SPEAKER_00: We study through books of the Bible here at the Village Chapel, and it's my great delight to be leading us through Genesis chapter 10.
SPEAKER_00: We're about to study what is typically called the Table of Nations.
SPEAKER_00: And I was doing a little bit of research on the population of the world and trying to figure out, you know, how many people are there now and how many might there have been back then and all that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that I noticed was it wasn't until 1804 that the world population was estimated to be about one billion.
SPEAKER_00: But if you take all of the people, you know, all of the years before that, you you wouldn't have come up with one billion on the planet at the same time until 1804.
SPEAKER_00: Well, just to 1927, it doubled from one uh billion to two billion, 1960 to 3 billion, and here in 2020, just last year, 7.8 billion.
SPEAKER_00: So you can see the the growth curve is really sharp.
SPEAKER_00: The G forces are intense.
SPEAKER_00: By 2050, it's projected that we'll have 9 to 10 billion people on the planet.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you, my friend, are an introvert, the trajectory is not very promising.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, where did all these people come from?
SPEAKER_00: Uh, are we all distant cousins from some founding couple many, many, many, many, many eons ago?
SPEAKER_00: Or did our ancestors arrive on a planet Earth in a giant spaceship from some distant solar system?
SPEAKER_00: Uh, what is the origin of all things?
SPEAKER_00: These are great questions.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis is awesome about helping us begin to answer some of those questions.
SPEAKER_00: We've come through chapters one through nine, and we just finished up the narrative of the great flood, and God has instructed Noah and his family to repopulate the earth.
SPEAKER_00: But while there was rising hope for a fresh start for humanity, chapter nine ended with a very sobering reminder that uh humanity's sin problem still existed.
SPEAKER_00: As we read there, Noah was portrayed as a drunken and very self-indulgent man who ends up passing out in his tent, and then he's disrespected by one of his sons and uh even mocked, if you will.
SPEAKER_00: And it's just not a very good start when they'd be given such a great opportunity for uh, you know, a completely new beginning.
SPEAKER_00: So, what will happen to the human race is the question you're left with at the end of chapter nine.
SPEAKER_00: What will happen as they begin again or start over?
SPEAKER_00: Will they have learned anything from God's righteous judgment through that great flood?
SPEAKER_00: Will they pass on the spiritual lessons to their families, to their descendants in the years to come?
SPEAKER_00: Or will they turn their back on God and continue down the same path of worshiping at the altar of autonomy that seems to be our proclivity and the kind of thing that we we all drift toward.
SPEAKER_00: And then more importantly, how does God respond to them?
SPEAKER_00: And this is the this is the amazing story of the entire Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Uh let's let's read the text, and here we'll see, as I say, another genial uh genealogy.
SPEAKER_00: Um and and call me crazy, but I love the genealogies, um, partly because I love wrestling with the pronunciation of the names, and and some of you probably enjoy uh watching me struggle with that.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm gonna and I'm gonna challenge you to open your Bible and look with me.
SPEAKER_00: And as I pronounce them, perhaps you'll uh ask yourself the question how would you have pronounced that yourself?
SPEAKER_00: All right, now these are the records or the generations of uh Shem Ham and Japheth, the sons of Noah.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and sons were born to them after the flood.
SPEAKER_00: And so the author of Genesis is very um intentional about contextualizing the record we're about to read.
SPEAKER_00: It is post-flood.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, he wants us to know that, and this is sort of uh the phrase that we read throughout Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: These are the generations, is sort of a marker, if you will, that there's a new story or kind of a new part of the story that's gonna be told.
SPEAKER_00: And so this is uh the table of nations, and it goes like this.
SPEAKER_00: The sons of Japheth were Gomer, Magog, and Medai, and Javon and Tubal, and Meshach and Tirus.
SPEAKER_00: All right, so these are uh Hebrew names, and there's no uh they're typically going to be called the the sons of, and there's you must understand there's no uh Hebrew word for grandfather.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the generations that are listed are literal and and sequential, and and you're supposed to read them that way.
SPEAKER_00: Other times in genealogical records in the Old Testament, we find that there'll be generations that are skipped.
SPEAKER_00: Later we find that out by reading it in another uh like first chronicles or some other book.
SPEAKER_00: But uh the idea is that these are the descendants of, okay.
SPEAKER_00: The sons of Japheth were Gomer, Magog, Medai, uh, Javon, Tubal, Meshech, and Tyrus.
SPEAKER_00: I'm doing okay on the names so far, and I assume you would too.
SPEAKER_00: The sons of Gomer were Ashkenaz and Riphath and Togarmah.
SPEAKER_00: The sons of Javan were Elisha, Tarshish, Ketim, and Dodanim.
SPEAKER_00: From these the coastlands of the nations were separated into their lands, everyone according to his language, according to their families, into their nations.
SPEAKER_00: And the sons of Ham were Cush and Mizrem and Put and Canaan, and the sons of Cush were Sebah, Havalah, the Sabtah, and Re'mah, and Sabteca and the sons of Re'amah were Sheba and Didan.
SPEAKER_00: How are we doing?
SPEAKER_00: You doing hanging in there with me?
SPEAKER_00: I hope you are.
SPEAKER_00: What's interesting about this record and these this set of genealogies, unlike chapter 5, is instead of getting the number of years that a person lived, and then that that sort of pattern was, and then they died.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what we're getting more.
SPEAKER_00: The emphasis is not so much on um uh just the genealogy as it is also on the geography that we see here.
SPEAKER_00: And so verse 8, now Cush became the father of Nimrod.
SPEAKER_00: He was a mighty one on the earth, he was a mighty hunter before the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Um if you look it up, and I'm no Hebrew expert, I just know how to use the tools.
SPEAKER_00: Um, if you look it up, though, the the word before the Lord, before could also be translated against.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, in English that would have a completely different meaning, wouldn't it?
SPEAKER_00: But given what we read later about Nimrod, it's at least interesting to know that, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Um Cush became the father of Nimrod, he became a mighty one on the earth, he was a mighty hunter before or against the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, it is said like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before or against the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and that's where the music goes, dun dun dun dun, okay, because Baba will become the tower of Babel in the next chapter, and much, much later, even in the book of Revelation, we'll read about Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, in uh 586 BC, we know that Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, comes and overruns uh half of, you know, or the southern half of Israel and captures all of them.
SPEAKER_00: Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, those guys are all dragged into Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: And it becomes a uh sort of a symbol Babylon does, as you especially in Revelation, for all that is set itself against God.
SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting that uh that word could be translated against as well as before.
SPEAKER_00: And he becomes the one who sets up or establishes Babel and Erech and Akkad and Kalnah in the land of Shinar, basically Mesopotamia over in that general direction.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: So from that land he went forth into Assyria and built Nineveh and Rehoboth, Eir, and Kela and Rezin between Nineveh and Kalah.
SPEAKER_00: That is the great city.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we have here is not only the names of some of the descendants, but the names of some of the cities, the names of some of the countries or nations that are formed in people groups as well.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 13, Mizraim became the father of Ludim and Anamim and Lahabim and Naphtim and Pathrusim and Kazluhim, from which came the Philistines.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that one was a lot easier to pronounce, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_00: And Kaftorim.
SPEAKER_00: And Canaan became the father of Sidon, his firstborn, and Heth.
SPEAKER_00: And the Jebusite and the Amorite and the Gergeshite and the Hivite and the Architec and the Sinite, and I always like to say, and the termite and the flashlight, because these are all the people, these are the names that like the Jebusites will become.
SPEAKER_00: Jebus is the ancient name before Jerusalem was called Jerusalem, it was called Jebus.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's you start to see that these names of places correspond to names that we know later.
SPEAKER_00: And so you kind of do a little triangulating and you find out these are, hey, this record is actually talking about real places and real people.
SPEAKER_00: And the Arvadite and the Zemerite and the Hamathite, and afterward the families of the Canaanite were spread abroad.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 19, and the territory of the Canaanite extended from Sidon, and that's a coastland city, Tyre and Sidon.
SPEAKER_00: We'll read about those even in the gospel records with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: As you go toward Garar, as far as Gaza, as you go toward Sodom and Gomorrah and Adma and Zebuim and as far as Lasha.
SPEAKER_00: And so again, names we know, Sodom and Gomorrah, we'll read about later.
SPEAKER_00: And uh just want to remind us that all of this as a record anyway is not just fable and myth, it's actually uh real names, real people, the whole thing.
SPEAKER_00: The sons of Ham, according to their families, according to their languages, by their lands, by their nations.
SPEAKER_00: And notice that because again, the the record here is not just of people, but it's of progress.
SPEAKER_00: It's of the the migration of people, it's of the of the uh uh generating not only people, but generating culture as well.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 21 also to Shem, the father of all the children of Eber and the or Eber, the older brother of Japheth, children were born.
SPEAKER_00: And this is just fascinating, right?
SPEAKER_00: This is the early roots of Israel, because Shem, uh uh Abram and Abraham, known as both, uh, will descend from Shem.
SPEAKER_00: So, verse 22, the sons of Shem were Elam and Ashur and Arpakshad and Lud and Aram, and the sons of Aram were Uz and Hul and Gether and Mash, and Arkpashad became the father of Shelah, and Shela became the father of Eber.
SPEAKER_00: And two sons were born to Eber.
SPEAKER_00: The name of the one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided, and his brother's name was Jochtan.
SPEAKER_00: And so again, you get this little insert of something about history.
SPEAKER_00: In those days, the earth was divided.
SPEAKER_00: In what way was it divided?
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps it's a reference to what happens in the next chapter with the Tower of Babel and how God scatters the people.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we certainly know what it's like to live in a land divided, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: Um, but there is this indication here again that we're talking about space-time history, which I think is so important for us to at least notice that.
SPEAKER_00: And as we read through these genealogies, we don't want to miss those kinds of things, do we?
SPEAKER_00: So then you have uh verse 26.
SPEAKER_00: And Jochtan became the father of Almodad and Sheleph and Hazarmah, Veth, and Jerah, and Hadaram, and Uzal and Dikla, and Obal and Abimael and Sheba, and Ofer and Havilah and Jobab.
SPEAKER_00: All these were the sons of Jochdan.
SPEAKER_00: Now their settlement extended from Mesha as ye go towards Sephar, the hill country of the east.
SPEAKER_00: These are the sons of Shem, according to their families, according to their languages, by their lands, according to their nations.
SPEAKER_00: These are the families of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies, by their nations, and out of these the nations were separated on the earth after the flood, and thus ends the reading of chapter 10.
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't know about you, but again, I read something like that, and I'm fascinated by the names.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, if you guys are, if you guys, any of you are pregnant out there and you're gonna look for a name, Genesis chapter 10, you can find all kinds of great names.
SPEAKER_00: Um, sometimes people choose names for their children for all kinds of different reasons.
SPEAKER_00: Um back in the day, in the times that we read about, anyway, in biblical times, a lot of times people would would, their name might be changed along the way.
SPEAKER_00: So Simon in the New Testament might become Peter.
SPEAKER_00: And uh and we find that there's some event or some character trait that surfaces, and so it just seems that we should call that person by that name because it tells us more about who they are.
SPEAKER_00: Well, Genesis has been classified by uh as myth by some who claim that it's all a fantastic fairy tale, thought up by an ancient dreamer, and there's no way anyone could ever know with specificity or with certainty all of these kinds of things.
SPEAKER_00: Others, like the ancient Near East uh historian Thorkild Jakobson, have called it mytho history.
SPEAKER_00: It's a combination of history and mythological pre-scientific knowledge, if you will, but st uh weightier and more credible, if you will, more historic than something that's mere myth, while others take a more literal approach to the interpretation.
SPEAKER_00: And when it says God created everything in seven days, that means exactly one earth week.
SPEAKER_00: So which is it?
SPEAKER_00: How should we interpret Genesis?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the answer probably depends on how one understands and interprets terms like history and myth.
SPEAKER_00: Terms like myth, for instance, uh is sometimes conflated with fairy tale, with folklore, with legend.
SPEAKER_00: So if we're trying to decide if Genesis describes history, actual history, real history, or fictional mythology, we must at least first ask the question of the text, how does Genesis present itself?
SPEAKER_00: And when you read what I just read in Genesis chapter 10, ask yourself that question.
SPEAKER_00: How does it present itself?
SPEAKER_00: What does it actually say?
SPEAKER_00: What can we determine about what the author intended to convey there?
SPEAKER_00: What is it apparent?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, as you read it, you ought to be able to say, well, I think this guy's trying to communicate something.
SPEAKER_00: What is it, you know, or this person.
SPEAKER_00: And um, so is it historical record?
SPEAKER_00: Does it sound like there are real places, real names of real people?
SPEAKER_00: Um, uh, whether we have any ability to corroborate it or triangulate and check it against something else or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about how does it present itself?
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's worth asking as you go to your Bible and you read it.
SPEAKER_00: For instance, Star Wars and the Mandalorian, these are fiction.
SPEAKER_00: All right?
SPEAKER_00: The Babylonian Enuma Elish and the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, they might be mytho-historical.
SPEAKER_00: Um, they might be the mixing elements of historical reality with a pre-scientific understanding of what lies behind it all.
SPEAKER_00: But what then is Genesis, you might ask?
SPEAKER_00: Well, here we do find 70 names.
SPEAKER_00: Real people, real names, who lived in real places, and those places even had real names, some of which we can indeed cross-reference with extra-biblical sources.
SPEAKER_00: Many of these individuals raised families, they developed into real nations.
SPEAKER_00: We're told they even developed their own languages or tongues and made real culture.
SPEAKER_00: So this is a great chapter to call What Is In or What's In a Name, and that's what we're going to call it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, the storyline moves, I think, toward uh not only giving us data, but also toward giving us an idea of the progress of redemption history.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, even though we've come from that end of chapter nine where things were kind of dark in the sense that Noah looks a bit like a fool and a drunken fool at that, um, after being told, you know, much earlier in chapter six that he was a righteous man, they walked with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, we can't look down our noses as we sort of sit, you know, in in so many years later and and say, oh, the guy was a hypocrite, without also pointing the finger at ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I've been a hypocrite, I'm a hypocrite.
SPEAKER_00: I if you if you're trying to get away from hypocrites, you gotta leave the planet.
SPEAKER_00: There's just nobody, and then you'd be with you, and that's the problem.
SPEAKER_00: See, hypocrisy is everywhere, it's universal in that regard.
SPEAKER_00: But here, the storyline does indeed move in a certain direction.
SPEAKER_00: And as we see, uh, and as we will even continue to see throughout Genesis, it moves in the direction of God's redeeming power and God being in pursuit of a people, he can call his own.
SPEAKER_00: But we're gonna call this study What's in a name?
SPEAKER_00: I think it's a great title for this particular chapter.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, what's in a name?
SPEAKER_00: Do individuals, for instance, even matter?
SPEAKER_00: Uh if I'm just one of eight billion people on this dust ball-sized planet right now in a massive universe, uh, can my little human life have any significance, any meaning, and can I find purpose uh to get out of bed tomorrow morning and and and have a mission in life at all?
SPEAKER_00: Uh what is in a name?
SPEAKER_00: We're small, fragile.
SPEAKER_00: We live in a massive, complex, beautiful, but sometimes dangerous universe.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, in many ways, we feel insignificant, often, most of us do.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and we are highly vulnerable.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, just look at how humanity has been not only threatened, but ravaged by a virus so small it's invisible to the naked eye.
SPEAKER_00: But in spite of this, you know, you think, what's in the name?
SPEAKER_00: Genesis tells me that we aren't here by accident.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis tells me we are not alone.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis tells me we were made in the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: You were made in the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: Your roommates, your household, you know, family, whoever they may be, they were made, every single human person made in the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: And so you see that from the Bible, anyway, what we get is that human life has intrinsic value simply because it's made in the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: Male and female made he us, we're told, uh, in this first chapter of Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: And it's our great joy to lean into and to re and to rest in this divine uh design of our creator God uh who's who's made us all in his image.
SPEAKER_00: How well does Genesis comport with what we've learned from modern science, uh cosmology, uh astrophysics, and archaeology?
SPEAKER_00: Well, there's lots of material to explore if you're curious.
SPEAKER_00: I suggest online videos, books, and articles, and here's a list of some of my favorites to read.
SPEAKER_00: C.
SPEAKER_00: John or Jack Collins reading Genesis Well, Professor John Lennox, Seven Days That Divide the World, Dr.
SPEAKER_00: John Salhammer, Genesis Unbound, Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses, Derek Kidner, one of the best commentaries you can buy, just simply called Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: And that's all just a name, a few.
SPEAKER_00: I'll I'll in the months to come, weeks and months to come as we study through on to the rest of it, I'll I'll post some more choices for you.
SPEAKER_00: But for our purposes today, Genesis 10 focuses on the dispersion of humanity after the great flood and the development of a variety of ancient nations and kingdoms, these all descending from the three sons of Noah, Japheth, Ham and Shem.
SPEAKER_00: While the genealogy, as I say, that we read in chapter 5 focused on the progeny, this chapter, chapter 10, uh, focuses more on the geography, the dispersion of humanity and the establishment of nations and ethnicities, which we celebrate.
SPEAKER_00: It's a wonderful thing in so many ways, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: And all the way, that same theme, uh God's people coming from every nation, every tribe, every tongue, that runs all the way through, not just it doesn't stop in Genesis, runs all the way through the Bible, all the way to the book of Revelation, see.
SPEAKER_00: And there you you catch the the glimpse of the throne room in heaven and the worship of God in heaven, and it's just beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: And it's people from every tribe and tongue and nation.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why Christian um the the Christian gospel is to me the most inclusive of all world religions.
SPEAKER_00: Um this is the this is an amazing offer.
SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't matter where you're from, doesn't matter what color your skin is, doesn't it doesn't matter whether you're you know wealthy, poor, rich, whatever your background, it doesn't, none of that matters.
SPEAKER_00: What matters is That there is an offer on the table for you from God.
SPEAKER_00: See?
SPEAKER_00: He's done everything necessary for you and me to be reconciled to him.
SPEAKER_00: And this is beautiful and powerful.
SPEAKER_00: The question is: will we repent and believe?
SPEAKER_00: Will we turn to him and believe?
SPEAKER_00: As I said, Genesis 10 lists 70 descendants, 14 from Japheth, 30 from Ham, and 26 from Shem.
SPEAKER_00: It is at least a little interesting to me that the sons of Noah are mentioned in a reverse order from when we first learned about them at the end of Genesis chapter 5.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, God is often doing things in ways that disrupt my penchant for predictability.
SPEAKER_00: I have a, I have a, I'm sort of drawn to predictability.
SPEAKER_00: I like to know what's around the corner.
SPEAKER_00: Are you that way?
SPEAKER_00: I like to know why something's happening or why it's not happening.
SPEAKER_00: I like to know what God is up to and what his plans are.
SPEAKER_00: And I often advise him on the timing and the process, and you probably do too.
SPEAKER_00: And when I stop and think about that, though, I just start to see how ridiculous it would be that a little tiny ant such as myself would ever need to advise Almighty God, who created everything out of nothing, and who's shaped and influenced human history down through the ages, so that we could be here on this day studying this storyline that is so old, but just continues to drive home so many great timeless truths from God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Well, these are lists of real persons, as I said, real cities, nation names, and all of that.
SPEAKER_00: The progression of migration.
SPEAKER_00: And all of that to me anchors Genesis, the narrative of Genesis in history.
SPEAKER_00: There are sections of Genesis, though, that are poetry or songs.
SPEAKER_00: There will be sections of Genesis that we'll read that I think are meant to not be taken with literalism in mind.
SPEAKER_00: And the problem, of course, is it the ism part of that.
SPEAKER_00: Where it presents, though, as naming real names and real people and all that sort of thing, I have great confidence that this is God's word to us, and it's credible.
SPEAKER_00: Here is a map I want to throw up on the screen that shows the development of some of the ancient kingdoms.
SPEAKER_00: And just to help orient you, uh where it says domain there, this is that's just an ancient name for you know that that section there, that uh the Mediterranean Sea section there.
SPEAKER_00: And um, but you see north of that the Hittite Empire, uh, you see the Assyria, the Empire of the Assyrians, the Babylonian Empire, and that's over in the land that was mentioned there, Shinar.
SPEAKER_00: You see the Egyptian Empire there.
SPEAKER_00: And what you don't see, but you might be able to see if you look real carefully there, is Jerusalem, which is what will become later.
SPEAKER_00: Um it's Jebus, but it will become Jerusalem later.
SPEAKER_00: And you see that in the background.
SPEAKER_00: So that gives you a little idea that that is the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea, and that's Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: That's where the southern kingdom of the two kingdoms of Israel, the northern kingdom, the southern kingdom, will be, and in that region.
SPEAKER_00: But that's the relationship, and what's happening is um uh humanity is spreading out and beginning to sort of disperse and and and occupy different parts of the world.
SPEAKER_00: What's in a name?
SPEAKER_00: What do we really learn here?
SPEAKER_00: Well, let me quote uh one of those books that I just mentioned from Robert Alter, brilliant uh scholar.
SPEAKER_00: Uh his book, The Five Books of Moses, is not only uh uh his own translation of the first five books, but also some running commentary by this excellent scholar.
SPEAKER_00: He says it should be observed that representing the origins of nations as a genealogical scheme preserves a thematic continuity with the divine injunction after creation to be fruitful and multiply.
SPEAKER_00: And it sets the stage for the history of the one people whose propagation is repeatedly promised, but continually threatened.
SPEAKER_00: He said that really well, summarizes it so beautifully and eloquently.
SPEAKER_00: And so when we look at this genealogical record, please understand it's starting out really wide, but it's kind of starting to focus, and the lens is zooming in and slowly, you know, it's just like turning it real slow, and and you're it's becoming more narrow.
SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna get to, in a while, we'll get to the story of Abram, who becomes Abraham, and uh the stories of Isaac and Jacob, Jacob who becomes renamed Israel by God.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, the story of Joseph uh closes out uh our book of Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: What's in a name, though, Genesis 10?
SPEAKER_00: What is in a name?
SPEAKER_00: And what about this whole table of nations?
SPEAKER_00: Well, my first point of the uh this maybe three or four that I want to make anyway is that God's providence and sovereignty encompass all nations.
SPEAKER_00: And you've got to look at that, and you've got to actually see that, I think, when you look at at chapter 10 here.
SPEAKER_00: God is providentially leading and guiding human history, and he is sovereign over it all as well.
SPEAKER_00: It's his sovereign prerogative as the creator, since everything belongs to him, including people.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we, I belong to him.
SPEAKER_00: I don't belong to me, I belong to him.
SPEAKER_00: You belong to him, whether you know it or whether you're even not willing to admit it, doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_00: You belong not to yourself, you belong to God.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why all of us are chronically longing.
SPEAKER_00: There we're all we're all we're always longing for something that we can't see, taste, touch, smell, or hear.
SPEAKER_00: Because we're longing for eternity.
SPEAKER_00: God has put that in our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: We're longing for God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm so glad to be able to tell you that he's done everything necessary for you to be reconciled to him in the person and work of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So he's providential, or he's his providence and his sovereignty are over and they encompass all around all nations, which is great.
SPEAKER_00: That's why he can offer salvation to anyone from any nation, any tribe, any tongue, any background, no matter how far they've run away from God, no matter if they're a drunk lying in a tent like Noah was, uh, no matter if they are Nimrod and known as a mighty hunter, even against the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Um, he goes on to establish Nineveh, for instance.
SPEAKER_00: God sends uh Jonah, the prophet, the reluctant prophet, to go and preach in Nineveh.
SPEAKER_00: And so many years later, after Nimrod, uh, Nineveh will repent.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that amazing that God would be so kind as to send the message of salvation through the prophet Jonah to the people of Nineveh, the descendants of Nimrod, um, even though he's been against the Lord in all these ways.
SPEAKER_00: So, what am I saying here?
SPEAKER_00: What I'm saying is the Lord is in pursuit of a people he can call his own, including you, including me.
SPEAKER_00: No matter how far we've run, no matter what the disposition of our disposition of our heart currently is, he's after you, and he's after me in a great way, because he's coming with rescue in his hand.
SPEAKER_00: He's coming with redemption as a gift for you and for me.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis 10, the table of nations, reminds us of at least these five things.
SPEAKER_00: Real quick, this is under point one, but the Bible set in space-time history.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, humankind is united with all its diversity under one creator.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, it traces back to an original founding couple and their progeny.
SPEAKER_00: Three, the significance of every human life from the womb to the tomb.
SPEAKER_00: You see the table of nations, each of these names are mentioned, and that the inference there, of course, is that each name is so important to God.
SPEAKER_00: You, your name.
SPEAKER_00: He knows your name, he knows my name.
SPEAKER_00: All of you.
SPEAKER_00: He knows our name, see?
SPEAKER_00: And that suggests, as he knows us, that suggests that each one of us have intrinsic value.
SPEAKER_00: So the significance of every human life, uh, from womb to the tomb.
SPEAKER_00: Verse uh number four, rather, the divine oversight of redemption history, and and again, the the reordering, the focus of the line of Shem, through whom will come Abraham, all of that.
SPEAKER_00: It just continues to narrow the focus of the of the lens of the camera, if you will, of history uh through Genesis toward the line of redemption.
SPEAKER_00: And then five, God's sovereign grace in all his choices.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Noah and Nimrod.
SPEAKER_00: Noah, again, the you know, the just these two guys, they're kind of inconsistent at best.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
SPEAKER_00: That's me, and that's you as well.
SPEAKER_00: So thank God for his grace and his mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Nimrod um is where we leave here in uh chapter 10, and this will move then into the story of Babel, which we'll study next week.
SPEAKER_00: But for now, I want to go back to the overall what's in a name theme of Genesis chapter 10.
SPEAKER_00: And the second point is that God's in pursuit of a people he can call his own, as we've said.
SPEAKER_00: Some of the people listed in these genealogies will indeed turn their backs on the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: But look at the way the prophet Isaiah says this.
SPEAKER_00: But now says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, formed you, O Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Fear not, I've redeemed you, I have called you by name, you are mine.
SPEAKER_00: I love this.
SPEAKER_00: When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.
SPEAKER_00: Think of Noah, okay?
SPEAKER_00: And through the rivers they shall not overwhelm you.
SPEAKER_00: When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.
SPEAKER_00: Think about Daniel, think about all of us too.
SPEAKER_00: Think about any kind of natural disaster or tragedy or just the pressures of the fallen world around us, the despair of it all, the dark cloud of despair, and and the division of the land and the acrimony and the uh uh just the difficulties of living in a world where people can't get on, get along well, and people are just canceling each other left and right.
SPEAKER_00: Um, how are we going to survive all of that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, we don't belong to ourselves, we belong to him.
SPEAKER_00: And he's called us by name, and when we pass through all of those things, I, the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, he becomes our Savior, as it says right there in Isaiah 43.
SPEAKER_00: We can trust him.
SPEAKER_00: And I love the way Brendan Manning said this.
SPEAKER_00: We should be astonished at the goodness of God, stunned that he should call us by name, our mouths wide open at his love.
SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you right now, brothers and sisters, mine is just duh.
SPEAKER_00: I can't, you know, it's it's just hard to believe, honestly.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, knowing how in if we're all honest, if we if we could just for a minute set aside our pride and acknowledge our need, um and we can see ourselves in so many of these characters uh because they're all faulty and frail as well, vulnerable.
SPEAKER_00: Uh they can be tempted so easily.
SPEAKER_00: They they they get angry so quickly, they get frustrated just like we do.
SPEAKER_00: Um and and they make bad choices just like we do and just like others do, and sometimes it costs them, but sometimes it costs us as well, and the world is broken in so many ways.
SPEAKER_00: We need the salvation of God.
SPEAKER_00: So, thirdly, um you're not alone, I'm not alone.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: How do I know that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, because we're fully known and truly loved.
SPEAKER_00: As Tim Keller has beautifully pointed out, to be loved but not known is comforting but superficial.
SPEAKER_00: To be known and not loved is our greatest fear.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we don't want anybody finding out the truth about us because we're afraid we won't be loved.
SPEAKER_00: But to be fully known and truly loved is well, it's a lot like being loved by God.
SPEAKER_00: It is what we need more than anything.
SPEAKER_00: It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.
SPEAKER_00: I know it's so true in our culture.
SPEAKER_00: I feel it myself.
SPEAKER_00: We we drift toward self-righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: It's so easy to be self-righteous in social media.
SPEAKER_00: It's and self-righteousness is everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: It isn't just them, it's you, it's me.
SPEAKER_00: We we all fall to it.
SPEAKER_00: There's no repugnant other out there.
SPEAKER_00: We are the ones that are guilty.
SPEAKER_00: We're the ones that need to repent.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we're the ones that need to repent before we hit it and send it, uh, post it, whatever you want to call it.
SPEAKER_00: But the good news is we're fully known by God and we're truly loved by God.
SPEAKER_00: And he's proven that in the person and work of Jesus, who, in spite of the fact that the entire world had gone nuts during the time of Jesus, in spite of the fact that darkness was so dark, Jesus came.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, the greater one than Noah, much greater than Nimrod, much greater than anybody else we'll read about.
SPEAKER_00: Um, because he comes, and he's the, when you talk about the question, what's in a name, he's the only one that has ever lived up to his name.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll talk about that in just a minute.
SPEAKER_00: But fourthly, God's been planning your redemption for a long time, mine as well.
SPEAKER_00: Um, John Stott says it this way: you can never take God by surprise.
SPEAKER_00: You can never anticipate him.
SPEAKER_00: He always makes the first move.
SPEAKER_00: He's always there in the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: Before man existed, God acted.
SPEAKER_00: Before man stirs himself to seek God, God has sought man.
SPEAKER_00: In the Bible, we do not see man groping after God.
SPEAKER_00: We see God reaching after man.
SPEAKER_00: So I ask you again, folks, what's in a name?
SPEAKER_00: The name Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Yeshua, or its longer form Yehoshua.
SPEAKER_00: Joshua, if you will.
SPEAKER_00: It's the same name, right?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus, uh, the shorter version means God saves.
SPEAKER_00: The longer version, Yehoshua, means God is salvation.
SPEAKER_00: And this is such a wonderful thing as we study and and look through Genesis chapter 10 and and as even then calling this what's in a name, and all these names being important like they are.
SPEAKER_00: But to be able to point all the way forward to the New Testament to Jesus, to know what's in his name.
SPEAKER_00: God's salvation is in his name.
SPEAKER_00: That's where we find salvation, is in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And no one has ever lived up to their name like Jesus, folks.
SPEAKER_00: What's in a name?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And we want to sing of his name and we want to praise his name forever.
SPEAKER_00: How about you?
SPEAKER_00: Join us.