God Came Down from Heaven
Sermon for Pentecost June 8, 2025
Faith Lutheran Church, Beaufort, South Carolina
The Tower of Babel, Genesis 11.1-11
they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. 3 Then they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. 4 And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. 6 And the LORD said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. 7 Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.” 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. 9 Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.
Introduction
Today, as we celebrate the giving of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, I would like to bring your attention to the important Old Testament lesson of the Tower of Babel. I want to focus on several important questions that this lesson brings up. But the most important question is whether or not God comes to us, and if so, how and why?
Is Genesis Real?
Before we get to that we have to wrestle with the question about the reality of the Book of Genesis itself. A hundred years ago this wouldn't have bothered many Christians at all. But today many people think this book is a book of myths. We are told that Genesis is just stories which might have some useful meanings for us, but they are not real. I completely challenge that with a few very important questions of my own: If you deny the account of Creation, of the Great Flood, and the Tower of Babel, you have a lot of explaining to do. Will your explanations be any better than those of Genesis? If God didn't create the world, who did, and how? Of course we are told it all happened by accident through a process of random chance over millions of years. But the reality is that nothing gets built by accident. We all know that. If God didn't destroy the world through the Great Flood, then why do we find fossil graveyards where many creatures all died at once, and all their remains were fossilized at the same time? Why do we find layers of sediment that span continets? If God didn't confuse the languages at Babel, then why are there over seven thousand languages in the world? Wouldn't nature have taken a different approach? Wouldn't it be much better for the survival of human beings to have a better way to communicate with one language? Isn't this the way animals communicate all over the world?
These ideas are the real myths, not the records of Genesis. These are the myths that men imagine because they are determined to think of the world without the presence and the involvement of God. If they did that, their souls would be involved. They would have respond to God's call to repentance. They would have to receive His forgiveness. And they would have to live their lives according to His will. It is because they want none of this, and want life on their own terms that they imagine the myth of a world without God. In many ways they are like the men of Shinar that we hear about in Genesis chapter eleven.
What Is Our Identity?
Before we get to the main question, "Does God come to us and how?" there are a couple of important questions that God wants us to notice. First of all, the men of Shinar were confused about their identity. They said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves..." (11.4). The Bible always warns us "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall" (Proverbs 16.18). Having cut themselves off from God, they were lost, drifting, and they hoped to find an anchor by accomplishing something that everyone would think is great. We are certainly tempted to this ourselves. We want to be recognized for something: our hobby, our career, our accomplishments, our enthusiasim for certain things. None of these are necessarily bad until they become the main identity and focus of our life.
A Christian's main identity is in their relationship to God. John the Apostle spoke about this in his first letter. Four times in that short letter he identifies Christians as "the children of God." In chapter three he said, "Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!" (3.1). Paul said, "The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God," (Romans 8.16). This is a good identity because it's not really about us. We didn't make ourselves the children of God. We became the children of God as He called us, forgave us, and put His name and His pride and joy upon us in our baptism. Our significance is that God loves us, and nothing can ever destroy that or take it away from us.
The Fear Factor
Notice, also, that the men of Genesis eleven are afraid of something. They said, "let us make a name for ourselves lest we be scattered over the face of the earth" (11.4). Within five or six generations from Noah and the Great Flood, many people were forsaking God. God had commanded them to spread out and repopulate the world. In Genesis nine, God repeated the same command he gave to Adam and Eve, to "be fruitful, to multiply, and to fill the earth" (9.1). That command still stands today. It was never taken away. But the men of Shinar did not care about this. They only cared about themselves. When that happens, when men forsake God, initially they think everything is going to be great, all will be happy. But there is really no joy without God. Gradually fear begins to lay its grip upon them. In Psalm fourteen David describes the fools who say "there is no God" (14.1). They have "turned aside," (14.3). "There they are," David said, "in great terror" (14.5).
As Christians we are also tempted by fear. But there is a difference between the person who trusts in God and the person who does not. The Christian may be bumped off his firm foundation of faith by the troubles of life: sickness, accidents, or violence. But he has a foundation to climb back to. The unbeliever has nothing but to sink into the abyss of doubt. The men of Shinar were trying to create a sense of security by building this huge tower. They put their trust in themselves, and that never ends well. Psalm 146 tells us: "Do not put your trust in princes, Nor in a son of man, in whom there is no help. His spirit departs, he returns to his earth; In that very day his plans perish" (3-4). We have to be careful not to fall into the same trap thinking that our money, our strength, our government, or our technology will save us.
Does God Come to Us and How?
We've seen how Genesis is a book of realities - very important realities. We've seen how important it is to have our identity with God and how that saves us from fear. Now let's look at the main question: "Does God Come to Us and How and Why?"
Here we begin with what is probably the funniest verse of the Bible. God sometimes uses humor to make a point. So far everything has been about the men of Shinar and their famous building project. They are proud of this. This is going to save them. This will make a name for themselves. It will reach to the heavens. Then comes verse five: "But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built." Psalm two describes something similar. The kings of the earth set themselves agains God but then verse five: "He who sits in the heavens shall laugh. The LORD shall hold them in derision." So Moses said that God has to "come down" to see the this tower that the men have built. Here God is showing us His infinite majesty and power by using a familiar human experience. It is as if God is looking down from heaven like we might look down upon a tiny ant colony. They are building something which in their eyes is great. But from God's perspective He can barely see it. He has to "come down" to see it.
God does come to us in many ways. For the men of Shinar God came in judgment by confusing human language and making it impossible for them to do all that they might try to accomplish. In the very next chapter we read that God came into this world in a much different way. He came to Abram and promised to make him a great nation - a nation that would in fact bring a blessing to all the families of the earth (12.3). This was part of God's ongoing plan of salvation - His plan to come back into this sinful world in order to save it. Down through the ages God came into this world through His prophets speaking the ringing words of truth. The heart of that message was always the same: Repent and Believe. Repent of the sins that destroy, and believe in the grace of God that saves.
The prophets all pointed to a special person who would accomplish this salvation for the world. They called Him the Messiah, the Christ. When Jesus came into the world at His birth, Matthew quoted Isaiah, "Behold the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name 'Immanuel,' which is translated, 'God with us'" (1.23).
As we remembered last Sunday, Jesus lived and died and rose again for our salvation. He then ascended to the right hand of God. Today we remember what happened just ten days later. Jesus' disciples were gathered together in prayer in Jerusalem. As Jesus had promised, the Holy Spirit came upon them and enabled them and all Christians to believe in and proclaim the presence of God. The miracle of Pentecost is similar to the miracle a Babel. There God came in judgment to confuse languages and to slow the spread of evil. At Pentecost that judgment was reversed as God enabled Peter to speak in his language and yet be understood by people of many different languages.
Conclusion
Yes, God does come to us. He came through the prophets, through Jesus, through His apostles. We are living in a very special time as Peter said in his Pentecost sermon. These are the last days. "And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh..." He goes on to say that our sons and daughters, young and old, menservants and maidservants shall prophesy. The word "prophesy" means much more that saying things about the future. It is simply speaking the words of God. This is happening all the time. Mothers and fathers are teaching their children about Jesus. This church is proclaiming the Gospel. You are bearing witness to Jesus in your words and deeds wherever you go in the world. The world around us may act like the men of Shinar trying to live without God. But we, the children of God are here, and we are here to bring them the saving presence of God. Amen.
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