The Spreading Out of Nations

Good morning. We start with a few questions. Answer by raising your hand,

if you will. I appreciate the participation.

Today is part 10 of the How It Started series. How many of you would say that

you've been here for most of the series so far? Show of hands.

Okay, good. Good. A lot of people.

How many of you remember back several weeks ago when we did the genealogy chapter

of Genesis chapter 5? Raise your hands there.

Genesis 5 · chapter mention

All right. Very, very, very nice. Good, good.

How many of you would like to do something like that again?

Ah, okay, you're my kind of people right here. All right, guess what?

If you raised your hand with that or nodded or like, I'm not sure,

too bad. It's happening. It's coming right now.

My dad used to say something to the equation of, you're a glutton for punishment.

You know, it's a phrase that he would commonly say, not in a mean-spirited way.

It was usually a sarcastic, playful way of saying things. And he normally said

it to me when it revolved around playing ping pong against him.

My dad and I, we did a lot of great stuff together. And one thing I would clump

together as the group of, we did a lot of competition together.

You might find this surprising and even hard to believe, but I used to be a

super duper bad poor loser.

God is fixing me. fixing ing

present working on it like he's brought

me a long way uh sherry would vouch for me if you

ask her oh yeah you should have seen him whoa back then uh

so it it's getting there now i'm only a poor

sport loser not a super duty okay um

so my dad was competitive my mom has

a healthy streak of it herself so i get it honestly i

do uh but in ping pong i could not

beat him he was so good like

prideful good almost like he

would he would say hey this is how the next point's gonna go he

would dictate the point in advance of course

to his favor and so often he was right

but i was motivated really dad

day after day dad you want to play some ping pong and that's where it started

him answering you sure are a glutton for punishment and perhaps you are like

me if you've made it through genealogy chapter five and you want more of it,

you might be like my dad said,

a glutton for punishment in a playful kind of way.

But on the other side of the genealogy.

It is good because we do this because it is a way to know more about God,

know more about history, his history, and his plan for us.

And then we take all this knowledge and we turn it into worshiping him. And that's a win.

A win, by the way, much better than how ping pong turned out for me and my dad.

Because you see, I left for college and my roommate loved playing ping pong.

As God would have it. He did.

And he was able to teach me how to take being a defensive player,

which I was pretty decent at.

I had to be because my dad was just firing shot after shot at me.

And he taught me how to teach, go from being a defensive player and convert

it to be an offensive player.

And when I came home that summer and I said, Dad, you want to play ping pong?

He had no idea what I was about to do.

And that also ended the phrase, you must be a glutton for punishing. Stop.

He died eight years ago. Man, I would love to do more with him,

including playing another game of ping pong. I might even let him win.

No, that's going way too far.

All right, the first time we covered a genealogy, I hope that we discovered

at the end of it, like, wow, there are a lot more things that we connect,

a lot of things that we could see.

And today is part 10, the spreading out of the nations found in Genesis chapters 10 and 11.

Genesis 10 · chapter mention

Last week, we ended by just sticking our toe into the ending verses of chapter nine.

And so with the idea that we would double down on that today and come back and touch them.

And so that's where I want to start with Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

They are the three sons of Noah.

And what we're going to find is that these three sons, all the people groups

that come into existence, everyone that's going to get mentioned here in chapter

10 coming up, are from these guys. They have restarted the population train now after the flood.

And what we saw was last week, that because of Ham's unrighteous act,

looking at his father's nakedness,

while Noah was stone drunk in his tent, and instead of Ham helping his father

and doing something about it, he was being dishonorable, disrespectful.

And then we put that unrighteous act that Ham had next to the righteous act

of his brothers, Shem and Ham, Shem and Japheth.

And what they do, they show honor. They cover their dad. They don't look at their dad.

And the results of those acts are now that Noah gives a blessing and he gives a cursing.

The blessing is given to the God of Shem and his future generations.

And that blessing extends to Japheth and his family. And the curse is given

to Canaan, Ham's son, and Noah's grandson.

And here is one of the biggest things that we need to know about this.

All of this transpires because God is on the move, and he is about ready to

introduce Israel, the Hebrew people, into his story.

Like the people living at this time, they don't know that Israel is about ready

to become Israel, but that's about to happen.

That's where we're headed. So here we go, perhaps stumbling through the names

of Genesis 10, lots of grace given here, and chapter 11.

All right, we'll mention a few things.

If, a little lighthearted, if you are looking for a baby name,

a different sounding baby name, you are in the right place today.

All right? But on a more serious note, chapter 11, when we read chapter 11,

you need to read chapter 11 as it's a zooming in chapter.

In other words, it's a chapter that happens somewhere in chapter 10.

Chapter 10 is going to tell us the spreading out of the nations,

and chapter 11 is going to tell us how it happened.

When we come to the names that end in ites and ems,

These aren't individual names, but they are tribes or clans or nations.

However, when you hear the word nations, don't think of organized government.

Think of ethnicity and culture.

All right, and the fourth thing I will say is this genealogy isn't as much about living and dying.

All right, here in chapter 10, like it was back in chapter 5.

This time, this genealogy is more about people, persons, and places,

and then where they went to live.

So with that said, gluttons for punishment, round two.

Genealogy. But looking for some victories on the backside of this.

All right, Genesis 10 and 11.

These are the family records of Noah's son, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

They also had sons after the flood.

Japheth's sons, Gomer, Magog, Mudday, Javan, Tubal, Meshach, and Tears.

Gomer's sons, Ashkenaz, Rephot, and Togema. and Javan's sons,

Elisha, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dudanam.

The coastland peoples spread out in their lands.

These are Japheth's sons by their clans in their nations, in their ethnicity.

Each group had its own language.

Ham's sons, Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan.

Cush's sons, Seba, Havilah, Subta, Ramah, Subtika, and Ramah's sons, Sheba and Dudan.

Cush fathered Nimrod, who was the first powerful man on the earth.

He was a powerful hunter in the sight of the Lord.

That is why it is said, like Nimrod, a powerful hunter in the sight of the Lord.

His kingdom started with Babylon, Arek, Akkad, and Kalna in the land of Shinar.

From that land, he went to Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth-i-ar.

Kala, and Rezin between Nineveh and the great city Kala.

Mizraim fathered Ludum, Anam, Lehebim, Naphtuim, Pathrusim, Kasluim,

the Philistites came from them, and Kaphtorim.

Canaan fathered Sidon, his firstborn, then Het, the Jebusites,

the Amorites, the Gorgashites, the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites,

the Arvadites, the Zemurites, and the Hamathites.

Afterward, the Canaanite clan scattered. The Canaanite border went from Sidon

going toward Gerar as far as Gaza and going toward Sodom, Gomorrah,

Adma, and Zibium as far as Lasha.

These are Ham's sons by their clans According to their languages In their own

lands and their nations Got a name picked out yet?

And Shem, Japheth's older brother, also had sons. Shem was the father of all the sons, Eber.

Shem's sons were Elam, Ashur, Arpachad, Lod, and Aram.

Aram's sons, Uz, Hul, Geether, and Mash. That's a great name, Mash.

Archipod fathered Shelah, and Shelah fathered Eber.

Eber had two sons. One was named Peleg, for during his days the earth was divided.

His brother was named Jocton, and Jocton fathered Almadad, Shuleth,

Hazarmavith, Jareth, Hedorium, Uzal, Dekla, Obol,

Abimael, Sheba, Ophir, Havilah, and Jobab.

All these were Jocton's sons. Their settlements extended from Mesha to Siphar,

the eastern hill country.

These are Shem's sons by their clans according to their languages in their lands and their nations.

These are the clans of Noah's sons according to their family records in their nations.

The nations on earth spread out from these after the flood.

Now chapter 11. Chapter 11 could have very well happened at the lifetime of

Peleg back in chapter 10, verse 25, because there it said that in his lifetime,

the comment is made that the earth was divided.

I doubt it was an earthquake. It could have been, but in this text here,

it sounds like this is when it happened.

In chapter 11, we're going to see how this story of the population on the earth

gets divided and separated. Chapter 11.

At one time, the whole earth had the same language and vocabulary.

As people migrated from the east, they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there.

It's important to notice this about Shinar. It's the first time that it's mentioned in the Bible.

It's said many other times in the Old Testament. And here, starting in Genesis

11, Shinar has forever been known historically as a place of rebellion against God.

Like everything from building of the Tower of Babel that we're about ready to

read, false idols, false gods, to mistreating Israel, to how it's still connected to last days.

Shinar has always been known as a place of evil.

Verse 3, they said to each other, come, let us make an oven-fired bricks.

They used bricks for stone and asphalt for mortar.

And they said, come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top

in the sky. Let us make a name for ourselves, otherwise we will be scattered

over the face of the whole earth.

Then the Lord came down to look over the city and the tower that the men were building.

And the Lord said, if they have begun to do this as one people,

all having the same language, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.

Come, let us go down there and confuse their language, so that they will not

understand one another's speech.

So from there the Lord scattered them all over the face of the whole earth and

they stopped building the city therefore its name is called Babylon for there

the Lord confused the language of the whole earth and from there the Lord scattered

them over the face of the whole earth and then one more deep dive here in chapter

10 on the ancestry of Shem.

These are the family records of Shem. Shem lived 100 years and fathered Arpachad,

two years after the flood.

After he fathered Arpachad, Shem lived 500 years and fathered other sons and daughters.

Arpachad lived 35 years and fathered Shelah. After he fathered Shelah,

Arpachad lived 403 years and fathered other sons and daughters.

Shelah lived 30 years and fathered Eber.

After he fathered Eber, Shelah lived 403 years and fathered other sons and daughters.

Eber lived 34 years and fathered Peleg. After he fathered Peleg,

Eber lived 430 years and fathered other sons and daughters.

Peleg lived 30 years after he fathered Rehu.

After he fathered Rehu, Peleg lived 209 years and fathered other sons and daughters.

Rehu lived 32 years and fathered Seirig. After he fathered Seirig,

Rehu lived 207 years and fathered other sons and daughters.

Seirig lived 30 years and fathered Nahor. After he fathered Nahor,

Zerig lived 200 years and fathered other sons and daughters.

Nahor lived 29 years and fathered Terah.

After he fathered Terah, Nahor lived 119 years and fathered other sons and daughters.

Terah lived 70 years and fathered Abram. Circle it.

Nahor and Haran. These are the family records of Terah. Terah fathered Abram,

Nahor, and Haran, and Haran fathered Lot.

Haran died in his native land in Ur of the Chaldeans during his father's, Terah's lifetime.

Abram and Nora took wives. Abram's wife was named Sarai and Nahor's wife was Milcah.

She was the daughter of Haran and the father of both Milcah and Iscah.

Sarai was unable to conceive. She did not have a child.

Terah took his son, Abram, his grandson, Lot, Haran's son, and his daughter-in-law,

Sarai, his son, Abram's wife, and they set out together from Ur of the Chaldeans

to go to the land of Canaan.

But when they came to Haran, they settled there.

Terah lived 205 years and died in Haran.

Congratulations all right you might be feeling

numb and tingly in a good kind of way or a bad kind

of way after that but the point of reading these verses

these chapters is not to check off the box and

say yay hey we did it nor is it to see if we properly pronounce all the names

i tried but positive i didn't right the point is to learn and to understand

some things about god and his history of the world because all history is his history.

Like I know sometimes we call it American history or world history or current

events. It is his history.

And as we process it, even while we're living in our own little bubble of our

own history making, it's important here to understand his history and why it matters.

So now in reverse order, I'd like for us to go through these chapters.

First, coming to the end of chapter 11, a significant change is about to happen,

about to happen in the book of Genesis and really in the entire Bible.

And that is this, if nothing else, Genesis 1 through 11 moves us through history,

starting with Adam in Genesis 1 and gets us now to this young man that we said

circle, Abram, at the end of chapter 11.

And this is significant because here now, because beginning in Genesis chapter

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

12, there is going to be a shift and it's going to focus on Abram,

soon to be called Abraham and his descendants.

And the reason that this shift is so important is this.

It is the blessed line of the woman here. It is Shem's line.

It's the coming of the Israelites.

It's the line from which Jesus, the Messiah, comes.

So a big shift is about to take place and let's not forget Jesus is the main

character of the Bible and Genesis helps us to know how he came to the earth and.

Also notice at the end of chapter 11, did you notice people are dying at much earlier ages?

Put a little chart together to show it right here. You got Shem lived 500 years.

You know, that's a long time. Not when you compare it to his dad.

Noah lived 950 years. And so we see right away that lifespans are much shorter

in just a few generations after Noah's sons.

And sure, there's been lots of speculation, a lot of theories as to why this

might be the case. Maybe it's a combination of several of them.

Environmental changes, weakened genetics, mutations, sin and punishment.

Whatever the reasons, lifespans become much shorter after the flood.

Okay, still going in reverse order. We come to the famous story of the Tower of Babel.

I say famous, I think most churchy people know it. But I even think unchurchy

people know something to do about here with this idea of the Tower of Babel.

This is how and why the people are spread out all over the world.

One of God's commandments that he has repeatedly given several times throughout

the book of Genesis is be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth.

And one of the things that this story tells us is that the fill the earth part

isn't really happening.

Like verse two says, as the people migrated from the east, they found a valley

in the land of Shinar and they settled there.

So some of the problem that led to God dispersing the people is this,

but equally, if not even a greater problem, I think a greater problem is found in verse four.

And they said, come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top

in the sky, let us make a name for ourselves.

Pride. See, they have this new technology called bricks, and they are all full

of themselves, thinking that their technology is going to make them,

and their abilities with the bricks are going to make them invincible.

Like, honestly, it's not much different today. Like, sure, we made a brick.

Oh, that is not technology.

Well, I get that. We might do that. Nowadays, we just substitute with something else.

But back then, brick making was the newest and best thing to ever happen.

And it's not just that these people are prideful.

They fall more into the category of vain glory kind of pride.

That's like pride on steroids, right?

Pride has to do with this internal sense of your own worth and your own awesomeness.

Vain glory has to do with making this internal sense go public for everyone

to see your awesomeness. It is not enough to just feel like you're better or

to think that in your own mind.

No, you want the whole world to recognize how much better you are. That's vainglory.

Perhaps that sums up the motivation of like 99% of social media.

Here's a good piece of advice, and it comes right from the Bible.

Let another person praise you and promote you. Don't do it yourself.

If you want to know more about it, write down Proverbs 27.2.

Go there. You'll learn more of that.

But this city, it's not that the city or the tower were wrong in themselves.

But pride and vainglory is sin because either we desire the wrong thing or we

desire the right thing the wrong way.

So the people are building, building, building, building, building,

and up and up and up and up the building goes.

And then in somewhat of an ironic statement, verse 5, it says this,

Then the Lord came down to look over the city and the tower that the men were building.

So I picture the people are standing at the base of this building like,

oh, look at this building.

It's going forever. We're going to build this thing to heaven.

And then we have God saying, what are they doing down there?

What is this man little thing they're making? Let me go down and check this out.

And here is a valuable lesson for us to know about God.

The most impressive achievements, the grandest of accomplishments of man,

cure cancer, best SAT, ACT scores,

best athlete, most beautiful, build skyscrapers, or even let's bring it down

into everyday living, everyday living bragging rights, if you will.

Like employee of the month, a honor roll, lead actor of the play.

Best pickleball player on the courts.

If done, if done from a heart of pride, here's the point. God is not impressed.

And at the same time, don't miss this part.

At the same time, God, who is great and awesome, what a father he is. He sees his children.

He sees his people doing things, little things or big things, doesn't matter.

When he sees them being done in faith and obedience and humility,

he smiles like, yes, even when they aren't done perfectly,

even when the bed isn't made perfectly, But it comes from a heart of wanting

to be obedient and pleasing God or pleasing parents or pleasing your wife.

That is something that we as parents or bosses or owners can copy from God.

Be gracious to others even when it's not perfect because their attitude is honorable and obedient.

God loves obedience. and the first thing on his list of the things he hates is pride, right?

And that brings us to verses seven through nine. God says, come,

let us go down there and confuse their language.

Us could be Trinity talk, it could be angelic beings, us.

So they're going to confuse their language so that they will not understand one another's speech.

So from there, the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth and

they stopped building the city.

Therefore, its name is called Babylon. For there, the Lord confused the language

of the whole earth. And from there, the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

God breaks up the party.

I was thinking about this. He does the exact opposite of what he does in the

New Testament in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

In Acts chapter 2, everyone is speaking their own language, and he does this

Acts 2 · chapter mention

miracle thing, and everyone understands in their own language.

Here he does the exact opposite thing.

He takes their one known language that they all know, that they all speak,

and he makes it confusing to each other.

Once again, let it be said, and if I say this too much, I'll be happy to be

guilty of saying this too much.

God is in control of everything.

He has total control over words and people who say words and he scatters these people.

The building project comes to a halting stop.

Babylon is appropriately named. Babylon means confusion.

Could he have knocked the tower down? Could he have flattened the city?

Of course he could have. He's done that in other parts of the Bible.

Instead, he makes the blueprints unreadable.

Like imagine the confusion.

And even imagine the crushed dreams that these people have.

The story of the Tower of Babel serves as a reminder of what we heard at the

very beginning of this study in the book of Genesis.

And that is when God said to Adam and Eve and to everyone who comes after him, build my kingdom.

Seek first my kingdom. Grow my kingdom and not, do not make your own kingdoms.

That is still the mandate today.

There's one way at the end of these verses that we can look at doing that.

But first, you got to mention Nimrod because, for one, it's an interesting word.

And two, he gets special attention in verses 8 through 12. Let me read them to you again.

Sadly, I read them because I see all the genealogy coming.

Cush fathered Nimrod, who was the first powerful man on earth.

He was a powerful hunter in the sight of the Lord. That is why it is said,

like Nimrod, a powerful hunter in the sight of the Lord, his kingdom started

with Babylon, Arak, Akkad, and Kalna in the land of Shinar.

From that land, he went to Assyria, and he built Nineveh, and Rehoboth-Ir,

Kayla, and Rezin between Nineveh and the great city.

So, woof, we just thought we were done, and bam, they get us again.

But who is Nimrod from these verses?

We learn that he is the son of Cush. He's a powerful hunter,

and he is a real go-getter in starting cities and kingdoms.

Like eight of them right there are credited to his efforts.

You would think that in that day, he would be an impressive,

well-known man of his day, trailblazing and pioneering ways.

And not once, but twice here, it's talked about him being a mighty hunter of the Lord.

So at one point in time, to be called a Nimrod was to speak of a person's skillful ability to hunt.

But now, with the risk of many people only remembering the next 30 seconds of

this sermon, including my kids, next service,

I'm gonna ask, how did it come today that Nimrod is associated with being a moron?

Dumb, stupid, and dim-witted.

If used properly, the original meaning, Nimrod, is a compliment.

Some of you are Nimrods in the way you hunt.

Do not use Nimrod in the modern terminology.

Don't call someone a Nimrod. Do you got it? Don't call someone a Nimrod using modern technology.

But, believe it or not, if you grew up, like me, if you grew up with Bugs Bunny

or Elmer Fudd, this is one of the ways it happened.

I'm telling you, it's the truth.

Often in their scenarios, when they were the two in the together,

we would have Elmer saying, silly little wabbit.

Remember it? And oftentimes, bugs would mention him and say,

poor little Nimrod, little dim-witted Elmer.

Oh, the power of TV, including cartoons.

Okay, back to Genesis 10 Nimrod. He is mentioned in ancient history books.

There have been legends that have sprung up about him. Some say he was a giant.

Others say that he was a big time enemy of Abraham.

Others say that he was directly involved with building the Tower of Babel as

an act of defiance against God, like I'll show you God if you try to flood the earth again.

All these lessons are speculation outside of Nimrod being the great grandson

of Noah, a skilled hunter, and a developer of cities. That's what we know.

And when we come to this last point now, I want to bring your attention to a

major observation if you haven't already seen it from this genealogy of Noah.

Sometimes this genealogy is called the table of nations.

It's like a flow chart that traces genealogy.

There are 70 descendants, 26 of them from Shem, 30 descendants from Ham,

and 14 descendants from Japheth.

Genesis chapter 10 seems to imply that this is an exhaustive list.

Genesis 10 · chapter mention

However, it might not be the writer Moses.

He might have left off some descendants. Regardless, by faith,

we can believe that what is recorded here is enough in what God has revealed.

But it brings up one major observation.

There are not human races.

There is one human race. whoever added the S to the end of race is not only wrong,

but they have caused literally tons of trouble and figuratively.

Everyone comes from the race of Noah who came from the race of Adam. There is one race.

Caucasian, Africans, Asians, Indians, Arabs, and Jews. They are not different races.

They are the race called human with different features.

I dug into the stuff this week, and I became a little bit of a biochemist.

Do you know, according to biochemists, the decimal difference in any genetic

similarity between any two human beings is very small?

0.1% small.

That's teeny weeny small, which

also means that we humans take any two

that you want are 99.9 percent identical in our DNA and our makeup now let that

sink in you're telling me 0.1 percent difference 99.9 percent the same.

And we have this ginormous problem of racism over one-tenth?

That sounds ludicrous to me.

But here's the problem. The 0.1% difference is not the problem.

Humans are the problem because humans are evil.

There is no such thing as races, plural, except that it has been made socially.

It's a socially construed idea.

Races, plural, are man-made, made-up thing.

It's not biblical.

Acts 17.26, from one man.

Again, he has made every nationality, every ethnicity to live over the whole

earth and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they

live. Well, that sounds a whole lot like Genesis 10.

Nationality means ethnicity, not race.

And ethnicity includes many things, including skin.

Have you ever noticed everyone has skin?

Yeah. And skin color is not determined by race.

It's determined by a chemical called melanin.

And every single person, I found this out this week, Every single person has

the exact same amount of melanocytes in their body.

Melanocytes, what are those? Those are the things that make melanin.

And they just make different amounts and different types. That doesn't make more races.

To think it does make more races, that is a Nimrod idea.

It doesn't make more races. It makes more diversity into the one human race.

So instead of saying a person is black or brown or white, it is more accurate

to say the person is more middle or, like me, less melanin.

Good looking guys. All one race.

While i'm at it there is no

such thing as interracial marriage not if we're talking about two human beings

one male and one female getting married i suppose if a human were to marry something

non-human that would be interracial marriage and super weird,

but we're kind of headed that way in the days that we're living in But the term

or the idea of interracial marriage is a man-made thing, and it comes from evil intentions.

There is major work, major work to do in our society when it comes to fixing this problem of racism.

But church, one thing is sure.

This cannot be a problem in the body of Christ.

It cannot be the church must absolutely must

emphasize that from the beginning we

all have the same ancestry one race we all have the image of god we all have

the same sin nature we all need the same spiritual savior and and if we belong

to christ we are all going to We live together in the same place forever.

As one of your spiritual shepherds, let me go on record of saying I share the

same concern as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

When he said years ago, we must face the sad fact that at the 11 o'clock hour

on Sunday morning when we stand to sing in Christ there is no east or west,

we stand in the most segregated hour in America.

Now, I understand there are many factors involved in attending churches.

And I'm not even suggesting that everyone should go to the same church.

But we should not wait until eternity to get this right.

In eternity, gathered around the throne in heaven will be a great multitude

from every nation, every ethnicity, all tribes of people singing and saying, worthy is the lamb.

And we should be practicing doing that now on this side of heaven.

So let me end with a three sentence summary. The spreading out of nations is

the spreading out of one race throughout all the earth.

And this one race people have always had some people pursuing their own kingdoms

and their own vainglory.

And it's also had some people who are pursuing first the kingdom of God and growing his kingdom.

And so the question for each one of us is, which kingdom are you building? Let's pray.

Father, I thank you for your word again.

I would pray that we would be faithful in doing the work that you have called

us to, to be fruitful, to multiply, to fill the earth,

to honor and trust in you as we do it, to not fall for the trap of thinking

we can do everything on our own and we don't need you and pride reigns in our lives.

Father, help us to be godly, humble, recognizing that you are in control of all things.

For the area of racism, Father, I pray that great repentance will take place.

Great forgiveness will take place.

And that with Jesus as the central focus, there can be healing and hope.

On our own efforts, this is impossible for us to do.

We need your help.

Help us to submit to the things that you are calling us to do here in Ocala and abroad.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.