A parable of woes: 3. Woe to the ambitious!
I. THE CRIMINALITY OF THEIR AMBITION.
1. The object aimed at. To build towns and establish cities. Not necessarily a sinful project, unless the motive or the means be bad. City building may have originated in a spirit of defiance against Jehovah (Genesis 4:17), though this is not certain; but cities may be, as they often are, centres and sources of incalculable blessing to mankind. If they help to multiply the forces of evil, they also serve to intensify those of good. Cities promote the good order of society, stimulate intellectual life, increase the privileges, opportunities, and comforts of individuals, and so tend to accelerate the march of civilization, by quickening movements of reform and combining against public evils. Hence, though "God made the country," and "man made the town" (Cowper), it need not be assumed that city founding is against the Divine will—it can hardly be, since he himself has prepared for us a city (Hebrews 11:16). Only as there are cities and cities, so are there diversities in the modes of their construction.
2. The means resorted to. Blood and iniquity. Murder, bloodshed, transportation, and tyranny of every kind the Babylonian sovereigns employed to enrich their capital and strengthen their empire; and one is not sure whether in modern times cities are not sometimes built and kingdoms strengthened by similar methods, viz. by wars of aggression against foreign peoples, and by the enforcement of sinful treaties upon unwilling but weak governments. With regard to individuals, there is no room for doubt that often they build the houses of which a city consists in the way here indicated, if not by bloodshed exactly, at least by iniquity, paying for them by ill-gotten gains, and erecting them by means of under paid labour.
II. THE VANITY OF THEIR AMBITION.
1. The fact of it. They, i.e. the peoples (nations or individuals), who build towns and cities as above described, "labour for the fire" and "weary themselves for vanity;" i.e. exert themselves to erect buildings that the fire will one day consume, and weary themselves in producing structures that will one day be laid in ruins. What is here said about Babylon is true of all earthly things (2 Peter 3:10), and ought to moderate the strength of men's desires in running after them.
2. The certainty of it. It is already determined of the Lord of hosts. It is part of his counsel that permanence shall not attach to anything here below (1 John 2:17), and least of all to the productions of iniquity. Individuals may be allowed to wait for their ultimate overthrow till the day of death or the end of the world, but cities and nations, having no future, are usually visited with doom in the present. The overthrow in time of nations and empires that are built up by bloodshed and iniquity may be safely counted on. Nineveh, Babylon, Rome, are examples.
3. The reason of it. "The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God." That is to say, because this is the destiny of the world, the goal towards which all things terrestrial are moving, it is impossible that the ambitious projects of man should be allowed permanently to succeed. All superstructures, however solidly built, must be overthrown, all organizations, however compactly formed, must be broken up, that hinder the advancement of that happy era which Jehovah has promised. Hence the triumph of Babylon will come to an end, and with that the glory of Jehovah will shine forth with a brighter degree of effulgence. Men will see in that a display of Jehovah's character and power never witnessed before. The knowledge of his glory will take a wider sweep and extend over a larger area than before. The same principle demanded the overthrow of Rome, and demands the final destruction of all God's enemies, that the knowledge of his glory may cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.
Learn:
1. The sin and folly of ambition.
2. The beauty and wisdom of humility.