Just as it had been before the flood, in forgetting God and going on in sinful ways, so it was afterward; only now they seem to have very, very quickly forgotten the lesson of the ark and the awful flood of waters which God had sent on the earth to destroy every person that was not safe in that ark. I expect they thought that they were pretty smart people, and in a few verses in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, verses 21 to end of chapter, God has told us something about what they thought of themselves, and what He thought of them, which wasn’t the same at all. I want you to read them all, but I can only find room here for part of the verses:
“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things”. So you see they began making pictures and images of people and things, in order to pray to them, and make sacrifices or offerings to them, because they didn’t want to believe in the true God.
Among the things these early people found how to do, was making day bricks to build With, instead of stone, and Satan seems to have made use of this to get them to go a step further from God. They were getting to be so many, and the world was so big, it was certain the people would get scattered over the whole earth, which God surely meant them to be, but in peaceful quietness. But having no wish to please God, but only themselves, and determined to make themselves independent of Him, they thought they would build a big city, and a great high tower of brick as a kind of grand gathering point, or capital city of the world. But though they wanted to forget God, He did not forget them, and so we read (verse 5): “And the Lord came down to see the city, and the tower which the children of men builded”.
I don’t suppose anyone saw Him, or thought of Him, but He was there and just as now He sees into every heart, and knows what we are doing and saying, so it was then. God saw that the city and the tower were only a beginning; they would, with Satan as their leader, get worse and worse very fast, and God would soon have to punish the world in some dreadful happening like the flood. So He had a way to ruin their plans, and to hold back Satan’s wicked schemes, and that was to alter their speech so that they could not understand one another. Well, of course, just as soon as there were different languages spoken, which is just what God caused to happen, the building stopped, and the people separated. by languages into groups, and so there came about nationalities: each nation went off in search of a home for itself, and they were soon scattered all over the world. From this time, Egypt and China had their beginning, but those countries claim to he very old, older than Adam and Eve.
Other nations, too, came to be then; many of them we know very little about. Now this is the way God tells us the nations began, and I am glad the Bible tells us, because otherwise we would have to depend on what the histories tell, that men have written, both on stones and in books, which have been found untrue many a time.
Adam and Eve, when in the garden of Eden, had been given for their food, you will remember, the grains and nuts and fruits that grew on, plants and trees, and when God sent them out of that garden He had (chapter 3:18) told them again that these things were to be their food. But after the flood, God told men that besides what I mentioned, their food should include every moving thing; there was one thing prohibited,—the blood could not he used for food, but only the flesh of the creatures: Thirty years after the tower of Babel, came Nimrod, who began to be a mighty one in the earth, and we are told that he was also a mighty hunter before the Lord; he hunted wild creatures for the pleasure of hunting and killing them, and not just for food for himself and his family. Not only that, but Nimrod became, as it seems, the first king; and Babel, where the tower had been begun was the first city of his kingdom. And so the world went on without God Who made it, Who gave its people life and breath and all things. I wonder if my reader is trying to live without. God. Nimrod. and those of his day, could not know of the precious blood of Jesus, but we do, you and I. Are you trusting Him for salvation?