Turn, if you would, to Genesis chapter 10.
I feel like we're flying now, right?
We're moving a bit quicker than we were.
Genesis chapter 10 will cover all of chapter 10, more or less
this morning. I'm grateful to Pastor Ed for
filling in last week to preach on such wonderful subjects,
interesting topics. To be honest, I was kind of
bummed that I had to miss talking about what what did
happen in the tent? What was it that that Ham saw or
did? Yeah, these are just these
things that that people ask questions about What, what
happened there? What happened?
Truth is we don't fully know, but that's OK.
So Genesis chapter 10 is where we will be this morning.
Now here this morning we have the most tedious section of text
that that we've yet to come across.
Sure, we had a couple little genealogies back in chapters
4:00 and 5:00, but here in chapter 10 it's a bit more
extensive and and drawn out. These genealogies serve to
remind us of God's continuing faithfulness to fulfill His
promise to defeat the serpent's. In this chapter we see God's
provision for the line that would one day give rise to the
Messiah. Humanity hasn't been completely
destroyed in this remnant of people signifies hope for the
coming nations of the world. This morning's text is often
referred to as the table of nations and it details how the
descendants of Noah's three sons reproduced and they began to
spread across the earth, providing the roots for each
people group of verse one reads. These are the generations of the
sons of Noah. Shem, Ham and Japheth sons were
born to them after the flood, so this is a a continuing lineage.
God's God promised to save Noah and his family in the flood and
and he did so. Now those same people are the
roots of God's restart for humanity.
You may recall that a few weeks back I drew our attention to the
special formula or word called the Tolidoth section.
This name is taken from the Hebrew word for descendants.
That is Tolidoth, the phrase that we'll see.
These are the generations. That phrase occurs 10/10 times
in 10 different parts of of Genesis.
To draw our attention to the fact that this is a new section
of the narrative. It's essentially a way to
outline the important divisions in Genesis.
There was creation and Adam, Noah, Noah's sons, Shem, Tara,
Tara is Abraham's father, Ishmael, Isaac, Esau, and Jacob.
These all are various Tolidoth sections that we'll continue to
see throughout this book. Now, this new Tolidoth section
draws the reader's attention to the reality that life continued
when Noah and company got off the ark.
They continue to have babies, they continue to multiply, and
they began to spread across the earth, and everybody in the
world is connected back to the three sons of Noah.
Now, we're not going to read all of the texts this morning, but
what I want to do is draw our attention to various peoples and
nations, peoples of No 10 and who figure in the remaining
narrative of Genesis and the greater meta narrative of
Scripture. Even the first list we get is
found in verses 2 through 5, and it details the the sons of
Japheth. And Pastor Ed mentioned some of
the things that that I'm going to talk about this morning.
The sons of Japheth. Only 14 of Japheth's descendants
are mentioned. I know that may sound like a
lot, but in a list of 70 names, 14 is pretty small.
Now these, these sons, these descendants extend only to the
third generation. Here in the text, Japheth's
grandchildren. And the first name I want to
point out is Gomer. Of course not to be confused
with Gomer who comes later and who Hosea married Gomer.
This is a guy. First of all, the family of
Japheth is generally thought to be the foundation of those of us
who are more lacking in melanin, if you know what I mean.
They they filled parts of Europe and Asia Minor.
Gomer's descendants initially occupied the region north of the
Black Sea and what we would now know as Ukraine.
Over the years they began to shift S towards Asia Minor and
Turkey, and then then they later spread W into Western Europe,
filling in places like Germany, Denmark and Sweden, even the
British Isles. I know it's weird for us to be
talking about Bible and talking about Western Europe, but that
is where it seems that these people landed.
Their ancestors eventually formed the foundations of what
have come to be known as the Celtic people.
Today. There is even a group of Jews
who who call themselves the Ashkenazi, taken from the name
Ashkenaz, Gomer's son. Very interesting stuff, by the
way. I might add.
A few weeks ago I said, oh, that was a research paper that I was
basically writing for that week's sermon when we were
talking about the Nephilim and stuff like that.
There is so much stuff. Every name, you start
researching names, you're going down all sorts of rabbit trails.
There are 70 rabbit trails to chase down here in preparation
for this message, so I've tried to distill it down to the most
significant ones. The next person will consider in
Japheth's line is Magog. Magog will be familiar to us.
Magog has largely been associated with Eastern Europe
and the region of the Black Sea, similar to his brother Gomer.
Now Magog or Gog for short, is common commonly associated with
two of his brothers, Tubal and Meshech.
Meshech's people became the Mushku and lived near the
Mosquian mountains. Then later generations of the
Mushku seem to have moved farther NA significant ways and
they became what is now Moscow. So the Mushku people became
Moscow. I find this all very intriguing.
Then there's Tarshish. Tarshish is 1 of JFS grandsons.
There's a bit of debate as to as to where Tarshish is.
If I asked you where is Tarshish, tell me where is it?
That's that's that's what we naturally think of, right?
We first think of Spain. The southern portion of Spain
garners the most attention. But then others say, well, what
about Sardinia, the island of Sardinia, West of Italy?
Well, no, actually, maybe it's Tarsus where where Paul is from
that that might be what Tarshish is.
So we can't make any committed decisions on on where Tarshish
actually is. It could be Spain, it could be
Sardinia, and it could even be Tarsus.
So a lot of these there's a there's conjecture, there's
guessing trying to figure out where these people landed and
you will find arguments for and against various locations.
We do know Japheth's kin settled in parts of Asia Minor, the
northern Mediterranean and Europe, and they were the
forerunners of light skinned peoples.
Verse five said from these the coastland peoples spread in
their lands, each with his own language by their clans in their
nations. We'll see this formula reference
to languages, clans and nations three times in this chapter,
once for each sun. And, and this draws our
attention to the fact that each of these was a distinct people
group. They spread out.
These people spread out over the face of the earth.
Now I suspect that it wasn't so much out of obedience.
Perhaps for some it was out of obedience.
God said to be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth.
And so maybe some of them filled the earth and spread out out of
obedience. But I suspect there's a lot of
just pragmatism involved here as as people began to multiply and
and become more numerous, there comes a point where, hey, we
need more space. So they go farther and farther
simply because they need space and spread out into these
various regions of the world, the well they're known world,
and then ultimately throughout the rest of the world.
The next section, from verses 6 through 20, outlines Ham's kin.
Verse 6 tells us who Ham's sons are.
There's Kush, Egypt, Poops, and Canaan.
Now, I suspect some of you already know that Ham's
descendants largely head down into Africa.
First of all, we know where Egypt is.
There is no disputing where Egypt is.
Egypt, however, isn't the only one here who would become an
enemy to the people of God. Verses 13 and 14 tell us Egypt
fathered Ludim, Anamim, Lehabim, naftuhim, path through SIM cast
cast, Ludhim from whom the Philistines came, and Katharine.
I've been told all you need to do is just sound confident and
people will think you know what you're saying and you're
pronouncing it correctly. Sometimes I attempt to pronounce
them the way that the Hebrew would, but sometimes we just go
with whatever. So a number, this is a number of
different people groups that that are pointed out here.
When you hear eem as it said ludem anamim le habim, when you
hear eem on the end of the word, that means the word is plural.
That means these are this list. Here is a group of people that
that Egypt fathered. Notice what it says of Kas
Luhim. It says of Kas Luhim from whom
the Philistines came. This is the first time in
scripture that we see the Philistines mentioned and and
these descendants from Ham's son Egypt of course become arch
enemies of Israel. Look at verses 8 through 12 in
your Bible if you would Speaking of Ham's son, it reads Kush
fathered Nimrod. He was the first on earth to be
a mighty man. He was a mighty hunter before
the Lord. Therefore it is said, like
Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord, the beginning of his
Kingdom was Babel, Erek, Akkad and Kaunay in the land of
Shinar. From that land he went into
Assyria and built Nineveh, Reha, both ear Kala and resin.
Between Nineveh and Kala that is the great city.
So this tells us Nimrod built Babylon and Assyria.
Nimrod built Babylon and Assyria.
Now Nimrod is a very intriguing character.
Who was he? Can we pinpoint him in history?
Is is Nimrod a name or is it a title?
He's associated with some bad places, but was he actually
evil? And what was his relationship to
Yahweh? Since it says he was a mighty
hunter before the Lord, what does that mean?
So many questions, so few answers.
Here's what we do know. First of all, the name Nimrod
means rebel. It means rebel.
He was a powerful leader and hunter, the first of his type.
It said in in verse 8 he was a man of influence and power as
evidenced by the fact that he built a number of cities.
The first first city he built was was Babel or or Babylon
along with three other cities in the land of Shinar.
Now Shinar is largely located in in modern day Iraq as you can
see on the map. I think we have a map.
Yes. Then then verse 11 told us
Nimrod went into Assyria and built four other cities, of
which Nineveh is 1. And you see Nineveh is located
there in the very northern part of Iraq, in what is now Mosul.
We don't know more than what the text says, but it seems probable
that Nimrod either organized the building of Babel and its tower
or had it done. Nimrod symbolizes someone who
who had become proud and because of his his pride he had no need
for God and he gloried in his own strength and capabilities.
He single handedly created the two dynasties who many, many
years later would carry the Israelites off into exile, the
Babylonians and the Assyrians. Now Babel is the namesake of
Babylon and it symbolizes the worst of humanity.
The Babylonians are bad people, and so this empire becomes the
the archetype for man's sinful pride and all that's bad in the
world. Next the text turns to Canaan.
Ham was the was the one who had sinned, we learned about last
week, but it was his son Canaan whom Noah cursed.
Now was God not being fair to Canaan?
Was he being judged for his father's sin?
No, he's not being judged for his father's sin, and the text
will instead show us that the apple doesn't fall far from the
tree. This was actually more of a
prophecy indicating what Canaan's family would be like.
And and Canaanites will certainly be shown to live
sinful, wicked lives. So Canaan's family settled
places like Jibus, and Jibus is now Jerusalem.
They also settled Gaza, Sodom and Gomorrah, as well as further
north of the Dead Sea all throughout Palestine.
Now this was the the promised land and the Canaanites
repeatedly proved to be a problem, right?
You can see in this map that we have here that that Ham's
relatives lived throughout Palestine as as well as in parts
of the Arabian Peninsula and a little bit of Africa.
Everything that you see here, the green, the the tan, all, all
those different highlighted sections, those are all Hams
descendants. So you can see that they settled
in in part of Africa there on the northeastern side of Africa,
then in what is Saudi Arabia on the western side of Saudi Arabia
over into Iraq and of course all through Palestine is where Ham's
descendants settled. Lastly, verses 21 through 31
reveal Shems lineage to us. Now Shem.
Shem should have been listed first.
He's the oldest of the of the three sons.
All the other times when the brothers are listed, they're
listed as Shem, Ham, and Japheth, possibly pointing to
their birth order. Now when Noah issued the
blessing in Chapter 9, Shem was the one who received the greater
blessing. As Noah said, Japheth would
dwell in Shem's tents. This this infers that that Shem
is going to be so great that that Japheth would come dwell
alongside him. There's a concept often seen in
Scripture called primogeniture. I know this is a new word for
many of you, but primogeniture means that the oldest receives
the greater blessing. This is we find primogeniture
all throughout the ancient world as well as in the Near and
Middle East as the oldest Shem received the greater blessing.
He received the blessing. Primogeniture often means that
the oldest is listed first. But now in this list, the order
is reversed kind of in a oh, let's save the best for last
kind of way. So let's look at verse 21.
Verse 21 says to Shem, also the father of all the children of a
bear, the elder brother of Japheth children were born Now
it's so easy if we're we're not stopping to to really dig into
the text. It's so easy to just breathe
that and say, OK, children were born great move on to the next
verse. Some scholars and commentators
maintain that we that we can't be sure that Shem is the oldest,
and they speculate Japheth might actually be the oldest, but.
I don't agree with that with that assessment based on first
of all the concept of primogeniture.
Also, Scripture makes it clear that when primogeniture is being
upended, it is upended. Sometimes in the text it calls
that out. It makes that obvious that that
the the order of primogeniture is being upended and a younger
sibling instead is receiving the blessing.
Now lastly, this verse certainly seems to tell us that Shem was
the oldest. The basic statement, the first
clause in the last clause is that children are born to Shem
so that that's what it means. And then the middle 2 clauses,
the second and third phrase, clarify who Shem is.
It says he's the father of all the children of a bear, and he's
the elder brother of Japheth. So I think that means Shem is
the oldest. So this is ample proof for him
being the eldest. And I think the text bears that
out even more as we'll continue to look at it.
Now here Moses breaks stride. And instead of listing numerous
family members of each of Shem's sons, he chose to only address
our Pakshod. What then follows our Parkshod's
descendants? So.
So why are we drilling down on this particular son's progeny?
I imagine if I'd asked you who our Pakshod was before this
message, you would say I have absolutely no idea, right, If
we're being honest. So why are we examining him?
Well, verse 24 says our Pakshad fathered shala, and shala
fathered a bear. This is important because a bear
is where the word Hebrew comes from.
A bear is the first Hebrew person, if you will.
He's the father of the Hebrew people.
And interestingly, there are two lines of Hebrew people here, 2
lines that that come from him. There's the line of Peleg, which
is of significance, and we'll look at that more.
And then there's also the line of Jock 10.
The descendants of both sons are drawn out in this passage.
Now, of course, only one becomes the chosen.
Jock. Tan's descendants are said to
have settled towards the Hill Country of the east, and some
have argued they primarily settled in Saudi Arabia, which
is actually South, and then others argue that they settled
towards Asia, possibly Afghanistan or maybe even
further E. Again, we don't know exactly, we
can just only go on. The text tells us.
I'm inclined to think they went more E because Saudi Arabia is
South and not east of where they were now.
Jock Tan's brother was Peleg. The comment on Peleg is that in
his days the earth was divided. There are varying viewpoints on
on what this means, but a number of commentators believe this
points to consequences received from the experiments of the
Tower of Babel. This points to the consequences
received from the Tower of Babel.
In the Old Testament, the verb palag, which sounds like peleg
palag, is used to describe division of languages.
So it makes sense that that the division in view here, plague,
means division. The division in view here is the
Babble event occurring 5 generations after the flood.
It's interesting because because I think in my mind, perhaps in
yours as well, we tend to think, OK, got off the ark and then
Babble happened. But no, a bunch of time went by
before the Tower of Babel happened, and we'll examine that
in a few weeks. Now let's jump ahead.
Thousands of years from Peleg in Luke three.
You don't need to turn there, but Luke 3 we have the genealogy
of Jesus. This is a list that says to the
reader, this Jesus that that you have heard of here is his
lineage. We know exactly who He is.
We know where He comes from. We know that He is able to sit
on the throne of David and we know he's the one the Old
Testament was looking forward to.
Now I won't read all of the genealogy in Luke 3, but I want
to read this section that begins with the patriarchs.
You'll find it here on the screen.
Verse 34 picks up with Judah. Judah, the son of Jacob the son
of Isaac the son of Abraham the son of Terra, the son of Nahor
the son of Seru, the son of Rue, the son of Peleg, the son of
Ebert the son of Shala the son of Canaan.
Kainan that is the son of Arpashad, the son of Shem, the
son of Noah, the son of Lamech, the son of Methuselah the son of
Enoch, the son of Jared the son of Mahalalel the son of Kainan
the son of Anos the son of Seth the son of Adam the son of God.
I know this is fairly tedious but there in Luke 3 verse 35 a
bear and Peleg are listed as Jesus far descendants.
So Jesus is the Messiah that Adam and Eve and their offspring
had been looking forward to. So this morning's passage has
shown us all the peoples of the world, and you can see in this
map here you can see where they generally spread out to.
I hope I put Yep. OK, so you can see who they came
from and where they spread the the green is Ham's descendants,
the yellow is Shem's descendants, and then the orange
orangish red is Japhis descendants.
Now this doesn't necessarily jive with everything I just said
because there is a lot of debate about about where these people
went, but generally this is this is generally correct.
Now here I want to give us three final takeaways.
This is all fun. This is interesting.
I love to geek out on stuff like this and just learn weird and
novel things, but I don't want this to just be information.
Information doesn't do anything specifically for us if we don't
get to the heart. SO3 takeaways.
First of all, this list, as I said, included 70 names.
It is not a coincidence that there are 70 names listed here.
This means a couple things. First of all, this genealogy
should not be taken as comprehensive, rather it is
representative. Some names only go a couple
generations while others go to the 3rd, 4th, 5th and even the
6th generation. Not to mention Nimrod we we
don't know for sure where he sits in which generation.
Some of the some of the lists showed a true genealogy and then
then some of it switches over to people groups like the
Canaanites of course. So these 70 names represent
totality or completion. This is the first instance in
Scripture of the number 70 being used.
This represents completion, but it's but it's used in other
places as well. There are there are 70
descendants of Jacob in Exodus 170, elders of Israel in Exodus
24. Then in Luke 10, Jesus sends out
the 70 disciples. Here the number 70 is used to
represent the entirety of the world's population, coming from
Noah's sons. Furthermore, we could say the
the the three main races that that sociologists sometimes talk
about. The three main races of the
earth all come from this moment, and scholars often point to the
fact that some settled in Europe, some settled in Asia,
and then some settled in Africa. Next, in this genealogy we see
God working at both the macro and micro levels.
We see God working at both the macro level and the micro level.
I love this. The opening and closing verses
are at a macro, a high level. Verse one said these are the
generations of the sons of Noah Shem, Ham and Japheth sons were
born to them after the flood and then the chapter concluded these
are the clans of the sons of Noah according to their
genealogies in their nations and from and from those the nation
spread abroad on the earth after the flood chapter opens and
closes with a with a 30,000 foot perspective on humanity.
It's very high level. Noah and his family got off the
ark. They began to to spread abroad
on the earth as they multiplied. And in a sense it's a fulfilling
of the cultural mandates to be fruitful and multiply and fill
the earth. However, this passage isn't just
communicating information to us. In this genealogy, we see Yahweh
working at a more personal or or micro level as well.
First of all, God's concern for humanity is demonstrated with
each name that's mentioned. 2nd, the text shows God working at
both the the cosmic and and personal levels to accomplish
His plan for redemption. He's overseeing the course of
human history while simultaneously attending to the
lineage and and the future of the promised Messiah.
Think about this for a moment. Moses wrote this history of of
the human race and, and he, he's focusing specifically on the
line of Shem because he was teaching his contemporaries, He
was teaching the Israelites about their personal family
history, where they came from. The Holy Spirit guided him to
write these things because he, the Holy Spirit, knew what Moses
didn't know, that the Messiah would eventually arrive on
earth. Through that same genealogical
line, Moses knew practically nothing of the Messiah.
He only knew of Yahweh's promise to someday send someone who
would strike the serpent's head. This passage then continues to
unfold the story of the Creator's desire to not only
redeem this particular family line, but also people from every
tribe and tongue and nation. So how awesome is that?
God was working through all of it to accomplish His purposes.
And lastly, the gospel transcends cultures and borders.
The gospel transcends cultures and borders.
As we look at the list of peoples and nations, we see a
number of them who would later become Israel's enemies.
Yet from these same peoples, God has claimed the people for his
own possession. You see, God was always making a
way for the outsider, for the foreigner to be part of the
Kingdom. He'd made provisions in the law.
And this was this was first seen when Israel entered the promised
land. Rahab, she was the unlikeliest
of women to be brought into the fold, but Rahab was faithful in
the revelation that she received when when she met the spies and
and she responded to that revelation.
She responded in faith and obedience and eventually is
brought into Jesus own lineage. She's also mentioned in the hall
of faith in Hebrews Chapter 11. So the gospel does isn't
confined by borders and cultures.
It is for everyone. And Rahab is a marvelous picture
of the Gospels transformation. And because of the gospel's
great power, we have scenes like like the one spelled out in
Revelation 7, Revelation 7, You'll see it there on the
screen. Verse 9 says after this I looked
and behold a great multitude that no one could number from
every nation, from all the tribes and peoples and languages
standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in
white robes with palm branches in their hands and crying out
with a loud voice. Salvation belongs to our God who
sits on the throne and to the Lamb.
Just how? Imagine how amazing it'll be to
one day worship God with Christians from all of history,
even Jews, Iranians and Arabs all worshipping God around the
throne side by side. God promised that one day the
woman's seed would strike the head of the serpent.
He promised it so he can be trusted to keep his promise.
From the perspective of Noah's sons, fulfillment of the promise
may have seemed very slow in coming.
Noah was named rest. Perhaps this one will give up
best. Perhaps this will be the one
that brings change. But no, it was many, many years
later. God doesn't always work in the
timing we desire. He works in the right timing.
In Galatians 4 tells us that that when the fullness of time
had come, so in the right timing, God sent his Son Jesus
down into the world. The time was right, God was
shown to be faithful and keeping that promise.
And someday, at the end of time, the serpent will receive his
final blow and be locked away forever.
Until then, we wait, trusting that God is faithful and in
control of both the big picture and our own personal lives.
You know, it could be so easy to gloss over a chapter like this
since since it's a genealogy, I don't know how many times I've
read this chapter in my life and I've missed so many of these
things that we've talked about this morning.
But here we've seen the sovereignty and grace of God
revealed in these names. Humans filled the earth, but in
the midst of it all, God was paving the way for one
particular family to be the conduit through which He would
send salvation into the world. This.
This isn't a boring genealogy. This is God's grace being
demonstrated. Let's bow our heads and close
our eyes. God, this morning the major take
away from what we've learned, what we've examined is just to
be in awe of your working, that you were working at A at a macro
level to fill the earth from these three Suns.
But not only that you were working at the personal at the
micro level in each of these names, but also to to work
through the descendants of the bear and specifically through
Peleg. And then eventually this leads
us to the chosen family, the patriarchs of our faith.
How awesome it is. How you have always been
working. You have not taken a break, but
you've always been working your will and providing the way for
Jesus Christ to come into the world.
How awesome that is. What wonderful grace.
So God, may we be ever thankful for your grace that was
demonstrated all the way back then, even in this genealogy,
since Jesus name we pray, Amen.