This transcript was auto-generated. 

We have discovered that the story of the Tower of Babel is a warning against many things It is a warning against arrogance, a warning against totalitarianism, a warning of thinking that we can do with God in our lives or the societies in which we live. The Tower of Babel story also warns us that if societies unifies in open defiance against God, then it makes evangelism [reaching people] with the truth of the gospel more difficult if not nearly impossible and the effects of that can be catastrophic. There are already cultures on earth where the biblical world view can barely break through. Christians have cited Japan as a nation where the Gospel has been unable to make significant progress. Today some might say it in Western Europe is where we today find the greatest cultural blocks to the good news of Jesus these days. Babel asks us to imagine a world where one culture became the dominant worldview united in opposition to God. 

Look again at Acts interpretation of these events when it tells us in chapter 17:27 where God scattered the nations in order that 

“They would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.

It was done so that all people would be able to continue to seek and find their way individually to God. He divided them into nations in order to give us all free will to individually seek the Lord. Imagine if there was one predominant worldview and the whole world adopted a false religion then think about how much more difficult it would be to reach people with the gospel. But when people are culturally different then if one group seeks after a false religion God can use another culture or ethnic group to reach them. 

The Bible teaches here that God determined the way he did things in order to allow all the people, of all cultures and nations of the earth to reach out and draw them back. People for outside the Christian faith look and see many different expressions of the Christian faith around the world or different denominations and think division. I believe God look at the world and sees diversity. A great unity within the diversity of many Nations and cultures.

I think there's another final lesson to be learnt here and that is that disobedience leads to sin which in turn leads to separation from God. We saw sin leading to slavery in Genesis Chapter 9. We saw sin leading to separation in Genesis Chapter 11, because now the people want to unite but they want to unite apart from God.  The tried to do so in defiance of God and they ended up separated from each other. Isn’t that an interesting picture? They wanted to make a name for themselves, and they ended up being unable to even speak to each other. Sin divides people, it divides people from each-other and it divides people from God. 

Go back to the very beginning of everything. Adam and Eve fell, and they became separated from God. For the first time something has come between humanity and God. So, sin leads to separation from each other, and separation from God. When we are separated from God, we become separated from each other but we are also separated/fragmented within ourselves. This idea is best described in Romans where Paul tells us.  

15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And I do what I do not want to do…. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.

Then Paul calls out 

Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

The New Testament is describing a massive vision of fragmentation, of separation within ones-self. It seems to me that all of life is an attempt to gain back what was lost that day in the garden of Eden, and then in the Tower of Babel Story. But there remains within everyone an innate desire to get close to God and to have a meaningful connection with other people. The God shaped hole in the soul as Augustine of Hippo called it. 

All of life is a struggle back to that to what Genesis tells us we lost. Hope that the Paradise once lost can be found again. Sin always leads to alienation and separation.