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June 22, 2025
What are you building?
What if one of God’s greatest gifts to you is something He didn’t let happen?
BABEL | BUILD YOUR LIFE
Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
Genesis 11:1-9
The Myth of PROGRESS:
“Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves…”
If I achieve ENOUGH, then I’ll be ENOUGH.
Eastward – A textual motif the Biblical authors use to speak of humanity moving away from Eden, away from God, away from flourishing.
Progress without PRESENCE leads to EMPTINESS.
What are you building that looks successful but feels empty?
The Illusion of CONTROL:
“…otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
Ziggurat – A large pyramid-like structure in ancient Mesopotamia designed to be a “stairway to heaven.” It was a symbol of humanity’s attempt to control the divine.
If I could be GOD, then life would be GOOD.
If I could just control _______, then I would be __________.
FEAR is often the ROOT of our desire for control.
“Taking things into your own hands doesn’t seize your destiny; it sabotages it.”
– Mark Sayers
What is your tower?
The Mercy of DIVINE DISRUPTION.
“But the Lord came down to see…” “So the Lord scattered them…and they stopped building the city.”
Babel – In Hebrew, meaning “to confuse,” is an intentional word play on the Akkadian word Babylon, which means “the gate of god.”
Sometimes God disrupts our plans not to PUNISH us, but to PROTECT us.
God is more committed to who you’re BECOMING than what you’re BUILDING.
What if the most loving thing God can do is to interrupt what we’re building?
