I was in Japan the first time I encountered a language that was completely foreign to me. I went to the cashier in a Tokyo shop and handed over a children’s book I wanted to buy. The cashier smiled at me and said something in Japanese, and I stared back at her dumbfounded. I didn’t know a word of Japanese . . . I felt completely lost. Fortunately, a local friend came and rescued me and I bought the book I wanted.

God gave people the power of speech so we could work together, but we have to speak the same language!

Noah’s descendants had a shared language as they migrated east to Shinar, where modern Iraq is today. They worked together to make bricks and design a tower tall enough to reach the heavens. They were making a name for themselves and aiming for world domination. Then God came down to take a look.

God Comes Down

In Genesis God “came down” among people a lot. He walked with Adam and Eve in the garden, and he spoke directly with Noah and personally shut the door of the ark. He intervened at the Tower of Babel and scattered the people, and he appeared in person to Abram.

God is not a lofty, distant being in Genesis; people see, hear and feel his presence.

Notice how vividly God reveals himself to people as you continue through the Old Testament. These are stories of real people, having real experiences, in real time.

The people at the Tower of Babel knew God came down because their languages got confused and they couldn’t understand each other. What a benign way for God to break up the people’s prideful schemes and scatter them across the face of the earth.

Is a Genealogy a Timeline?

There are a couple of things to notice in the genealogies in the middle of Genesis 11. First, men live about half as long after the Flood as they did before it. They start families earlier and live shorter lifespans. The further people got from Eden the shorter their lives became.

Sometimes people wonder if they can figure out the dates of events in the Bible by tracing the years in these genealogies. I tried that once, then I learned that the genealogies may not be complete. Some generations may be skipped, some names may belong to more than one man and there may be lapses of time where there is no record of who lived.

The Bible is not a linear book of history. It’s a book about God and what he wants us to know about him.

Abram and God

One of the most important figures in human history enters the scene in Genesis 11:27. Abram is destined to be the father of countless people of faith, but he certainly didn’t know that while he was growing up

In Joshua 24:2-3 we read this about Abram:

Joshua said to all the people, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says, ‘Long ago your forefathers, including Terah, the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the River and worshiped other gods. But I took your father Abraham from the land beyond the River and led him throughout Canaan and gave him many descendants.’ “

Abram lived in a family that “worshiped other gods” before God called him, so in Genesis 12 we read about the conversion of Abram and the spectacular way it came about.

First God asked Abram to do the unthinkable, called Abram out of the safety of his father Terah’s clan and pointed him toward a completely foreign land.

Abram became a nomad traveling on God’s promises:

• That God would show him the way
• That God would make a great nation of him and
• That all the people of the earth would be blessed through him.

Promises or Presence?

Was Abram propelled forward by these wonderful promises, or by the awesome presence of God? His first response was to build an altar and worship God, and that tells us where his focus was.

“So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him . . .There he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord.” Genesis 12:7, 8

God’s Man

Abram became a powerful man. He commanded respect from the Pharaoh in Egypt, even though he was a liar and betrayed his wife Sarai. God protected Abram like a wayward son and led him out of trouble. When his nephew Lot was kidnapped, Abram fielded an army of fighting men from his own household and God helped him defeat a coalition of five kings.

On his way home with the people and plunder from his victory Abram met a priest who blessed him in God’s name. Is this the first time Abram met another believer? We don’t know, but Abram gave Melchizedek a tithe of the plunder he captured and together they honored their God.

By the end of today’s reading Abram was completely devoted to God. He wanted only what God had for him and he rejected earthly rewards from the King of Sodom. God’s powerful presence guided Abram and he became God’s man.