God Stopped the First AI Disaster at Babel

God is not afraid of AI, but he did stop the first version of it 4,000 years ago. In Genesis 11, the entire human race shared one language. They could build anything, accomplish anything, and God said, that's the problem. You see, most people think the Tower of Babel is a Sunday school story about a tall building, but I'm here to tell you it's not. It's the Bible's clearest warning about technology without boundaries. And I want to show you why this matters today more than ever before. Welcome to Get Into the Word. My name is Robbie Gallaty. Let's look at what Genesis 11 says. We're going to start in verse 1. The whole earth had the same language and vocabulary. As people migrated from the east, they found a valley in the land of Shinar, and they settled there. And they said one to another, come, let us, watch this, make oven-fired bricks. They used brick for stone and asphalt for mortar. This is the technological advancement I alluded to earlier. And they said, come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky. Let us make a name for ourselves. Otherwise, we will be scattered throughout the earth. One of the things we see in this picture of the Tower of Babel is that most people misunderstand the story. People have been told this is about a building project. Well, it's not. You see, bricks and asphalt were cutting-edge technology for the ancient world. But that wasn't the real breakthrough. The real breakthrough was common language. They were able to speak a common language with one another. That was their operating system, if you will. It's what unified them.

It's what accelerated them. It's what empowered them as a people. And if you think about it, when everyone speaks the same language, there is no friction between parties. There's no miscommunication between people. Ideas begin to move at the speed of thought. And in the ancient world, that kind of unity was really unprecedented. Now, watch the repetition in the text. Go back and look at it. And I want you to see something interesting. We notice that five times the people use this phrase, let us. You see it? Let us build with bricks. Let us come and build a city. Let us make a tower. Let us make a name, not for God, but for ourselves. And by the way, let us stay in one place. We don't want to scatter across the earth. Now, if you know anything about the Hebrew narrative, you understand that repetition is never accidental. The author is waving a flag for us to see. And he's saying, pay attention. Notice this. This isn't just collaboration. What this is, is collective pride. You see, every let us in this text is a declaration of independence from God. What they're saying is, God, we don't need you. We know better. If we need you, we'll let you know. And what this does is bring us to the first sin hiding underneath this story.

The sin is ambition without submission. Now, I want to go back and look at verse six one more time. And I want you to see what the Lord says. It's interesting. God says in verse six, if they have begun to do this as one people, all having the same language, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Now, here's the issue. I want you to hear this. God isn't threatened by their tower. He's not up in heaven, wringing his hands, thinking, oh, no, we're going to lose it. They're getting close. They're going to get to heaven. No, he's not worried about that. He's concerned more about their well-being. You see, just because something is possible to do doesn't mean it's wise. I found insight in a rabbinic commentary in the Mishnah. And it talks about what was happening in the first century. Now, the Mishnah is a collection of commentaries that gives us insight into that world of the ancient days of Moses and Noah and Jesus in the first century. And what it says about the story is that as the tower grew taller and taller, the workers would begin to fall to their death. In addition to that, bricks they were carrying up to the top. You can imagine the tower got pretty steep as they rose to the top. The bricks would fall from their hands and shatter below. And the tragedy was that the people began to mourn the bricks more than the bodies. In a sense, they cared more about the project than the people. Now, I don't know about you, but that hits us differently in 2026. Because you and I live in a world today that has done the exact same thing. We celebrate productivity over people. We celebrate output over image bearing.

We've actually built systems in where we live, where we work, where we play. We have systems in our companies, we have systems in our families, we even have systems in our churches where progress matters more than the people who are really involved. And every time progress matters more than people, don't miss this, you begin laying another brick at the tower of your own Babel. And I wanna take it a step further. You and I live in a world where we've basically reverse-engineered Babel technology. Google Translate today, you could take a phone and you could translate across cultures and languages. AI has made it easy for us to communicate with other people groups. Even glasses today, there are meta-glasses you could put on and you've seen these online where you can translate in real time what someone is saying from another language. We've rebuilt a common language through technology. We're more connected today than ever before in any point in history. But have we really reversed it spiritually? I don't think so. We're more connected than ever before and yet we're more isolated than we've ever been.

You and I are tempted to choose phones over intimacy. We choose scrolling over silence with God. We choose algorithms over accountability with another person. And according to a recent study by Barna, the greatest influence shaping someone's faith isn't their church or their pastor or their small group leader. The greatest influence in a person's life today is their algorithm. It's their social media feed. Technology in and of itself is not bad, it's neutral. It's not good or evil, but our pride weaponizes it. Every single time you and I live in a world where we may be too smart for our own good. And here's what I love about this passage. God doesn't destroy the tower. I've always assumed that God comes down and decimates and levels the tower. He doesn't do that. God actually confuses the language. Confusion, it's not a curse. Actually, God's curse, don't miss this, is the kindness of God toward humanity. He actually confused the language to preserve their future. Sometimes God does this in our own life. He prevents in order to protect. Now here's the second sin buried in the text and it goes even deeper than the first. The people sought to replace God.

Most people think the Tower of Babel was trying to reach heaven and we talked about this earlier. It's more than that. It's about building a tower, but they were building a structure that had significance. Now, one of the things about ziggurats or towers in the ancient world is that you don't have to look far to find them everywhere. I went online and did a cursory study through Google and I found towers or ziggurats in Indonesia. You can find them in Egypt and Cambodia, Mexico. You find them in China. And they weren't built necessarily to reach heaven. They were built to control it. Here's how it worked. A king in the ancient world would ascend to the top of the ziggurat. They would claim to have received revelation or divine knowledge from the gods. And then they would come back down to speak to the people on behalf of the gods. And here's what they would say. The God told me this and now you should do it. Don't ask questions, just obey. It was a power play. You see, the tower wasn't a stairway to heaven. It was a throne room for human authority. The table wasn't about reaching God. It was in a sense about removing him and replacing him.

And that goes all the way back to Eden, doesn't it? The first couple didn't just want to be with God. We learned from the text, the first couple wanted to be God. As my friend, Nate Sala always said, they didn't eat the fruit for information. They ate the fruit for independence. They didn't want to learn morality. They wanted to determine their own morality. Every time our opinion outranks God's word, you and I lay another brick at the tower of our own Babel. Now Genesis 10 gives us a backstory of the man who started the revolution to build. His name was Nimrod. And if you look at the Hebrew, his name literally means we shall rebel. Now I'm gonna go on a limb here and say that he probably was someone who got in trouble a lot when he was younger. Frequented the principal's office probably a lot with a name that means we shall rebel. But here's the point. Before Babel was a construction project, it was actually a rebellion project. The tower wasn't the heart of the problem. It was just the symptom. You see, the heart of the problem was a problem of their heart. And the text gives us one more clue that I don't want you to miss.

So if you've not paid attention up to this point, lock in right now, let's go back to verse two. And I want you to see what happens in verse two. It says they migrated from a particular area of the world. Remember, geography is theology in the Bible. It says the people migrated. from the East. Why the East? Now, if you've read Genesis up to this point, you started to see something about the East. In the Hebrew narrative, East is the direction of someone who drifts from the presence of God. We see this over and over again. When God banished Adam and Eve from the garden, he banished or expelled them east of Eden. Cain went east of Eden after he sinned. Lot himself, when he moved to Sodom, he moved east towards Sodom. And now we see people migrating west coming from, as the Bible shows us, east. It's interesting because when a person shows up geographically, it's not just a place on a map. It's the direction of their heart. It's not just a direction or example on a compass. It's where they have wandered from the Lord. Every step eastward in Genesis is a step away from Eden and a step away from God's presence. Now, these people have gathered in the valley to build. But what did God tell Adam? Not to gather. The first command was what? Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth. If you fast forward to Genesis 9, you see the same command given to Noah. He says to Noah, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth. Babel screams the opposite. Notice what Babel says. We're going to stay. We're going to build. We're going to huddle up. We're going to make a name for ourselves. Not you, God, but for ourselves. And they chose, get this, congregation over commission. They chose insulation over obedience. They wanted control over surrender. So what does God do? Well, next time, we'll look at what happens when God comes down to inspect humanity's greatest achievement, this tower. But here's the irony I want to leave you with. The text says God had to come down just to see what the tower looked like. They thought they were building something elaborate, impressive to reach the heavens. But God has to stoop down even to notice what they're doing. It's another reminder to us that our best made plans are laughable to God because no tower is tall enough to replace God's throne. No amount of bricks, no amount of technology, no amount of ambition will ever put you on equal footing with the God who spoke the universe into existence. And the good news is you don't need to build a tower to reach him.

He's already come down for you and for me. Hey, if you've enjoyed this video, let me encourage you to hit that subscribe button. It really helps the channel out. Hit that bell so you don't miss another piece of content. We're going to launch and drop content every week. And if you've learned something this week, hit the like button, share with your pastor, share with a friend, or even a family member. Until next time, let's get into the word until the word gets into us.