Futility

Read: Genesis 11:1-9

Come, let’s build a great city for ourselves with a tower that reaches into the sky. This will make us famous and keep us from being scattered all over the world. Genesis 11:4

IN WORD

God had told the first human beings to fill the earth and subdue it. They were to spread out, to be the governors of God’s realm under His kingship. The beauty and order of the Garden were to expand into the earth’s surrounding chaos. His Kingdom plan was for His glory to cover the earth through those He had created in His own image.

That isn’t what happened, of course. There was a massive and prolonged turn in the opposite direction. One example of the many contradictions to God’s plan occurred on the plains of Shinar, where the Babylonian empire would one day rise up. The human community devised a plan not to spread out and subdue the earth, as God had long ago ordered, but to come together and reach toward heaven. They rejected the idea of scattering and filling the earth with God’s image-bearers and instead chose to cluster and make a name for themselves. They acted contrary to God’s design.

Scripture and history both tell us how futile humanity’s attempts at self-exaltation have been. Romans 8:20-21 specifically tells us that God subjected the world to frustration in order to send it searching for freedom and glory ultimately in Him. At Babel, the frustration and futility are on full display. God scatters the people and gives them diverse languages that prevent them from clustering. Their attempts to exalt themselves fail miserably.

IN DEED

Ironically, God’s promise to His humble, dependent, redeemed children is to fill them with glory (Romans 8:21), and His assignment for them is again to fill the earth with the good news of His Kingdom (Luke 9:2). We receive what the people of Babel wanted, but by an entirely different means. We have glory and access to heaven. And we need to remember: No matter how things look, nothing in our lives is futile.

ADDITIONAL READING: Romans 8:19-21

The glory of God is a living man; and the life of man consists in beholding God.

IRENAEUS