The Tower of Babel (Chantilly Sermon)
July 26, 2026
Genesis 9:1 CSB – God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
Genesis 11:1-2 CSB – The whole earth had the same language and vocabulary. 2 As people migrated from the east, they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there.
Genesis 11:1 CSB – The whole earth had the same language and vocabulary.
Genesis 11 – The Building Chapter!
Babel: A Bad Foundation
Genesis 11:1-3 CSB – The whole earth had the same language and vocabulary. 2 As people migrated from the east, they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there.
Genesis 11:1 CSB – The whole earth had the same language and vocabulary.
2 Timothy 4:3-4 CSB – For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, will multiply teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear what they want to hear. 4 They will turn away from hearing the truth and will turn aside to myths. 5 But as for you, exercise self-control in everything, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
Matthew 24:35 CSB – Jesus said, Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
Babel: Built with Bad Plans
Genesis 11:3-4 CSB – They said to each other, “Come, let’s make oven-fired bricks.” (They used brick for stone and asphalt for mortar.) 4 And they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky. Let’s make a name for ourselves; otherwise, we will be scattered throughout the earth.”
Genesis 11:5 CSB – Then the Lord came down to look over the city and the tower that the humans were building.
Genesis 11:6 CSB – The Lord said, “If they have begun to do this as one people all having the same language, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let’s go down there and confuse their language so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So from there the Lord scattered them throughout the earth, and they stopped building the city.
Genesis 1:27 (Genesis 9:1) CSB – God said, Be fruitful. Multiply. Fill the earth
Genesis 11:8-9 CSB – So from there the Lord scattered them throughout the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 Therefore it is called Babylon, for there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth, and from there the Lord scattered them throughout the earth.
Out of Babylon, God’s Better Dream
Genesis 12:1-3 CSB –
The Lord said to Abram:
Go from your land,
your relatives,
and your father’s house
to the land that I will show you.
2 I will make you into a great nation,
I will bless you,
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt,
and all the peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.
Genesis 15:6 CSB – Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
Hebrews 11:8 CSB – By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed and set out for a place that he was going to receive as an inheritance. He went out, even though he did not know where he was going.
Hebrews 11:9 CSB – By faith he stayed as a foreigner in the land of promise,
Hebrews 11:10 CSB – For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire,… the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven.
It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.” – C.S. Lewis
Philippians 2:7-11 CSB – [Jesus]… emptied himself
by assuming the form of a servant,
taking on the likeness of humanity.
And when he had come as a man,
8 he humbled himself by becoming obedient
to the point of death—
even to death on a cross.
9 For this reason God highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus
every knee will bow—
in heaven and on earth
and under the earth—
11 and every tongue will confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
