Like Greedy Dragons

“For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you.” Psalm 5:4.
 
The wickedness of man was great on the earth, we learned in Genesis 6. Every intention and thought of mankind were only evil continually. Once sin entered the world, it continued to multiply. And as mankind multiplied, sin only increased all the more.
 
As the Psalmist said- God doesn’t delight in wickedness. And so, God determined to blot out mankind through the flood and begin again with Noah.
 
Afterward, God gives Noah the same command we heard in the garden all those years before, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” Noah’s line was fruitful and did multiply, as we learn through generation after generation of hard-to-pronounce names (for most Southerners at least). Yet they failed to obey the second part of the covenant- filling the earth.
 
All of mankind had one language, we learn in chapter 11 verse 1. And all of those people traveled together, found a plain in Shinar to settle in together, and decided together to build a tower that reached the heavens.
 
Notice the problem here? They couldn’t exactly fill the earth if they were all staying….together. Like children new to a sport, following the ball in a little clump, mankind refused to separate, instead staying together to pool their power and make a name for themselves. Even more, their desire was opposed to God’s. They wanted to build a tower and make a name for themselves “lest they be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”
 
So, in an eerie foreshadowing of their future slavery in Egypt, they make bricks and burn them thoroughly. They use brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar, and they don’t even realize that they’re already in slavery. Actively working against God’s good design for them, they’re bound by their sin and fleshly desires. As they work to take God’s created world and fashion it into a brick and harden it, their own hearts, created by God, are hardened by their pride and disobedience.
 
“The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers.” Psalm 5:5
 
The LORD comes down to see their Tower and, in another evidence of the Trinity, and another nod to God’s words in the early chapters of Genesis, the LORD says, “Let us… go down and confuse their language.”
 
Not because God felt threatened by them. He did, after all, have to come down to look at their tower. But because he saw, if left to their current state, they would never fill the earth. And this was part of their mandate- of the covenant with God- that as they multiplied and increased and spread across the earth and filled it- that in so doing the world would be filled with more and more image-bearers of God. That the glory and knowledge of God would also spread abroad and multiply and increase. Not kept stockpiled together in one spot, like greedy dragons who lay over their treasure, but spreading far and wide. Spreading the wealth.
 
“But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy.” Psalm 5:11
 
Sin didn’t end with the tower of Babel, as we know all too well. It continues to multiply and increase. There are still those who, in pride, seek to build a name for themselves apart from God. There are still days when I, falling back into my former ways, seek to build a name for myself.
 
But this same God who came down to confuse the language at Babel, also came down as the Son of Man, bringing a supernatural unity among his image-bearers of every language, nation, tribe, and tongue. We who were enslaved are now free. We who were prideful are now humbled. And we who sought refuge in our own strength, power, and ingenuity, can, because of the way made through Christ, take refuge in the Lord. We can ever sing for joy.
 
That is, after all, practice for eternity. Singing for joy to the Lord who made us in his image to know him and make him known, where all of those different languages will come together with one voice, giving glory and praise to God.