Some of you children live where the land is flat right to the skyline, and at night that sky is sprinkled with stars. Some of you live in the mountains with snowy peaks and where there are tall trees and small trees. And some of you bend your heads way back to look up at tall buildings towering into the sky where you hardly ever see a star because of the city lights.
But none of you have ever seen a tower like the one in today’s story. It was not destroyed by the crash of airplanes, but it is gone, as all the inventions of man must finally go. Here’s the story of the tower of Babel, and since it is written in God’s Word, we know that it is true.
It happened long ago in the plain of Shinar. The people at that time were very clever and full of ideas. They knew a lot, and they wanted to learn more of the secrets of the universe, so they planned a tower tall enough to reach above the clouds right into the heavens. Stone would not do, so they found special clay and made kiln-dried bricks and firmly cemented them together with asphalt. They had no textbooks of engineering and no machinery, but they all spoke the same language and had the same goal. They decided to give themselves a name so they wouldn’t be scattered all over the earth.
But they were God’s creation, just as you and I are, and God loved them. God loves you and me too, and He has planned for mankind a wonderful joy and a wonderful place with Himself in heaven that no man can improve. When man tries to improve on what God has made for us here on earth, man only spoils it. God came down to look at their tower. He heard their plans and He saw that they had decided to break through the limits that His wisdom had set for them. He saw, as they did not see, that they were planning their own misery, and in His wisdom, He decided to stop them.
If you do not know the story, you will never guess what He did that night. Destroy the tower? No. He did something that only God could do. The people all spoke the same language since they all lived in one part of the world. So God removed from the brain of every family all memory of the language that they had been speaking, and each family was given a different language. Each language was perfect in its details and understood only within the family. Isn’t our God powerful - far beyond the most powerful person you know?
With so many different languages, they could not work together. The families moved apart, and the planned tower became a ruin. The name Babel means “confusion,” and we still have the confusion of those many languages today.
We have come a long way since then and God has not stopped us. Research has explored and uncovered many wonders of God’s creation, but each new discovery does not increase the happiness of mankind. Do you feel frustrated and sad? God cares. That is why He sent His only begotten Son to die for you. That is why the Lord Jesus wants to welcome you to the place which He calls “My Father’s house.” There is room there for saved sinners, but there is no room for rebellious sinners. Will you accept Him as your own Savior right now?