1. "When people ask where you're from, they're usually not asking you a question about the exact latitude and longitude of the place you were born. They're asking you a question about what kind of people were you brought up as a part of, what language did they share, what did they have in common, what nation are you a part of."

2. "Friends, when Moses wrote this, he was not writing down a common idea. We are all made in the image of God, so we should not think too highly of ourselves or our race or our nation or our culture compared to others."

3. "Mothers, you're raising nations. You're doing things that will have effects far beyond your own lifetime, or perhaps even the lifetime of your children. Time, like an ever rolling stream, bears all its sons away. But history continues on, as do the nations."

4. "When the greatest of nations have passed from our memories, we will, each one of us, continue on after our bodies die in self conscious knowledge of God and His love, or in self conscious, futile, eternal opposition to him, vainly attempting to ignore or disobey him, and receiving the just punishment for it."

5. "My friend, the Bible teaches that your nationality in specific was determined by God. God is sovereign over your ethnicity. There's no point in you being jealous of somebody else's or dismissive of it or your own."

6. "Friend, if you work here in this area, think of how your job contributes to that end. How does your work contribute to people made in the image of God being protected and preserved? That's what God intends in the nations of the world and their governments."

7. "Had we believed the Bible better, we Christians never would have been guilty of the heresy of racial slavery. The truth we see in Genesis would have told us that we all have the same nature."

8. "Do you ever wonder if the Great Commission's going to fail? It won't. You listen to Bobby's sermons. In Revelation, we see the success of it recorded in God's own word."

9. "Not even the mightiest of men, not Nimrod, not Pilate, not Caesar, could derail God's plan for his people, for the nations. And so even the mightiest of empires was bent on to fulfill God's purposes when he sent His Son to die on the cross in our place."

10. "Learn to know Christ and him crucified. Learn to sing to him and say, 'Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness, I am your sin. You have taken upon yourself what is mine and given me what is yours. You became what you were not so that I might become what I was not.'"

Observation Questions

1. In Genesis 10:1, what significant phrase introduces this chapter, and how does it connect to God's command in Genesis 9:1?

2. Looking at Genesis 10:5, 20, and 31, what four characteristics are repeated for each group of descendants? What might this tell us about God's purposes?

3. Read Genesis 10:8-12. What unique details are provided about Nimrod that aren't mentioned for other descendants?

4. In Genesis 10:21, how is Shem specifically described, and why might this description be significant?

5. Examine Genesis 10:25. What important event is mentioned regarding Peleg's lifetime?

6. Looking at the entire chapter, how many names are listed, and what symbolic significance might this number have in Jewish understanding?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why does Moses include specific details about Nimrod's kingdom and cities when most other descendants receive only brief mentions?

2. How does the organization of this genealogy (Japheth, Ham, then Shem) help us understand its purpose in the larger narrative of Genesis?

3. What does the detailed listing of various peoples and nations tell us about God's view of human diversity?

4. How does this genealogy demonstrate both God's faithfulness to His creation mandate and His sovereign control over history?

5. In what ways does this chapter serve as a bridge between the flood narrative and the Tower of Babel account?

Application Questions

1. When was the last time you found yourself making assumptions about someone based on their nationality or ethnicity? How does Genesis 10's teaching about our common ancestry challenge those assumptions?

2. Think about your own national identity. How does understanding it as God's providential gift change your perspective on who you are?

3. In what specific ways can you contribute to your nation's God-given role of protecting and preserving human life?

4. Consider your local church. How well does it reflect the variety of nations God created? What practical steps could you take to better embrace and celebrate this diversity?

5. When you hear news about international conflicts, how might viewing these events through the lens of Genesis 10 change your prayers and responses?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Acts 17:22-28 - Paul's sermon at the Areopagus expands on the theme of God's sovereignty over nations and their boundaries, connecting directly to the truths established in Genesis 10.

2. Revelation 7:9-10 - This vision of worship from every nation, tribe, people, and language shows the ultimate fulfillment of God's purpose for human diversity.

3. Deuteronomy 32:8-9 - This passage reveals how God's distribution of nations relates to His special relationship with Israel, providing context for understanding national distinctions.

4. Isaiah 60:1-3 - The prophet describes how nations will ultimately be drawn to God's light, showing the redemptive purpose behind God's ordering of nations in Genesis 10.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Understanding Identity and Nations Through Genealogy

II. Approaching Biblical Genealogies: Six Guiding Questions

III. Lessons from Genesis 10: God’s Sovereignty Over Nations

IV. Christ’s Sacrifice and the Fulfillment of God’s Plan

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Detailed Sermon Outline

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I was 16, I was in a local convenience store in Madisonville, Kentucky, where I'd grown up, and the person at the counter, standing there checking me out, said, Where are you from? And I said, I'm from right here in Madisonville. She said, Where are you born? I said, I was born right here in Madisonville. She said, Where are your people from?

I said, Ma'am, they're from right here in Madisonville on both sides for over a hundred years. She said, you, sure do talk funny.

I think what she was referring to is the fact that from the time I was five years old, I had been watching the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite religiously. And I probably learned most of the pronunciations of words from Walter Cronkite. So I didn't sound like somebody maybe from Madisonville. Where you're from when people ask that, they're usually not asking you a question about the exact latitude and longitude of the place you were born. They're asking you a question about, you know, what kind of people were you brought up as a part of?

What language did they share? What place? What did they have in common? What nation are you a part of?

Now as soon as I mention nation, some people on Capitol Hill are going to think, I'm talking about a modern invention. Maybe you think of apparently arbitrary borders in Africa or the Middle East that European colonial powers drew in the 19th or the 20th century, often either dividing tribes or putting together collections of people that had never shared one government before. I mean you think of Iraq. You consider the Kurds or the three countries in Africa that I was just in, in Zambia or Kenya or South Africa. Each of these nations is new, but they are comprised of nations that are very old: Zulus, Kikuyus, Masai.

When we come to Genesis chapter 10, we come to a genealogy that is both a family tree and a table of nations. Turn there now, Genesis chapter 10. You'll find it on page 7 in the Bibles provided. Before I read it, yes, I'm intending on reading it, let me share with you some helpful thoughts that Meredith Barnes provoked for me last night with a question about how you should understand a genealogy. How do you understand a genealogy in the Bible?

She said her community group Friday night was talking about this and she thought it would be helpful to think about that, so thank you for that, Meredith. Provoked a good question, made me think, and it made me think, well, I should share this with the congregation because you're the kind of congregation that likes to hear the whole Bible preached. That's why we do not skip Genesis chapter 10. Even in books we have commentaries in my study that go over Genesis. It's amazing how many times there'll be stuff on Genesis 9 and Genesis 11, but they skipped out chapter 10.

Even Spurgeon preached on chapter 9 and chapter 11, but nothing on chapter 10. I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't say that in public, but there it is. So I know I know you want to understand these genealogies, these parts of God's Word, because you've also got Matthew 1, Jonathan Leeman will be leading us in a study of that in a few weeks. We've got Genesis 5 we had a few weeks ago. There's another one coming, Genesis 11, next week.

1 Chronicles 1-9, I mean there are a number of genealogies in the Bible. So let me tell you these general questions, six general questions that you want to ask when you're looking at a genealogy, and then I'll read the whole thing. First, what's emphasized by structure or by repetition? What's emphasized by structure or by repetition? Second, what's unique?

What's unique? Third, where does it begin?

Fourth, where does it end? What's it pointing to or explaining?

Five, how does it function in the overall book? And six, what lessons can we learn from it? Let me just repeat those for you. Number one, what's emphasized by the structure or by repetition? Number two, what's unique?

Number three, where does it begin? And number four, where does it end? What's it pointing to or explaining? Number five, how does it function in the overall book? And number six, what lessons can we learn from it?

We'll spend most of our time on that last question, by the way, the lessons. But listen first as I read through the passage, Genesis chapter 10.

These are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Sons who were born to them after the flood. The sons of Japheth: Gomer, Magog, Medai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras. The sons of Gomer: Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah. The sons of Javan: Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim.

From these the coastland peoples spread in their lands, each with his own language, by their clans, in their nations. The sons of Ham: Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan. The sons of Cush: Seba, Havilah, Sabta, Raamah, and Sabteca. The sons of Raamah: Sheba and Dedan. 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, Akkad, 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. Egypt fathered Ludim, Anamim, Lehabim, Naphtuhim, Pathrusim, Casluhim, from whom the Philistines came, and Caphtorim. Canaan fathered Sidon his firstborn and Heth. And the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites, the Arvites, the Simorites, the Zimorites, the Hamathites. Afterward the clans of the Canaanites dispersed.

And the territory of the Canaanites extended from Sidon in the direction of Gerar as far as Gaza, and in the direction of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim as far as Lasha. These are the sons of Ham. By their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations. To Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, the elder brother of Japheth, children were born. The sons of Shem: Elam, Ashur, Arpachshad, Lud, and Aram.

The sons of Aram: Uz, Hul, Gether, and Mash. Arpachshad fathered Shelah, and Shelah fathered Eber. To Eber were born two sons, the name of the one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided, and his brother's name was Joktan. Joktan fathered Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, Obal, Abimael, Sheba, Ophir, Havilah, and Jobab—all these were the sons of Joktan. The territory in which they lived extended from Mesha in the direction of Sepher to the hill country of the east.

These are the sons of Shem, by their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations. These are the clans of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies in their nations. And from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood. First question. What's emphasized by the structure or by repetition?

Do you remember when we did this before in chapter 5? Just turn back to chapter 5 for a moment. We looked at a genealogy there a couple of months ago.

And there we noted the common structure of each of the accounts and the fact that each one ended with, and he died. You see that at the end of each paragraph? And he died. And he died. We were seeing the truth that the curse of the fall was being lived out through these inevitable deaths.

And that was part of Moses' point in recording that genealogy and in the way he recorded that genealogy. So if you look back at our passage in chapter 10, the structure is pretty straightforward. You can see it by the paragraphs in the ESV. Translation. The first and the last verses are the introduction and the summary.

The three sons of Noah form the outline of the genealogy. The first paragraph gives us the descendants of Japheth, the middle son of Noah, and the one that the nation of Israel was having the least interactions with at the time Moses would have been writing this down. Then the second two paragraphs give us the descendants of Ham. The youngest son, but the one from whom Canaan came, whose descendants were living in the land that Moses was about to send the Israelites to conquer. So the second paragraph of those two, there verses 15 to 20, are specifically about Ham's descendants through his son Canaan, and these would be the very peoples that the Israelites were about to fight.

And then the last major paragraph forms the third section, the descendants of Noah's oldest son Shem, and the son through whom the promise of a deliverer would be fulfilled. This is the line from which he would come. So the structure emphasizes Noah's three sons, and the fulfillment of the command repeated in chapter 9, in verses 1 and 7, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. So in these 70 names, and that's how many there are if you count them up, in these 70 names, that Moses gives us here, the fulfillment of this command to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth is recorded. You see it in the peoples that stretched out to Israel's north and west in Japheth, Israel's west and south in Ham, and Israel's closer cousins through Shem in the east and the south.

The expanse of the earth was being filled up to the very horizons in every direction by people made in the image of God. Just as he had commanded. Some people have wondered about the order of the sons here. They weren't the birth order of Shem, Japheth, and Ham. That's true.

But they're in the order of interest, you might say. So the first one is the least interest. You're going to kind of deal with him and get him out of the way. That's Japheth. There was just nothing much going on with the descendants of Japheth and the descendants of Israel when Moses was writing this.

And then the Hamites are the second group. They were of special interest because they comprise Israel's greatest foes. Initially in verses 15 to 20, the Canaanites who were in the land now, but in the more distant future, verses 6 to 14, that first paragraph, that includes the Assyrians who would in centuries to come wipe out the northern tribes and the peoples who would become the Babylonians who would capture Jerusalem and bring the southern tribes to captivity again. So this genealogy is linking those to be destroyed in the coming conquest to the sinning son of Noah, mocking and dishonoring him. Ham, we thought about in the last study in Genesis chapter 9.

And that prophecy of doom that Noah announced in chapter 9 over Ham and Canaan. Another feature that's repeated in chapter, in this summary, or rather is the summary statement, at the end of the account of each of the sons' descendants. Kind of like we have refrains in a hymn. You know, we'll sing the stanza and then you sing that same refrain again. Well, we've got that kind of refrain if you look in our chapter at verse 5.

From these the coastland peoples spread in their lands, each with his own language, by their clans, in their nations. And then down in verse 20 at the end of the sons of Ham, these are the sons of Ham, by their clans, their languages, their lands, their nations. And then at the end of Shem's descendants listed there in verse 31, these are the sons of Shem, by their clans, their languages, their lands, their nations. And these sections are then sealed in the whole, as it were, by the first and last verse of the chapter. Verse 1, these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

Sons were born to them after the flood. And the last verse, these are the clans of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies, in their nations, and from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood. So these 70 names, when the descendants of all these of Noah's sons are combined, these 70 names stand for the 70 nations that the ancient rabbis took to represent all the nations of the world. The completeness of the number is seven times ten. It shows the fullness of God's blessing on these creatures made in His image.

Even after the flood, God's purposes for His world to be filled with people made in His image would not be thwarted. And that's what's being emphasized by the structure and repetition that we see here. Second question, number two, what's unique? What stands out as you read through this? What is not repeated?

Well, if you look down at it, what would stick out to you? I think we can fairly assume anything that Moses gives special attention to, he means us to give special attention to. Probably the main example of that in our genealogy would be verses 8 to 12, which center on Nimrod. On the whole, very little is said of him compared to great figures in Genesis like Noah or Abraham. And even what is said can be ambiguous.

You look there in verse 9, that phrase, Before the Lord is repeated. It can sound like a kind of particular dedication to the Lord, like in 2 Samuel when David danced before the Lord, or when the Scottish minister and Olympian that Chariots of Fire was about, Eric Liddle, runs when he says he can feel God's pleasure. You think, is this, this kind of thing? When Nimrod hunted, he hunted before the Lord, that is, as to the Lord. I don't think that's what this is talking about here.

I say this mainly because Nimrod seems to be singled out as the great emperor of the period between the flood and Abraham. And in those centuries, what's the one event that is central? We only know one big event. We'll be looking at it next week, Lord willing. It's the Tower of Babel, the building of that tower and the dispersal of that people.

They would build it in chapter 11, verse 4, to make a name for ourselves. So if you look in our chapter in verse 10, we read, the beginning of his kingdom was Babel. So I'm guessing that Nimrod was the ruler who led the people to build the Tower of Babel. And that what he did was not hidden from the Lord in any sense. He wasn't trying to, it was openly, brazenly, proudly before the Lord.

Sounds like what those who want to make a name for themselves would do. That's what Nimrod was doing. Two other names that stand out, not as much, both of these are in the line of Shem. One you see in verse 25, Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided. That's almost certainly saying that it's in his time that the Tower of Babel happened.

So you see, you've got to stick chapter 11 inside chapter 10 three times, because what's happening, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, there's just one language at first. But by the time you get to that last phrase with each of their descendants, they're in multiple languages. So the Tower of Babel happened inside those three chronologies. Does that make sense? So you just have to look down and see when that dispersal happened.

And in the descendants of Shem, it was clearly during the time of Peleg, whose name means division. The other one to note, I think, is verses 21-24-25. That's Eber, E-B-E-R. And he's significant because his name comes to typify the people descended from him in the language they speak. Turn over to Genesis 14. Look at verse 13.

Genesis 14, verse 13.

Then one who had escaped came and told Abram the Hebrew who was living among them Abram is called a Hebrew. That means a descendant of Eber. So this guy Eber is where that name Hebrew comes from. So Hebrew is from Eber, right here. Those seem to be the unique matters that Moses points out to his readers.

All right, then the third question. Number three, where does this genealogy begin? Where does this genealogy begin? The answer is very simple. It begins with Noah.

You look back in chapter 5, you see that genealogy began with Adam. Just flip back there, see that? Begin with Adam. This is the book of the generations of Adam, chapter 5. Now here in chapter 10, these are the generations of the sons of Noah.

So it's showing what happened to the human race. After the fall in chapter 5, God's plans were still fulfilled. And now after the flood in chapter 10, God's plans are still fulfilled. The earth was still being filled with those made in His image. So what's the significance of this genealogy starting with Noah?

Well, it's the same thing. It's showing Moses is wanting to show that God's image was once again populating and repopulating the whole earth. God is keeping His covenant, as he said in chapter 9, verse 9, with you and your offspring. So where does the genealogy begin? Number four, fourth question, nicely pairs with it.

Where does this genealogy end? Where does this genealogy end? Well, if we understand the end, we can see then what it's pointing to. Well, in this case, you've got to look down through chapter 10, and you see it clearly doesn't end with Japheth and his sons, or Ham and his sons. It ends with the sons of Shem, but you have to look through to sort of figure it out.

The latest one seemed to be Eber's two sons, Peleg and Joktan, in verse 25. But then only the sons of Joktan are named, 13 of them, Mother's Day, verses 26 to 29.

Peleg's sons aren't mentioned because they're going to be picked up in the next genealogy in chapter 11. They are the ones through whom the saving line of Reu, Serug, Nahor, Terah, and Abram come. But that's for next time. That's in chapter 11. Here, the genealogy of Noah and his sons in chapter 9 and 10 points to the line of Shem as it continues on, particularly as the line of promise winds its way down to Abraham, the father of the faithful, and the grandfather of Jacob or Israel.

So this genealogy here in chapter 10 is meant to show that God's plans are fulfilled. The earth is filled. He doesn't just concentrate on Shem like he's about to do. But it also sets him up for fulfillment, which will be even more clearly pointed out in this next genealogy. But here, for the last time, he's looking at all the other people, the Japhethites and the Hamites.

They're about to drop out of the picture for the rest of the Bible. From the rest of the Bible, we're just going to take this third one, Shem. That's who's going to pick up in chapter 11, and that's what the rest of Genesis will do. But here, why does Moses include this genealogy? It's to show that the whole earth was filled, that God was being faithful to the covenant charge that He gave, even beyond the flood.

So this is why you can see Shem is last, even though he's the eldest. He's not being first in the order of the sons considered. But he's last because Shem are the ones the whole story will continue through. Question five. How does this genealogy function in the overall book?

How does this genealogy function in the overall book? Well, it is most of the fourth section that is marked off in our English Bibles as These are the generations of. You see the beginning of the third such section back in chapter 6, verse 9. These are the generations of Noah. So if you look through, if you have your own copy of your Bible with you, you can mark, you've got ten sections like that in the book of Genesis.

These are the generations of. That's the way Moses divided up this book. So the one before this started in 6:9, these are the generations of Noah. Means this is the account of Noah, as in, whatever happened to Noah? All right?

And then in the next one, we'll see next week, chapter 11, verse 10, these are the generations of Shem, so the camera will zoom in on Shem and his family. That's next week, starting there in 11:10.

But we are in this fourth section here in chapter 10, beginning verse 1, these are the generations of the sons of Noah. Shem, Ham and Japheth. So this shows the beginning of the repopulation of the whole world after the judgment of the flood. This is the last section of the Bible, as I say, to give a kind of comprehensive history before Moses simply turns loose most of the world and focuses in on the line of promise through Abram. The last question we want to ask when looking at a genealogy in the Bible and the question we'll spend the rest of our time looking at this morning, number six, what lessons can we learn from this genealogy?

What lessons can we learn from this genealogy? Let me suggest five. Let me suggest five. So Mark, just to understand, you have a six point sermon, and in your sixth point, where we were getting quite hopeful, you now have five sub points that you are maintaining, taken together, are actually longer than these five points you've already covered. That would be correct.

Number one, nations are greater than individuals and also less than individuals. Nations are greater than individuals and also less than individuals. Number two, nations equally share humanity, yet Israel was also uniquely holy. Nations equally share humanity, Yet Israel was also uniquely holy. Number three, nations are many, but there is only one God over them all.

Nations are many, but there is only one God over them all. Number four, nations are a means of God's justice to protect and preserve life. Nations are a means of God's justice to protect and preserve life. And number five, nations are meant by God to form part of our identity. Nations are meant by God to form part of our identity.

So number one, nations are greater than individuals and also less than individuals. Here in this genealogy we see so many names, names of people, people who are born who themselves sire other children, and yet their very names become the names of people as a whole and places they inhabit. Cush in Egypt. Canaan and Sidon and many others. Now sometimes that people, liberal scholars, have wondered if these are just fanciful personifications, that is legends, that you're trying to find an explanation for why is this place called that?

Let's say there was a mythical person who called that, and it's named after them. And of course that could be the case sometimes. But just because you have such an account, doesn't mean it's not true. It's not that unusual for a whole people to be called after their founder or a place after the person who began it. Think of Rome being named for Romulus or of us living in Washington.

Surely no one here wants to suggest this place is real but the man Washington is just a figment of our imaginations, a legend that had to be made up to explain where this place came from. Now there's a real person named Washington. Whole nations do come from individuals, as the Jews come from Israel. That seems appropriate to think about on Mother's Day. Remember in the last sermon when we thought about the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.

Mothers, you're raising nations. You're doing things that will have effects far beyond your own lifetime or perhaps even the lifetime of your children. I thank God for what He's done through my own mother, what my wife has done in our children's lives, for the work so many of you have done in the lives of your children. In raising your kids, you're shaping the future. Genealogies like this one remind us that history won't end even when someone as great as Noah dies.

A living, growing legacy lives on after him in his descendants. As the hymn says, Time like an ever rolling stream bears all its sons away. But history continues on, as do the nations. Many people have even given their lives to build. So in that sense, nations are greater than individuals.

But in another sense, nations are much less than individuals. Genealogies like this one remind us that even nations can vanish, whereas people last forever. Nations as great as Nimrod's empire can be scattered and dispersed over the face of all the earth. Sometimes in the Bible we see that cities, nations, even great empires are destroyed. How many empires were destroyed in the flood.

And yet no person made in God's image will ever cease to exist. When the greatest of nations have passed from our memories, we will each one of us continue on after our bodies die in self-conscious knowledge of God and His love or in self-conscious futile eternal opposition to Him.

Vainly attempting to ignore or disobey Him and receiving the just punishment for it. So this genealogy moves the narrative of Moses ahead. It gives the background and the justification for the fast approaching displacement of the Canaanites. The conquest under Joshua will now be understood and presented as part of a larger, longer story involving the very purposes of God in creation. So nations are greater than individuals and also less than individuals.

Let's go on to lesson number two, number two, nations share equally humanity.

Nations equally share humanity, yet Israel was also uniquely holy. One of the most basic lessons we learn here is of the shared humanity of all people from whatever nation. These people described here in Genesis 10 are literally all a part of one large extended family. As Paul says in Acts 17:26, and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place. Nations all come from one man.

Initially Adam, now since the flood, Noah.

So what difference does knowing this is true make? Kids, that's a good question for you to pursue at Mother's Day lunch. Ask what difference does it make that we all come from the same family? Ask that question at the meal. See what kind of conversation you get into.

I'll tell you one thing, this unity proves that there is no basis for ideas of innate racial inferiority or superiority. Or any justification for any of the injustices which flow from such ideas, because all of us are commonly made in the image of God. Friends, that was a revolutionary thing for Moses to write down. You're not going to find stuff like that among the Persians, among the Egyptians. They're going to be very chauvinistic.

From the Greeks we get the idea of barbarians. You know who barbarians are? Everybody who's not Greek. Friends, when Moses wrote this, he was not writing down a common idea. We are all made in the image of God.

So we should not think too highly of ourselves or our race or our nation or our culture compared to others. But there's also the note that will become so pronounced later in the book of Moses, but which I do want us to realize is beginning to appear even here. Even here in these passages about us having all the same origin, God is distinguishing in His mercy and grace. As surely as He picked Noah and his family to deliver from the deluge, so surely did He pick Shem from among the sons of Noah to be specially blessed and to carry on belief in that special coming blessing from God. This whole passage, as we've noted, is pointing toward Abraham and therefore toward his family.

We read later in Leviticus chapter 20 verse 26, the Lord's words to the people of Israel, you shall be holy to Me, for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples that you should be mine. Though we're not all the same in every way, we're the same fundamentally in our nature by the nature being made in the image of God. But grace has made some of us to differ, and that not along natural and national lines, but by the Spirit of God giving life to those the Father has given to the Son from every tribe and language and people and nation. Both holiness and humility are encouraged by this genealogy. Israel was uniquely holy but all nations equally are made in the image of God.

Third lesson, number three, nations are many, but there is only one God over them all. We shouldn't let our fascination with the amazing variety in God's world lead us to conclude that there are different gods for different nations. There are many nations, But there is one God, Isaiah 54 verse 5, For your Maker is your Husband, the Lord of hosts is His name, and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth He is called. Jeremiah 10:10, But the Lord is the true God, He is the living God and the everlasting King.

Jeremiah 32:27, Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. And there is only one way to this God, through His only Son, Jesus Christ. Peter called Jesus Lord of all in Acts 10. In Romans 10, Paul said, There is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all. As Jesus Himself taught in Mark 10:45, the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many.

Friend, if it's not through faith in Christ and trusting in His ransoming death, how would you have your sins be forgiven?

How else will you relate to this one true God? If not through the means of forgiveness for those sins that He's presented by faith in His Son, Jesus Christ. Friends, that's what it means to be a Christian. If you want to know more about this, talk to me or others at the doors on the way out. Talk to some you came with.

We would love to help you understand more of what it means to follow Jesus Christ. Just a few more ideas from this table of nations here.

As this passage has historically been called, these nations being listed out begin to help us see where we should take the gospel. You know, Jesus taught His disciples to go and make disciples of all nations. And when we look at the book of Acts, that's exactly what they did. We see even these early lists and we think, well, who of these has not been reached? Is the gospel running to the peoples of these once great cities in Iraq?

How about to the Hebrews? How about to others around the Mediterranean, the Greeks, those in many islands? We know that Moses will recount God's great promise to Abram in just a couple of chapters in chapter 12, verse 3, that through him all the families of the earth shall be blessed. What a promise! What a blessing that all the families of the earth shall be blessed through Abraham.

Of course, that's a reference to Christ. The seed that will come. Remember at one point in his earthly ministry the Lord sent out the disciples into the villages up in Gentile Galilee. And you remember how many he sent out? Seventy-two.

People wonder, is that a reference to the nations of the world? Friends, this also means that very practically we want to see our Bibles translated into every language. We want to see the Bible taught and preached and studied in every language because all the nations must have God's only holy book. The Bible is not just our holy book, it is the Word of God for the people of the world spread throughout the whole earth. We want to continue on in that ministry of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, of taking God's Word and presenting the same message to all the people of the earth in all the different tongues they now speak.

And that also means that all nations are welcomed in a biblical church. There's no such thing as a church discriminating against somebody because of their nationality. We want to care for and minister to and aim at in missions all the nations of the world. Now, not that any one church can do it all. I'm not saying that.

But any true church should yearn to see God glorified in all of his world, among all of those made in his image and desired for everyone to come to know Jesus Christ is their Lord and Savior. If nothing else, I hope that our looking over this international genealogy this morning will be used by God to pull at your heart and to pull your prayers merely out of your own day, your own week, your own family, and be concerned for those around you and those far from you who don't know the Lord, who've never heard of the Lord. Pray that God grow that kind of heart in you for those who've never yet heard of Jesus Christ. Peter said, There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through Me. Nations are many. But there is only one God over them all. A fourth lesson. Number four, nations are a means of God's justice to protect and preserve life.

So in the meantime, before the Lord returns, God has called nations and their governments to work as a means of His own justice in the world to protect and preserve human life.

This is what God was doing with Noah immediately after the flood. You remember, look back in chapter nine. We saw this in verses five and six of chapter nine. Chapter nine, verses five and six, and for your lifeblood, I will require a reckoning. From every beast I will require it, and from man, from his fellow man, I will require a reckoning for the life of man.

Whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image. Friends, God is keeping His promises regardless of what might be happening in our world today, in Iran or Israel, in Ukraine or Russia, in Brazil or China right now. We can be confident that even amidst international confusion, that the promise God made to bring one who would crush Satan, and that promise has been fulfilled, and that same God who reminded us even by the beautiful rainbow He gave us last night here, is the same God who continues to use many of you seated here this morning as part of the way His justice is administered. Human lives are protected and preserved even in this fallen world. Friend, if you work here in this area, think of how your job contributes to that end.

How does your work contribute to people made in the image of God being protected and preserved. That's what God intends in the nations of the world and their governments. Romans 13 teaches us that our nation's governments can succeed at this. And so nations organized in their governments can restrain human wickedness. Do you remember that verse?

Romans chapter 13 verse 1. Paul wrote, Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.

So we can respect human life as the Scripture teaches us to do. All of these peoples could reflect the truths that Noah had learned from God and had no doubt taught to his sons and his grandsons. But we should also note that nations can fail. Nations can fail. They can foolishly concentrate power in the hands of fallen individuals and so magnify human wickedness.

That may be what was going on with Nimrod. Certainly the results of his labors, the Assyrians, the great city of Nineveh, would end up harassing God's people. That even the rise of the mightiest of emperors as enemies to the gospel will not cause God to break or abandon His covenant. There's no guarantee that nations will organize themselves well or that rulers will rule well. We should pray and steward well the portions of our nation's authority that have been entrusted to us by right or by office or by custom.

You'll note how even in our own church we regularly pray for those in authority. As Paul instructs us to in the Word, because nations are a means of God's justice to protect and preserve life. Fifth lesson, number five, nations are meant by God to form part of our identity. Have you thought about that before? Nations are meant by God to form part of our identity.

You can't have a person without having that person have a family and therefore a larger identity that they're part of. Individuals don't give birth to themselves. They don't rear themselves. God made us normally quite literally to live together, not in isolation. This is one of the reasons that Christ has founded his church and called us to join ourselves to a local body of believers.

I am preaching church membership out of a genealogy in Genesis chapter 10.

We are meant to be a part of a larger people by God's design. We are designed as social creatures. One of the implications of Acts 17:26, God made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, is that God sovereignly takes on very personal and practical dimensions. My friend, the Bible teaches that your nationality, in specific, was determined by God. God is sovereign over your ethnicity.

There's no point in you being jealous of somebody else's or dismissive of it or your own. Melody is like God made her in this regard. As is Raulston, as is Adrian. Every person in this room, each one of us, are just the age and just the family. We are just the gender that God made us and meant us to be.

And our nationality and our ethnicity is part of that identity that God has entrusted to us as part of His providential gift to us. Nations are meant by God to form part of our identity. So, friends, that's the genealogy. That's Genesis, chapter 10. God's sovereignty would continue to work through the nations of the world, through Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, through that part of the story that's much more familiar to most of us, through the Exodus and the conquest, the days of Samuel and David and the divided kingdom, and even the invasion of the Greeks under Alexander and of the Romans.

In fact, it was that situation of nations all mixed together, one upon another, that became the situation in which the religious opponents of Jesus Christ could use the capital authority of the Roman state to crucify their own Messiah. But rather than feel this dark deed was only tragedy, Peter soon summarized it with these words in Acts chapter 4. In prayer. Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, why did the Gentiles rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed.

For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate. Along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

So you see how nations, even nations mixed together, even with malice and forethought, bent to our heavenly Father's intricately, shockingly, beautifully predestined plan. Had we believed the Bible better, we Christians never would have been guilty of the heresy of racial slavery. The truth we see in Genesis would have told us that we all have the same nature. And yet, even through the convolutions of history and heresy, God's plans, slow and certain, come to fruition. The earth is filled.

The sun is sacrificed. The gospel does go out to all nations. Do you ever wonder if the Great Commission is going to fail? It won't. We listen to Bobby's sermons in Revelation.

We see the success of it recorded in God's own Word. Who would have thought that these ancient nations were being prepared to hear this amazingly good news. The Father, because of his love for human beings, sent his Son, who offered himself willingly and gladly to satisfy his justice so that Christ took the place of sinners. The punishment and penalty that we deserved was laid on Jesus Christ instead of on us, so that in the cross both God's holiness and his love are manifested. And so God's ancient covenant for all His people of every race, tribe, language and nation was coming to pass even through human betrayal and sin.

Not even the mightiest of men, not Nimrod, not Pilate, not Caesar could derail God's plan for His people, for the nations. And so even the mightiest of empires was bent to fulfill God's purposes when He sent His Son to die on the cross in our place. I love how Martin Luther expressed this. All the prophets did foresee in spirit that Christ should become the greatest transgressor, murderer, thief, rebel, blasphemer, etc. that ever was or could be in all the world.

For He being made a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world is not now an innocent person and without sins, but a sinner. Our most merciful Father sent His only Son into the world and laid upon Him the sins of all men, saying, 'Be thou Peter, that denier. Paul, that persecutor, blasphemer, and cruel oppressor. David, that adulterer. That sinner which did eat the apple in paradise.

That thief which hanged upon the cross. And briefly, be thou the person which hath committed the sins of all men. See therefore that thou pay and satisfy for them. ' Here now comes the law and saith, I find him a sinner, therefore let him die upon the cross. And so he setteth upon him and killeth him.

By this means the whole world is purged and cleansed from all sins. Learn to know Christ and him crucified. Learn to sing to him and say, Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness, I am your sin. You have taken upon yourself what is mine and given me what is yours. You became what you were not so that I might become what I was not.

Praise God that whatever identity we came here with this morning, wherever we're from, we can leave with God as our Heavenly Father through the work of Christ on the cross.

Let's pray. Lord God, we thank you that you have in your mysterious mercy decided to send your only Son as a Savior for sinners. Thank you for how you've included us in the hearing of that message. Enliven our hearts to faith, we pray, even now, by your Holy Spirit. We ask in Jesus' name.

Amen.