of the They dispersed. Now, not immediately, we'll learn that, but yeah. So, and the Bible's really neat. It tells us a lot of stuff, including where these three sons of Noah, where they went as far as their descendants. So that's really cool. Now with this, I should note that chapter 10 actually follows after chapter 11 in a chronological way. So if you're reading it and always thinking that it goes chronologically in the Bible, not necessarily. So really chapter 10 gives the details of how they were dispersed. And chapter 11, which Pastor Josh will get to next week, tells what brought that about. Or maybe I should say who brought that about. And so chapter 10 kind of then tells us who the people were and then where they ended up going, because they were supposed to go anyway, but once they got going. So yeah, that's what happens in the chapter tonight. But first, I do want to warn something as we go through, and it's just a good thing to know about Bible study, is maybe something that's illustrated, maybe God has some things happen to me in my life, so that I can use them for illustrations. You're like, oh, you're going to talk about an illness or something. Not at all. What I'm going to talk about is, I'm going to really bring this up there, my wife, I'm going to bring this up. Yeah, so there was a wasp in the kitchen. And so I'm the man of the house, you know, all five foot three of me, I'm the man of the house. And so I decided I would take care of the wasp. Yes, no problem, wife and kids, I'll take care of it. So I decided I will get the fly swat and I will get the spray. Well, I wasn't thinking real straight about this because I grabbed the wasp and hornet spray. Now, you guys aren't laughing yet, so you evidently don't know, the wasp and hornet spray is really supposed to be used outside. Because once you let that thing go, I mean, you know, it's like the length of a flamethrower. It's just. So I didn't think about it, and I'm just like, I'm gonna get him, I'm gonna get him. And he was in midair, and I'm like, he's never gonna land, so I'm just gonna knock him out of the sky. So I got the wasp, he's dead. But we had to mop the floor, we had to clean the table, we had to, my chips ahoy, those were drenched, those are gone. So anyway, I tell you that because you can do overkill. and how you apply things in the Bible. The application, you know, wait a minute, no, no, you tell us there's too much. Well, sometimes we draw out things that aren't there. So you have to be careful about that. The right process that you go through is to observe what's there, interpret it, in other words, you find out what the meaning, notice I didn't say a meaning, the meaning that's there, then you apply it to your life. And there can be all kinds of applications, but that doesn't mean just any application is okay. But you want to make sure that you don't go in just looking for application right away, or you'll twist stuff. Like one of the, when I teach Bible at the school, one of the books that I had brought this up as an illustration about a youth pastor that was teaching on David and Goliath and said, and the five stones, what those mean is these are five character traits that we all need. That's not there. Not to mention David only used one of the stones. So evidently the other four weren't important. So, with something, when we go through genealogies, we need to be careful to not pull out stuff that's not there. It serves a purpose, and we find that in 2 Timothy 3.16. All scripture, including what we're going through tonight, is given by inspiration to God and is profitable. Now, you don't read just over this. This means something. For doctrine. You're like, yeah, I know, that's supposed to be like, you know, the doctrine of the church, like what we believe about salvation and all that. Yeah, but it's also facts. Like God says, this is true. Yeah, but what's the spiritual depth of this? Well, there's kind of a thing of just knowing this is true. And this is how it happened. As opposed to what the world says is the way that it happened. And so this chapter is a lot like that. And so it's inspired, it's God's word. And so let's look at this. We're not gonna read through the whole thing and somebody was challenging me, they thought it'd be great to hear me try to pronounce all this stuff. So we're not gonna exactly do all that. But look at Genesis 10 verse one. Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, of Noah. Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And unto them were sons born after the flood. Now in this, they're gonna go through some of these lines here. The lines of Japheth and Ham are focused on first in this list. And then, just leave it there to focus on the line of blessing which will come through Shem, because Shem is the line that's the blessed line. So, but first of all, it's going to be focused on the alliance of Japheth and Ham. So verse 2, the sons of Japheth, Gomer and Magog and Madai and Javan and Tubal and Meshach and Tyrus. Now, I don't know if you can see this, that map here. Oh, you can see it pretty good. Some of you guys might need binoculars a little bit for it. But yeah, so on this, as far as Japheth is concerned, it's more of the rectangles, okay? The rectangles, not the little rounded ones like that, you know, nothing like that. Or the rhombuses, y'all remember geometry? Okay, anyway, so yeah, not those things either. But just the rectangles are showing who came from Japheth. Japheth's descendants are located to the west and north of Israel. Now, you have to remember, when you're reading the Pentateuch, the first five books, these are written, all of us gain wealth of knowledge and spiritual applications and all that from them, but the real audience were the Israelites. And Moses wrote them to give them some information about the past and to get them to understand who they were and what God wanted to do with them. And that's what a lot of this is about. It's including the information in this chapter. And so with this, when you look at locations, it's going to be who they are as far as where Israel is located and that type of thing. So Japheth's descendants will be located to the west and the north, and you might even say the northwest, and the north of Israel. They cover a lot of area. So his descendants will go out to, for instance, Gomer will end up going into parts of Europe. That's where Gomer will go. Javan will end up going to the territories that will be Greeks. The Greeks. And these are Gentiles, and who we think of as Gentiles when Paul says they're Gentiles. We think of a lot of these people like this. And so these are descendants of Japheth. But not only that, we also go north and a little bit northeast. So you have Magog. That's Russia. Okay, Magog is Russia. Medi is the Medes. Okay, anybody remember where there's Medes later on? Now the cool thing is, the children of Israel, when they're reading this, when Moses writes this, they have no idea who some of these people are. So it's pretty wild if you think about this and they're reading this and then later on, people read this because they know who the Medes are. Because the Medes and the Persians were one of the empires that conquered the land of Israel, you know, that were over them. And so you have the Medes, okay, Maida. Meshech is something like the area of Russia and Ukraine, in that area probably. Tubal is part of Turkey. And then Tiras is kind of a region that goes from Turkey, Bulgaria, and Greece, and kind of in there. These are the descendants of Japheth. Now, as we go through looking at some of these, here's the question. Do these divisions tell us specifically where everyone came from? So do we know, for instance, do they tell us that? Well, let me tell you, they do tell us that everyone, all of you guys, everybody in Jamestown, everybody in the world came from these three fellas. Everybody. They didn't come from a fourth. They didn't evolve from some ape somewhere else. They all came from these three fellas. Now, does the Bible, for instance, tell us where did people from China come from? Well, it doesn't really say. Because Moses, when writing on the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and writing this for Israel to understand, probably they didn't need to know where the people from China came from. Okay? We might guess that more than likely they probably came from Japheth. Okay? But I don't know that for sure. And I don't know that's really important. But it is important to know that they did come from one of these three. Okay, that's very important. All right, they came from one of these three. And obviously, this is the first stage. So when we look at like the map I had before, you're like, well, that's not the whole world. Okay, yeah, it's not. They would have kept on spreading out in different directions. And over time, some people from one of those sons' descendants might take over somebody from the other sons' descendants in some lands. That would happen even as it has happened in the past 100 years. of history. And so that can happen that way as well. So that is Japheth, and the sons of Japheth and their descendants will cover quite a bit of areas that later on, some of those, more the ones to the north and northeast, will play a role in Israel's future, okay? They will play a role. We move on then to the sons of Ham. The sons of Ham, in verse 6, the sons of Ham, Cush, Mizraim, and Put, and Canaan. All right? Ham's descendants are located mostly in Canaan, what we know as Canaan. Also Egypt and in Africa. That's where the regions that they are going to go. Cush is probably Ethiopia or a land that's just below what we might think of Egypt. Misram is more of the Egyptian territory. Put, or Fut, is Libya. And then there's Canaan. We know where that's at. Okay, so you can kind of see Canaan there. And from those also the Philistines would be part of some of that as well. And so here are all these people that come from Ham. And then a guy is mentioned in here, Nimrod. Now this is actually a guy that's supposed to, I understand that, I don't know, I grew up in the 80s, so evidently I thought this is the way it was, but in the 80s, if somebody called you a Nimrod, they were not giving you a compliment. That was the same thing as calling you a dipstick or anything else. Nimrod. But that's not the way that he meant it here. This is different, okay? So Cush begat Nimrod. And notice, it didn't say he began to be an idiot in the earth. It said he began to be a mighty one in the earth. Verse 9 says, he was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Hey, let's just notice everything is before the Lord. No matter what you do, including this guy, he will become great. Everything is done before the Lord. Whoever's president of the US does that before the Lord. Whoever is over China is ruling that before the Lord. Nobody escapes being before the Lord. That's important to remember, okay? He was a mighty hunter before the Lord, wherefore it said, even as Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord. In other words, there was a saying that went about, and if you were a good hunter or did a good job hunting that day, they'd say, You're a nimrod. Okay. Well, they're not saying you're a dummy. They're saying you are really great. You are a great hunter. So this guy was great in that aspect, but he was just known for getting his camouflage on and doing that kind of thing. He was a great man as far as in the world's eyes. And he is really, from what we can look at, and I was reading up on him and different theologians talking about him, he is the ideal of what we see later on in Mesopotamia and this area of the kind of rulers that come up like Nebuchadnezzar and different ones that rule through conquering and that type thing and subduing other people. This guy is really kind of one of the first to be like that. And so, probably was, I mean it wasn't much there. So Nimrod, yeah, verse 10 says, in the beginning of his, notice kingdom, not his clan or family, the beginning of his kingdom was Babel. Ah, we've heard that before, and this is the same one. Yeah, he is going to start off a whole thing of Babylon. Okay, this is this whole thing, they may not call it Babylon yet, but that's what it'll become. Babel, Eric, which is similar, Akkad, Kelna, which I'm not sure people know exactly where that's at, and in the land of Shinar, and this is the area where Babylon is gonna be. Shinar is mentioned associated with that a few times later in the Bible. and out of that land, out Shinar, went forth Asher and built Nineveh, Asher of Assyria would be the idea, and built Nineveh and the city of Rehoboth and Calah. And so with this, this guy is going to be a mighty conqueror. He's gonna establish great cities. He's going to, we're gonna learn that Asher is actually, some say, well, maybe this was another descendant of Ham. I don't think so. I think he's listed as one of Shem's sons. I don't think there was two of them necessarily. I think this guy may have conquered some of the people there already that were from Shem at that time. He was always already doing this type thing and so this is the kind of guy that Israel will encounter hundreds of years later in their history. They will be encountering people like this and Nebuchadnezzar is one that comes to mind that's kind of like that. Alright, but with all this, let's be reminded of what Noah had said in Genesis 9, 26. Blessed be the Lord God of Shem, Canaan shall be his servant. Canaan shall be his servant. And if you read through this chapter in chapter 10, I'm not gonna go through all of them, but you'll see the Amorites and some others, the Jebusites and others that are listed as descendants of Ham. And yes, they will end up being the servants of the Israelites of who proceeds from Shem. And so, yeah, so these guys, that will be accomplished. All right, so then we come to Shem, okay? Shem is the third one and we get to verse 21 where he's at. Unto Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, the brother of Japheth the elder, even to him were children born. Now, here are some of the children of Shem. There is Aram, or Aram, that's Syria. There's Asher, I mentioned before, that's Assyria. And by the way, in the Bible, don't ever mix up when you're reading through the Old Testament, Syria and Assyria are two different groups. two different groups, okay? There's Elam, which is Persia. There is then Arpachshod, and you're like, who's that person? Very important person, okay? And there's some debate about exactly what land that Arpachshod went, down there in the lower right. But it's somewhere in that Mesopotamian region And he's very important because in verse 24, "...and Arpichad begat Selah, and Selah begat Eber." And then verse 25, "...unto Eber were born two sons. The name of one was Peleg, for in his days was the earth divided, and his brother's name was Jocton." Many believe, but it can't be, I don't know they can be proven exactly, but there are many that believe that the term Hebrew is derived from Eber. This whole line is where we will get to Abraham. I'm not going to go there, though, because that's in chapter 11. But yeah, that's where Abraham comes from, this line, and he's in the place of Ur, which evidently is part of this region that Arpichat will be at. And so yeah, Eber is part of that. Let's go back to this other part. And the name of one was Peleg, for in his days was the earth divided. Now I used to think, oh yeah, yeah, this is where like continental drift, which actually never happened, it was continental shift. But yeah, so continental drift, that's an evolutionary idea, where the continents were all one thing before, which that part's true. And then over millions and millions and millions, it's just fun to say, years, that it's just gradually shifted apart. Gradually, until we get the continents that we have today. And if you'll look, by the way, it was a Christian that found this, that if you'll take North America and shove that over there, you can fit it pretty good if you'll finagle things just right. It'll fit with the continents over there to the right, and it's pretty cool. My right. There you go, like that. So if you do that, that's neat. Well, that's because, and there's a massive, what do you call that, in the ocean right there, anyway, a big crease. So you can tell those really used to be together in a way. But they didn't happen over millions and millions and millions of years, okay? They happened in the flood. And so it wasn't a continental drift. It was a major continental shift all at once. Remember the waters that came up from the deep? That was a massive release that caused a shift in those and all that mess that happened while Noah and his family were on the ark and staying safe was happening under those tons and tons of water, all of that force going on, and that kind of thing is what happened then. So that's not what's happening here. If this happened in the days of Peleg, I mean, it might have wiped out everybody that was there with Noah at the time. I mean, it would cause all kinds of crazy things to happen there. What this is talking about is the division that we're talking about here And it will also happen there in chapter 11. That happened in the days of Peleg. In his days was the earth divided. So I think this is really neat. You're like, okay, I didn't really get all the narrative in that one. I'm kind of looking for the narrative or the thou shalts and thou shalt nots in that one. Remember, God gives us facts. A lot of these facts are just so we can know the history. This is very important history and there is application that will go through here. So if you're waiting to fill in the blanks, you've waited quite a while and I'm glad you stayed awake because we're there now. But yeah, these are important things for us to know. These are important things for us to know. Hey, all the people in the world originally came from three people and ultimately from one man and his wife. Yeah, those three sons, they split off into everybody we know today. And this gives us kind of a map of how they spread out, you know, originally and then they spread out more after that. So in this, I'm gonna just bring out some points and we'll be done. Yeah, first of all is the rejection of human evolution. So like I said, everybody on this planet today, came from one of these three guys. One of these three guys. What I mean is, they didn't develop from some ape in this section, or some ape in this section, or some ape or whatever, and all these people developed and we all grew up into different races and all that based on these different apes and this, that's not the way it worked. That's not biblical. What happened is there are three mature, developed, cultured human beings from which all of us came from. That's the Bible. That's just Bible, okay? And so we have the rejection of human evolution, okay? Then we have the ridiculousness of racism. Why? I don't care how you're shaded. I don't care whatever different thing, how your hair may be different from so-and-so, whatever. We all came from three people who had one dad. That's it. We're all related. I mean, the best that you can say looking at somebody else is like you would look at your brother and say, well, I'm better than you. That's about as far as you can go because everybody on this earth is your brother and sister in humanity in that way. because we all came from three people, all of us. And if anybody wants to be racist, you're gonna have a problem in heaven. Revelation 5-9 says, they sang a new song saying, thou, Jesus, art worthy to take the book and to open the seals thereof, for thou was slain and has redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation. They're all gonna be in heaven. Every race, as you wanna call it, there's really only one. Every ethnicity, they're all gonna be in heaven. They all came from a man and wife who had three sons, and we all came from those. We all came from those. So, biblically, racism is ridiculous. It's ridiculous. None of us should be racist in any way. We're just brothers and sisters. Yeah, we're brothers and sisters in that way. Now, spiritually, I know. Not everybody's my brother or sister. I'd like them to be. We'd want them to be. But in human terms, we are. We are. The third, and this is the part I really wanted to get to here, and it's at the end, is the reach of God's providence and sovereignty. So what names, when we looked at these, and remember, we're going way back. I mean, we're just after the flood here. Got the three sons, and then their sons, and their sons. But you know, we've not gone too far in time, and we're already seeing Babel, Babylon. We're already seeing Asher, Assyria. We're already seeing empires. We're seeing people like the Philistines, they were on the map. Already there. These are people that were enemies of Israel. And yet, there they are. Are they in power yet? Nope. Nope. They're just trying to find where they can farm land. They're just seeing how they can survive. Hey, couldn't God just put a stop to that? Yeah. But here's God that knows everything from the beginning. He has a plan and there they are. He's going to bring Israel through Abraham's line eventually into Canaan. a place that has the Canaanites in it at that point. He's gonna bring them in there, they're gonna take that, it's gonna be their land, and they're gonna remove and come back in, and he's gonna do that. Then they're gonna fall, because they sin, they're gonna fall to some of these empires, Babylon. Assyria, we mentioned the Greeks, okay. There'll be some Greek powers that will take over in between the Testaments. The Medes, we saw them, they're there too. All these different ones, God knows about them in the beginning. Did those people take over Israel because God lost control? No. He used those people to purge Israel. Israel never had a real problem with idolatry once you get to the New Testament. That was one of their major problems before. God purged that out of their system. Now, they weren't right. They still had problems, but he purged that part. He worked all of that in sovereign control. With these, I mean, he worked all kinds of things. We could be here all night talking about what he worked through these Gentiles. And then through all of that, he still connected this line and kept it going that went all the way up to our Savior, Jesus Christ. Can I tell you that God is in control? He already knows what's happening way before it happens when we think it does. He is in sovereign control and His plan isn't done yet. It will be fulfilled. So we're in election year and whatever happens, we don't need to get super upset about it. God is in control. Remember Nimrod? Before the Lord. And nobody's gonna mess up God's plan. Oh, man, you know what? I mean, if we'd only known back then, I mean, that the Assyrians were gonna be there, the Babylonians, they should have just wiped them out. God's okay with it. Because he's in control. Here's our deal. Not to wonder if God's got this, Our deal is to make sure we're in God's will to play the part that he wants us to play. He is not going to fail. And at the end, he will have his plan like he wanted it. The question for me and you is, are we doing what he would have us to do in his plan? That's the deal. And like he told Esther, look, you can do what you're supposed to do right now, Mordecai said, or God will get somebody else. But he's gonna save his people. So I wanna let you know that we have a big God. He is the Lord of the nations. He is the Lord of history and everything to come. Acts 17, 26, that wraps this up, I think. And hath made, speaking of God, hath made of one blood, notice that, all nations of men for to dwell in the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation." I don't care if nations acknowledge God or not, they are ultimately under His control. He is God. Amen?