Tues., 1/10/17 Devotion (Gen. 11:5)

Today's encouragement comes from Genesis 11:5, which says this:

"But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built."

The tower of Babel, and the city surrounding it, was man's effort to establish a society without God. It was a perverse imitation of the Lord's ideal, that of a community—centered not around a man-honoring structure—but a God-centered worship.

The Lord's confusing of the languages, accomplished in Gen., ch. 11, was actually an act of mercy and grace. Had man stuck together, we would have all descended, as a congealed ball of humanity, into hell. Only in the New Covenant do the languages of the world get sorted out, and "un-confused" in the universal church.

[Puritan quote of the day: "Unity in faith and discipline is a mercy we cannot prize enough. This is that which God has promised (Jer. 32:39), and which we should pursue (Zech. 8:18-23).” —Thomas Watson, in, "The Beatitudes"]