This Day in History: 0000-03-24

March 24 – Genesis 8:18, 9:1 & 12:1-4 

So Noah, his wife, and his sons and their wives left the boat. And all of the large and small animals and birds came out of the boat, pair by pair.
Then God blessed Noah and his sons and told them, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth.” 

At one time all the people of the world spoke the same language and used the same words. As the people migrated to the east, they found a plain in the land of Babylonia and settled there.
They began saying to each other, “Let’s make bricks and harden them with fire.” (In this region bricks were used instead of stone, and tar was used for mortar.) Then they said, “Come let’s build a great city for ourselves with a tower that reaches into the sky. This will make us famous and keep us from being scattered all over the world.” 

Why are we so bent on disobedience? It has never taken long, throughout history, for people to forsake the plain and simple commands of the Lord. We think we know better. It is a theme. 

After the flood God told Noah and his family to be fruitful and multiply, and to fill the earth. Simple. But within almost no time at all, the descendants of Noah and his sons decided that filling the earth was not what they wanted to do. Instead, they wanted to do something to bring glory to themselves. They wanted to create something that would “make them famous” and also that would keep them from being scattered, as God had commanded. 

As a result, God had to intervene and upset their plans by confusing their language, forcing them to spread out as He had originally commanded. 

Now, every time I travel to a part of the world in which a different language is spoken from my own, I think, “Ugh, why can’t we just obey God? How much easier things could be if we would!” 

But seriously. It is my prayer that we will learn something from this Biblical account. Even our disobedience will not stop God’s ultimate plan. It will only make the journey more difficult for us. The post-flood population could have spread out on their own in obedience and enjoyed the convenience of shared language, but instead, they were spread out by God and we have to deal with the difficulties of that decision to this day! 

Let’s save ourselves the trouble and just obey!