendants of Japheth, the son of Noah. Now, it is clear that
Shem and his progeny included the family of Abraham. Because if you look in our chapter,
Genesis 11 and verse 10, there the author takes up the line
of Shem's generation, and he traces that generation down to
Abraham, or the genealogy of Japheth down to Abraham. We read in Matthew 1 and verse
1 where Jesus Christ is called the Son of Abraham as his lineage
is phrased from Abraham to Joseph for us in the New Testament.
The husband of Mary, the one who bare the Lord Jesus Christ
in the flesh. Now coming to chapter 11 of the
book of Genesis and the Tower of Babel. Now there are two things
here that were done that are important. God did two great
things here that altered forever the course of human history and
the course of the human family. Number one, He confused the language
of the people. Did we not read in verse 1, they
were all one lip, one speech, one tongue. God confused their
language and greatly damaged their unity by that act. We'll say more about that later.
And the second thing that God did is He scattered and dispersed
them all over the face of the earth. And no doubt, the first
was the instrument and instrument of the second, that the confusion
of language played a part in the dispersing of the people
all over the world. And those with a common language
were then drawn together because they had more in common. Now,
just as a common language had held them together before, so
now it would, by being confused, be instrumental in dividing them
into families and nations. what that common language was
before this time, it is useless for us to guess. Who can know? Though it must have been the
language used by Noah and his family and brought through the
flood and the ark. And even if there were multiple
languages that were in existence before the flood, They were reduced
to one by the flood, that of Noah. That his dialect survived
the flood and the ark with him. So that all were of one lip,
as you see it there in verse 1. Now we have two facts to begin
chapter 11. Both of them which God would
change or alter. The two things again are A, there
was a common language. Anybody could understand anybody
else. And B, and get this, it's important
later, there was a determination on the part of the people. How
many there were, I could not tell you. But there was, from
the text, a determination on their part not to disperse, not
to be divided, not to be separated up. For in verse 4, as we saw,
they devised a plan that they intended would prevent being
scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. What would
they do that might not result in their scattering? Verse 4,
Let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto the
heaven, and let us make us a name. Now there it is summed up. No, both a city and a tower. We don't think of the tower by
itself. But a city and the tower, no
doubt, rising up out of it, so tall, so tall that they would
say that it appeared even to reach into the heaven. Again, their motive was twofold,
and we look at that. They wanted to make a name for
themselves, that a city and a tower so great and magnificent might
be a monumental and a testimony unto themselves. Matthew Henry
wrote, these Babel builders did put themselves to a great deal
of foolish expense and labor to make themselves a name. To
leave as a memorial to themselves when they had been scattered,
if they were, or when they were dead and gone. To be famous and
to have their names in remembrance of the men who built the tower
of Babel. We often hear the phrase, in
our day, and you can understand this, the world's tallest building. And that's a great boast. The
world's tallest building. I don't know which one is now. I've been 84 floors up on the
Empire State Building. I do not want to go any higher. It looks like an airplane view.
But these things men boast of. The longest bridge in the world. Or the longest cable bridge in
the world. It has something to do with moving
people, yes, but also with the pride of man that enters in. For in light of that, I want
you to consider from the book of Daniel an example and an experience. In Daniel chapter 4 and verse
30, and King Nebuchadnezzar who in verse 29 walked in or upon,
as the margin said, the palace of the kingdom of Babylon. On a certain day, the king was
walking. In verse 30, the king said, either
to himself or to some of his nobles or to some visiting dignitaries
that he might have wanted to impress, but he said these words
walking upon the palace of the kingdom. Quote, Is not this great
Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the
might of my power and for the honor of my majesty? Unquote. Now there's the king,
boasting in his great accomplishment, proud, showing off what he had
done by his mighty power. God dealt with that man immediately. And do you remember how it was
that God dealt with him? He takes all the credit to Himself. He extols what He thinks is His
greatness. He considers all of it a monument
to His leadership and wit and skill and greatness and His majesty. But in verse 31 and following,
in Daniel chapter 4, we read of a fearful thing. before the
words had cleared the mouth of that presumptuous, prideful king. While the words were still yet
upon his tongue, it says, God sent an awful, awful judgment
upon and against the king. He pronounced a severe judgment
against the king for his failure to honor God and lower and humble
himself. What did he do? He turned the
king for a time into a quasi-beast, if I may call it that, and sent
him out into the field. And he grazed and ate grass like
the cattle of the field, Nebuchadnezzar, like the beast of the pasture. He grazed, and his hair grew,
and his nails grew, and he looked like something awful. And in
Daniel 4, verse 32, that the king might acknowledge that the
Most High God rules in the kingdom of men and gives it to whomsoever
He will. This is the lesson that he must
learn, that God is sovereign, that He has power over all nations,
even those that seem to be wicked and godless. You can compare
this with Daniel chapter 5, 17 through verse 21. How about those
who boast in our day of having the world's largest church? We have 20,000 members. Our budget is $100 million a
year. We're on 900 television stations and 450 radio stations. And our church costs $40 million
to build. Yes, and let me tell you what
they don't have, and that would be the truth of the gospel of
Jesus Christ our Lord. But now let's look at the second
thing that we mentioned that they aimed at, and that was to
avoid being dispersed over the face of the earth. And they wanted
to build a mighty, mighty citadel, a fortress city, a stronghold
of some kind evidently, including in it a mighty tower that appeared
to reach even into the heaven. Now, a monument to their ingenuity,
including this great architectural work that they so boasted in. Now consider, if you will, two
questions for our consideration. First of all, why did they not
want to be scattered? Why was it in their heart that
they did not want to be scattered? Number two, why was it the mind
of God to scatter them abroad? Why did they not want to be scattered? And why was it the mind of God
that they be scattered? First, as to why they did not
want themselves to be scattered, which raises the question, what
did they think? Did they think they might be
scattered? That there was the chance that
they might be scattered? And why did they fear it? Or,
if not fear it, why did they resist it? Could the answers
be as simple as Calvin suggests in his commentary? That in the
inestimable number, as they multiplied into great numbers, the land
would not hold them in the particular place where they were, and so
they would leave a monument to their name in that place. We
see in some cases how very fond men are of both a nation and
of unity of numbers. We see that men sometimes think
that this is their best way to go. How fond they are, are men
and nations both of uniting together and thinking that there is great
power and safety in their uniting together. And yet I think that
these things and these kind of thoughts have led to the forming
of such monstrosities as the United Nations, the National
Council of Churches, and such like, who sacrifice liberty for
unity and truth for numbers and for power. But secondly, there
is the greater question, why was it in the mind of God that
they be scattered and become sectarian and divided up into
peoples and into nations. Now, the text makes it very clear. The Lord would have them to be
scattered, and He took definite measures to bring that to pass. For consider, if you will, certain
things in our text. Verse 5, the Lord took notice
of their project. He knows and sees all, and so
He took notice. In verse 6, He said the imagination
of their heart is set upon this evil scheme. When I thought of
that, I thought again of Genesis 6 and verse 5, and Genesis 8
and 21. that the hearts of the people
is fully set in them to do evil. But look at verse 7. The Lord
confounded their language. One expositor called this, quote,
a linguistic change, unquote, and certainly it was. Now this
is not explained. We don't have any explanation
about it. The fact is simply stated, but
it must have been a phenomenal occurrence among that group of
people. It must have produced, if we
can imagine it, a great amazement among the people as they're working
on their project. And then all of a sudden, they
could not communicate, for they could not understand the words
of one another back and forth. And they could not continue their
project, and they left off the building of the tower. Perhaps
as one asked for a brick, another reached out and shook his hand,
or took his break, or sat down to eat lunch. But anyway, they
looked at one another in absolute amazement as they spoke and could
not understand each other. Perhaps a good way to help us
understand this is to remember and consider the opposite phenomenon
when at Pentecost, every man heard in his or her own dialect. They heard the wonderful works
of God, each one in their dialect. with which they were familiar. This was not a bunch of jibber-jabber
like the Pentecost tried to make out. They understand in each
one's dialect is the word that is used there in Acts. All of
them that spoke were Galileans, they said, and yet they heard
in their own dialect. At Pentecost, many dialects yielded
to one, while at Babel, One language yielded unto many. To return to the thought that
it was the mind and the will of God to scatter them, as stated
in verse 8 here of our text, so the Lord scattered them abroad
from thence, or from that place, upon the face of all of the earth,
and did it at least in part by causing a great catastrophe in
regard to their language, which became a barrier between them. Now here are two thoughts to
consider. Number one, God willed to scatter
a people in a way that He had not scattered them before the
flood. He did not do this in the days
before the flood. Secondly, and this is more important,
there was a purpose to the scattering of the people at Babel that reached
all the way to the incarnation of Jesus Christ, our Lord and
Savior. God's purpose was to scatter
all mankind into all parts of the earth. You remember what
Paul told the Athenians in Athens in Acts chapter 17 and verse
26? For God has made of one blood
all nations of men, for to dwell upon the face of the earth, and
has determined the bounds in time before appointed of their
habitation." Now in this context in Acts 17, Paul says this, it
is true, against the belief of those Athenians who believed
that they had sprung up out of the native earth of their country. Paul may have had in his mind
something which Moses told the congregation way back in Deuteronomy. And I intend to turn there. Deuteronomy
32, if you care to go and read. And it's just a couple of verses,
but verse 7 and verse 8 in Deuteronomy chapter 32. We wonder, did Paul
perhaps have this in his mind? Here's what it said. Moses speaking
to them, says in verse 7, remember the days of old. Consider the
years of many generations. Ask the Father, and He will show
thee the elders, and they will tell thee when the Most High
divided to the nations their inheritance When He separated
the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people according
to the number of the children of Israel." Now get that last
part. He set them according to the
number of the children of Israel. Now we may refer to verse 9,
under which our text point says, Moses reminds them of old days. when their fathers were familiar
with the work that God had done among them. And verse 8, the
Most High separated the sons of Adam. He divided to the nations
their inheritance, giving them their portion, setting their
bounds of their habitation. That is said to be the work of
God. Now, let that move us into our
next point. as to how the dividing of the
nation is intended to serve the purpose of God toward the nations
of the world concerning the Jews, and through them Messiah came
after the flesh. Here again, Deuteronomy 32, verse
8, the last part, and verse 9. He set the bounds of the people
according to the number of the children of Israel, for the large
portion is his people. Jacob is the lot of his inheritance."
And when we come to Genesis 11 and verse 10 and following, the
author then concentrates upon the posterity of Noah's son Shem,
of which line Abraham would descend and from which the nation of
Israel was propagated. It was where God put His worship
and made the covenants and to whom pertained the adoption and
the glory and the service of God, of whom Christ came after
the flesh. Paul says all of that in Romans
9, 4 and 5. So here, let us recall the prophecy
of Noah in regard to his son Shem, in Genesis 9 and 26. Blessed be the Lord God of Shem. Again, not blessed be Shem, but
blessed be the Lord God of Shem. And when the nations were divided,
and the land was allotted for their dwelling places, and the
languages were assigned after the Tower of Babel, it must be
true what Matthew Henry said, even though God had Abraham's
seed in His mind and in His eye, and the land of Canaan was promised
specifically unto His seed. Genesis 12 and verse 7. Though Genesis 12 and 6, the
Canaanite was then in the land and possessing it, Once more,
let us recall the words of Moses in Deuteronomy 32 and verse 8,
that God in His infinite wisdom and pursuant, therefore, unto
His own purpose, quote, set the bounds of the people according
to the number of the children of Israel and from Abraham as
a head and father there developed a people and a land that was
theirs given unto them by God." Now concerning the institution
of the different languages there at Babel, Jonathan Edwards has
made a good point in his book, The History of Redemption. He makes the point that in preparation
for Christ coming into the world and the proclamation of the gospel,
in preparation for that, God had so ordered His providence
that the Grecian empire was established with Greek as the known language
spoken throughout most of that known world. And this enhanced
the preaching of the gospel in the early years of Christianity. How wise is our God! But in consideration
of these things, the dividing of the sons of Adam and assigning
to them their particular territory, let us not forget the line of
another son of Noah, and that is Japheth. The descendants of
Japheth had their inheritance principally among the choice
spots upon the earth. And for a large part, it was
to these descendants of Japheth that the gospel was passed off
to when the Jews were cut off. They were cut off in Europe,
and England, and Switzerland, and Scotland, and Germany, and
eventually America became a place where the gospel was sent. The descendants of Japheth, therefore,
became the means for the calling of the Gentiles. On the other
hand, consider, Those multitudes who have fallen into abject paganism
and idolatry. Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism,
Islam, Shintoism. All of these rejecters of the
one true and living God and salvation by His Son, Jesus Christ. I was reading John Owen. Always
have to check Owen. He was very adamant that paganism
idolatry took its rise from there at Babel in the new world. And
when the Lord instituted the worship of God among the seed
of Abraham, then pagan idolatry took a two-fold form of worshiping
graven images and temporal things or tangible things that could
be seen. It had two forms, paganism did,
in the worship of graven images that were made by men's hands,
and number two, the worship of created things and images like
the sun, the moon, the stars, animals, and such like. Now,
concerning the confusion of languages and the dispersion, consider
two points in closing. One, though the confusion of
language was a major means of God dispersing the people at
the same time, it made for an orderly dispersion as each group
had their own common language. Secondly, it prepared the way
both for the coming of Christ and the calling of the Gentiles
as God made this great work. We are left with no time this
morning to consider a question that might have run through your
mind, was this the origin of nationalities? A lot of people
wonder about that, how the nationalities and so forth came into being.
Was this the place where God made that to occur? There was
one language before, there are many after. And then another
thing. I don't want to get into, because
I don't know much about it. And that is the New Testament
word, Mystery Babylon, as the writer speaks of Mystery Babylon,
the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth. No doubt figurative of Old Testament
Babylon. But thank God for His providential
work and how He has carried it on. And we look back over that
and see what came to pass. Jews in their land, the Gentiles
then called. What a wonderful work did God
do at the Tower of Babel. All right, let's stand together
please for a word of dismissal prayer.