BUILDING FOR TIME OR FOR ETERNITY?

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 – Genesis 11:4 (NASB).

Only three generations after the flood of judgement destroyed the earth due to the wickedness of the human heart, mankind again rose in rebellion against the Creator. They flagrantly refused to obey God’s clear command to Noah and his three sons to “be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth” (Genesis 9:1). Rather than spread “abroad” to FILL the earth, they decided to conglomerate in a CITY and erect monuments to SELF through an ambitious and rebellious tower of PRIDE. It was to be a tower whose top will defiantly “reach into heaven.” The spirit of rebellion in the builders of Babel’s tower was the same attitude of arrogance that was within Lucifer – the heart that says “I will be my own God…I would make my own choices, with no reference to God and no regard as to their effects on others” (See Isa. 14:12-14).

The rebels of Babel decided: to BUILD a CITY and a TOWER for themselves; and to MAKE a NAME for themselves. Today, human beings are still desperate to Build for Selves – larger-than-life-size statues, castles, mansions, towers, cities, empires, monuments, movements and gigantic institutions. On face value, these were commendable and innovative ideas and a tribute to technology, but for the wrong MOTIVE! “Their inward thought is, that their houses shall continue for ever, and their dwelling places to all generations; they call their lands after their own names” (Psa. 49:11). There is a deep-seated longing for self-perpetuity; a desire that God has already surpassed meeting, by setting “ETERNITY in the human heart” (Eccl.3:11, NIV). If only we could realise that God has made everything beautiful in its time and set eternity in our hearts, there would be no desperate pursuit of self-perpetuity!

What are you spending time and life to build? Why and who are you building for? Is your motive self-perpetuation or the desire to fulfil God’s purpose in eternity? To spend all of life’s strength accumulating possessions, building towers, constructing structures, erecting monuments, gathering materials, and pursuing positions and titles which would only last in TIME, is the height of folly! “And He said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth” (Lk.12:15).

Never forget this: You are a Creature of ETERNITY through TIME! Are you merely building for Time or for Eternity?