This is part 17 of a series exploring how the Bible teaches that Jesus was greater than all who came before him.  This series is not intended to be exhaustive.  The topic of Jesus as “greater than” or “better” than those who came before him is inexhaustible.  Libraries could and should be written on this subject.  But we have attempted in these pages to explore what such a rich subject would look like. (Each entry is excerpted from There Is No Greater Love)

Christ Greater than the Builders of Babel

Now the whole earth had one language and one speech. As they wandered in the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they settled there.  Then they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly. So they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar.  And they said, “Let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens…” (Gen 11:1-4).

How pitiful was the titanic rebellion of these builders of Babel!  God commanded the children of Noah to scatter and to fill the earth.  But these rebels insisted on organizing themselves to build a city that would preserve their unity.  Their great project was to build a city and a tower whose height would reach up to heaven.  But so trivial was their great labor that Moses mocks them.  He tells us that the all-knowing Lord God had to “come down” from heaven in order to be able to see the tower that was supposed to pierce the clouds and make its top in heaven (Gen 11:7)!

The great labor of Jesus is likewise to build a city.  But how much greater is the New Jerusalem than old Babel (Gk. Babylon) of Shinar!  Babel was built of sun-dried mud and oven-baked brick, which the builders used instead of stone.  Its builders only had tar for mortar for their city.  But Jesus builds His city’s foundations with sapphires; He makes her battlements out of rubies and all of her gates out of crystal and precious jewels (Isa 54:11-12).  His city is laid out in courses of glittering jewels and gems of light (Rev 21:19-23). Babel had to be raised up from earth toward heaven.  But the city Jesus builds will come down from heaven to earth with all the beauty of a bride made ready for her groom of glory (Rev 21:2)!  Babel was a city of confused tongues, and its tower was left unfinished.  But in the New Jerusalem, every tongue will give praise to God (Rom 14:11). And Jesus, who has founded His city by His own obedience to the point of death, says of all His work, “It is finished!”