Now we turn to our sermon text for this morning, which is the entirety of Genesis chapter 10, so verses one through 32. We continue our series preaching through this first book of the Bible, the book of first and foundational things, the book of Genesis. And the next few weeks we're going to take, well, actually one more week in Genesis, and then we'll take a break. for Christmas and New Year and will return shortly. But this is where we're at this morning. Genesis chapter 10. I invite you to stand out of respect for the reading of God's inspired word. These are the generations of the sons of Noah. Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Sons were born to them after the flood. The sons of Japheth, Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshach, and Tyrus. The sons of Gomer, Ashkenaz, Riphah, and Togarmah. The sons of Javan, Elisha, Tarshish, Katim, and Dodanim. From these, the coastline people 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, Havalah, Sabta, Rahama, and Sabdaka, the sons of Rahama, Sheba, and Dedan. Cush fathered Nimrod. He was the first on the 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. Eric, Akkad, and Qalna in the land of Shinar. From that land he went into Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth-ir, Qala, and Resen between Nineveh and Qala. That is the great city. Egypt fathered Ludim, Anamim, Lehabim, Naphtahim, Pachrissim, Qasfaluhim, from whom the Philistines came, and Qaftarim. Canaan fathered Sidon, the firstborn, and Heth, and the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites, the Arvidites, the Zemurites, and 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 Sarum, Gomorrah, Adma, and Zeboim 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, Alam, Asher, Arpoxad, Lud, and Aram. The sons of Aram, Uz, Hol, Gether, Mash. Our Paxad fathered Shelah, and Shelah fathered Eber. To Eber were born two sons. The name of the one was Pelag, for in his days the earth was divided, and his brother's name was Jactan. Jactan fathered Almadad, Shelef, Hazarmaveth, Jera, Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, Obal, Abimele, Sheba, Ophir, Havalah, and Jobal. All these were the sons of Joctan. The territory in which they lived extended from Misha in the direction of Sephar to the hill country of the east. These are the sons of Shem by their clans, their language, their lands, their nations. These are the clans of the sons of Noah according to their genealogies in their nations and from these the nation spread abroad on the earth after the flood. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God abides forever. Amen. You may be seated. If you were to come into my house on any given day, you'd walk into the front entryway, and then you'd walk into the dining room, and there's a piano in there, and right above the piano is a big picture frame, and in that picture frame is our big family tree. And it's, you could say, a statement piece of the house that I'm really proud of because I wrote out by hand all of the descendants that I know about. And some of you might have something like this, a family tree, or maybe you know about it, but it's called a family tree for a reason. It branches out in all these different directions. And the one that we have above our piano, I really like because it actually has this beautiful picture of a tree. And written around the different branches are the names of our descendants. Family tree, genealogy. Some of you might be interested in this kind of thing, or maybe it makes your eyes glaze over. Maybe it makes you feel a little bit like reading Genesis chapter 10. We have here in Genesis chapter 10, The table of nations, that's what it's called. But what is it? It's really just a big, huge family tree. And it's a family tree that is your family tree. Did you know this? We're all descended through probably through Shem, Ham, and Japheth at some point. At this point, all the nations have so intermixed and intertwined that we could probably weave different strands back to Shem, Ham, and Japheth, but you might find one of the dominant lines of your ancestry maybe reaches back through Japheth or through Ham, and so you can really find interesting genealogy here. But as we read Genesis chapter 10, It's hard to focus in, isn't it? It doesn't always feel that interesting. In fact, it might just feel like a statement piece hanging on the wall of the Bible. There it is, that family tree. We know where that is, but let's move as fast as we can through it. Or at least let's find some sort of joy in hearing the pastor try to pronounce all these crazy names. But we don't want to do that. We've been to genealogies in the Bible before, and by this time we've learned that the genealogies aren't just here for the sake of having a genealogy. They're not just here to teach about our ancestry, they're here to teach about theology. Truth, God's truth. And not just his truth about who we are, but his truth about how we can be saved in the Lord Jesus Christ. All of that. is there in Genesis chapter 10 and the table of nations. And so I'm not going to approach this this morning by going name by name, by name, by name, as you might in a history class. We're going to look at this as if we were flying over in a plane and looking down and seeing an overview of the family tree and then seeing certain patterns. And what we're going to see is God's perfect control over the nations. And we're also going to see God's perfect plan for the nations. That'll be more than enough to keep us focused and occupied this morning. And I pray that we don't read this passage and our eyes glaze over. I pray that we read this passage and lean in and say, what is God teaching us? There are no ultimately boring sections of the Bible. But even the ones we would be prone to pass by are there for a reason. They're there to teach you about godliness and teach you about the Lord Jesus. God's perfect control over the nations. That's evident here. God knows the nations. Look at how they're listed in chapter 10, one after another, after another. They're all known to God. And you see here that a list that you really won't find a parallel to this in the ancient world. Even the Greeks who are so good at writing down lists of nations and studying and keeping libraries, you won't find something like this. It's here in the Bible that we see an ancient list that is so very accurate. As historians have leaned in and found such lists scattered throughout the world, they found that this one is really, really accurate and matches up with all the other ones we found. So right away, I want you all to be very encouraged that the Bible is reliable and true and accurate. And what we see here isn't some made up list. It's specific and it's specific to a fault. Basically saying, prove me wrong. And it's what we found instead, we've leaned in and these names have proved to be true. These nations were there. These nations existed. These nations spread throughout the whole world. It's interesting, isn't it, that the Bible doesn't really think of human beings, first and foremost, in the way that we would categorize them today, right? We'd think of human beings in terms of races, but the Bible really wants to think in terms of nations or ethnicities. This is this is more the biblical way of looking at things, saying everyone is descended from the same DNA. There's really one human race. And look at the different ways it splinters off from Shem and Ham and Japheth. We're all one. And yet look at the great diversity of the nations. There's more. This list is not a Complete list, right? It's selective, it's stylized. And we know that because there were more nations than this, and it could have traced lines, certain directions could have included more sons and daughters, but it includes what it does for a reason. And it really leans in to the number seven. We see the number seven throughout this whole genealogy. Japheth, here's some examples. Japheth has seven sons and seven grandsons. There are seven sons of Cush. And you can count out seven descendants of Mizraim. But the main thing, all in all, you count up all the different nations that are listed and you get 70 nations. right? A multiplication of the number seven. And that's really important because it's basically making this selective list where you have this number of perfection, the number seven, which the Bible uses a lot. And it stylizes this family tree on that same number. In other words, saying this is the perfect outgrowth of the line of Noah. These are Adam descendants perfectly filling the earth. And the point here is that God is in perfect control of the nations. He knows them. He determines their number. He directs them where they'd go and they complete his perfect purposes for mankind. Seven, seven, seven, 70. They serve God's purposes on the world stage. And isn't that exactly what we heard in Acts chapter 17, read by Mr. Wagner this morning? Yes. When Paul speaks to the Greeks in Athens, he says, Your nation and the nations that you see all around you, they're not there by accident. God put them there. God knows them. God directs them. They do God's ultimate bidding. They fulfill his purposes. The different branches of the human family tree aren't random. They're there by God's wise design. and kids, this is important. Because it means that when you sit down in class and start to open up history books, you're not just studying random facts or things that are detached from the Bible. When you read about the Romans and their wars, right? You're reading about God's good purpose and design, things that don't slip around him, but things that are part of his great plan. And when you read about the Greeks and you look back to Mesopotamia, I mean, you memorize these facts. You are memorizing facts about God's world. That's why Christian education is really important. Because we need teachers and we need parents who bring before their kids this constant reminder that even lists of nations and facts of wars and history and the movements of people through the Bering Strait to North America. These things aren't random. They are part of God's world and reasons why we should praise him and trust him. It's important to hear that God's in perfect control of the nations because some of the nations listed here did not act like they were under God's control. In fact, their godlessness reached epic proportions. They turned on one another through brutal conquest. In violence, they tried to conquer the other branches and make a name for themselves. And we know this. Look at some of the names here. Canaanites, Philistines, Nineveh, all of these were mentioned. And if you know anything about the Bible, as we read the Bible, we see that these names appear again and again and again. And they have their slice of history where these nations seem to rise up against God's people and against other nations and try to be the big one. And yet they always fall short of that under God's perfect timing. There's a name here that we especially should focus on. It's the name Nimrod. He's the father of what? Of Babel. When you hear the word Babel, we're about to hear about the Tower of Babel next week. And so that's very significant, right? We're already seeing that prideful arrogance show up. The kind of arrogance which says, I can be God. I can reach the heavens. And that attitude was there in the mighty hunter Nimrod. But from him come the descendants that turned into Babylon, yes, Israel's great enemy who swept down and took them captive for a time. And so Israel would be reading this and saying, okay, we know this station, we know this station. It's like if you're a Hatfield and you spy a McCoy in your family history, right? You say, oh no, you know, there's bad blood here. So this is how we're to read this list, is we're supposed to see all the nations and we're supposed to see in the midst of it, some nations who thought more highly of themselves that they ought and even propped themselves up in power to stand against God and against his people. Now, take comfort. That's what you need to understand. When the nations rage, God is still in control. They're not surprising him with their movements. They're not somehow surprising heaven with victories and wars and overturning their regimes. Israel needed to hear this because think of where Israel was. They were, as it were, you could say they're in the armpit of the world. on the east of the Mediterranean Sea, tucked away in this tiny little place, the land of Canaan. And they'd look around and they'd see big warriors to their north, and big warriors to their east, and mighty men to their west, and intimidating men to their south. And they'd say, what's happening? And they'd see these nations move against one another and against them sometimes. And they'd say, God, what are you doing with all this? And the seven times seven times seven with 70 nations is there to say, don't worry, people of God. I know what I'm doing. I've put these nations here for a reason. I know what their outgrowth is going to look like because I planned it. That's what God's saying. And so when we hear and when we see on headlines, of the regime in Syria being overturned by rebels, or we hear of Russia making moves, or we hear of factions in North Korea visiting Russia, and we learn of the outcomes of our own elections, and we say, oh, what's happening? What's happening? What's God doing with all this? We are to say, stay calm, people of God. Stay calm. God knows what he's doing. This does not surprise him. doesn't surprise him because he has a perfect control over the nations and he also has a perfect plan for them. We see the pattern of sevens here, but there's another pattern. And that other pattern is in the way that the sons are ordered. Notice right there in verse one, it says, these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Sons were born to them after the flood. But here's what's interesting. When God talks about each of these people, he breaks it down into their ancestry. He actually starts with Japheth, and then he goes to Ham, and then he goes to Shem. And there's a reason for that. He talks about Shem last because he's giving him the place of privilege and focus. And that's because Shem's line, his ancestry, is going to play a very important role in God's plan for the nations. That's what we see unfold over the rest of the Bible. The rest of Genesis and the rest of the whole Bible is going to focus on one line. It's going to go through Eber, and you can hear that name Eber, the very earliest stage of the name, which is Hebrew, right? That's where the name Hebrew comes from, is this name Eber. And we see from Eber, and then the world divides with Peleg and Joctan, but then the line is going to move in the direction of Peleg, to Terah, to Abraham, and then down through the corridors of history all the way to Jesus, comes directly descended from the line of Shem. We know that because there are more genealogies in the Bible and Luke. But before we get there, I just want to briefly mention that we're going to see even more genealogies in the book of Genesis. And when we get there, some of the later books are going to, some of the later genealogies are going to be really important for seeing this. I want you to hear something. Before Abraham, the nations numbered how many? 70, 70 nations. But after Abraham, at the very end of the book of Genesis, there's another genealogy we're gonna see. And the number of Abraham's total offspring, guess how many? 70, 70. The number of nations, the total number of nations, and the total number of Abraham's descendants are what? They're parallel, they're the same. This isn't an accident. The Bible does not put these things forward as a coincidence. There's a point here. The point... is that God is showing us that Abraham's seed is the hope of the nations. 70 nations, 70 descendants. It is through this specific branch of humanity, through Abraham, through his ancestry, leading all the way to Jesus himself, that humanity will find salvation. And when Jesus comes in the fullness of time, as the very son of God, taking on flesh, he comes as the opposite of Nimrod, the opposite of the mighty man who rules with by beating down the nations. He comes ruling with humility, coming riding on a donkey, saying, I come to do the will of my father. And only after that will he come with the rod of iron to subdue the nations under his feet. This is our Savior. This is Jesus. And when we start to see this, that Genesis chapter 10 is designed to point you to this line from which your Savior, Jesus, is going to come. That's when we start to see that this isn't just a family tree, it's a map. It's a map for what? For world missions. map for the gospel going out to the nations. You see, this is what's so interesting. I love this about the Bible, that you go from Genesis to Malachi, right? The entire Old Testament. And what does it do? It starts big with the whole family tree, and it gets more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more specific. Zeros in all the way to Jesus. And then what happens after Jesus? Starts with him. And then it starts to branch out, and out, and out, and out, and out, and out, and out, and out, and out, until you get to the whole ends of the earth. It happens right during Jesus's ministry. Jesus is still on earth preaching, and he says, we gotta get some people going out to the nations. And guess how many people? Guess how many evangelists he appoints in Luke chapter 10? Oh, you know by this point. How many? 70. 70 evangelists go out to the nations. This isn't coincidence. one for each of the nations, one for each of the table of nations of Genesis 10. God's plan is for the entire human family tree to unite in praise to the Creator and the Redeemer. And that's why in Matthew 28, 19, a famous verse, Jesus commissions his disciples and he says, all authority on heaven and earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations. He said, go to every branch of the family tree. Go as far as that. Go to the coastlands. Go to Japheth's tribes, which have been strewn abroad. As far as God has sent them forth, go find them. Go to the sons of Ham. Go to the sons of Shem. Tell them of the Savior. And isn't this the very storyline of the book of Acts? The gospel comes first to the sons of Shem who are gathered in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. And then, not long after, you see Philip encounter who? An Ethiopian eunuch, a son of Ham. And he shares with him the good news of the gospel. And then goes the gospel to the tribes of Cush and spreads throughout Africa. And even today, just this past week, I was overjoyed to be part of a missions conference in which I heard of an Ethiopian mercy reform church that still abides today, still has good news. And they're hungry for the gospel to go forth in the country of Ethiopia still. And I heard of a Sudanese reformed church to the north of Ethiopia. And of course, we see in Acts chapter 10 that the sons of Japheth aren't left out either because the gospel comes to Cornelius, the Italian. Sons of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. pulled into the orbit of the gospel, or a better way to put it, the gospel goes out to them and starts tracing its way through the different family lines, the different family tree. And so you see an Ethiopian and an Italian, one back to the God that created them. Brothers and sisters, I think part of what we take away from this family tree, table of nations is that we've got to stop thinking of salvation only in terms of individuals. It's a very American way to see it. It's not wrong, right? I mean, it's human hearts that believe, individual human hearts. It's not nations that believe for you. So we're right to appeal to individuals to repent and believe the gospel. But if we just stop there, we don't go as far as the gospel goes, because the gospel wants entire people groups to believe. The Bible wants to see people and people groups pulled into the orbit of salvation. And it's ultimately, why would this be? Why would it be that Scripture doesn't want us to just stop with individuals but also go, but have great care for people groups that haven't heard the gospel or that have been resistant to the gospel for that stubbornness to break down and for them to believe. It's ultimately a matter of God's glory. I want you to think about this. This is God's family tree. This would be hanging on his living room, on the walls of heaven. Look at my creation, look at the people that I've spread abroad over my fine earth. If all believing human hearts were from just one people group, God would still get great glory, wouldn't he? Yes, he would. But how much fuller and richer is the praise to his glorious grace from thousands of ethnicities? The full diversity of God's family tree, giving praise to Jesus. Revelation chapter five, last book of the Bible. We're in the first book of the Bible. Let's turn briefly to the last book of the Bible, and I want you to see this. Revelation chapter five, nine through 10. They sang a new song saying, worthy are you to take the scroll and open its seals for you were slain and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God and they shall reign on the earth. This is God's plan for the nations. He was mapping it out even in Genesis chapter 10. And now he says to us, We're not there yet. The gospel still needs to go forth. And so you need to invest in world missions. You need to invest in your corner of the globe, but you need to invest in the gospel even as it goes far out. And yes, you need to, it's fine to be patriotic and proud of your nation. But if we don't see a concern that reaches beyond our borders to other peoples and languages and countries, and cultures abroad, then we're falling short of all that God has planned for his great family tree. This is God's plan for the nations. This is why missions exist. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, you care for the nations. You know them by name. You know everything about them. You see the family tree with all of its intricate branches, and Lord, you care to see these different branches won back to yourself, just as Paul preached in Acts 17, that you would no longer overlook times of ignorance, but now you call everyone to repentance through the man you have raised from the dead, Christ Jesus. Help us to believe. Help us to be, as the nations abroad, those that are a shining witness to yourself. And help us to care, Lord, that your glory be underscored by investing in missions, by perhaps, Lord, even some amongst us going forward to proclaim the gospel in places where it is not known. Lord, this is our prayer. In the name of Christ Jesus, we pray, amen.