7.8.24 - Primeval Problems

Yesterday, we heard from Matt Richardson about Jesus healing the paralyzed man lowered through the roof. We learned about Jesus’ mission to heal us from the inside out and a little about YoungLife’s work to do whatever it takes to bring the teenagers of Bristol and lay them before Jesus’ feet.

When Alan gets back, we’re going to jump into a series on the book of Jonah, but in the meantime, this Sunday, we’re going to take a quick look at the story of the tower of Babel from Genesis 11:1-9. As we do, I think its helpful to locate ourselves in the story of Genesis and get up to speed about what’s been happening up to this point.

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1563), Public Domain.

The first 11 chapters of Genesis tell the story of what we often call the “primeval history,” or the history of the first ages. With grand, world-shaping stories like the Creation and Fall, the Flood, and the genealogies of nations, we can think of these stories as a sort of mythology for the people of God. Not the sense of myth as fiction, but myth in the sense of the stories people use to help them make sense of the world. That’s what these early chapters of Genesis were for the people of Israel to whom they were written.

Within these stories, or rather within this one unfolding story, they would find answers to questions like, who are we? Where did everything come from? How did we get here? Why is the world the way that is? And what are we supposed to be doing with our lives? Because the story of Genesis is our story too, because the Bible is one united story about Jesus saving the world, I think we find in these first chapters of Genesis at least some pieces of answers to these questions for ourselves too.

The primeval history of Genesis 1-11 tells the story of a good God who created a good world in love. And he created humans lastly and uniquely as the greatest of his creatures. He made humans in his own image, and while there are a great deal of things that might mean, it at least means that we’re made for a particular relationship with God to be with him as his children and for a particular vocation, or calling, to carry on his work of creation by filling the earth and be his representatives on the earth. But with the sin in the Garden, the first humans failed this vocation by rebelling against God and, as a result, created a fracture our relationship with him. The peace and order of that God had made in the good creation was disrupted by sin and the world was broken; the first humans exiled from their Garden paradise, cast out from the presence of God.

This is the conflict that drives the story of the Bible. The rest of the primeval history works out two questions, two problems that overshadow the whole rest of the story. The first is, how can humans get back into the presence of God? How can we get past the flaming sword that guards the entrance to Eden? How can we be restored to that relationship for which we were made? How can we be with God again after we’ve sinned against him?

Then the second is related: how can humans be what God made us to be? How can we live up to the vocation that God first gave to Adam and Eve to will the earth and subdue it, to reign over the creation on his behalf by representing him, reflecting his likeness to the world?

I think these are the questions that the whole story of the Bible is working to answer. You can hear it in the voice of the psalmist in Psalm 24, “Who shall ascend the mountain of the Lord?” You can hear it the voice of John standing before the throne of God in Revelation 5, “Is anyone worthy to open the scroll?” These problems loom over the story as we approach the plain of Shinar in Genesis 11, where these humans are going to build the city of Babel and a tower reaching into heavens.