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Diverse and Beautiful Languages
Dallas is becoming increasingly diverse as people pour into our city from all over the world. People are coming for education and jobs and opportunity. As a country boy who grew up in a town of less than a thousand with very little racial or ethnic diversity, I love the increasing diversity of this area. I love it because it reflects the beauty and creativity of God and because it gives us a unique opportunity to take the gospel to the nations without even leaving our city.
I also love it because it reflects heaven. Revelation 7:9 says, “I looked, and behold, a great multitude of all nations, tribes, and peoples before the Lamb.” Heaven will be even more ethnically diverse than our city. Heaven will be hell for racists.
There are approximately 7,000 known languages in the world. The five most common languages in the world are Mandarin Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish, and Russian. The CDC lists 94 different languages that are spoken in households in Dallas County.[1]
The Origin of All Nations
Our world, our city, and even our church is full of people who speak different languages and come from different nations. This reality is the result of what we learn in Genesis 10-11. In chapter 10, we learn about the origin of all the nations of the earth. In 11:1-9, we learn about the origin of all the languages of the earth.
This genealogy mentions seventy nations that came from Noah and his sons. The sons of Japheth are listed first in verses 2-5, then the sons of Ham in verses 6-20, then the sons of Shem in verses 21-31. I’ll move quickly through these names, pointing out a few things along the way.
Madai in verse 2 is where the Medes come from, or the people of modern-day Iran. Javan (v. 2) is similar to Ion. The Ionic people were the ancient Greek people.
Next we come to the sons of Ham in verses 6-20. Remember from chapter 9 that Noah’s son Ham shamed him by not covering his nakedness (9:22-23), so Noah cursed the descendants of Ham through Canaan (v. 25). The reason Moses the narrator puts so much emphasis on Ham’s descendants is because Israel is about to come into the land of Canaan where they’ll bring God’s judgment on the descendants of Ham, the Canaanites.
Don’t Be a Nimrod
In verses 8-12, we meet a man named Nimrod. “Mighty man” (v. 8) wasn’t a compliment. He was proud, forceful, greedy, and violent. He founded what becomes the capital cities of Babylon and Assyria, Babel and Nineveh. Both these nations give Israel lots of trouble later on, with the Assyrians defeating the northern kingdom in 722 BC and taking them into exile and the Babylonians defeating the southern kingdom in 586 BC and taking them into exile.
Nimrod was a mighty man, a mighty hunter, and a mighty city-builder. But there’s no indication that he worshipped the one true and living God. He lived for himself and he’s totally forgotten today. Unless you’re reading this text, you don’t know anything about Nimrod. He’s completely irrelevant, as will be everyone who refuses to worship the living and true God. The only way to find lasting significance as a human being is to find yourself among the worshippers of God. To achieve significance, don’t be a Nimrod, live for God.
Descent Does Not Determine Destiny
Heth (v. 15) is probably the father of the Hittites. The Hittites are Canaanites and are therefore under the curse of Noah, enemies of the people of God. But that doesn’t mean that God can’t save these people. Remember Uriah the Hittite? His name means “Yahweh is my light.” This Hittite had been drawn to the people of God and sworn his life to protect the king of Israel. He was a pagan who was drawn into the worship of the one, true and living God.
This means that our descent doesn’t determine our destiny. The people we descend from don’t determine what kind of person we will be or whether or not we will know the one, true and living God.
The Sons of Shem
In verses 21-31, we meet the sons of Shem. “Eber” is where the word “Hebrew” comes from. It has the same consonants that form the word for “Passover.” The Hebrew people are literally “the people of the Passover.”
Eber has two sons (v. 25). This genealogy follows Joktan. The one in chapter 11 will follow Peleg, taking us all the way to Abram. This is one of the features of the book of Genesis. It will often deal with the line from whom the chosen one does not descend first, then it’ll give us the line from which the chosen one descends. “In his days the earth was divided” likely refers to when the Lord divided, or confused, the languages of the earth.
Verse 32 summarizes what is happening in this genealogy. The Bible is telling us where all the peoples of the earth came from. This means that humanity is unified. All people are the same kind of people because all people have the same ancestor, Noah, who descended from Adam. All people bear the image of God and therefore have dignity and worth. This means that any ideology that seeks to divide ethnic groups should be rejected (eg. Critical Race Theory, White Supremacy, Replacement Theory, etc).
The Origin of All Languages
In chapter 10, we’ve learned about the origin of all the nations of the earth. In chapter 11, we learn about the origin of all the languages of the earth.
Language is a beautiful and profound thing. Language is the primary way that we communicate with one another. Language is how we express our ideas, our emotions, our desires, our hopes and dreams. Complex and abstract language is one of the things that sets us apart from animals. Language is one of the ways that we image God. We’re made in the likeness of a God who speaks.
In this text, we’re going to learn that the presence of different languages is actually the result of man’s sin and God’s judgment. But this doesn’t mean that God didn’t ordain this reality in order to bring glory to Jesus.
Contextual Clarification
You may remember that chapter 10 mentions the presence of different languages. “From these the coastland peoples spread in their lands, each with his own language, by their clans, in their nations” (vv. 5, 20, 31).
But Genesis 11:1 says, “The whole earth had one language and the same words.” Had Moses forgotten what he’d just written in chapter 10? No, he had not. He knew what he was doing. The solution is to realize that Moses didn’t put these accounts in chronological order. He first describes the spreading out of the peoples in chapter 10, then he describes the origin of the spreading in chapter 11.
God had told Noah and his family to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (9:1), and that’s exactly what chapter 10 describes. Chapter 10 appears to be man’s obedience to God’s command. But Genesis 11:1-9 tells us that it wasn’t obedience after all. We learn that the spreading of the peoples and the multiplying of the languages was a result of God’s judgment. After the flood, the people began clustering instead of spreading, so God did something that would make their clustering impossible. He confuses their languages and breaks them up into many peoples.
Two-Fold Sin
What exactly did the people do to invite God’s judgment? Verse 4 is the key to understanding their sin. There are four key statements in this verse that tell us what their four aims, or goals, were. First, they aimed to build a city. Second, they aimed to build a tower in the city that would reach to the heavens. Third, they aimed to make a name for themselves. And fourth, they aimed to not be dispersed over the whole earth.
The first aim corresponds with the last aim. Building a city is how they planned on avoiding being dispersed over the whole earth. And the second aim corresponds to the third aim. Building a tower that would reach the heavens is how they would make a name for themselves.
Their desire to build a city and a tower were the outward expressions of their inward sins. The two inward sins that drove their actions were the love of praise (desiring to make a name for themselves) and the love of security (desiring to build a city instead of taking the risk of filling the earth).
Making a Name for Ourselves
The desire to make a name for ourselves is endemic to being human. The people of Babel were doing exactly what we all do. We’re always on the look-out for ways to make a name for ourselves.
It started with Adam and Eve eating the fruit because they thought that they would gain a wisdom that would make them like God (Gen. 3:6). And it continues in our lives as we do whatever we can to make a name for ourselves. Out of a fear of anonymity, of being obscure, we’re driven to succeed at work or by having the model family or by crafting the perfect image of ourselves online, all in order to make a name for ourselves. We can’t stand the thought of being obscure or anonymous.
“The Lord Came Down”
Did you notice the holy sarcasm in verse 5? “The Lord came down to see the city and the tower.” This is holy mockery. The tower was so little that God had to come down to see it. This tiny tower was so far from reaching heaven that God couldn’t even see it from heaven!
What does God do in response to their direct disobedience to his command to “fill the earth” (Gen. 9:1), to their pride in trying to make a name for themselves? Verses 6-8 tell us.
God’s response to their sin was to confuse their language and disperse them over the face of the earth (vv. 6, 8). God’s response to man’s arrogance and presumption was to make it harder for man to communicate and thus harder to unite in rebellion against God. The end of verse 6 tells us that God knows the immense potential of people created in his image. So he multiplies languages and peoples in order to limit their ability to exalt themselves and find security apart from him.
Interestingly, in verse 9 we see that God gave them what they wanted. They made a name for themselves – “Babel,” just not the one they wanted. Sometimes God’s judgment in our lives is that we get exactly what we want, only to find out that what we want is not good for us.
Babel and the Glory of Jesus
How does man’s sin and God’s judgment at the tower of Babel bring glory to Jesus? Let me first say that whenever God permits, or allows, something to happen, he does so for a reason. And if there’s a reason, then that means that it’s part of a plan. God does not act haphazardly or aimlessly. When he permits this rebellion on the plains of Shinar to take place he knows exactly what he’s doing and what his response will be.
This means that the different languages and the different peoples of the world aren’t an afterthought. They aren’t God’s knee-jerk response to a sin that he didn’t see coming. They’re simultaneously the judgment of God on sin and part of a plan that will bring praise to Jesus.
Authority of Jesus is Magnified
How exactly does man’s sin and God’s judgment at the tower of Babel bring glory to Jesus? In at least three ways. First, because Jesus lays claim on every language group. Matthew 28:18-19, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”
Why are we to go and make disciples of all nations (or ethnes, or people groups)? Because Jesus has all authority and therefore he has authority to call people from all peoples to worship him. Before he ascended to heaven, he staked out his claim on all the peoples of the earth.
The Gospel is Glorified
The second way that Jesus is glorified through the tower of Babel is that his gospel is seen as more glorious because it has the power to break into every language and every people group. The message of the gospel, the message of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection for the forgiveness of sins, has the power to save and transform people from any language or people group.
Romans 1:16, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” The gospel is powerful and glorious because it’s able to bring salvation to all peoples. The gospel of Jesus isn’t provincial, it’s not a tribal religion that only effects a small percentage of the human race. The gospel of Jesus has the power to break into every language group and every people group.
John Piper summarizes this point well: “If there were no diversity of languages, if the spectacular sin of Babel had not happened with its judgment, the global glory of the gospel of Christ would not shine as beautifully as it does in the prism of thousands of languages.”[2]
Praise From Every Tribe and Language
The third and final way that Jesus is glorified through the events of the tower of Babel is because Jesus will one day receive praise from every tribe and every language. Revelation 5:9, “And they sang a new song, saying, ‘Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.’”
Revelation 7:9-10, “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’”
The praise that Jesus will receive on that day will be more glorious and more beautiful because of its diversity than it would’ve been if there were only one language and one people. The arrogance of the people of Babel and the resulting judgment of God have become the means that God is using to call together the most beautiful choir that the universe has ever seen.
There will be almost 7,000 languages in that choir made up of people with every skin color under the sun. I pray that we would become a church that embraces that future reality in the present through loving and God-honoring diversity. And I pray that we would be a church that would take seriously our mandate to take the gospel of Jesus to every language group on the planet, for the glory of Jesus.
The Gospel at the Tower of Babel
If the story of the tower of Babel teaches us anything, it’s that we were never meant to center our lives on who we are and what we can do, but on God who created us. We were never meant to build towers and ascend to heaven. We were made to love and trust our God who left heaven to meet us where we are, rather than requiring us to work our way to where he is. The tower of Babel illustrates for us the fatal delusion of all man-made religion that says that through superior effort man can reach God.
The beauty and power of the gospel of Jesus Christ – the thing that makes it unique among all other world religions, is that in the gospel, God comes down to man. The gospel of Jesus Christ is infinitely more beautiful than any other religion because it says that, although man is sinful and God is holy, man can be forgiven and gain access to the presence of God if he’ll only repent of his sins and look in faith to Jesus Christ.
In the middle of our Babel-like pride and rebellion, God has stepped down out of the clouds and met us where we are and offered us his grace at no charge if we’ll humbly accept it.
God will one day step out of heaven again. Jesus will come a second time, and he won’t come as a suffering servant but as a conquering King. He’ll come to judge the nations and separate out those who are his from those who aren’t. On that day, it’ll become clear who’s name we were living for.
[1]http://emergency.cdc.gov/snaps/data/48/48113_lang.htm
[2]John Piper, Spectacular Sins and Their Global Purpose in the Glory of Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008), 72.