I think how I am going to do these is to take one section of each day’s reading selection and focus on that for each blog. If there is ever anything that I need to cover that goes over multiple chapters/sections, then I will do my best to summarize the important points. I don’t want to make it longer but I also want to include everything that you as the readers need to know to understand what I am talking about day to day .

Today I am going to focus on the tower of Babel and what it reveals about sin and disobedience.

The first section of this devotion gives a look into a time where everyone in the world spoke the same language. So there wasn’t Hebrew, Aramaic, or other various languages. There was just one language. I don’t know what it was or if it was a specific language that we have now today, but the point is, everyone spoke the same language. So people began migrating eastward in response to God’s command that was given to Noah for all the people in Genesis 9:1 – be fruitful and multiply, fill all the earth. So the were supposed to be migrating and slowly inhabiting the earth. That is what God had planned so that is what they were doing and what they should have been doing.

But here they come along a plain in Babylonia (your Bible might say Shinar, same thing, just was formerly called Shinar). So they settled here on this plain.

So this part is fascinating to me because  it seems to be the way God’s people live, behave, and operate throughout the rest of the Bible (and probably even today too). They decide to do the opposite of what God wants. They decide to stay there and build a giant city with a giant tower that reaches high into the sky. And here’s the part that shows their defiance “this will make us famous and keep us from being scattered all over the world.”

See, this goes right along with the first sin of Adam and Eve. When people try to take things into their own hands, big problems are created. Eve decided that she knew better than God by taking a bite of the fruit and here much in the same manner, the people that travel to Babylonia/Shinar show their pride and arrogance by wanting to make a name for themselves by building a tower that reaches to the sky.

So God knows what they are up to and the great problems it would bring, so he decides that they all need to be scattered and have different languages rather than being allowed to come together in one city and all speak the same language. God knew that if all the people were able to work together toward their crooked goals and desires to be famously known that they wouldn’t think they would need God anymore because they would be living under a facade of being entirely self sufficient. So God scattered them all over the world and the they stopped building the city. They were confused from that point on because they couldn’t talk to each other and scheme as they had been doing previously. And for all of you Hebrew scholars out there, lol, the reason it was called Babel is because the word Babel is very close to the Hebrew word balal which was their verb for confused.

So what can we pull out of this that is applicable to our lives today? Well throughout the whole Bible we see God’s people receiving direction from God and they follow that direction and it always seems that His people, even though they receive clear and direct instruction on how to live for Him and how to live a fulfilled life for God. We saw it with Adam and Eve. God gave them everything they could have ever needed or desired and more. Adam got to name all of the animals, he got to eat any of the food from the garden of Eden that he wanted to. Adam literally had the whole world to himself and God still knew he needed something more. So God created woman and gave Eve to Adam. God created everything and He saw that it was all good. But what happened? The one thing that they were not allowed to do, they did. They weren’t supposed to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil but they did. I don’t really think it was the fruit of the tree that was necessarily bad but it was more so the action of disobedience to God that was the ultimate problem, that is what sin is after all.

Then we saw the people here want to bring attention and fame to their lives by building a giant city. They decided against God’s will to stay there rather than multiplying and continuing to occupy more of the earth. It is, like I said, fascinating to me how we can track this behavior throughout the history of humanity.

So what I get from this is that we as God’s people always need to be aware of what we are doing: choices, consequences, and the reasons we make the choices we do. It is clearly evident that it is easy to stray from God. That isn’t to say that it is hard to live for God though. It just takes commitment. So this challenges me to always live my life according to the plan and will that God has for me and to always remain humble to God so that I never attempt to live outside of the boundaries God has wisely given me. God is a jealous God, yes, He is. But that doesn’t come with the negative connotation that we automatically place with the word jealousy today.

See, God’s jealousy isn’t an irrational jealousy. God’s jealousy is a rational desire for us to live our lives according to what He has set before us not because He wants to be power hungry but because He truly is in control of all and He truly knows what is best for us! That is why God has such a strong and jealous desire for us to serve Him with our utmost. When we fully live in humility to God in our lives, then we are going live lives that have a purpose, destinity, and eternity.

So I hope this challenges you in similar ways. Don’t let yourself get caught up in trying to do things that gratify yourself but make the choice to live for and serve God! God has a plan for my life and He has one for yours. So choose to follow that path! You can’t go wrong.