Safety. Significance. Glory. You were made for all three — just not the way Babel tried to get them.

Pastor Jackson opens with a homestay in Bucharest, a Romanian Yanni superfan, and three hours of silence that somehow perfectly sets up everything Genesis 11 is about to say. One language. One plain. One plan: build a city, raise a tower, make a name. It sounds like progress. God calls it something else.

The Tower of Babel isn't just a story about ancient arrogance — it's the story of every human heart trying to manufacture what God was always meant to provide. A city for safety and security. A tower for significance. A great name for glory and connection to greatness. Jackson traces each one back to the garden, where God gave humanity all three in himself — and shows what's been driving us ever since we walked away from that.

The second half cuts deeper: sin's root isn't just bad behavior, it's "by my will, in my strength, for my glory" — and the ruins it promises to build always collapse into insecurity, insignificance, and inconsistency. The only way out is the same thing Babel refused: surrender.

Key topics: What Babel was actually trying to build and why | Sin as an attempt to find in something what only God provides | "By my will, in my strength, for my glory" | Babylon in Revelation as Babel's long shadow | Insecurity → In Security: who you are in Christ

Church of the Cascades | Bend, Oregon | Genesis series