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 The world as I am sure you know is made of continents, each of those continents there is a nation or several nations.  In many cases there are different languages spoken in those different nations of the earth. Where did all these nations come from?  For the answers to these questions, I believe to a great extent are found in Genesis chapters 10 and 11. 

hat I want to do over these next few podcasts is talk about the nations as revealed in Genesis 10, and what is their purpose. Then next week we will look at Genesis 11 to see what the bible says about how all the different languages and what is their significance, but we're going to talk about this morning is the nations. Where did they come from how did they form? There is some fascinating stuff here but we're going to have to wade through some thick underbrush to get to the truth here. One of the most famous archaeologists of the 20th century was a man named W F Albright and he said this concerning Genesis chapter 10. I quote 

It stands alone in ancient literature without a remote parallel even among the writing of the Greeks. [This is where] where we find the closest approach to a distribution of people and a geographical framework, [To this day} the table of nations remains an astonishingly accurate document.

This chapter, commonly referred to as, the table of nations is considered astonishingly accurate based on what we know already from an archaeological point of view. A Bible teacher I read said referring to this passage it is simply one of the most interesting and most important chapters in the entire word of God.  

However, when you read it seems to be just a long list of names and frankly it can seem a bit boring. I mean this is like reading the fine print on your smart phone terms and conditions. One respected old school commentator I read when preparing this got to this chapter in his commentary on Genesis and he said, I quote. 

It may very well be questioned whether a man should ever preach on a chapter such as this

Well, I must confess that when I first looked at it, I thought maybe we should skip this chapter.  But where going to dig deep the morning because what on the surface look unimportant turns out to be vitally important to understanding the salvation plan of God for the whole human race. So, let’s look together at Genesis chapter 10 to see what the Bible say about the nations and the beginning of the nations.  

There are over 70 names here so if I took just one minute per name, we could be here quite a long time, but I don’t want to inflict the list on you all in one go. If you want to follow along in the entire text it is available in the podcast noted page of the audio version of this podcast. What I'm going to do is outlined the chapter and hit the high spots that I believe are significant.  All the names are significant in the overall picture but there are few that are really important. It begins: This is the account of Shem, Ham and Japheth, Noah’s sons, who themselves had sons after the flood.

(Gen 10:1)

The outline is simple, this chapter is about the sons of Noah and they each one of those sons gets a section in this chapter. In each of these sections there is an introduction in which all the sons are named. Then a description of one of the sons and their offspring is given. Then at the end of each of these 3 sections there is a summary statement and that's the structure of the entire chapter.

 I'm going to give you the point upfront.  In each of these statements there is a concluding observation that this son produced families who ultimately would produce nations. That's the point of the chapter which is why it is popularly referred to as “The table of nations”. That each of these sons of Noah produced descendants who in turn produced the nations of the ancient world.  With that in mind we will plunge into the text in the next episode.