Title: The Tower of Babel
Speaker: Pastor John Van De Giessen
Date: 16th August 2026
Location: Adelaide, Australia
Summary
“Sometimes the problem isn’t what you’re building. The problem is the foundation you’re building it on.” The Tower of Babel is one of those Old Testament accounts that is easy to skim past, so this episode slows down and looks at what actually happened on the plain of Shinar. A group of people with one language, real skill and genuine unity set out to build a city and a tower. They made bricks from clay and used natural tar for mortar, and the engineering was remarkable for the time. The problem was never their ability. It was their intent, because they wanted to make a name for themselves.
From there the focus shifts closer to home. Life fills up fast with study, work, a mortgage and family, and it becomes easy to keep putting God off until things settle down. The caution is direct: the greatest tragedy is not building something that collapses, but building something that succeeds and discovering at the end that God was never in it.
The episode closes by setting Babel beside Pentecost. At Babel people built upward and were scattered. At Pentecost God came down, filled people with the Holy Spirit and gathered the nations back together.
Key Points
- One language and real engineering skill gave the people on the plain of Shinar genuine unity, but that unity was pointed away from God’s purpose.
- The tower was never really about height. It was about making a name for themselves, and the intent behind it is what God responded to.
- What you are building matters less than the foundation you are building it on.
- Busyness will always find you. Study, career, a house and a family can quietly become reasons to postpone God indefinitely.
- The greatest tragedy is not a project that collapses, but one that succeeds while God was never part of it.
- Checking in on one another is the brick and mortar of a church, and nobody needs to wait for someone in leadership to make the call or the visit.
- Babel and Pentecost mirror each other: people build upward and are scattered, God comes down and gathers the nations together.
- Anything built without God ends up a monument to itself rather than a testimony to him.
Reference Scriptures
- Genesis 11:1-4
- Genesis 11:6-9
- Psalm 127:1
- Acts 2:1-5