There was a time in our planet’s history when everyone spoke the same language. It says in Genesis 11:1, “Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.” One way of looking at language and words is to see them as a type of world view or culture. In a sense, language is what connects people to each other. It makes it possible for them to share their experiences and ideas with each other. A common language helps us to draw the same conclusions as other people and to see things from a similar perspective.

The Hebrew word translated words in Genesis 11:1, dabar (daw-baw’) refers to a matter (H1697) and could be thought of as a topic of discussion. A specialized occurrence of dabar is in reference ”to records of the ‘events of a period.” Dabar can also be used as a more general term in the sense of “something.” In this way, it is an indefinite generalized concept rather than a reference to everything in particular. In connection with prophecy, when the phrase “the word of the Lord” is used, it is meant to focus our attention on the content or meaning of what is being said instead of the actual words themselves.

As a result of everyone speaking the same language, people were able to accomplish amazing things and became less reliant on God for their natural resources. It says in Genesis 11:4:

Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”

The place that was built became known as Babel. “Babel was a deliberate rejection of God’s instruction to ‘fill the earth’ (Genesis 9:1), a flagrant example of the corporate pride of man (Genesis 11:4). “The expression ‘a tower with its top in the heavens’ may refer to their desire to ascend to heaven or may denote a tower with an idolatrous ‘temple of heaven’ at its top” (note on Genesis 11:1-9).

One of the things that is clear from God’s reaction to the tower of Babel was that he didn’t intend for mankind to function without him. It says in Genesis 11:5-6, “And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the LORD said, ‘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.'” God acknowledged the power and potential of a unified people that all spoke the same language. Because of this, he intervened and caused the people’s language to be confused so that they could not “understand one another’s speech” (Genesis 11:7).

God’s strategy to keep mankind from becoming independent of him was to keep people from understanding what was meant when they said something to each other. For example, if I were to say, I don’t want to talk to you anymore; it could mean that I’m busy and I need to end our conversation or it could mean that I’m angry and I’m never going to speak to you again. These kinds of nuances to language make communication very difficult. When we misunderstand something that is said to us, it usually affects our relationship with that person and tends to over time break relationships apart.

The Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians included some guidelines for keeping relationships intact. He said, “Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honor your father and mother’ (this is the first commandment with a promise), ‘that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.’ Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:1-4). Paul’s instructions indicated that God wants us to have good relationships and that he blesses our efforts toward that end. In particular, we know that family relationships are important to God because he promises to bless us when we honor or pay attention to what our parents instruct us to do.

After God confused the language of men and dispersed them over the face of the earth (Genesis 11:7-8), God began to focus his attention on one family, in fact, a single person that he intended to bless and make into a great nation. Genesis 12:1-2 states, “Now the LORD said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.” The phrase “the land that I will show you” consists of two Hebrew words that convey the message of an unknown place, somewhere that Abram hadn’t been to before. God was definitely referring to the material world that Abram lived in, but he also implied that the location Abram was going to had a special spiritual significance.

God’s promise to Abram (Genesis 12:1-3) “is one of the most significant passages in the entire Bible. It points ultimately to the redemption of the whole world. Abraham’s family became a divinely appointed channel through which blessing would come to all men” (note on Genesis 12:1-3). Abram’s obedience to the words God spoke to him started the first spiritual awakening in the world. It also initiated a spiritual journey that took Abram about 40 years to complete. Afterward, the process continued with Abram’s descendants for hundreds of years until finally a temple for God to dwell in was built in Jerusalem (1 Kings 8).

It says in Genesis 12:4, “So Abram went, as the LORD had told him to, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed Haran.” The Hebrew word translated went, yalak (yaw-lak’) literally means to walk (H3212) and it seems likely that Abram traveled by foot when he left Haran. The Hebrew word translated departed, yatsa (haw-tsaw’) has to do with movement away from some point, but there could be more to what was happening than just Abram leaving one city and going to another. Abram was likely disassociating himself from one way of life and embracing another. It says in Genesis 12:6, “When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh.” The Hebrew word translated passed, `abar (aw-bar’) is used very widely of any transition. “This word communicates the idea of crossing over the boundary of right and entering the forbidden land of wrong” (H5674).

Abram’s arrival in Canaan may not have been so much about getting him to the right place for God to bless him as it was about getting Abram to the right place for him to be a blessing to others. The LORD took Abram to the place where his distant cousin Nimrod’s sinful kingdom was located (Genesis 10:10, 11:1-9). When he arrived in Shechem, “the LORD appeared to Abram and said, ‘to your offspring I will give this land'” (Genesis 12:7). Abram’s reaction to this news seemed to be twofold. First, Abram was thankful and demonstrated his appreciation by building an altar to the LORD (Genesis 12:7), but Abram may also have been terrified because he immediately moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east” (Genesis 12:8).

Abram’s positioning of himself between the cities of Bethel and Ai likely had something to do with their future spiritual significance. Bethel was the place where Abram’s grandson Jacob discovered the house of God (Genesis 28:17) and Ai was the location where the Israelites experienced their first military defeat after entering the Promised Land (Joshua 7:5). Abram may have been wondering how he was going to maintain his relationship with the LORD and not get killed in the process. Abram probably realized he couldn’t handle his precarious situation without God’s help and may have thought in the meantime he just needed to stay out of harms way.

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians pointed out that spiritual warfare is a real battle that every believer is expected to engage in. Paul began his explanation of how spiritual warfare works by stating that the Lord is the source of our spiritual strength. He said:

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Paul’s description of our spiritual enemy, the devil, included the organization structure he uses to overtake us. Paul said that “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).

A spiritual ruler is someone that is first in rank or power (G757), similar to the president or CEO of a company. Authorities are persons that have the ability to direct the actions of others. You might say that spiritual authorities are beings that are able to make things happen in the spiritual realm (G1537). Cosmic powers over this present darkness are associated with Satan as a world-ruler that is opposed to God’s kingdom. The Greek word kosmokrator (kos-mok-rat’-ore) does not refer to earthly potentates, “but spiritual powers, who, under the permissive will of God, and in consequence to human sin, exercise satanic and therefore antagonistic authority over the world in its present condition of spiritual darkness and alienation from God” (G2888). The spiritual forces of evil that Paul referred to were most likely the invisible powers that believers must contend with on a daily basis (G4152). Perhaps, the best way to describe these evil forces would be to say that they are demons that cohabitate with Christians who are addicted to sin.

What may or may not be true based on Paul’s description of the spiritual landscape is that Satan’s forces are concentrated in areas where there is little resistance to their presence. One can only assume that believers are more secure when they are surrounded by other believers. When God instructed Abram to leave his homeland and go to Canaan, he was essentially asking him to go to a place that was similar to the pit of hell. Abram’s willingness to accept this assignment showed that he believed God was more powerful than Satan’s evil forces.

One the remarkable aspects of God’s promise to Abram was that he said he would give the land of Canaan to Abram’s offspring (Genesis 12:7). At that time, Abram didn’t have any offspring. His only living relative besides his wife was the son of his deceased brother. It says in Genesis 11:30 that “Sarai was barren; she had no child.” The Hebrew word translated barren, `aqar (aw-kawr’) means sterile in the same sense as someone that has had a hysterectomy (H6135). It was physically impossible for Sarai to conceive a child. What this meant was that Abram’s faith was placed in God with no misunderstanding that it was going to take a miracle for the words that God spoke to him to actually happen.

Paul instructed believers to “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil” (Ephesians 6:11). The Greek word translated schemes, methodeia (meth-od-i’-ah) means traveling over (G3180). Methodeia’s two root words, meta (met-ah’) and hudeuo (hod-yoo’-o) denote accompaniment on a journey (G3326/G3593). What this seems to suggest is that when Abram left his hometown and headed for Canaan, Satan went with him. This might be true in a sense because Abram took his nephew Lot with him when he left Ur of the Chaldeans even though God told him to leave his country and his kindred behind (Genesis 12:1). Abram’s obedience to God included a measure of disobedience and that’s how Satan was able to work his way into Abram’s situation.

A detour that Abram took after entering the land of Canaan was a trip to Egypt. It says in Genesis 12:10, “Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land.” Abram’s reaction to the famine was to find a way out by taking advantage of alternate resources. Abram’s actions showed that he wasn’t depending on the LORD for protection, but rather his own ingenuity. It says in Genesis 12:11-13, “When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance, and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake.”

Initially, Abram’s actions seemed to pay off. He “went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the Negeb” (Genesis 13:1), but there were likely some long term spiritual consequences from Abram’s decision to deceive Pharaoh and use his resources to prosper himself. Genesis 13:5-7 states, “And Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents, so that the land could not support both of them dwelling together; for their possessions were so great that they could not dwell together, and there was strife between the herdsmen of Abram’s livestock and the herdsmen of Lot’s livestock.” Abram’s solution to the problem was to separate himself from his nephew and to give Lot the opportunity to make a go of it on his own in the land of Canaan (Genesis 13:8-9).

The Apostle Paul’s description of spiritual warfare suggests that it’s an ongoing battle that takes place in the spiritual realm. Paul talked about resisting the devil and indicated that spiritual attacks had to be faced head on. Paul’s message to the Ephesians stated, “Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one” (Ephesians 6:10-16).

The Greek word translated withstand in Ephesians 6:13, anthistemi (anth-is’-tay-mee) is derived from the words anti (an-tee’) and histemi (his’-tay-mee). The word anti means opposite. “This preposition is first of equivalence and then of exchange, stressing being in the place where another should be; total replacement” (G473). The Greek word histemi means to appoint or to be singled out, in order that it might be made known that one has been chosen by God (G2476). When Abram gave Lot the opportunity to choose the place he wanted to settle down, Lot chose Sodom. Genesis 13:12-13 states, “Abram settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled among the cities of the valley and moved his tent as far as Sodom. Now the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the LORD.”

Sodom was definitely the wrong place for Lot to settle if he wanted to live a godly life. Abram’s willingness to let Lot go there indicated that he was not being a good spiritual leader or withstanding the devil at that point in his life. In spite of this, the LORD confirmed that Abram was right where he wanted him. “The LORD said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, ‘Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length, and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you'” (Genesis 13:14-17).

The Hebrew word translated place in Genesis 13:14 is maqowm (maw-kome’) which is properly translated as “a standing” (H4725). Maqowm refers to the place where something stands. With regard to spiritual warfare, you might say that the LORD was intentionally placing Abram in a location where he would have to continually take a stand for his faith and as a result develop that capability on a daily basis. Maqowm is derived from the word quwm which means to rise and can refer to the origin of something (H6965). The LORD told Abram to “arise, walk through the length and breadth of the land” (Genesis 13:17). In this instance, quwm is translated arise and may have indicated empowering or strengthening. Quwm “is also used to denote the inevitable occurrence of something predicted or prearranged.” In that way, you could say that God’s promise to Abram depended not only on him going to the right place, but also staying there in spite having to engage in spiritual warfare on a continual basis.

If you would like to have a relationship with God, you can do so by simply praying this prayer and meaning it in your heart.

Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, and I ask for your forgiveness. I believe you died for my sins and rose from the dead. I turn from my sins and invite you to come into my heart and life. I want to trust you and follow you as my Lord and Savior.

If you prayed this prayer, please take a moment to write me at calleen0381@gmail.com and let me know about your decision.

God bless you!