All Things Are Possible?

Read Genesis 11:1-9.

The whole earth had one language and the same words. That means both husbands and wives knew what “I’m fine” meant. Having one language and the same words, they understood. No one needed to be told what a word meant.

Imagine that. 

Clarity of language is certainly God’s will for us. The Second Commandment teaches us the right use of God’s name—that we do not curse, swear, use satanic arts, lie, or deceive by His name but call upon it in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks—and the Eighth Commandment teaches us, among other things, to defend our neighbor and speak well of him.

So—we must not lie and we must speak well of our neighbor.

But what if the truth is unpopular. What if you have a crazy neighbor? What if your neighbor, or your neighbor’s children, say that 2+2=5? What if they call good evil and evil good?

Clarity of language is certainly God’s will for us, and the history of the Tower of Babel is helpful in understanding both God’s will for us and how we should speak to our neighbor.

We need to know—and God, through Moses, tells us—that some things are and should be impossible.

We’ve all heard and we’ve all said something along the lines of “You can be anything you want to be when you grow up.” But that’s a lie. There are plenty of things you can’t be, plenty of things you can’t do.

With a large enough imagination, the vast majority of things are actually impossible.

Men aren’t women. They can’t be. Boys aren’t girls. They can’t be.

There are a lot of things that marriage is and even more things that marriage is not.

There are a lot of things that love is and even more things that love is not.

We need to know that when the Lord says, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech” (Genesis 11:6-7), when the Lord says that nothing they propose to do will be impossible for them, that’s the worst way He could describe an unfaithful people.

If nothing is impossible for them—that is, if they think that nothing is impossible for them—that means they think they can keep the requirements of the Law perfectly, win their way into a state of grace, and save themselves. But that’s not possible.

If nothing is impossible for them—that is, if they think that nothing is impossible for them—they will teach their children that nothing is impossible for them, that men can be women and women men, that 2+2=5, love is love, and pride is a virtue.

See—we need to know that some things are impossible.

Because pride goes before destruction. And love, true love, is defined by God in the sacrifice of His Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of sins. 2+2 is always 4. And we need to do all that we can to raise our boys and girls to be men and women of virtue.

Look not to the world for what is possible. Look, rather, to the Lord for what is certain.

He came down to them and confused their language so that they would not understand each other.

So they would know that some things are impossible.

But here’s the best news—the Good News: in Christ and His Church, we are one people, and we have the one language of the Gospel, and we rejoice to know that our sins are forgiven.

We don’t have to imagine that.

We know.

In Jesus’ name, Amen!

-Pr. Benjamin Tyler Holt