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Sermon Notes: notes.cornerstonesj.org
One Nation Under God
Good morning. Everybody's nice and quiet. I guess we're ready to go. All right. There is going to be a new youth
Sunday school. Kevin, could you stand up and wave just so people can get a sight of you? This is
Kevin Lindaberry. He's going to be teaching the case for Christ beginning on May 26th for 13 -19 year olds.
You got to be a teenager, and it's going to take place early in the morning, 9
AM, which for a teenager, you realize that's very early, 9 AM. But I think it's worth it.
Teenagers, you guys should make that sacrifice. Get here at 9 AM in the classroom on the right beginning
May 26th. It'll be 14 weeks studying through the book, The Case for Christ.
On June 9th, we are going to have a baptism service right out here on the lawn. We'll have an inflatable tub, bunch of people getting baptized.
We will have a water slide, but that water slide is only for children.
Adults, no. We don't want you coming in bathing suits, just the little kids on the water slide for that baptism service.
We're going to have a picnic. We're going to have lots of food. It will be a lot of fun. So that is
June 9th. Mark your calendar now, so you remember to stay after second service.
My last announcement for today is a progress report on the orphanage that God has graciously allowed us to help build.
Would you guys like to see a picture of how it's coming? Here it is. Notice the solar panels up there.
Isn't it incredible that this began to be built in January and it's almost done? So just a wonderful praise report there.
Hamilton will be getting that installment of financial resources that we took on Easter Sunday.
So we believe that it's fully funded at this point. So praise God. Let's go to the
Lord in prayer. Father God, we thank you so much for what you're doing in Malawi with the building of the
Cornerstone Safe House Orphanage. We pray Lord that it would open within a couple of months here
Lord, and girls would be able to be brought off the street and kept in a safe house, and also discipled in the
Christian faith. Lord, we pray for those who might be going out from us, possibly Judy, possibly
Ron Jacobs, to go and spend a week or two there in Malawi. We pray that those short -term trips would come together, and that it would be powerful and fruitful in the ministry, and a big help to the ministry in Malawi.
So Lord, we lift them up to you in Jesus name. Father, we do want to ask now that this worship service would be found pleasing to you
Lord. We pray that like a fresh wind and a fresh fire, you would come into this place and fill us with your
Holy Spirit. We know that all of us who have received Christ Jesus are baptized into Christ, part of the body.
But we also know that there is a filling of your Holy Spirit, that we are to be controlled by your
Spirit as we surrender and yield to the moving of your Spirit in our lives. So Lord, we pray that this morning we would yield our lives to you in how we sing and how we hear the word.
Lord, help us to mortify the flesh. Lord, put to death the deeds of the flesh, and give ourselves completely to worship you this morning, and then as we go from this place for the rest of our lives.
So Lord, move in a powerful way this Pentecost morning. In Jesus name, amen. Amen, let's stand.
Let's sing unto the Lord a new song, amen. As long as I'm breathing,
I've got a reason to praise the
Lord, oh my soul. Praise the
Lord, oh my soul. I praise when I feel it,
I praise when I don't. I praise because I know you're still in control.
My praise is a weapon, it's more than a sound. My praise is a shout that brings
Jericho down. As long as I'm breathing,
Lord, oh my soul. I won't keep quiet, my
God is alive. How could I keep it inside? Praise the
Lord, oh my soul. Praise the Lord, oh my soul.
I praise because you're solid,
I praise because you reign. I praise because you rose and defeated the grave.
I praise because you're faithful, I praise because you're true. I praise because there's nobody greater than you.
I praise because you're solid, I praise because you reign. I praise because you rose and defeated the grave.
Praise the Lord, oh my soul. Praise the
God is alive. How could I keep it inside? I won't keep quiet, my
Lord, oh my soul. I just want to speak the name of Jesus For every heart and every mind
Cause I know there is peace within your presence
I speak Jesus I just want to speak the name of Jesus Till every dark addiction starts to break
Declaring there is hope and there is freedom I speak
Jesus Cause your name is power, your name is healing
Your name is life Break every stronghold, shine through the shadows
Burn like a fire I just want to speak the name of Jesus Over fear and all anxiety
To every soul held captive by depression
I speak Jesus Cause your name is power, your name is healing
Burn like a fire Shout Jesus from the mountains
Jesus in the streets Jesus in the darkness over every enemy
Jesus for my family I speak the holy name,
Jesus Shout Jesus from the mountains
Jesus I just want to speak the name of Jesus Over every heart and every mind
I speak Jesus It was my cross you bore
So I could live in the freedom you died for And now my life is yours
And I will sing of your goodness forevermore
Worthy is your name, Jesus You deserve the praise
Worthy is your name Worthy is your name,
Jesus You deserve the praise
Worthy is your name And now my shame is gone
I stand amazed in your love undeniable
Your grace goes on and on And I will sing of your goodness forevermore
Worthy is your name Be exalted now in the heavens
As your glory fills this place You alone deserve our praise
You're the name above all names Be exalted now in the heavens
You're the name above all names Worthy is your name,
Worthy is your name Lord, cleanse us of all of our sins and wash us white as snow
God, as we have proclaimed the name of Christ Lord, we have sung praises to you
Christ alone, my hope is found He is my light, my strength, my song
This cornerstone, this solid ground
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm
What heights above, what depths of peace
When fears are still and striving cease
My comforter, my all in all
Here in the love of Christ I stand
In Christ alone, who took on flesh
Wholeness of God in helpless pain This gift of love and righteousness
Scorned by the ones He came to save Till on that cross, as Jesus died
Forever love was satisfied
For every sin on Him was laid
Here in the death of Christ I live
Here in the ground His body lay
Light of the world by darkness slain
Then bursting forth in glorious day
Upon the grave He rose again
And as He stands in victory Sin's curse has lost its grip on me
For I am His and He is mine
Born with the precious blood of Christ Built in life, no fear in death
This is the power of Christ in me
From life's first cry to final breath
Jesus commands my destiny No power of hell, no scheme of man
Can ever pluck me from His hand Till He returns or calls me home
Here in the power of Christ I stand No power of hell, no scheme of man
Can ever pluck me from His hand
Till He returns or calls me home
Here in the power of Christ I'll stand Here in the power of Christ I'll stand
Let's pray.
Father, why do the nations rage and the people's plot in vain? Lord, we pray for this nation in which
You have placed us, that it would not rebel against You, the King of kings, but we would bow the knee and kiss the sun, lest You be angry and the peoples perish in the way.
Lord, we pray for the United States of America to have a revival of the Christian religion that You would revive us in our day, that You would fill us with Your precious
Holy Spirit. Today is Pentecost Sunday, and we ask for fresh power to go out and do
Your will. Move in our hearts, Lord. Stir us up to go forth preaching the name above every name.
We pray, Lord, that Your word now would come forth to us with power. It's a passage that many of us might have skipped over in years past, but we pray,
Lord, that it would hit us in a new way today and You would use it to fan into flame the gift of God that is in each of us who believe in Jesus.
Lord, I pray now that You would help me and fan into flame a preaching gift that I could be submitted to Your Holy Spirit as I speak and let all of us who hear
Your word receive it as the food from heaven, the bread from heaven, that Your word would nourish our hearts and change us in Jesus' name.
Amen. Pyongyang used to be called the
Jerusalem of the East. Pyongyang, of course, is the capital of North Korea.
It is one of the darkest countries. In fact, if you were to look at a map at night of North Korea and South Korea next to one another on that Korean peninsula, at nighttime, from an aerial view, the
South is lit up and the North remains mostly dark, except for Pyongyang, where all the resources are.
It used to be, prior to 1950, that one out of six Korean residents of Pyongyang were
Christians. One out of six. And that's why they called it the Jerusalem of the
East. But in 1905, the Japanese conquered
Korea, and they began to impose Shinto, which was emperor worship, and many of the people were subjugated to that.
The missionaries continued to fight spiritually in this war for the heart of the
Korean people, but in many ways, Shintoism was taking root. Then in World War II, the nation of Korea was divided.
After the war, once the United States defeated Japan, the
Korean peninsula was divided between North Korea, controlled by the USSR and their communist worldview, and the
South, which was supported by the United States of America. So North Korea and South Korea were divided.
Missionaries quickly returned to South Korea, and most of them set up base in Seoul, but the
Soviet Union never allowed missionaries back in to the North. Church, I want to tell you, what happens nationally matters.
Very often, we think that the only thing that matters is individuals and their private decision to trust or reject
Jesus Christ, and of course, that is the preeminent thing. Individual conversion is the preeminent thing, but nations also matter.
Today, there are only half a million believers that live in North Korea, half a million
Christians, but in South Korea, there are over 15 million
Christians. Do you think the politics that happened after World War II make a difference?
It's more than 30 times the Christian population in South Korea, even though the population of North Korea is only half that.
So 26 million people live in the North and 52 million people in South Korea, and yet the number of believers in the
South is 30 times larger. Politics matters. In 1948, government officials announced the end of religion in North Korea.
There were to be no more churches, no more evangelists, and no gods, except for Kim Il -sung.
The Kim dynasty is a cult of personality revolving around this leader, this communist leader of North Korea, and the result is the captivity of people.
In fact, of those half a million Christians, between 50 ,000 and 70 ,000 of them lived their lives in a prison camp this morning.
Most of them sentenced to 15 -year terms for practicing their Christianity, and most of those who received that 15 -year prison sentence will not make it out because of the harsh conditions of the prison camp.
North Korea is a stronghold of the enemy, whereas South Korea largely lives in freedom, and Christianity flourishes there.
I want to show you a map of the nations of the world. This map demonstrates the descent of the nations of the world from one man whose name was
Noah. Noah had three sons, and most of the peoples of the earth, well, all the peoples of the earth trace themselves to Noah, but through these three men.
Here at the north, if my little pointer is working, my battery might have died here, but you can see the northern territories there.
This is a map of the world. The northern parts are those who descend from Japheth.
Japheth. The eastern peoples, including India and China and Korea and Japan, all of Australia, this part of the world, these eastern peoples descend from Shem, and the
Hamites, those descending from Ham, include Saudi Arabia and the African continent.
By and large, this is the descent of the peoples. I know this because of Genesis chapter 10, which is where we will now turn, but before we read the genealogies of the table of the nations, how the nations spread out, a couple things need to be said.
First, there was a popular tradition in American history called the Curse of Ham.
The Curse of Ham was a racist ideology that caused slaveholders who come from the tribes of Japheth to justify the enslavement of Africans on the basis that they descend from Ham and are under a curse.
The first thing I want you to see, as we go back to Genesis 9, 24 to 27, we're picking up from last week, the curse was not placed on Ham.
The curse was on a particular son of Ham, namely Canaan.
Verse 25, cursed be Canaan. And the Canaanite peoples were the particular people in that Israelite off the
Mediterranean Sea where Israel currently is. The Canaanites were right here, the descendants of Canaan.
Chapter 9, verse 25 says, cursed be Canaan. It is also the case that this curse had to do with Old Testament Israel.
I want you to think about when the book of Genesis was written, around the year 1500
BC, and the author was Moses. Where were they situated when the
Torah was given? They had come out of captivity in Egypt. The Israelites were in their wilderness wanderings, about to go into the
Promised Land, and who inhabited the Promised Land? The Canaanite people.
So the issue of the curse that is placed in 9, 24 to 27, had a particular time and place in view.
The Canaanites were those who descended from Canaan, and they were a very wicked and cursed people whose sexual sin and debauchery had been increasing to the point where God had decided to kick them out of the land.
In fact, the language of the Torah is that the land would vomit them out, so that the people of God, the
Semitic peoples, which of course Shem is the father of the Semitic peoples, and one particular tribe of Semites, you know the term anti -Semitism, refers to racism against Israelites, against Jews.
That is a particular tribe from Shem. So we go now to the main idea of the sermon.
Humanity collectivizes according to lands, languages, clans, and nations.
As we go through Genesis 10, I want you to notice that phrase repeated three times.
Lands, languages, clans, and nations, which means this matters to God.
Nations matter to God. While Christians must never lose focus on bringing individuals to faith in Christ, we must also not neglect the important work of making our land, our language, our clan, our nation more righteous, more honoring to God.
Here's a very important verse I'd like you to make note of. It is Proverbs 14, 34. Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.
Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.
It is good and godly to have a desire and to work for the
United States to become one nation under God. That expression was added to the
Pledge of Allegiance, One Nation Under God, in the 1950s, when it seemed that the culture was drifting away from Christianity.
And I think the president at that time was Eisenhower. He wanted to reaffirm the
Christian heritage and the Christian worldview of this country, a belief in God, and recognize that nations exist not of themselves, but by the plan and hand of God.
Now, this genealogy that we're about to read is not like the ones we've read earlier or later, which are vertical in nature, showing a patriarch, followed by a son, a grandson, a great -grandson, all the way down the line to a key person.
For example, Shem will eventually bring forth
Abraham. We will see that kind of vertical genealogy in Genesis 11, when we see the line from Shem, from Noah and Shem, down to Abraham.
That's the key point next week. But I want you to understand, this week it's not a vertical descent through one family tree.
Rather, it's a horizontal spreading out of the nations through three sons, each of them having many sons, so that within a couple of generations, you actually have 70 names.
Now, imagine what I'm tasked to do this morning. I have to preach 70 names in a genealogy.
But I want you to understand, the 70 names are 70 nations.
It's a horizontal spreading out of the nations to the ends of the earth, and in the time of Moses, when this book was given.
It refers especially to the nations as they existed when Israel was about to go take
Canaan into the Promised Land. So let's read it. Beginning with Genesis 10, verse 1.
We'll take this in three sections, because how many sons did Noah have? Three. All right, let's start with Japheth.
Genesis 10, one to five. 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, Javon, Tubal, Meshach, and Tyrus.
If you don't know how to pronounce a name, just say it really confidently, and you guys will be convinced this is the right way to say it.
I don't think anybody knows for sure the exact pronunciation, so I'll do my best.
The sons of Gomer, Ashkenaz, Rephath, and Togermah. The sons of Javon, Elisha, Tarshish.
You might recognize Tarshish because of Jonah, when he was sent to Nineveh.
Instead, he fled to the coastlands to Tarshish. Kittim and Dodonim. From these, this is important, the coastland peoples spread in their lands, each with his own language, by their clans and their nations.
There is the first repetition of that phrase. We're dealing with nations, clans, languages, a land, a particular people located in a particular place.
So where did the tribes of Japheth go? You might recognize Magog from Ezekiel 38.
Gog and Magog. This refers to the Russian peoples to the north, far north, over the
Black Sea, or adjacent to the Black Sea, Gog and Magog. The coastland peoples refers to those who go north of Israel along the
Mediterranean coast, but not just those who live on the sea, but those who travel from those port cities.
Oh, this is popping again. Phil, come on. Help us out here. This monitor starts popping when it doesn't like something
I say. Yeah, yeah. Thanks, guys. Thank you.
So the coastland peoples refers to those to the north, not only those who live on the sea, but those who can be reached from those port cities.
So where would you go from the port cities along the northern Mediterranean? Out to places as far as Greece, or Italy, or Spain, or even all the way around to France and England.
These are the northwestern peoples, the coastland peoples. Isaiah chapter 42, verse 4, if you want to look at it,
Isaiah 42, 4, refers to these coastland peoples receiving the gospel. And in fact, when the gospel first went out, where did it go?
Paul intended to head east, but the spirit of the living God prohibited him from going there and instead sent him to Macedonia, up into Greece.
And so the gospel took root first in these northern tribes. The light of the gospel went there and is now penetrated and is circling the globe and returning back to Jerusalem, the place where it began.
The point here is that the northern tribes are the tribes of Japheth.
And we who live in the United States of America were colonized or settled in a good way by Christian people from England largely, but then the other nations of northern
Europe. And the Christianity that was brought to the place, the nation in which we live, is a great treasure, a gift from God that we were born here under that land.
When Noah Webster was one of the founding fathers, he wrote about the influence of the
Bible on the culture that we have. And we need to understand something that when the
Bible says lands and nations, it's talking about a whole collective identity, a people, a people whose
God is the Lord is blessed to have that. Noah Webster said, the Bible must be considered as the great source of all the truth by which men are to be guided in government as well as in all social transactions.
Noah Webster was, you know, you have the Merriam -Webster dictionary so famously, the first to make such a great dictionary, and also the one who created the spelling books for the early generations of Americans.
Noah Webster understood that the Bible was the foundation of our government, one of the founding fathers.
This is an inheritance that we have received, that the culture was formed by biblical ideas.
Now we are being told that the high value of American society is multiculturalism.
Different cultures, each equally esteemed within a land.
But the problem is, many values of one culture contradict or stand against the values of another.
So multiculturalism can never be what integrates a people, what makes people a nation and a clan and a language.
Multiculturalism has no value in and of itself. When I was training to become a missionary, that's where I first thought
I would be, in seminary. I was taking cross -cultural classes. And the professors would teach us that we need to value and understand the cultures of others and be willing to adjust.
And there's something true about that. A missionary going to another part of the world will encounter a different set of values.
For example, in many cultures, time is not valued the same way it is in our culture.
You might go to meet someone at 5 o 'clock and they might not show up till 7 o 'clock.
And that could be extremely frustrating to a missionary. And the culture shock of that brings a lot of missionaries home.
You have to be willing to adjust to these kind of things if you want to be a missionary. But listen, the valuing of time is a biblical value.
The Bible says, let your yes be yes and your no be no. If you say, I'll be there at 5 o 'clock and you show up at 7 o 'clock, you are disrespecting another person.
You're devaluing their time. And biblical ethics teaches us to be punctual, to keep our word.
If we say, we'll be somewhere at a certain time, we should be there. That is one of the foundation stones of Christian ethics.
Honesty, integrity, doing as you say you will do. So it's not a neutral or indifferent value, but these
Christian values are an important part of culture. In his book, The Poverty of Nations, Wayne Grudem shows that it's cultural differences and cultural values, differences in values that account for the differences in outcomes of the nations.
Poverty on one continent versus prosperity on another. It's not a matter of genetics.
It's a matter of cultural values. A people that's built on biblical ethics will be blessed for that.
Make sense? God values nations, not just individuals. Now, here's where it gets interesting.
Because as the nations spread out across the world, often nations as such will turn against God.
And here you see that it is particularly the descendants of Ham and the Canaanites in particular that are standing against God.
So we pick up at verse six and notice the theme here. It's not just that they're a land and a nation, a language and a clan.
It's that these particular ones are rebelling against God. Genesis 10, verses six and following.
The sons of Ham, Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan.
The Cushites are the Ethiopians and those south of the Sahara Desert. Also in Africa, I mean in Saudi Arabia, the southern part of the
Saudi Arabian Peninsula, that was considered Cush. Egypt, you all know.
You know where the pyramids are in Egypt. Put and Canaan. Now, Canaan is the key place for understanding what's happening in this genealogy.
The Canaanites are those who inhabited the land just before the Israelites took the promised land.
Now, the sons of Cush, Seba, Havilah, Sabta, Ramah, and Sabtica, the sons of Ramah, Sheba, and Dedan.
Anybody here ever try to read through the Bible and when you got to a genealogy, you just skipped? True confession here.
Be honest. You might have done that. There are important themes embedded even in the genealogy, so try to pay attention even if you're not really seeing the relevance.
Cush fathered Nimrod. He was the first on earth to be a mighty man. What theme has
God already developed in the book of Genesis regarding the mighty man? Genesis 6.
The mighty men were those who began to conquer and to begin to rule and dominate over other peoples.
This precipitated the flood in Genesis 6, so mighty man is not a good thing here. In fact, the word
Nimrod means to rebel. Here you have a rebel. His father
Cush names him to rebel as a hand, a fist shaking at almighty
God, a rebel against the throne of God. He was the first on earth to become a mighty man, so he's gaining power.
He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Now the phrase before the Lord doesn't mean in obedience to the
Lord. We heard Enoch walked with God. Noah walked with God. Here, Nimrod is before the
Lord as in in his face, as a rebel to the throne. Therefore, it is said, like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the
Lord. This mighty hunter gained a following because he was tough.
He was a man's man. If there was a lion terrorizing a village, call Nimrod.
He would come and take care of the lion, and people began to follow the hunter. But before long, he becomes not only a hunter of animals, he becomes a hunter of men, a terror.
And notice in verse 10, the beginning of his kingdom was Babel. Now we know from Genesis 11 that this is a wicked undertaking.
He's trying to gain a following for himself and make a name for himself and the people who follow him.
Notice that it's a one world government that's forming under his lead. Erik, Akkad, and Kalna in the land of Shinar.
This is that Mesopotamian basin. From that land, he went into Assyria and built
Nineveh. The Assyrian Empire would become the most wicked place on earth.
The ones who destroyed the 10 northern tribes later in history. It says,
Rehobothir, Kala, resin between Nineveh and Kala. That is the great city.
And we go on from there. So what do we know about Nimrod? Biblically, we only have this information.
But there have been traditions that have developed around him that might actually trace back to him.
Paganism has its roots in ancient Babylon. If you remember
Genesis 3 .15, God promised to crush Satan, Lucifer, the pretender to the throne, by the seed of a woman.
So God, the father, would send a seed of the woman to crush
Satan. Satan, of course, is at war against God. So what does he do in his counterfeit kingdom?
He mimics God and tries to overthrow God by creating a counterfeit of God's intent.
If God is going to send a seed of the woman, Satan would counterfeit that with a seed of the woman.
So the history goes, and historians debate how much of this is mythology and how much actually happened.
But Nimrod's wife was named Semiramis. When Nimrod died, she proclaimed that he became the sun god,
Nimrod. And Semiramis was the moon god. So the masculinity and femininity thing.
And from Semiramis came Tammuz. Tammuz was the offspring of the woman.
She claimed to have given birth to him as a virgin with no man. So she's mimicking
God's promise of Genesis 3 .15. However, it is not godly. It is explicitly satanic.
Paganism is born in Babylon with the Tower of Babel. And you see this same thing occur in every pagan culture.
So the Vikings in the Scandinavian countries would claim that Odin was the father god,
Jorah was the mother, and from them came Thor, the son.
This is a pagan imitation of God's promise. In Rome, they had
Jupiter, Diana, and the firstborn Apollo.
In Egypt, they had Ra, the female Isis, and Horus. Ultimately, Lucifer desires to bring by a woman the
Antichrist into the world. This traces all the way back to Mystery Babylon.
And what we have in the end of our Bible, Revelation 13 -19, is the fall of Mystery Babylon.
Because what happens there in Revelation 17 -18 is you have one world religion with the
Antichrist as the head of it regarded by the world as to be worshipped, the son, ultimately, of Lucifer.
And they have one world government all trading through this one state control.
So Mystery Babylon includes both the political one world government and the one world religion.
Can you see in the text that this is precisely what Nimrod was trying to do? Verse 10 and 11, the beginning of his kingdom was
Babel. They tried to create that, but God confused the languages and spread them out. Then he himself founded
Nineveh. He's creating a one world empire. The great empires of the world would be
Assyria and then Babylon. And then the Persians, the
Medo -Persians and the Greeks, then the Romans, and the revised Roman Empire will be the
Antichrist kingdom. So here you have Nimrod trying to establish a one world government.
If anybody ever calls you a Nimrod, that is not a compliment. Nimrod here is rebel.
He's trying to establish a one world government around himself as the mighty man.
Turn with me to Leviticus 18. Just gonna look at three verses here before we come back to Genesis 10.
We've been reading about, in the second section, the descendants of which of Noah's sons?
Ham, right? And which particularly of his sons received the curse?
Canaan. And what was the transgression of Ham that led to the curse?
The word was Gala. It was uncovering. Noah, drunken in the tent, was uncovered.
He was Gala, uncovered. In Leviticus 18, that word will be used about 30 times in what follows.
Not only in this chapter, but the word Gala means uncovering. The holiness code of Israel prohibits the uncovering with sexual sin in all of these illicit relationships.
So many of us are familiar with Leviticus 18 because God gives his sexual ethic and establishes his holiness code.
But notice the connection with Ham. As Ham uncovered Gala, so in Leviticus 18, cursed is the one who uncovers.
Cursed for the uncovering. Notice also in Leviticus 18 1 to 3 that the
Canaanites who do this are being spit out of the land, vomited out of the land. It's not just that Israel is receiving a holiness code, but it's in contradistinction to the
Canaanites who practice these things. Leviticus 18 1 to 3, and the
Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to the people of Israel and say to them, I am the
Lord your God. You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt.
Egypt, this Hamite tribe that worships
Horus and Isis and all the gods, so many polytheistic gods of Egypt.
You are not to do like them where you lived and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan to which
I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes. They have a culture, a culture of uncovering, of gala, of sexual depravity.
And even in Leviticus 18, you have when children are born, often they would be offered to Moloch, Moloch worship.
This is what offended God so much about the Canaanite people. They had descended into the sexual debauchery and into murderous hatred of babies in Moloch worship.
That worldview, that culture, that nation, the language, the clan, the peoples become so detestable to God.
He allows that iniquity to build up for 400 years and then he decrees the judgment of those nations.
Now what's interesting about Old Testament Israel is that God himself is their king and God can send them into holy war.
This is very important because the nations today are not commissioned by God to holy war, only defensive wars.
There is a just war theory that is built from Christian ethics. But Israel was different.
Israel was the sword in God's hand and when God decided to punish a people, he used his nation to do it.
So he will send one tribe from Shem, one Semitic tribe who is
Israel to go into the promised land and listen, he decrees that they are to kill every man, every woman, every child, every animal.
How could this be? Because the nation has been entangled in satanic worship, completely depraved in their lifestyle and murderous towards the most vulnerable among them, their children, in Moloch worship.
And God will send Israel as the rod of his wrath in a holy war, which again does not exist since the cross.
But in Old Testament Israel, under that dispensation, Israel would wipe out all of the
Canaanites. So we go back to Genesis 10 to understand what's happening here. We left off at verse 14.
These are other Hamite tribes. In fact, interestingly, the Philistines are mentioned here. The Philistines are those who are now in modern -day
Palestine. The Palestinians who continue to hate Israel. So there is some residual hatred from this curse of Canaan.
Pathruzim kazluhim, from whom the Philistines came. And Kaphtarim.
Now notice the Canaanites of verses 15 to 20. Canaan fathered Sidon, his firstborn, and Heth.
You'll recognize these names if you've read Joshua and Judges, the Canaanite peoples. 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.
Isn't it amazing how relevant the word of God is to what's happening in our world today? The clash between Israel and the
Canaanite peoples. And in the direction of, notice the wickedness, the sexual depravity of,
Sodom and Gomorrah. Adma and Zeboim, as far as Lasha.
These are the sons of Ham. By their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations.
You see the repetition there. The issue is as a people, as people groups, as nations, they have become wicked, identifying with Moloch worship, following Nimrod, and the wickedness of their depraved cultures.
Lastly, verses 21 to 32, you have listed last the
Semites. You think that's intentional. Of course it is. It's culminating in Shem because from Noah through Shem will come
Abraham. And we'll see that genealogy in chapter 11 going into chapter 12. So here you have the
Semites. The father of all the children of Eber. From which we get the word
Hebrew. Hebrews are Semites. They come from Shem. The elder brother of Japheth.
Children were born to them. So it seems Shem was the older brother of Japheth. I was misreading that in first service actually.
I thought that Eber was the elder brother of Japheth. Because it's the nearest antecedent to it.
But I think in the flow of the text, because you'll notice Japheth is not mentioned in verse 22. Shem is the father and here are the sons.
Elam, Asher, Arpachshad, Lud and Aram. The sons of Aram.
Uz, Hol, Gether and Mash. His friends call them potatoes. Arpachshad fathered
Shelah and Shelah fathered Eber. To Eber were born two sons.
The name of the one was Peleg or Peleg for in his days the earth was divided.
It's probably the case that this division that is spoken of here is the Tower of Babel.
That's when everything dispersed and when everything was divided. And you say well wait a minute why are there nations in chapter 10 and then
Babel doesn't happen until chapter 11. It's not chronological here. It's thematic.
The theme of chapter 10 is how the nations descend from their family head.
Shem, Ham or Japheth. But chapter 11 is how it came to be. How they got spread out and shot out to the ends of the earth.
So it's not chronological. It's thematic in chapter 10. This is about the nations who they descend from.
But verse 25 I think is referencing the next chapter, Babel. And his brother's name was
Joktan. Joktan fathered Almodad. Shelef, Hazer, Mabeth, Jera, Hadoram, Uzal, Dikla, Obal, Abimele, Sheba.
Boy this will preach won't it? Ofer, Havilah and Jobab. All these were the sons of Joktan.
The territory in which they lived extended from Misha in the direction of Shefar till the hill country of the east.
And when you do archaeological studies you discover places that correspond to these names.
So like I said Gog and Magog, that's a reference to Russia. And as you head out to the east you find these
Semitic names in the people groups. And then of course it goes beyond that and extends over the centuries.
There is so much mixing of races, so many revolutions and wars that after about 146
BC you really don't want to apply any kind of curse of Ham or curse of Canaan ideology to the people groups of the world.
Did you hear that? So in 146 BC in the Battle of Carthage in Tunis, northern
Africa, the Romans conquered the descendants of Ham.
That battle could be linked to the curse and Japheth conquering
Ham according to the curse. But after that point in time and especially with the coming of Jesus Christ and the spreading of the gospel to the ends of the earth, you don't want to apply any curse of Ham, curse of Canaan ideology because all of us are just mixed.
We all descend from Noah. The issue here was that the descent from Ham in the days of Noah planted a wicked
Canaanite people in that land at that time and Israel was called to conquer them,
Joshua and Judges. That's what's happening here. Make sense? So we don't want to get twisted into the kind of racist way of thinking that people from Africa descend from Ham and people from Europe are
Japheth and justifying wicked slavery for that. That's not an application of this whatsoever.
But what we do have is in a time and place, nations have an identity. Lands matter, okay?
Because you see it repeated here one more time, verse 31. 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. Notice what it says again. In their nations and from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood.
In application, in closing. Acts 17 .26 says,
And 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.
God made nations. In fact, Israel as a nation proves that God cares about nations not just individuals, right?
Because he had a chosen nation over against the nations of the world. So he cares about nations.
Acts 17 .26 says, He determines the allotted time and boundary of each person's habitation.
God determined that you would be born in this country at this time.
And because you were not born in North Korea, your overt
Christianity is not punished with a prison camp. But you are free to leave this room on this
Pentecost Sunday and tell everybody you know about Jesus Christ and nobody's going to throw you in jail.
This nation matters to God. He has used this nation to free
South Korea, to stop Adolf Hitler in his tracks.
God has used this nation. And what we have as a nation with our Christian foundation is worth preserving.
It's worth fighting for. So I do want you to go out and talk to individuals about Christ.
That's the most important thing. Discipling the nations means one by one preaching the name of Jesus.
But it also means fighting for and contending for this nation as such.
Multiculturalism is saying to Christians in this country that every culture is the same.
There's no distinction. And so with the flood of illegal immigrants across the border from anti -Protestant nations and also increasingly from anti -Christian nations.
Have you noticed the number of Muslims that are immigrating into the United States of America? This happened in Europe and it's really overwhelmed
England and France and parts of Germany with the Turkish influx to the point where multiculturalism is tearing the very fabric of these societies apart.
The truth is the foundation upon which this country was built was the
Bible as Noah Webster said and John Witherspoon said. And it's not wrong or xenophobic to say that.
This is a nation worth fighting for. So it's right to say to preserve the land, the nation, the clan, the language, we should close the border at the south of our country.
That's worth fighting for. It's a national, it's a political kind of thing to fight for that but it's for the sake of preserving freedom, liberty, justice for all.
Preserving the culture that's built on Christian foundations. When you say the
Pledge of Allegiance, I don't know if you've said that since high school but do you not say one nation under God?
And if God is not the head of this nation, if Christ is not the king of kings, then who is?
What worldview will dominate? Right now there is a clash and I close with this.
There is a clash between competing worldviews. Secular humanism is a worldview completely opposite that of the
Christian faith. In all areas of ethics, it preaches a different gospel.
What they call good news is actually death to the unborn. It's the mutilation of children.
It's totalitarian control over people, forcing injections. Bigger and bigger government which ultimately leads to the thing they hate most, listen, is nationalism.
Because the United States of America is what stood in the way of that one world government, this
Nimrod run system based in Geneva or some other part of Europe.
That secular humanism is trying to overtake every institution in America and yet the conservative movement, those who understand biblical ethics, are also strong.
There's a clash between these two and they can't just be regarded as equal and neutral. So here on one side we have biblical
Christianity and on the other we have secular humanism. And it's not wrong to fight for the gospel.
Don't let anybody tell you that it is wrong. I want to pray and close and ask for fresh power from the
Holy Spirit for us individually to tell people about Christ but also for the future of our nation as such.
Let's pray. And worship team, you can come. Father, we thank you for Genesis 10.
Many of us have skipped over the genealogies and not seen the layers of depth that are there.
But we recognize from Genesis 10 that you do care about languages and peoples and lands and nations.
Righteousness exalts a nation but sin is a reproach to any people. And Lord, I want to pray first of all on this
Pentecost Sunday that you would touch us with fire from your Holy Spirit. Fill us with tongues of fire that we would go out proclaiming speaking the name of Jesus sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with every individual.
We ask for a fresh filling of your Holy Spirit but we also ask for this nation, Lord that you would sustain this nation as John Winthrop prayed on the
Arabella that this would be a city on a hill that the light of the gospel would shine from the
United States of America that we would be a land of liberty and justice for all.
We pray, Lord, for America that it would not go the way of the other nations. We pray that the
United States of America would return to the Bible that there would be a massive revival in this country and that the laws of the land would affect it.
Lord, we pray against abortion in New Jersey and in all the states. We pray against the totalitarian control of governments.
Lord, we pray that Christ would be exalted as King in the United States of America. In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen. When you're born again
Is it all too much to bear? Let me tell you about my
Jesus Do you feel the empty air? The shades of the coldest air
Take off for some year Let me tell you about my
Jesus He makes a way where there ain't a way
Rises up from an empty grave Ain't no sinner that he can't save Let me tell you about my
Jesus His love is strong and he's gracious And the good news is
I know that he Can do for you what he's done for me
Let me tell you about my Jesus That my Jesus changed your life
Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Amen, Amen You can have your ways and tears
But won't be strays and wasted years Cause heaven has to disappear
Let me tell you about my Jesus He knows the problems that you are
He'll know what to do if you cry He'll be working out for your good
Let me tell you about my Jesus He makes a way where there ain't a way
Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Amen, Amen Let me tell you from Calvary The advice for all my guilty
Who would care that much about me Let me tell you about my
Jesus He makes a way where there ain't no way
I know that he Can do for you what he's done for me Let me tell you about my
Jesus That my Jesus changed your life
Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Amen, Amen Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah That my
Jesus changed your life Was that Anna or Ann Wilson?
That was great, thank you guys so much Praise the Lord Hallelujah And Jesus came and said to them
All authority in heaven and on earth Has been given to me
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations Baptizing them in the name of the
Father And of the Son and of the Holy Spirit Teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you