This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
Lesson 5: “All Nations and Babel”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- The underlying Adventist worldview is revealed in the first day’s study which says “Once again, God’s plans for humankind are disrupted.”
- The lesson fails to connect God’s judgment with the accomplishment of His original purpose: to fill the earth and to preserve humanity.
- The lesson does not connect God’s judgment at Babel with the reversal of His judgment at Pentecost.
While the lesson this week doesn’t proclaim multiple heresies outright, its underlying premise, that God’s plans for humanity were disrupted again, shapes the entire account of post-flood civilizations in a way that obscures the big picture of God’s sovereignty. In fact, the Adventist view that God “has the last word” and scurries about to correct the evil man does turns reality upside down. Man is NOT in charge of history. God is in charge. This lesson fails to show that God’s plan was never thwarted; rather the evil in men’s hearts is ubiquitous, and it is always checked by God’s sovereign power for His purpose.
The lesson portrays a God who cleans up man’s messes instead of a God who is sovereign over men, even over the evil they think and do. In spite of their evil intentions, they are never allowed to carry their plans to their logical conclusions. God’s plan is always being accomplished. Evil is His puppet.
Noah’s Sons
Genesis 9 gives the account of Noah’s drunken episode after which his youngest son, Ham, proclaimed his father’s shame to his brothers instead of covering and protecting his father. Shem and Japheth, on the other hand, backed into Noah’s tent so they would not see their naked father and covered him.
Noah prophesied when he came to his senses, but instead of cursing Ham, he cursed his son Canaan whose descendants would turn out to be supremely evil to the point that, when God took Israel into the land, He destroyed the unrepentant Canaanites as Israel moved in. The lesson correctly points out that this curse is not a racial curse. Neither does it reflect that the progeny were punished for their father’s sin. Rather, Canaan, the son of Ham, was likely named because he was even more evil than was his disrespectful father.
In Genesis 9:26 we read that Noah blessed God who, he said, was the “God of Shem”. He pronounced that Canaan would be Shem’s servant—and we see in the story of Israel that the Canaanites were made subservient to Israel. Further, Noah prayed that God would “enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant.”
In this prophecy we see Noah foreshadowing the holy seed again. Shem became the father of the people we now identify as the Semites—those who descended from Abraham—and Japheth represents the non-semitic nations—the gentiles who would be ushered into God’s blessings through the covenant blessings promised to Abraham and accomplished through his Seed: the Lord Jesus.
As Jesus said to the Samaritan woman in John 4, “Salvation is of the Jews”, and here in Genesis 9 we see this fact foreshadowed in Noah’s blessing. Noah blessed the God of Shem, and he prophesied that Japheth would be “enlarged” and blessed in the tents of Shem. Gentiles would also receive God’s blessing through the holy semitic seed of the Lord Jesus.
Babel
The story of Babel always seemed like an isolated account of hubris when I was an Adventist. People were proud and tried to reach heaven, to escape a future flood and to attain to godlike status by building a great tower. The curse of the languages always seemed like God doing what He could to stop a powerful people—a bit like a check-mate that He threw down to the unsuspecting arrogant ones. In fact, I saw this story exactly as the lesson portrays it: God manipulating the wicked deeds of evil free will so He could bring some sort of good out of a bad situation.
In reality, non of this story was a Plan B. Babel reveals that even though God had to destroy the corrupted life on earth with a flood and start over with Noah (albeit without losing the line of holy seed from Seth), the depravity of men’s hearts had not changed—because it COULD NOT change. Mankind was still evil and largely responded to the self-obsessed greed and desire for control that depravity brings about.
God had given Noah the command to fill the earth, but with the tower of Babel, post-flood humanity demonstrated their rebellion. They refused to scatter throughout the earth but gathered on the plain of Shinar to make a name for themselves. The command had been clear—so clear that it is recorded by Moses centuries later in god’s eternal word. Yet humanity refused to do what God said to do, so God intervened.
Interestingly, God said that if He didn’t confound their language, “nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them” (Gen. 11:6). Notice that God said NOTHING they purposed to do would be impossible given their ability to communicate with one another.
God confounded their language as a judgment against their evil hearts. They rebelled against Him and refused to scatter throughout the earth. They refused to acknowledge Him even after the flood had destroyed the earth so relatively recently, so God judged them and forced them to scatter.
Imagine the effect of having their languages suddenly changed. In their corporate planning, suddenly some people would hold certain skills and knowledge that others might not understand anymore. They would be unable to collaborate by bringing their skill sets to each other, and they would become proprietary of their skills.
They clumped together by language, and they moved away from each other and finally filled the earth—exactly as God had intended. This story brings Paul’s words to the Athenians to mind:
The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us (Acts 17:24–27).
The nations exist by God’s determination. The times and places of each one is determined BY HIM. They do not exist because God came in and executed Plan B to clean up people’s messes. No! God’s Plan A was at work, and He established the nations by language group exactly as He determined.
Furthermore, on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2, we find the day that God reversed the curse of Babel. The multiplicity of languages which made it difficult to impossible for humanity to communicate with each other had been a judgment against their evil and had protected the race from the destruction that almost certainly would have occurred had God allowed them to continue communicating.
Now, however, when Jesus had opened a new and living way to the Father and had sent the Holy Spirit, He restored language to those who believe. He granted the gift of tongues, and thousand of people heard the gospel in their own languages that day as the Jewish apostles spoke by God’s power.
In Christ we have restored Word. Jesus, the Word of God, makes it possible for His truth to be communicated whether or not we know the other’s language. The word of God is associated with truth. The power of language is limited by God in order to protect humanity from its own destructive impulses, but in Christ the Word is restored for the purpose of eternal life in Christ!
Nothing that happened at Babel interrupted God’s plan; it was, rather, God’s plan for the nations to be formed and scattered around language groups, and it was always God’s plan for language to be restored in Christ through the Holy Spirit when the gospel was revealed! †
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