August 16 2026

Havasu Christian Church       

August 16, 2026

Characters in Genesis

Genesis 11:1-9

“THEY, THEM…”

INTRO: In our society, there are a few misguided people who think their pronouns are “They” and “Them.” Why these people want to be spoken of in the plural, is a mystery to me.

        But today, we are going to look at a GROUP of people. This GROUP of people are the folks that we read about in the genealogy in chapter 10. This is a very long, very detailed list of people who descended from Noah’s family. Many of them have very hard to pronounce names, and we really don’t know much about them.

We are told in chapter 10, where these families wound up, and what nations descended from them. But this list in chapter 10 is actually a preview of what will happen. All the moving described in chapter 10 comes about after what happens in chapter 11.

Here in chapter 11, we meet them all as a group, and we get a glimpse of what they are doing before they go off to the various places they will live. Before they become separate nations. We will call them THEY or THEM!   

Genesis 11:1–9 (NASB95)

     1   Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words. 

     2   It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 

     3   They said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.” And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. 

     4   They said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” 

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

     6   The LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. 

     7   “Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” 

     8   So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. 

     9   Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth.

1. THEY all speak the same language.
2. This makes sense.
3. After all, they are all descendants of the same family.
4. Their parents and grandparents all came off the Ark together, and began to pick up the pieces of their lives after the floods’ destruction.
5. As we read in chapter 10, they begin to have families.
6. The people listed in the genealogy in chapter 10 are in no way all of the people born.
7. Rather, this is an accounting of where the Jewish people will come from, and the nations that surround them in the promised land.
8. There is no need for the Jewish people to know where ALL the people groups of the earth come from.
9. They won’t even know that the places where many of their kinfolks go exist until much later.
10. Their reluctance to leave this one area is in direct defiance of God’s command.

Genesis 9:1 (NASB95) And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.

1. They seem to have the “multiplying” part down, but not the “fill the earth” part.

1. THEY decide to work together… to defy God!
2. It’s good to work together.
3. LOTS of great things have been accomplished by groups of people, working together.
4. But it’s always a good idea to think about WHAT it is you are doing!
5. It may not be such a good thing to do!
6. The “Half a boy principle…”
7. One boy, is a boy… Simple enough..
8. Two boys are half a boy… “What do you mean by that?”
9. Three boys is no boy at all! “That doesn’t even make sense!”
10. The larger the group of boys you gather and leave to their own devices, the more likely they are to do something really stupid, and most likely harmful to themselves and or others.
11. This also happens with other groups of people, not just boys!
12. In chapter 10 we read about Nimrod.

Genesis 10:8–12 (NASB95) Now Cush became the father of Nimrod; he became a mighty one on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD; therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the LORD.” The beginning of his kingdom was Babel and Erech and Accad and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. From that land he went forth into Assyria, and built Nineveh and Rehoboth-Ir and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city.

1. There are those who would blame Nimrod for what happened. And perhaps, he did push the issue.
2. But Scripture says that building the tower and staying in one place was a GROUP decision.
3. THEY decide to build a city.
4. THEY decide to build a tower.
5. THEY want to make a name for themselves.
6. THEY decide to defy God!
7. If we all work together to build this city, and this tower, no one will want to leave!
8. I’ve heard people make a big deal about the tower “reaching into heaven,” but I think they are just saying that they want to build it tall.
9. They aren’t planning to build so high that they can walk into God’s heavenly abode.
10. They are however, defiantly doing exactly what God told them not to do.
11. God wanted them to spread out.
12. They wanted to stay together.
13. So they built a city and a tower to keep them together!

1. God deals with THEM and takes care of the problem!
2. God confuses their languages.
3. Can you imagine, getting up to go make bricks one morning, and your best friend on the job is completely unable to understand what you are saying?
4. To make matters worse, you can’t understand a word that he is saying either!
5. God apparently confused the languages of these different families, so they would go together to new places.
6. WHY did God confuse their languages?
7. He wanted them to spread out.
8.  God’s plan was for their to be people in the various areas, learning to live in these new places.
9. With all these people working together in harmony, they will be advancing in technology at a fast pace.
10. They have lost a great deal in the flood.
11. With all these people together, they will corrupt themselves in a hurry, just like what happened before the flood.
12. God wanted them to follow HIS plan, not their own plan!
13. Verse 9 presents an interesting question.
14. Did the change in languages make people want to move?
15. Or did God pick them up and move them?

RABBIT TRIAL ALERT! The Bible isn’t the only place where we see an account of this event.

There is a record of the Greek historian Abydenus, retold by Eusebius, who lived from around 260 A.D. to around 339 A.D. He was an Elder in the Church in Caesarea, and was a historian. He records what he calls “The CHALDÆAN LEGEND OF THE TOWER OF BABEL.”

“Not long after the Flood, the ancient race of men were so puffed up with their strength and tallness of stature that they began to despise and contemn the gods, and laboured to erect that very lofty tower which is now called Babylon, intending thereby to scale the heavens. But when the building approached the sky, behold, the gods called in the aid of the winds, and by their help overturned the tower, and cast it to the ground! The name of the ruin is still called Babel, because until this time all men had used the same speech; but now there was sent upon them a confusion of many and diverse tongues”

Conclusion: What can we learn from THEM?

• When God says to do something, He means it!
• It’s not up to you or me to come up with a “Better” plan!
• Working together is GOOD! As long as you are working together to achieve the right goal.
• President John F. Kennedy set the historic national goal on May 25, 1961, pledging that the United States would land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth before the end of the 1960s.
• Our country committed huge amounts of resources and manpower to make this happen.
• The Nazi Party was founded on January 5, 1919, in Munich, Germany. It started as a small group called the German Workers' Party (DAP) before being renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) in 1920. Anton Drexler and Karl Harrer created it, and Adolf Hitler later took control.
• This was not a noble goal to draw people together. It was a horrible idea.
• Don’t go along with a bad decision, even if a large group of people think it’s a great idea.
• Large groups of people often decide to do really dumb things.
• Large groups of people often decide to do really terrible things!
• Make sure that you honor God in your decisions.
• In this passage, we see a glimpse of the Trinity.    

Genesis 11:7 “Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”

• This is not the “Royal We” of Queen Elizabeth.
• This is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in total agreement, knowing what needs to be done.
• Listen to wise counsel.
• When all this is taking place, Noah and his sons are still very much alive.
• This is a guess on my part, but I suspect that had they been consulted, the Tower and the city, never would have been built.