The Lord Came Down
A Devotional Series from Genesis
Online Bible Audio/Readings Links (ESV)
8/7 Reading Portions: Judges 21; Acts 25; Jeremiah 35; Psalms 7-8
Genesis 11:5
And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built.
GOSPEL
If this verse was the only verse that gave us any information about YHVH God, one might think that He needed to come down to earth to see what was going on. God is omnipresent and omniscient. That is, He is everywhere present and He knows all things. God is not taken by surprise by anything that happens; neither does He have to wait to see what happens in order to make a decision. He has no needs because He is Self-sufficient; and therefore, since He is omniscient, knowing all things, He does not need to learn. We must keep God’s attributes in mind when we read Scripture, else we will come up with all kinds of strange notions about what God’s Word says. Yet this verse is given to us to reveal to us the amazing, wonderful, marvelous, and most excellent gospel truth of our condescending God, the Lord Jesus Christ. Our God is thoroughly involved with the affairs of sinful mankind. He is not aloof. He does not save us or discipline us from a distance. Though God is omnipotent, being all-powerful, and could have saved you and me from heaven with a word, instead the Lord Jesus came down to earth and dwelt among us (John 1:14). And even then, 101 years after the flood, at the birth of Peleg, the Holy Spirit reveals to us that the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ, though not yet fully revealed, though many of the details were still yet to be unveiled through history by prophets called of God, glimpses of the truth of the promised Messiah was at least known by some during the days of Babel’s jiggery pokery.
Hallelujah! What a Savior!