God had a purpose when he created the universe and put man in the center of it. This is what the Bible tells us. I believe God’s plan was not thwarted by Adam and Eve eating from the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God’s plan was not thwarted by Cain killing Abel, and God’s plan was not thwarted by the Babylonians constructing a tower to their own glory.
God is patient and long-suffering. He created His universe and called it good, but His plan is and always has been to perfect His creation.
God gave us the ability to go our own way, but God’s purposes will be accomplished despite the freedom God gave us.
God gave us the ability to create our own kingdoms, but God’s purposes are to invite all people to embrace His kingdom. He provides the way freely as a gift, but our kingdoms often look better to us, and our ways seem right in our own eyes.
This is a very simplistic view of the whole sweep of Scripture, from beginning to end, which I believe we need to see so we don’t miss the forest for the trees. Of course, only God has perspective to see and to make sense of all the trees in that Great Forest. But, He gave us His word so we can begin to catch a glimpse of God’s great plans.
I want to focus on the big picture today, to survey the sweep and arc of God’s plan as revealed in the Bible, but I am not going to start with the creation of the universe or in the garden. I am going to start in Babylon. After all, we all live in a spiritual Babylon today.
We read in Genesis 11 that the world had one language and common speech. The people moved eastward, found a plain, and they settled there.
Recall that God instructed Adam and Eve to fill the whole earth. Their descendants settled in Babylon, however, and they remained there contrary to that instruction. They didn’t want to follow God’s plan; they wanted to follow their own plans.
The people came together to build a city for themselves and “a tower that reaches to the heavens” to “make a name for themselves.” This is a description of human beings choosing to go their own way, rather than God’s way.
They were afraid of being scattered over the face of the whole earth because that is what God wanted: for them to fill the earth. Because they resisted they were afraid..
The people were unified in going their own way against God. Their unity in going their own way was an obstacle to God achieving His purposes. For this reason, God confused their language, and they scattered over the whole earth.
People do not do well with differences. We isolate. We become group-focused. We despise others who are not like us, and we have inordinate pride in ourselves and our own kind. THIS is the story of human history.
It is also the story of God working His purposes in the world He created to achieve his ends. We may have trouble following it, but I think it will come into better focus if we jump quickly to the end. Then we will fill in the middle. All of this is just a brief snapshot of what God has revealed.
Let’s jump forward now to Revelation 7:9. This is a vision of the fulfillment of God’s purposes given to John, the apostle. John says that he saw “a great multitude that no one could count.” This great multitude was “from every nation, tribe, people and language.” They were all “standing before the throne and before the Lamb …. wearing white robes and … holding palm branches.” They cried in one loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God!”
This is a glimpse of God’s ultimate purposes. This is where we are heading. From all the nations, tribes, and people – and from every language – God will gather this great multitude together in harmony, with one united purpose to honor, praise, and worship God in loving relationship with Him and each other.
It is a picture of all that we dream and hope for. Peace on earth. Indeed, this peace will the character of the “new heaven and … new earth” – a perfect one – with a Holy City, the New Jerusalem. It will not just be good; it will be perfect, and all those who have submitted to God will be perfect as well, cleansed from their sin and unified with God and all their neighbors – “from every nation, tribe, people and language”.
The insertion of the word, language, should remind us of Babylon, where God confused the language of the people. The vision God gave John shows God bringing people whose languages were confused back together again. They are unified again, but this time they are unified in Christ, the Lamb.
So why did God scatter the people across the face of the earth, confusing their languages so that they could not work together?
If God’s purpose all along was and is for all people to be together with him in the new Jerusalem, gathering people from across the face of the earth to be with him, why did he scatter them so long ago?
I think the answer lies in the hearts of people. We have a tendency to want to go our own way. This is seen from the very beginning, with the Adam and Eve, with Cane killing Abel, and with the people in Babylon. It is the same tendency that is in my heart, and your heart, and the hearts of all people who live on the face of the earth.
God gave us all the ability to make the same choice: to go our own ways, as Adam and Eve did. That, too, is part of His plan.
He gave us one choice we could not make in the beginning, and now he gives us one choice and one choice alone that we can make that will bring us back into the purposes of God. That is the choice of denying ourselves and our own purposes and choosing God and His purposes.
By giving us choice, God invites us into his creation and to work toward the purposes of God in making His good universe perfect.
Paul says in Romans 8 that God subjected the world to futility. This is part of God’s grand design, also. It is through that futility that we struggle and wrestle with the tension between ourselves and our purposes and God and His purposes.
Which way will we go? We often go our own way, and we taste the bitter fruit of the futility of going our own ways. When we turn, repent, and let go of our own ways to embrace God’s way, we taste the goodness of heaven. We gain the holy spirit as a deposit and promise of the future God promises us.
Yet, as long as we live in these bodies, we struggle. In order to love our neighbor, we need to learn who our neighbor is. When our neighbor doesn’t even speak our own language, we need to learn how to bridge the language barrier. In this struggle, we learn to give ourselves to the purposes of God.
It isn’t just language barriers. Children form cliques on the playground. The us against them mentality is ingrained in our sinful nature. It is the same thing that caused Eve to doubt God and challenge his instruction by eating of the forbidden fruit. It is the same thing that caused Cane to kill Abel in a fit of jealousy. It is the same thing that caused the people in Babel to resist God and build a tower to their own glory.
This same sinful bent of the human heart causes children to form cliques on the playground, to favor themselves and their own kind over others, to wall off cities and to attack them, to discriminate against people of a different skin color and to have unhealthy pride in our own national identity. It is all the same stuff – choosing to go our own way, rather than embrace the purposes of God and His way.
We see the results of God’s purpose in Revelation 7. He desires that we all come back together, not unified in going our own way and in resistance to God, but unified in going God’s way in harmony with God.
He desires that we set aside all the tendencies of our sinful hearts, to overcome those desires to do our own thing and to go our own way, and to submit to God’s eternal purposes, living in harmony with each other as one before God.
The symbol and the example for us to follow is the Lamb. Not the Lion. Though Jesus was equal to God, he did not consider equality with God an advantage to exploit or hold on to. Rather, he emptied himself and became a man. As a man, he walked obedient to the purposes of God the father even to the end of his own death. (Phil. 2:1-11)
This is our example, Jesus, the land of Lamb of God. Although Jesus is a Lion, Jesus, the Lamb, is held up as our example to follow.
After all, we are presently like sheep who have gone astray. Though we may think of ourselves as little lions, Jesus tells us to grab our crosses (not our swords) to follow him. We do not follow him in the way of the Lion. We follow him in the way of the Lamb
This is God’s great upside down kingdom. His kingdom is upside down in Babylon, in the present world surrounded by the kingdoms of the world that look very different than the kingdom of God.
At the end, however, God’s Kingdom will all be right side up, and we will stand as one, unified in Christ, before God the father in a perfect heaven and earth filled with the glory of God and people who love him and love each other perfectly as He intends. All of this is part of God’s plan – from beginning to end, from Babylon to the New Jerusalem.
Navigating by Faith 