Genesis 10 – Being Human

Well, good afternoon, everyone.

Uh, welcome to you.

My name's Mark.

I'm one of the leaders here at City Church.

Very welcome if you're new or visiting, when we pray and ask for God's help.

Uh, Father, we do affirm and rejoice in the knowledge that all scripture is indeed God-breathed and profitable for our learning.

Father, give us eyes to see your truth this morning.

Help us to see uh what uh how it is that you view the nations of the world.

We thank you for this passage and pray for your help by your Holy Spirit.

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Okay.

Well, already in this book, already in Genesis, uh we've seen a couple, we've been dealing with a couple of big issues.

Uh, we dealt uh earlier on with issues of uh of gender, of sex, sexuality, and I think in Genesis 10 we hit the third in that kind of uh trinity of issues that our world is dealing with, namely the issue of race.

Genesis 10 helps us to think through biblically the issue of race and racial diversity.

It's important for us because it's something that we are all having to deal with uh regardless of where you've come from.

Perhaps it is that you came from a country where uh racial division and segregation was up until recently or is still very much the norm.

Racial prejudice and cultural ethnic division still runs rife in your land.

Perhaps it is that you have come to Ireland.

Uh, Ireland is not your home culture, and you're trying to work out what it means for you to be part of modern Irish culture.

Perhaps it is you have experienced derogatory talk at the hands of people in this land.

Or maybe you are part of the majority culture and you're trying to think through what it means to love and embrace as your neighbor, those from different lands.

And it's essential as Christians that we think these things through, right?

Because what we're journeying towards is a multi-ethnic kingdom.

Every tribe and tongue and nation gathered around the throne of the Lord Jesus.

And shouldn't the church express that now?

Shouldn't the church look like the kingdom that we're going towards?

Aren't we an embassy of the kingdom now, in a sense?

And so, what does it mean for us to be a multi-ethnic, multi-racial group of people all calling on the name of the Lord Jesus together?

It's also important to think through this issue because it's something that our world is wrestling with, and our world is giving us potential answers or ways of interacting with it that run uh contrary to or are distinct from the story that the Bible tells.

It's important to see that the view of the nations that the Bible offers is profoundly different to the major narratives that there are in the countries of the world that we come from.

Let me just quickly list out what those three major kind of narratives are, the three major ways of dealing with racial diversity, ethnic diversity, right?

First one on one extreme, let's uh just call it for what it is, is racism, right?

Racism is this idea that uh that you can grade different people on a spectrum or in a hierarchy based on their skin color.

That there are superior races and inferior races based largely on the color of their skin.

This is a toxic and persistent sin in humanity.

It should go without saying that it is anti-biblical, anti-Christian, anti-the gospel is also anti-human.

We praise God that those who labored for the abolition of the barbarous, racist slave trade in the 19th century did so because they had an appreciation for the Bible's view of the value of the individual person, regardless of their skin color.

If that's one extreme, perhaps the uh the other extreme you might call uh kind of cosmopolitan pluralism, using the word cosmopolitan there in its technical sense that basically means people from everywhere.

Cosmopolitan pluralism, by contrast, would would say, well, we're we're all just we're all just one to the extent that that borders and boundaries and national identities and citizenships, none of that matters.

That's all just social construct.

Human beings have all just made that up, right?

So why have borders at all?

Perhaps you're sitting here this morning thinking, yeah, that's that's the right one, right?

That's the one to go for.

Well, we'll see.

Uh the third uh would perhaps be a kind of just uh uh an extreme form of individualism that says it doesn't matter what my national identity is, my affiliation or my culture, what matters is me as an individual, my rights, my needs, my expectations, my entitlements.

Given these three predominant narratives, how do we as Christians plot a way forward?

How do we consider issues of race, ethnicity?

Believe it or not, this long list of names helps us out quite a lot.

Why?

Because it is not just a list of sons born to Shem, Ham and Japheth.

Those sons who were born to Shem, Ham and Japheth give their name to nations.

You see that when we read nations like Egypt.

You're like, oh, that sounds familiar.

Yeah, because it's an actual country, right?

The idea being that there was a guy called Egypt who gave his name to the Egyptian people.

This passage has elsewhere been called the table of nations.

We see that, uh, we see hints that that's what's going on all the way through, not least of all, uh on the very last verse.

These are the clans of the sons of Noah, verse 32, according to their genealogies in their nations.

And from these, the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood.

This isn't just a kind of this isn't just a family tree.

This is giving us the nations of the world, right?

So, what can we learn from these 70 or so nations of the world?

We're going to take them in turn.

Firstly, that's a joke, by the way.

I'm not gonna do so.

Okay, not gonna do 70 names.

I think we can learn some important things, however.

First thing that we can learn is that all of human all of humanity is connected by common descent.

All of humanity is connected by common descent.

There's a pair of um uh TV presenters in the UK uh that present uh silly TV shows like I'm a celebrity, get me out of here.

Their names are Anton Deck, uh, Anthony McPartland and Declan Donnelly.

They're we kind of grew up with them.

If you grew up watching kind of any television coming out of the the UK, and on Monday night, my wife and I we stumbled across a documentary of uh of them doing their kind of tracing their lineage, doing a DNA test, and it was called Anton Deck's DNA journey.

And actually it was really fascinating and quite emotional.

We didn't find out that they were one of them was related to uh this this billionaire in New Yorker, like sent and sent a chopper from Manhattan to fly them out to their house and uh they realized that they were related to to people in a small town in in Northern Ireland, uh near near Macrafelt uh in Mid Ulster.

But the conclusion of it was that uh they got a they got a message that they were related to somebody else, and they they looked in the envelope, and what they realized was that they were they were actually related to one another.

That they each shared this DNA marker from around about 10,000 years ago, right?

And they were delighted because what's after all, what's a couple of thousand years between friends?

They realized that really they were of the same family, that some ancient ancestor, I think actually some high king of Ireland, uh, had been their uh progenitor all way back when, and they couldn't believe it.

It was very cool, it was emotional.

Philippa, my wife, cried.

I had something in my eye, but she cried.

As emotional as that is, it's exactly what Genesis 10 is telling us.

That we're all connected to one another.

All the nations of the world come from a common ancestry.

Genesis 5, which is a genealogy, a genealogy that traces from Adam through to Noah.

And then here we go from Noah and his sons to all the nations of the world.

The idea being, Genesis is telling us that we can wind the clock back to a common ancestor, that we are all sons and daughters of Adam.

This is hugely important when we're thinking about issues like uh racial inequality, because it says that we all have a common lineage.

It also says that because our common lineage is Adam, and after all, who was Adam?

Adam was an image-bearer of God with inherent dignity and value and worth.

And he passed on that image to his son, who in turn passed it on, who passed it on, who passed it on.

We are all image bearers of God because we all share a common lineage.

There is therefore no inferior race, no inferior caste or class, because we all share a common descent.

We are all image-bearers.

Moreover, the Lord Jesus, when he stepped into human history and lived a perfect life and died in place of others, he died as the second Adam to redeem the sons of Adam.

That means that there is no race or ethnicity or linguistically distinct group for which Christ did not die.

And that is great news for our world.

Christ gave himself for all peoples that he might create in himself a new humanity.

According to the International Missions Board, the IMB, there are eleven thousand four hundred and eighty-nine linguistically distinct people groups.

Of that eleven thousand four hundred and eighty-nine, some six thousand eight hundred and thirty-two, and I'm no mathematician, but that's more than half, are less than two percent Christian.

And of that big number, that eleven thousand number, three thousand two hundred and sixty-four linguistically distinct people groups have no Christian witness in their language at all.

There's not one Christian who can tell them the hope of the Lord Jesus who gave himself for all the sons and daughters of Adam.

How should that impact us?

How should that change our prayers?

Should it not at the very least lift our gaze from our own concerns, if not just for a moment?

To the horizon of the world that God sees and to at the very least be in prayer for these people?

Would it not compel you sometime this afternoon to go on to the Joshua Project?

Which is uh a charity uh designed uh for the evangelization of unreached people's groups, and sign up for their prayer news or Operation Mobilization or Wycliffe Bible translators.

Does it not stir also our hearts?

That some of us might go.

There are three options in the Christian life when it comes to uh the evangelization of the nations, when it comes to missions to unreached people groups, there are three options.

There are those who go, there are those who enthusiastically send, and there are those who are disobedient.

What will we be?

Will you take up the biographies of great men and women of the faith, those for whom the world has not been worthy?

People like Helen Rosevere, who trained as a doctor at Oxford University and went to the Congo in the 1950s and 60s, who was imprisoned for nine months by Congolese rebels, raped repeatedly, having her teeth kicked out by Congolese rebels, and then after a short furlough back to the UK, went back, who turned aside from husband and the potential of marriage to see these people around that heavenly throne because she counted that Christ was enough, that he was worthy of her sacrifice.

You can read that.

She has a three-volume autobiography.

The first one is called Give Me This Mountain.

Give me this mountain.

Or you could simply read her little book entitled Enough.

She was a dear woman who went.

I had the privilege of knowing her a little bit.

She went to be with Jesus a few years ago.

At the funeral of an elderly clergyman.

I was sitting beside her and I said, How are you doing?

And she said, I'm just jealous.

I'm jealous of him.

I'm jealous that she gets to see, that he gets to see the Lord Jesus, and I'm left here.

I hope that when I'm in my mid-80s that I'm able to say that, because right now I don't want to.

Corey Tenbaum, Jim Elliott.

So many who gave themselves for the cause of the gospel and the evangelization of the nations.

Second, diversity is a good thing.

Diversity is a good thing.

There's lots of diversity in this passage.

There's geographical diversity.

I I know it's kind of uh confusing when we're just listing our names, but uh let me just briefly, in your mind's eye, draw a picture of where we're looking at.

So if you imagine in the middle, you've got Israel, you know, right at the the eastern end of the Mediterranean.

So you've got Israel, and I guess if you're looking at me, the sons of uh the sons of uh Japheth are heading north and west up into Europe and into Greece.

That's the kind of movement that we're seeing there.

The sons of Ham, because we're reading about Cush, which is Ethiopia, Egypt, they're moving into North Africa and down.

And the sons of Shem, the Shemites or the Semites, they're settling in Palestine, the Semitic countries moving into Iran, Persia, Iraq, and further eastward on into India.

So that's the geographical diversity, that's the spread that we're seeing in this passage, okay?

There's also cultural diversity.

See references to sea people, see references to hunter cultures, Nimrod, you know, like it said, Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord.

Never use that as a catchphrase, but that's a new one for you today.

Um, cultural diversity.

And the repeated refrain that comes out in verse 5, verse uh 20, verse 31, that they diversified according to their clans, their languages, their nations.

Uh notice that when that repeated refrain, what that repeated refrain doesn't say, it doesn't say according to their clans, their languages, and their skin colors.

There's a helpful corrective there in the Bible, isn't there?

There's a kind of color blindness in the Bible.

That's not to say that skin color doesn't matter at all.

But it is of relative importance.

The emphasis on diversity here is not thought of primarily in terms of skin color, but in terms of nationhood, culture, language, clan.

Things get a little bit confusing though, if they weren't confusing enough, because if you were to read at the start of uh of chapter 11, what you would read are 11 verse 1.

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.

You think, well, hold on a second.

We've just been reading all about all these different languages that are multiplying across the world, and then when we get into the Tower of Babel, which Ben will be preaching on uh next week, but he's not here, so I'm just gonna kind of do a little foray into his passage.

Uh, what you might say was, well, hold on a second.

Everybody was all one language, and God came down and confused it.

Isn't that the judgment of God?

Aren't we then to conclude that linguistic diversity is a bad thing because God is deliberately confusing their language?

How do we square this circle?

I think that Genesis 10 is placed deliberately before Genesis 11 in order to show that diversity isn't a bad thing.

I think that Genesis 10 describes the events subsequent to the scattering of Babel before the incident of Babel.

I think, well, that doesn't actually make it any clearer.

So what so what's going on?

Well, Genesis 10 makes sense in terms of the flow because you've just had the uh you just had the flood and the command, excuse me, to Noah and his sons to be fruitful and multiply to fill the earth.

And then Genesis 10 shows that that happened.

And then the narrator is essentially saying, and then let me take you back to this thing.

Do you see?

But also, if we had the table of nations after Babel, we would be tempted to conclude that national diversity, linguistic difference, we'd be tempted to conclude that all of those things were bad, that they were an act of judgment.

But that is not the case.

God has always wanted.

Dispersion.

Genesis 1:28, fill the earth and subdue it.

Genesis 1:28

9 verse 1.

You don't even need to flick a page, it's just look, cast your eye over.

The command is to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth.

God's always saying, Go, get out, fill the earth.

There's lots to do.

Fill it all.

Lots of land to play on.

The sin of Babel, the sin of Babel was them all clumping together in disobedience to that command.

They're all going, no, they're huddling together like penguins, right?

Saying, no, we're just gonna stay safe here.

Let's not be obedient to what let's protect ourselves, let's not be obedient to what God has said.

And God comes down and scatters them.

Get out! Come on! So that they would fulfill what he has commanded.

Filling the earth with diverse peoples has always been part of God's plan.

Diversity is a good thing.

Let me give you uh an example of this from the New Testament.

Paul, in his speech in Athens in Acts chapter 17, says this.

Acts 17 · chapter mention

He says, and from sorry, and he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth, having determined a lot of periods and the boundaries for their dwelling place, that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way towards him and find him.

What's Paul saying there?

Paul's saying that not only does God determine the boundaries, the borders of our lands, not only does God determine that, but he does so, and this is peculiar to our mind, but he does so for evangelistic purpose.

That they should seek God and perhaps feel their way towards him and find him.

National diversity, filling the earth and subduing it, different people groups, is in God's economy part of how he is going to evangelize the whole world.

Strange as that might seem.

Doesn't Jesus Himself say that he will make disciples?

Or say to the disciples to go and make disciples of all nations?

And then he says to the disciples in Acts chapter 1, verse 8, he says, You'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem.

Acts 1:8

In Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth.

And that's the flow of the book of Acts, saying the gospel go to the ends of the earth.

But how does it get there?

See, again, what happens is the disciples clump together.

They're like, no, it's scary out there, it's not safe.

Right?

How does God get them out of Jerusalem?

Persecution.

And it literally says that they were scattered.

God scatters them by persecution, so that they take the gospel to the ends of the earth.

And where does where does the book of Acts conclude?

In Rome.

The end of the known world with the gospel reaching there.

Acts chapter 8, the gospel reaches Cush, Ethiopia.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

The most southerly point of the known world at that time.

The gospel goes to the ends of the earth.

God has always been scattering people that we might fill the earth.

And now, as believers, we do not just fill the earth with our own progeny.

We fill the earth with Jesus' followers.

With disciples of the risen Lord.

Diversity is a good thing.

The God of the Bible loves diversity and he celebrates it.

Why else does God celebrate diversity?

Because he himself is diverse.

We believe in a God who is a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

He is himself a community of three distinct persons in unity, in harmony.

Harmony and diversity together.

And so we image him when we image our diversity and our unity.

And what is the basis of Christian unity?

The basis of Christian unity is the gospel.

It is not national identity.

It is the gospel of the Lord Jesus.

And the view that one day all will gather around his throne and proclaim blessing and honor, glory and power be to our God for ever and ever.

Amen.

Diversity is a good thing.

Thirdly, and finally, although this one has three sub points.

Just when you all breathe a sigh of relief.

It's a more beautiful story, you might put it that way, it's a more beautiful story than the stories we tell ourselves.

The stories of racism, of cosmopolitan uh plurality, pluralism.

The story of radical individualism.

Biblical diversity is better than anything that the world would propose to us.

You see, contrary to racism, the Bible doesn't focus primarily on a person's skin color, as we've already noted.

The focus here is on cultural diversification, not on how a person looks.

Martin Luther King Jr.

said in his famous I Have a Dream speech that he longed for a day when his children would be judged not on the color of their skin, but on the content of their character.

And doesn't that accord with the vision of Genesis 10?

There's a refreshing lack of mention of skin color, and that is not to say that skin color is unimportant, but it is of relative importance.

Doesn't it accord with what Genesis 10 is about?

The judgment of God does not land more harshly or lightly, depending on your skin color, the ground before the cross is gloriously flat.

Nor does the mercy and grace of God flow like rivers to one ethnicity and drip like a tap to another.

The ground before the cross is gloriously flat.

Contrary to cosmopolitan pluralism, this passage sees that national boundaries, clans, nations, different citizenships, different cultural identities, they're not inherently bad.

Nor are they simply a man-made construct.

What does Paul say in Acts chapter 17?

Acts 17 · chapter mention

God sets the boundaries.

For me, borders aren't inherently bad.

Diversity is inherently bad.

Isn't inherently bad.

What has happened is the people have taken cultural diversity and borders and made them divisions.

Sin has caused hostility between people groups.

But what that means is that every culture, every people group needs to be redeemed.

Every culture needs to be redeemed.

There is no such thing as the perfect culture.

All of our cultural norms need to be brought into conformity with the gospel.

All of our cultural, but that's just the way it's done us, needs to be brought in line with the mind of Christ, does it not?

Wouldn't it be so arrogant to say, no, no, my culture is more inherently good, God-fearing than another.

Yes, some cultures have experienced more of that gospel reforming because it has existed in that culture for longer, but we have not arrived.

All of our cultures must be conformed to the mind of Christ.

And we must be in our world and for one another, a kingdom culture that is utterly different to the cultures that we are from, a part of.

The culture of Jesus' kingdom is completely different.

It's completely counter to what we have grown up with.

It's where the humble are lifted high, where the pride are brought low.

It's a place where the meek inherit the earth.

It's a place where those who seek peace will be called children of God.

And this is why what the Bible tells us is better than individualism.

Because the culture that exists in Jesus' kingdom isn't ultimately about us, it's about love of God and love of others.

Jesus was asked by a lawyer, who is my neighbor?

Watch the story that he told in response.

It was the parable of the good Samaritan.

Not in small part to show that you are connected by a common humanity, even to those who you would consider to be your worst enemy.

You see, it is only in the gospel that the dividing walls of hostility are broken down.

It's only Jesus who can break down the dividing walls.

Because it's only Him that's making one new humanity, humanity, with Him as the head.

Cain asked of God, Am I my brother's keeper?

The answer that the gospel gives is yes.

Yes, you are, my friend.

Because of our common connection, our common connection that is expressed in this passage.

So for those of you this morning who perhaps are here and you're simply looking in on Christianity, you're not quite sure what you believe.

The message of the Bible is that cultural and rec and racial reconciliation is possible only through the gospel of the Lord Jesus.

Only because he is the one who died and rose to reconcile all peoples to himself, all tribes, all nations.

In order to be a people without head, we must be a people with new hearts.

New hearts that are promised to us in the gospel.

For the Christian.

How does this not compel us out?

How does this not compel us to be more prayerful?

How does this not compel us to lift our eyes from our own circumstances and to see the millions of image bearers whom God loves?

Why would we not go to them?

Why would we not pray for them?

Those who have no idea that there is a God in heaven who loves them and gave himself for them.

What does it mean for us as a church?

Is this the extent of the cultural diversity that you are content to express?

Just sitting beside somebody of a different race.

Should it not permeate our friendship groups?

Who we have around for dinner?

And shouldn't we celebrate diversity?

As a good thing that it is.

To celebrate that even in this room there are many tongues and nations.

And to look forward and to long for the day.

As a small expression of the goodness of our diversity, our linguistic linguistic diversity.

Let me pray.

Father, we pray that you would break down those dividing walls that exist between us in each of our hearts.

Help us to see the goodness of the world that you have made, the goodness of the diverse people groups, and to look forward to that day when we will all be united around the throne of the Lord Jesus, in whose name we pray.

Amen.