(Sermon from 7/20/14 at Christ Fellowship Church.)
Text: Genesis 10
Heavenly Father, we are so grateful for Your Word, we love Your Word. Help us to remember, that even though Genesis 10 is difficult and awkward and can seem irrelevant to us here today, it is Your holy and inspired Word that it is like buried treasure. We thank You for Your Spirit that leads us into all truth. So we ask that you would please lead us from this difficult chapter to Your Gospel. Open our eyes and illuminate this text that we may see Christ. We ask these things for Christ’s sake. Amen!
Genesis 10 is commonly called the “Table of Nations” because it is an outline of the notable and prominent descendants from which the nations and kingdoms came. It is a history of the peoples of the world who literally all came from the 8 people God saved in the ark.
It is a partial genealogy of the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, Noah’s sons. It is not exhaustive, listing every single descendant. In fact this list includes people groups and regions as well as individuals.
When Moses says “These are the generations…” this was a way to say something like, “this is what came next.” We see this same phrase used in Genesis 2:4, “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth…” It was a way to introduce the account of how something unfolded.
Verse 5 says, “each with his own language”. This tells us that what is being described here are the generations after after the Tower of Babel. However, Moses, who wrote Genesis, meant for us to read the list seamlessly following chapter 9. In some ways it is a continuation of the blessing and the cursing that Noah pronounced. Moses, I believe, is expounding on and demonstrating historical and cultural and sociopolitical results of that blessing and cursing.
It is worth pointing out that this list is introduced to us by naming Noah’s sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth and then the listing of the descendants begins with Japheth, then Ham, and ends with Shem. This is interesting partly because we know that Ham was Noah’s youngest son (Genesis 9:24) and Shem was almost positively the oldest son (Genesis 10:21). One commentator speculates that Moses starts with Japheth, the middle son, because they were the least known to God’s people because they had receded the farthest from their country, then moves to Ham, whose descendants where much more familiar to God’s people, and finally comes to Shem last, to weave the history of the Church into one continuous narrative.
That makes good sense, at least regarding why Moses ends with Shem. God’s faithful people, and ultimately Jesus descended from this blessed line.
In verses 2 through 5 we are given the nations and peoples descended from Japheth, including the Medes, Greeks, Scythians, and the “coastland peoples.” There are others but those are the ones that perhaps you have heard of and in reading your Bible and you will likely come across in other places.
I mention the coastland peoples only because they are probably alluded to by the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 41:5; 42:4.
The coastlands have seen and are afraid; the ends of the earth tremble; they have drawn near and come. (Isaiah 41:5)
He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for His law. (Isaiah 42:4)
In a moment we will get to a couple of points I want us to take away from this text, but I want help you see that although Shem was the line of Christ and Israel, God’s salvation was alway intended to reach beyond the line of Shem.
In verses 6 through 20 we have the nations and peoples descended from Ham, including the Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites, Girgashites, Sodom, Gomorrah, the Egyptians, Babylonians, Canaanites, Assyrians, and the Philistines. ??If you are at all familiar with the Old Testament, there is no doubt you have heard of some of these. They are some of the most prominent enemies of God and of His people.
Verses 8 – 12 talk about one man in particular.
Cush 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, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. From that land he went into Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth-Ir, Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city.
This is the first place in the Bible that this word “kingdom” is used. At first glance, besides a name like Nimrod, he may seem like someone men would want to emulate. He was a mighty man, a mighty hunter before the Lord. Nimrod, means rebellion.
This phrase, before the Lord, is not talking about a worshipful reverence, but actually refers to his self-exultation above the order of men. We are left to infer from this passage that Nimrod was actually a domineering hunter of men and a brutal and proud tyrant. He began building his kingdom at Babel and in his pride and rebellion, tried to build a way to God.
In this passage we see a birthing of man’s pursuits of dominion and self-exaltation.
Then in Genesis 10 verses 21 through 31 we are given the descendants of Shem. From Shem came the Semitic people including Abraham and the Hebrews, and ultimately Christ.
It is important to note when talking about nations and peoples and descendants, that God is not a racist nor a respecter of persons. God so loved the world that He gave us Jesus. There were undoubtedly God-fearing, faithful people who were not technically descendants of Shem and vice versa, there were most certainly descendants of Shem who were not faithful to God. However, at that time, those were the exception and not the rule.
Stereotypes and clichés, no matter how much we may hate them, are stereotypes and clichés, because they are true. Bible is full of generalizations that are true, but that are true generally and not absolutely. For example, Paul says it is true that Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. This is quite the stereotype. Paul goes on to exhort a young pastor, Titus, to rebuke the Cretans sharply for this so that they may be sound in the faith, and therefore Paul is letting us know that He is generalizing and not speaking literally. In other words, Paul is telling Titus to rebuke the Cretans in his church, so that the stereotype will not be true of them.
When we say that these nations and peoples were enemies of God and of His people, this is a generalization that does not inherently exclude certain peoples or races from salvation, but rather identifies them and the salvation and grace they so desperately need, which is the same salvation and the same grace that we so desperately need.
The Bible is clear, apart from Christ, we are all enemies of God. Who your parents or grandparents are, ultimately has nothing to do with your salvation. Being born into a God-fearing family wasn’t good enough then and it isn’t good enough now, Jesus says, you must be born again.
Today, if you have not trusted in Christ and His saving work on the cross, if Christ is not your most precious treasure, you are an enemy of God. But the good news to you today is, if you will have Him, right now, if you will receive him, He will be yours. He will save you. You will be born-again and instead of an enemy, you will be His child.
Our text this morning is an identification of nations and peoples, where are you represented in this list? As we go deeper into this passage to its implication about Christ and the Gospel; as we gaze through this lens to the God of nations, consider where you are.
This is one of those text that is easy to skip over in our Bible reading. This is an example perhaps of one of the more difficult kind of passages to see the Gospel and to apply it personally to our lives. This morning, I want us to see 2 things in and through our text:
1. God rules the world. He is sovereign.
2. God makes the nations prove the glories of His righteousness and the wonders of His love.
I am borrowing the language of Isaac Watts’ great hymn, Joy To The World. Listen to these words.
Joy to the world, the Lord is come let earth receive her King…
Joy to the world the Savior reigns…
He rules world with truth and grace and makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness and wonders of His love
This list of names that we awkwardly stumble over, is ultimately pointing to The Gospel and proving the Promise. This text is meant to get us ready for Christmas and for Easter. It is getting the world ready for her Messiah.
1. God rules the world. He is sovereign.
Remember where we are in the story, Noah coming off the ark, becomes a man of the soil and plants a vineyard and makes his wine, and becomes drunk and passes out in his tent. He is uncovered and hated by his youngest son, Ham, who gleefully scorns his father and tells his two brothers, who instead of joining in Ham’s wickedness, show mercy and grace to their father.
This results in Noah pronouncing a blessing on Shem and Japheth and in doing so blessing their offspring, and pronouncing a curse on Canaan, Ham’s son, and in doing so cursing not only Canaan, but his offspring.
Noah was not cursing Canaan while Ham was left untouched. By cursing Canaan, God was communicating the severity and longevity of sin and implicitly cursing Ham as well as his offspring. Ham’s sin, just like Adam’s sin, would be felt in his descendants for generations to come.
Chapter 10 follows in this vein of the blessing and curse, and begins with Moses essentially saying, “And this is what came of those cursed and blessed descendants.”
Genesis 10 reminds us that whoever we are and whatever we do, everything has a role in the story. God rules the world. He is sovereign, and that means nothing is meaningless. Every sinful thing we do, along with every faithful thing we do, all of it, has an integral place in God’s metanarrative. It all fits. Everything we do has its perfect place in God story of redemption through the Messiah.
God is sovereign. He was not looking away when Noah got drunk and Ham sinned against his father. God was not caught off guard. God was ruling. God was working in the sinfulness and shame and scorn to produce glory.
Think about this, God did not have to create the process of fermentation. God did not have to create sugar to break down into alcohol. God didn’t have to create our bodies to react to excessive amounts of alcohol the way they do.
In addition, God, knowing the future, could have kept Ham from getting on the ark. But He did not. God could have struck Ham dead right there, in a moment and kept that whole thing from happening. All God needed to do was stop telling Ham’s heart and lungs to keep doing their jobs and Ham would have dropped dead right there.
God kept Ham’s heart beating. God let Ham inflate his lungs to breath the vile hatred of his father to his brothers. God kept Ham alive and gave Him children. God sustained Ham while he produced the wicked descendants that would enslave and terrorize and murder God chosen people.
God was ruling the world then, God is ruling the world now. He is the Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them (Acts 4:24). He is the Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords (1 Timothy 6:15).
God rules the world. He is sovereign over all things.
Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it? (Amos 3:9)
Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil? (Job 2:10)
The Lord has made everything for its purpose even the wicked for the day of trouble. (Proverbs 16:4)
Behold, God is exalted in His power; who is a teacher like Him? Who has prescribed for Him His way, or who can say, ‘You have done wrong’? (Job 36:22-23)
And lest you think that God is not interested or involved in the “minutia”, in what we think are the “trivial details” or random coincidences of life, hear this.
The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord. (Proverbs 16:33)
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. (Matthew 10:29-30)
God rules the world and sparrows and kings.
The King’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it whenever He will. (Proverbs 21:1)
[God] sees everything that is high; He is King over all the sons of pride. (Job 41:34)
[God] changes times and seasons; He removes kings and sets up kings…(Daniel 2:21)
For Kingship belongs to the Lord and He rules over the nations. (Psalm 22:28)
God rules the world. He is sovereign. He is sovereign over sin and sparrows and kings and nations. God is sovereign over our stories, and He is sovereign over our salvation.
This is a difficult thing to accept for some people. The idea that ultimately we have no say in the matter of whether or not God will show us saving grace, that there is nothing we can do to earn this gift, no amount of money we can use to buy this gift, ultimately, salvation is of the Lord (Jonah 2:9, Revelation 7:10).
God rules the world and He chooses whom He chooses, He saves whom He wills. He shows mercy on whom He shows mercy, and has compassion on whom He will have compassion (Romans 9:15). We don’t get to object and accuse God for blessing Shem and cursing Ham. God is God and we are not. He rules the world.
This brings us to the second point.
1. God rules the world. He is sovereign.
2. God makes the nations prove the glories of His righteousness and the wonders of His love.
There is nothing outside of God’s vision. God created the world to glorify Himself and He does this in mysterious ways. One of the ways God glorifies Himself is in working to redeem the nations. This is one of the reasons, perhaps the main reason, we are still here and God did not just transport us to Heaven when we were saved.
In Nahum 1, we are given a picture of what God is like. The prophet says in verse 3, “The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty.” In verse 7 the prophet says, “The Lord is good”. These are all attributes of God, inherent facets of His nature, and in verse 2, we are given another, “The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord is avenging and wrathful; the Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries and keeps wrath for His enemies.”
Remember how we got here, Ham sins agains his father and is cursed. That curse results in a line of wicked descendants. Enemies. And why enemies? Why the devil? Why Hell? Why can’t we all just get along and go to Heaven? What’s the point of the curse? Why did God not just let it go?
The answer to these are tied up with who God is and what He is like. It is an inherent part of God and therefore a part of His creation.
God, is jealous and avenging, and for that attribute of His character to be manifest, there must be an enemy to defeat. In order for God to be the avenging redeemer, there had to be not only an enemy to destroy, but a prize to win—a love to redeem.??This is a further manifestation of the enmity that was pronounced in the garden between the seed of the woman, and the seed of the dragon. But it goes even further back than that. In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth, and before that foundation was laid, Christ was the Lamb who was slain (Revelations 13:8).
Something I heard, that I teach my children, is a summary answer to the question of what the whole Bible is about. The whole Bible is the story about God who sent His Son to kill the dragon, and get the girl. In a nutshell, that’s it. This is the metanarrative. This is the storyline that is developing from Genesis to Revelation and beyond. The storyline we see developing in Genesis 10 is the same storyline we see when we open up a newspaper.
God is working to redeem the nations, and that implies enemies and a threatened love.
In Genesis 12 God calls Abraham (who was a descendant of Shem)to go to the land that God would show him. Then in Genesis 15 God makes a covenant with Abraham, to give his offspring the land of the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites, etc. who are the descendants of Ham.
In Exodus God tells Moses and the Israelites multiple times that He will give them the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. God even says He will send an angel to drive out thees nations (Exodus 33:2), and later God says that He will drive them out (Exodus 34:11).
God was reminding His people of His promise to enlarge the house of Shem and to cut down the house of Ham. He was reminding His people of His promise that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent.
Deuteronomy 7:1-6 says,
When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you, and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and He would destroy you quickly. but thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and burn their carved images with fire. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.
These were wicked, idolatrous, pagan peoples. They were threatening enemies of God’s people and God’s purpose. They were devout rebels toward the God who created them and sustained them.
I want us to be careful here, because to our modern way of thinking, it is very easy for these people to be victimized and for God to come across, in passages like these (there are many more), as cruel or unjust. This would be a damning position to take.
Romans 1:18-25 says,
For the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
God commands the Israelites to show these nations no mercy and to devote them to complete destruction and this does not only exalt God’s righteousness and justice, because they deserved annihilation. But it also magnifies His love and mercy, because we all deserved annihilation. This is God making the nations prove the glories of His righteousness and the wonders of His love.
God was casting history. This may seem simplistic or reductionistic, reducing real people to expendable extras and cautionary tales in a cosmic theater, but who are we to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder “Why have you made me like this?” (Romans 9:19-20)
God isn’t writing history for our sakes. He didn’t create the world for our sake. He created the world to display His glory. He created the world to put Himself on display and to make His worth known. This includes every aspect of His character and nature, the jealousy and wrath and vengeance, and the love and mercy and grace.
These often times are being displayed at the very same time in the very same event. The perfect place to see this, is at the cross. In the collision of wrath and love, of sorrow and joy, of blessing and cursing, of wounding and healing. The Son of God made sin and becoming the curse, and that curse becoming our cure and our blessing and our joy.
God is redeeming the nations. The prophet Haggai says, speaking of Christ, “And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come” (Haggai 2:7). He goes on later in that chapter to say, “I will shake the heavens and the earth; And I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms, and I will destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the heathen; and I will overthrow the chariots, and those that ride in them;
and the horses and their riders shall come down everyone by the sword of His brother.”
When God removed Adam and Eve from Paradise, He was keeping them from getting back to the Tree of Life in their sinful state. Do you remember what God used to guard the way to the Tree of Life? A cherubim and a flaming, spinning sword.
After the cross and the resurrection, just before Jesus ascends to the Father, He tells His disciples this: all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…
God, who has all authority, intends for the nations to worship Him. Because He is worthy of all praise. One way He demonstrates this worth—His power and global fame, is to raise men up and cut them down. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth” (Romans 9:17).
God makes the nations prove the glories of His righteousness and the wonders of His love. This table of nations in Genesis 10, is pointing us to the desire of nations, to Jesus; to the Tree of Life. It is pointing us to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel that either condemns men or redeems them. The God who’s word is a sharp sword that cuts men down to the soul to either damn them or to save them.
To disciple the nations is not to suggest to the nations. It isn’t to campaign to the nations, it is a commission for us to discipline, to command the unbelievers to believe. To speak to the dry bones with all the authority in Heaven and on Earth, and command them in the name of Jesus, to arise.
You see, we were no different than the cursed descendants of Ham in that we are all totally depraved, incapable of saving ourselves. The difference is not that we are better, the difference is that because of Christ, we are better off. And this is not of ourselves lest we should boast, it is a gift of God (Ephesians 2:8-9).
The Gospel is a call to come and die, to come and be cut down, to be wounded, to take up your cross and be planted in the ground, to lose your life, to find true Life.
Genesis 10, the table of nations, points us to the desire of nations and it helps to identifies who and where we are in relation to the promise and the blessing and the curse. This morning your life is proving the glory of God’s righteousness and demonstrating the wonder of His love. You don’t have to worry about that. The question is whether your life is proving it like Ham’s life did or like Shem’s life did. Will your legacy look like Ham’s cursed legacy or like Shem’s blessed legacy.
We are all enemies of God apart from Christ. Your life will be the story of you, an enemy, defeated by Christ the Hero. Will you be an enemy who receives wrath and cast out, or an enemy who is set free and brought into His eternal Kingdom.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father we thank You for sending Jesus to kill the dragon and get the girl. We thank You that You have accomplished this and that You are accomplishing it. We look at the state of our world today, at the conflict between man and man, nation and nation, and it is easy to despair and to lose sight of the One who is ruling the world. You are the Desire of Nations, would You show Yourselves to be the Desire of every heart in the room today. For Your glory in Jesus Christ we ask these things. Amen.
Charge: God rules the world and makes the nations prove the glories of His righteousness and wonders of His love. He is redeeming the nations. He does this in and through story. A story that you are a part of. You have a role. Christ has commissioned You, Christian, by His everlasting authority, to go to the nations to disciple and baptize and teach them, that they may worship the God who is worthy of all honor and praise. So live out the mission, Christ, in all of life, for all the world.
Benediction: Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem!?The Lord has taken away the judgments against you; he has cleared away your enemies.?The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you shall never again fear evil. The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save;?He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you by his love;?He will exult over you with loud singing.
Go in Peace.
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