Sovereign Over the Nations

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Word.
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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles.
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If you don't have a Bible, we have one in the pew in front of you, at least hopefully we do.
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And we invite you to take out a Bible and turn with me to Genesis chapter 10.
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Now last week was Resurrection Sunday and we stayed in Genesis even for that and we ended up with a very interesting Resurrection Sunday sermon.
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At least I think it was interesting.
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But we're going to continue on.
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We have been going verse by verse through the book of Genesis.
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We've been in Genesis now for a few years so we're making some headway, but not too fast.
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And we're going through verse by verse and today we're going to hopefully cover an entire chapter.
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And last week, if you remember, I mentioned that following the process of verse by verse exposition, we don't get to choose the passages that we preach.
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We rather preach the passage that comes and we commit ourselves to preaching the whole counsel of God.
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And this becomes difficult sometimes, especially when we get to sections that are extremely repetitious.
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And that's what we're going to look at today with the genealogy in Genesis 10.
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Yet to skip over these portions would be unwise because they are in the Bible.
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And the Bible says all Scripture is given by inspiration of God.
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It is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for training in righteousness and for correction.
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This is still the word of God.
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And so we will take a day like today to discover why this section is so important.
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It was only a few months ago that we looked at Genesis 5, which was an extended genealogy.
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And some of you came to me afterwards and you said, I was very thankful because I've not looked at the genealogies that way and I was thankful for what we learned.
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So hopefully today you will be in the same frame of mind, ready to learn from God's word.
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Now for the sake of our standing, because we do stand for the reading of the word of God, we're not going to read the whole chapter.
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I'll read through it as we teach through it, but we're going to read verse 1 and verse 32, the two bookends of the chapter.
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So please stand together.
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We'll read verse 1 and then we will go down to verse 32.
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Genesis chapter 10, verse 1.
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These are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
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Sons were born to them after the flood.
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Verse 32.
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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.
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Well, may God add his blessing to the reading and to the hearing of his word.
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You may be seated.
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On March 31st, just a few days ago, my daughter Ashley turned 23 years old and for her gift this year her mother and I purchased her 23andMe.
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We thought it went well with the age and also we thought an online DNA test to help her discover her roots and her ancestry.
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Many of you know Ashley and Cody are adopted and we're thankful to have Cody with us today from the Air Force.
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He's here.
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But it's sometimes something people want to do, especially adopted children wanting to know more about their heritage, about their DNA, about where they came from.
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And this is really an amazing advancement in technology.
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If you think about it, this has really only been in our current generation that we're able to do anything like this.
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In the times past, if somebody wanted to learn about their genealogy, if somebody wanted to learn about their family history, the only way to do that would be to go and to research your parents and research their parents and find whatever historical sources you could.
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And I know of people who've gone to the libraries and who've looked at old films of newsreels and trying to find everything they could about their parents.
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It wasn't just a matter of depositing a DNA sample into a cup and receiving a report back in six months.
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No, it was something that took sometimes years to discover someone's ancestry.
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Recently my wife found a group online who were doing a history of my family, a history of the Foskys.
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And we found out that our family is descended from two brothers, the two Fosky brothers back in the 1800s who came to Georgia during a time where they were doing a land lottery.
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And one of the brothers got land and the other brother didn't.
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Well, we all happen to be descended from the land-getter, not the land-ungetter.
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I guess he flourished a little better than the one who didn't get the land.
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But it's interesting, that's what we know, what little we know about our history is that was our Fosky heritage.
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And most of us find great interest in that because we want to know where our families come from.
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We want to know a little bit, at least, about who we are as a people.
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But when we arrive at Genesis chapter 10, what we are seeing is we're seeing an account of, and take this for what it's worth, literally where everybody came from.
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This is the account of all of us.
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Genesis chapter 10 is sometimes referred to as the table of nations.
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All peoples, tribes, languages, and nations have their ultimate genealogy in Genesis chapter 10.
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In John Currid's commentary, he says this, he says, this genealogy is primarily ethnographic, that is, it deals with nations and peoples rather than with individuals.
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Some individuals are mentioned, but they are important as ancestors of groups.
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It is a unique document, nothing like it has been found in the rest of ancient Near East archaeology.
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Nothing else like this genealogy exists in all the world.
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This is the only one.
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This is the one that we have.
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This is the one the whole world has.
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And as we're going to go through today, we're going to see many groups, not just Christians and Jews, but many groups look at this as being the oldest documented record of where the diverse people groups of the world came from.
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This is it.
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Kent Hughes, in his commentary, says this, he says, the transcending truth of the table of nations is that it gives us an unparalleled ecumenical vision of human reality.
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The table declares the interrelatedness of all peoples.
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We all have the same ancestry.
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We all, red and yellow, black and white, pink and beige and piebald, all share the same paternity of Adam and Noah.
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Our DNA all comes from the same source.
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So, this is what we're learning today.
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We're learning about where we all came from.
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And it's important to note that this is connected to the next chapter as well.
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If you look at chapter 10, and just hold your place there for a second, I want you just to flip one page over to chapter 11, and I want you to see the next part of the narrative.
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What comes after the genealogy of chapter 10 is the Tower of Babel.
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And we will be studying that next week.
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And notice chapter 11 is actually two parts.
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If your Bible has headings like mine does, it shows the Tower of Babel is verses 1 to 9.
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And then after that, you have the descendants of Shem.
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You have another genealogy, which is verses 10 to 32.
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And so, what we have here, if you remember a few weeks ago, I talked about a chiasm.
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A chiasm is when you have a, basically it's a linguistic building block.
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It builds a story out with a centerpiece that's the important part of the story.
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And that's what this is.
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We have a chiasm here.
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We have the genealogy of the nations.
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Then we have the Tower of Babel.
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Then we have the genealogy of Shem, who leads us to Abraham.
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And so, what's the centerpiece in that? If you think of it like an X, remember I said the chiasm is like an X.
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What's the centerpiece of that? The Tower of Babel.
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The Tower of Babel is what causes the nations to disperse.
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In Genesis 10, it says they separated by their languages.
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Well, guess what? Where did the languages come from? Chapter 11 came from the Tower of Babel.
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So, Chapter 10 actually is looking forward to Chapter 11.
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It's looking forward to what's about to happen in sort of in a, kind of a strange order.
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We would all, most of us, if we were telling the story, we would put Tower of Babel first, and then we would give the genealogy.
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But the reason why it's set up this way is it's putting the Tower of Babel right in the middle so that if you're reading this in a Hebrew way, you understand that that's the centerpiece.
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That's the point that's important, and that's what it's all pointing to.
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So, what we're going to learn about today, just remember, is in line with what happens in the next chapter.
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So, Chapter 10 and Chapter 11 fit together as one big story with this one important point in the middle, and that's the Tower of Babel.
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Everybody with me on that? Make sense? The other thing I want you to notice is the use of the word generations.
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If you see that in Chapter 10, verse 1, it says, these are the generations of the sons of Noah.
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Remember that word we talked about weeks ago? We talked about that's the word toledot in Hebrew, and it's a marking post throughout Genesis.
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We see this marking post in Genesis 2.
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These are the generations of the earth when God created the heavens and the earth, and then we see it in Chapter 5.
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These are the generations of Adam.
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Then we see it in Chapter 6 with Noah.
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These are the generations of Noah.
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Now we see it, these are the generations of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, which are the whole world, and then later it's going to be the generations of Shem, specifically.
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And so, this is a way of the writer, Moses, is giving us these marking posts to say, okay, here's where the story is going to begin again, and you can follow it through and understand the narrative a little better.
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So, this brings us to what we're going to look at today in our three parts.
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As you know, if I preach, there's going to be three points.
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I don't know why.
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Thank God.
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He's connected me.
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I recently started studying Dr.
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John Frame.
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He's a theologian and apologist, and I've been reading some of his literature, and he has what's called a tri-perspectival view of the world, and I think he's like, he is now my favorite teacher because I have had that tri-perspectival.
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I just see everything in threes, and maybe it's the Trinity.
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I don't know, but it just so happens to be he sees it the same way, so he's going to become my favorite teacher real quick, I think.
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So, here's our three things we're going to look at today.
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We'll put them on the board for you.
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We're going to ask the question, which nations come from which brother? Because that's what this chapter tells us, which nations come from which brother? The second thing we're going to ask is, who is given special attention? Because I'm going to say there's three particular people in this chapter 10 who are given special attention, one specifically, and then two secondarily.
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We're going to look at who gets the special attention, and then we're going to ask, number three, what significance does this have for the metanarrative, and that word metanarrative simply means the big picture of Scripture.
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What does this tell us about the whole of the Bible? So, let's begin in Genesis 10.
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The first thing we see is after verse 1, we begin at verse 2 with the sons of Japheth, and then if you look down to verse 6, you will see the sons of Ham, and then if you look at verse 21, you'll see Shem.
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And so that's how it's broken down, which is interesting because that's not in order, because Shem is actually the oldest, and Japheth is the youngest.
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But it reverses the order for us, and again, that's another chiastic thing.
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It's reversing the order for a purpose, because later it's going to put all of the emphasis on Shem, and then it's going to put all of the emphasis on the son of Shem, the descendant of Shem, who's Abraham.
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So, there's a pattern here that we need to see, and the pattern is we're going to start with the youngest, we're going to work our way back to the oldest, then we're going to tell the story of the Tower of Babel, then we're going to focus everything on the oldest until we get to Abraham, and then he's going to become the part of the story that takes over the whole rest of the Bible.
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Genesis 1 to 11 takes us through primeval history.
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Genesis chapter 12 and forward, it's Abrahamic history.
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Everything after Genesis chapter 12 has to do with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, his descendants.
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So, that's what it's taking.
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Everything from chapter 1 to chapter 11 is to get us to Abraham, because he is the father of the faithful.
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He is the one who is going to be the father of the Hebrew people.
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So, again, and if I seem like I'm going fast and taking many roads today, just think about what I'm teaching.
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This is a big deal.
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This is not easy stuff.
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So, hopefully we're all hanging together today.
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I'm trying to keep it together in my mind.
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So, let's look at verse 2.
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The sons of Japheth are Gomer, Magog, Madai, Yavin, Tubal, Meshach, and Tiras.
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The sons of Gomer, we note here, he doesn't give us all the grandsons, but he does give us some of the grandsons of Japheth.
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And he goes to the sons of Gomer, which is Ashkenaz, Riphoth, Togomar.
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The sons of Yavin are Elisha, Tarshish, Ketim, Donanim.
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And from these, the coastland people spread in the lands, each with his own language, by their clans and their nations.
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Now, just to give you a quick overview, you say, well, who cares? Here's why we should care.
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These seven descendants of Japheth, essentially, are the ancestors of the Northern Hemisphere.
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And by that, I mean pretty much all of it.
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Because what we're going to find out is the sons of Ham become the descendants of the Southwestern Hemisphere, which is the African people.
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We're going to see they go to Ethiopia and to Egypt and places like that, and they become the descendants of the Africans.
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And the Shemites go into the Arabian Peninsula and become the ancestors of the Arabs and the Jews.
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And so, basically, Japheth is everybody else.
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And from the point of just biblical language, it makes sense because if you go back to chapter 9, when God talks about Japheth, what does he say he's going to do with Japheth? I'm going to spread him out.
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And boy, does he.
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Because honestly, he gets spread all over.
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In fact, bring up my map, Nate, if you would.
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This is, I didn't draw this, so I didn't come up with this.
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But if it helps, this is just a little thing.
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These are available online.
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Kind of gives you the idea.
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The purple would be the Hamites.
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And again, if you look around at the names of these places, you will see where they are and where they go.
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And you'll see the Shemites.
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You see that peninsula there? That's the Arabian Peninsula.
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And then, of course, Japheth is the, a lot of people think it's just the Europeans.
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But from what I've been studying this week, it's actually spread out the Russians and even into Asia.
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Probably even into Native America.
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And so, Japheth really spreads wide throughout the Northern Hemisphere.
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And what's interesting about this is, you guys remember Josephus? Josephus was a first century historian.
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He was a Jewish historian.
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He was actually the first one that we know of to produce a list where he connected the people in Genesis 10 with the people groups of his day.
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And basically, he sort of was the proto-this.
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He sort of started saying, okay, well, this people is this people.
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Like, for instance, when you go back to the Japhethites, you look at Yavin.
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Yavin.
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That's the ancestor of the Greeks.
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That is the Iconian people.
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The Ionian people.
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That's the Greek people.
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And so, and Magog.
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What is Magog? That's the Russian people.
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They trace their ancestry back there.
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And so, this is something that, from just a historical perspective, people can trace back their roots.
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And so, most of us in this room would probably be Japhethites in the sense of where our ancestry would go back.
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And again, God will enlarge Japheth.
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Yes, he did.
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They're all over.
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And so, then we go to Ham.
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And the next group is Ham starts in verse 6.
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Now, Ham gets the lion's share of this chapter.
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Ham gets from verse 6 all the way to verse 20.
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And it begins with four sons.
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Japheth had seven sons and they had grandsons.
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At least the ones that were named.
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There could be unnamed sons.
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I want to mention that, by the way.
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Genealogies in the Bible are not always absolutely full.
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Just like if you did a family tree, it might not necessarily have every single person in it.
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Some of the genealogies in the Bible don't have every single person in it.
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But I do think they're pretty expansive because we're looking at Japheth's seven sons.
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And from his sons, the Japhethites come.
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And the Cushites, rather, I'm sorry, the Hamites, give us the Cushites, the Egyptians, the Canaanites and those from Puth.
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And so, let's look at that.
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It says, the sons of Ham are Cush, Egypt, Phut, or Put, and Canaan.
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And then it gives us the sons of each of these.
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The sons of Cush, Sheba, Havilah, Satbah, Rahma, Saptakah.
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The sons of Rahma are Sheba and Dedan.
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Cush fathered Nimrod.
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Now, we're going to talk about Nimrod in a minute, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time with this, but I'll read it.
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Cush fathered Nimrod.
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He was the first of the earth to be a mighty man.
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He was a mighty hunter before the Lord.
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Therefore, it is said, like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord.
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The beginning of his kingdom was Babel.
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Remember, we're going to talk about this next week, Babel.
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And then there's Erech, Achad, Chalnai in the land of Shinar.
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And from that land, he went into Assyria and built Nineveh.
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What's the story of Jonah? We know about the Ninevites.
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And then Rehoboth, Ur, and Kala, and Rezim between Nineveh and Kala.
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That is the great city.
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Egypt fathered Ludim, Anamim, Lehabim, Nephtuhim.
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All these im means groups.
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That im at the end, it means groups of people.
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So he's fathering not just individuals.
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He's fathering nations.
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Ham's got a lot of folks coming from him too.
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Japheth ain't the only one who had a lot of descendants.
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Ham had a lot of descendants too.
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Pathrushim, Kasluhim, from whom the Philistines came.
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Who are the Philistines? Philistines, the great enemies of Israel, right? Remember, the Philistines was David and Goliath.
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Goliath was a Philistine.
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You know, this is giving us history, right? Important history, who these people are.
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And Katharim.
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Now, Canaan gets attention.
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Why does Canaan get attention? Well, what's the land of Israel, what was it called originally? Canaan land, right? It's the land of Canaan.
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So Canaan gets attention here.
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Canaan fathered Sidon, his firstborn, and Heth.
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And the Jebusites, by the way, where does Jerusalem come from? The Jebusites.
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Jerusalem, Jebusalem is where the name Jerusalem comes from.
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So the Jebusites were the ones who first had Jerusalem.
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The Amorites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, the Arkites, Arkitites, the Sinites, the Arvidites, and again, the Ites.
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What is Ites? It's peoples, right? But like the Eem, this is groups, right? The Zemurites, 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 and Gomorrah, we know about them, right? What happened to Sodom and Gomorrah comes later in Genesis, we know about that.
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Adma and Sabaim, as far as Lasha, these are the sons of Ham by their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations.
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So from Ham, we have the Ethiopians, the Egyptians, the Libyans, all of them point back to Ham.
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And so on the map again, this is where these groups find their history.
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Now we go to Shem, Shem verse 21.
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And by the way, you've heard the term Semite, that's Shem, that's the father of the Semite people.
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This is the Jewish people trace their line back to Shem.
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So this is the Semites.
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To Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, by the way, we'll talk about this a little bit more in a second, but Eber is why the Jewish people call themselves Hebrews.
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They are sons of Eber.
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Eber is the root of Hebrews.
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So, Shemites, they're Semites and they're Hebrews.
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So, to Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, the elder brother of Japheth, the children were born.
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The sons of Shem, Elam, Asher, Arpichad, Lud, and Aram.
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The sons of Aram, Uz, Hul, Kether, and Mash.
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Arpichad fathered Shelah, Shelah fathered Eber, that's the Hebrew.
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To Eber were born two sons, the name of one was Peleg, in his days the earth was divided, and his brother's name was Joktan.
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Joktan fathered Almadad, Shephalah, Haz, this one's hard, Harzavimeth, Jera, Hadaram, Uzah, and Shem.
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Diklah, Obel, Abime'el, Sheba, Ofer, Havalah, and Jabob.
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All of these were the sons of Joktan.
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The territory in which they lived extended from Misha in the direction of Sephar to the hill country to the east, and then it says these are the sons of Shem by their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations.
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All of them end that way, by the way.
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If you go back up to verse 20, these are the lands of Ham by their clans, by their languages, by their nations, and you go back up again to verse 5, from these the coastland people spread out, each with their own language, clans, and nations.
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So how do we know this happens after the story of the Tower of Babel? Because they have languages, right? It's saying they're spreading out by their, not just their clans, but by their languages.
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So this is what tells us sort of how it fits in the story, because the language thing hasn't happened yet.
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At this point, everybody's speaking the same language, and we don't know what language they're speaking, but at this point, prior to Babel, they're all speaking a similar language, and God will confuse that.
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God will give them different languages, and that will be the reasons why they spread out.
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We'll talk about this more next week, but kind of think about that.
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If you're working on a building with a group of guys, and suddenly you're the only one who speaks English, it's going to be real hard to finish that building, right? So that's sort of what we're going to talk about next week.
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And so we have the Babel story brings in the idea of clans, and the idea of separation, and the idea of languages.
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So that tells us where we are.
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And so from Shem, getting back to the Shemites, we have the Persians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, which are the Chaldeans, the Lydians, the Assyrians, all of the, again, all the Arabian people find their roots in Shem.
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All right, so that's the table of nations.
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Now, that was the first question we asked.
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Who came from which brother? Now we know.
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Let's go back to our outline, Nate, and we'll look at the second question.
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Okay, of all of those people, we just, and I read them all, said I was, said we're going to read them all, and we did.
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So now that we've read them all, now who gets special attention? Well, the first people to get special attention obviously are the three main brothers.
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And again, we are either a Shemite, a Japhethite, or a Hamite.
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At this point, it doesn't matter, because there has been so much intermarriage within the groups, you really couldn't say I'm absolutely 100% anything anymore, because of the descendants and how things have worked.
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And honestly, you know, when I looked at my, my, we did the ancestry thing, Jennifer and I did, she was like 99% British Isles.
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So she's closest I've ever seen to almost 100% one thing.
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And I was, I was broken up.
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I had some Irish and Scottish.
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I was so happy about Scottish, because I've always wanted to wear a kilt.
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And so there was some Scot in there.
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I won't do it while I preach, I promise.
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But, but there was, but, you know, I got hers confused with mine, because I used to say I was the one that was 99%.
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But I looked at him again yesterday.
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She's actually the 99% one.
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But, but it really is most of us are really a combination of so many different backgrounds and everything.
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So it's hard to say anybody's one thing.
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Some people say that the Hebrew, the Hebrew creates the, the three types of scientific designations.
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And there are three scientific designations for people.
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From a scientific perspective, there are Caucasian, Negroid, Mongoloid.
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That's the three designations of people.
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There's some argument that there's a fourth, Austroloid.
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But either way, if that's the case, then you could say that, that Japhethites would be Caucasians, the Hamites would be the Negroid, and the Semites might be the Mongoloid.
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I don't know if I would go there.
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This is all speculation at this point.
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But as I said before, at this point, we're all, we're all from somebody.
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Most importantly though, nobody is from anybody else.
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We are all sons of Adam.
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We're all sons of Noah.
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We're all part of that same family in that sense.
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And that's what brings us to the next part, which is, well, who gets special attention in this story? And why? Why does anybody get special attention in this story? Well, there's only, as I was reading through this, I read through it several times trying to, you know, do my, do my investigation into the text as I'm getting ready to read it.
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I noted only really three names are mentioned with any particular distinction other than Shem, Ham, and Japheth, who are all of us.
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The first is a man by the name of Nimrod.
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Look at verse 8.
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Nimrod gets attention.
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And he is the son of Cush, which is Ethiopia, is Cushites, Ethiopians.
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And he fathered a man named Nimrod.
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He was the first on earth to be a mighty man.
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And he was a mighty hunter before the Lord.
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Therefore it is said like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord.
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This probably sounds very positive to many of us, especially, is Chuck here today? I imagine Chuck would love it.
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He's not here.
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You can tell him I said this.
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He would probably love it if over his door, it said mighty hunter before the Lord.
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Like that was his sign, like going into his house.
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Have you ever been to Chuck's? He loves to hunt.
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And he's got, you know, he's done a lot of hunting.
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He's got heads to prove it.
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Right? And so the idea of being a mighty hunter, I know a lot of men who would love that designation.
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And so we think of it in our context of being a positive thing.
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But most of the commentators and people who have looked at ancient languages and how this is actually broken down for us, actually say it's actually not a positive thing.
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The name Nimrod means let us rebel.
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That word Nimrod is tied to rebellion.
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And the concept of being a hunter is actually not really tied so much with being like a, what we would think of as a man who goes out and hunts for food, but rather of being a tyrant, a man who hunts for men, a man who is a powerful hunter in the sense of he is a, almost what we would think of like a warlord.
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Jim Boyce in his commentary says this.
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He says, this is not talking about Nimrod's ability to hunt wild game.
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He was not a hunter of animals.
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He was a hunter of men.
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He was a warrior.
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He said, well, where do we get that from? Well, Henry Morris, who many of you are probably very familiar with, did a tremendous study of Genesis and particularly the flood and what happened after the flood.
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Henry Morris said there was a Jerusalem Targum that was discovered that actually said this, and this is a quote.
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It says, he was a powerful in hunting and in wickedness before the Lord, for he was a hunter of the sons of men.
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And he said to them, depart from the judgment of the Lord and adhere to the judgment of Nimrod.
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He was a mighty hunter.
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And the idea of being before the Lord is that his, not necessarily that he was righteous before the Lord, but rather, as it says here, as Nimrod, the strong man, the strong in hunting and wickedness.
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And he was known for his wickedness before the Lord or his rebellion.
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Now, that being said, I do want to make another quick point.
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Many of us associate the word Nimrod with a fool.
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I mean, I don't know how many of you grew up in public school and had somebody say, ah, you're a Nimrod.
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And it was not usually a nice thing to say.
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But do you know where that came from? I had to say this.
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You might think it's irrelevant for a sermon, but I had to mention this.
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Do you know where that comes from? Bugs Bunny.
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1940, there was a Bugs Bunny cartoon where he, Elmer Fudd, he saw Elmer Fudd and he called him Nimrod because he was a hunter.
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But it wasn't calling him a fool.
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But because Bugs Bunny is so sarcastic, all the people thought he was calling him a fool.
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I just had to tell you that.
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You may not think it's relevant to me.
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Enough to put it in my notes.
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But what's the significance of Nimrod? Here it is from my perspective.
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I think this is important.
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Nimrod reminds us that there are still two lines.
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Remember, we've been talking about this since Adam and Eve had Cain and Abel.
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There were two lines.
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There was the godly and the ungodly.
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Cain kills Abel.
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They have Seth.
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And now you have the godly line and the ungodly line.
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Even after the flood, you have who? You have the godly line of Japheth and Shem.
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Shem being the primary godly line because he's going to bring Abraham.
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And then you have the ungodly line of Ham, the one who was making fun of his father, making his father a fool.
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We talked about that last week, right? Well, Nimrod is a person, based on the text, he's a person who lives for his own glory.
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He's a person who advance his own kingdom.
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In fact, what's one of the kingdoms of his? Read it.
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Babel.
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What was the problem with Babel? What are we going to learn about next week? They built a tower to heaven.
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And everybody thinks they were trying to make it up to where God lives.
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That's not what the tower was about.
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The tower was a building to their own name, a building so that their name would be remembered in the earth.
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It was about their own pride.
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The tower of Babel is a tower of pride.
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And who is the king? Nimrod.
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Look at it.
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He is the one.
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He founded Babel and these other places.
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So, Nimrod reminds us there's still a strong line within the generations.
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There's this line of those who serve the true God and there are the line of those who do not.
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And that's where I say, when I say, who's given special attention? Nimrod's given a special attention, but somebody else has given a special attention.
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Look down in verse 25.
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Eber is given special attention.
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It says, to Eber, this is the father of the Hebrew people, to Eber were born two sons.
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The name of one was Peleg.
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And here's the point that I'm going to make.
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For in his days the earth was divided.
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What is that about? It's in my opinion, and you can argue with me later, send me an email if you want.
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It's in my opinion that that's referring to what happened at Babel because that's when the people were divided.
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Some people think that's when the continents divided.
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Some people think that's when continental drift began and that's what it's talking about.
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That's when the earth was divided, was in the days of Peleg.
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I don't think so.
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I think that what this is referring to is that it was in the days of Peleg that this situation with Babel happened and that's when the people of all the earth were separated.
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And so we have the descendant of Eber, Peleg, and it was in his lifetime that the people of the earth were separated.
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All right.
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So we have three significant people if you want to, just in case you're making notes, it's Nimrod, Eber himself, father of Hebrew people, and his descendant, Peleg, in whose lifetime the earth was separated.
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All right, number three.
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What's the significance of all this? Is this just been like jeopardy for Christians today? We're going to learn all these neat things? No, there's actual significance here for the overall metanarrative of scripture and so we move to the third point which is our application point.
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All nations of the world are ultimately related through these three brothers and as I noted earlier, you know, all the Phosges are related to two brothers but all the people of the world are related through three brothers and if you look at verse 32, that's how it sums up the chapter.
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It says, 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.
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Now I don't want to make a long second sermon about this but I said it a few weeks ago, I'm going to say it again today because I said this when we were in Genesis 5.
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This is one of the reasons why hatred of other human beings simply because of what they look like and what color they are is really ridiculous because honestly, we're all of the same blood in regard to our ancestry.
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We all go back to Adam, we all go back to Noah, we're either a Shemite, a Hamite or a Japhethite and really at the end of the day, we're all of the same family which is the human family and so that, verse 32 tells us that.
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It says, from these the nations spread abroad on the earth.
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Second thing, all nations of the world began, this is important, I had this conversation yesterday actually with another pastor.
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All nations of the world began with a right understanding of God.
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Now that might, you might want to argue with me later but let me explain, let me put down what I'm saying.
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You look around the world today, if I brought that map back up and you got all the nations of the world and you can usually point out by nation where their idolatry is, right? You look at India and it's filled with false gods.
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You look at China and it's filled with all kinds of spiritual and false deities, right? You go to Africa and there's all kinds of false teachings and you go up into Europe and there's all kinds, it's everywhere.
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Idolatry knows no bounds, right? Whether they're worshipping a witch doctor or they're worshipping Thor or they're worshipping Buddha, wherever you go there is idolatry.
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But all the nations of the world began from three brothers who knew who God was.
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Now we could argue about him and you know his foolishness but there's something that we can't doubt.
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He knew who God was.
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He saw his dad build a boat because God told him to.
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He got on that boat and he lived on that boat for a year and he got off and he saw his dad worship that God and he knew who that God was.
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This is one of the reasons why when we look at the nations of the world and we see their idolatry, we can say to the sociologists who say to us, well see, all men were originally polytheists and they evolved into monotheists.
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Hogwash, the Greek word, what? Baloney.
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It's baloney.
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That's not the way it is.
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All nations were monotheists.
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They knew the God who exists and the God who created all things and idolatry came from that not the other way around.
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People didn't go from being pantheists to being monotheists to being, by the way, that's the Darwinian view of religion.
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The Darwinian view of religion is that all people were once pantheists and then they became polytheists and then they became monotheists just to make it easier.
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In Darwinism that would make sense but that's not how it is.
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How it is, is this.
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Adam knew God.
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His descendants knew God.
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Noah knew God.
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Shem, Ham, and Japheth knew God and from their children, idolatry came.
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So that's just a key important truth.
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So when we're talking to the person from another country and they say, well, you know, I was brought up a Muslim or I was brought up a Hindu.
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Yeah, but that's not where you came from.
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That's not where you came from.
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Your people and my people and all the people knew the one true God.
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And that's why I titled today's sermon, going back to the title because that's actually, I didn't fix the title on that screen, is Sovereign over the Nations.
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The God who is, is the God who created all nations.
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And I want you to turn to one last passage and this is where we're going to close.
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Go to Acts chapter 17.
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In Acts chapter 17, the Apostle Paul is speaking to the men on Mars Hill.
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He's speaking to the Athenian philosophers.
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And you've heard this before but I want you to hear it now with new ears.
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I want you to hear what he says.
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Beginning in verse 24, this is Paul speaking to the men on Mars Hill.
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He says this.
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He says, The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by men, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.
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And he, verse 26, this is a key verse, And he, that is God, made from one man, that is Adam, every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling places.
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I bring that map up again and I show you.
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That was God's sovereignty.
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God sovereignly spread out the nations and appointed their places.
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All Paul is doing on Mars Hill is quoting what happened in Genesis 10.
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God is sovereign over the nations.
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God is sovereign.
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And why did he do it? That they may seek God, verse 27, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him, yet he's actually not far from each one of us.
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For in him we live and move and have our being, as some of our own poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring.
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You see, this reminds us there's no place in the world where God is not the Lord.
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There is no place in the world where God is not the Lord.
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You say, well, no, God's not the God of Iraq, that's Allah.
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No, Yahweh is still the Lord in Iraq.
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Yahweh is still the Lord in Arabia.
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Yahweh is still the Lord in China.
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Well, they don't believe it.
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I don't care.
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It doesn't matter.
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He is still the Lord.
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He is still sovereign over the nations.
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And what we're going to see through Genesis is that the attention will go from the nations to one man, Abraham, and to one family, the family of Abraham through Isaac and Jacob.
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And it's going to begin a trajectory through the Bible to get to one man, Jesus.
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And what will be the purpose of Jesus' coming? To fulfill the blessing promised to Abraham, which was what? Through you, all the nations will be blessed.
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Jesus fulfills the blessing to Abraham that all of those nations will ultimately be blessed through him.
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In fact, I told you we were going to finish in Acts.
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I'm going to read this.
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You don't have to turn there, but I want you to hear this in Revelation 5.
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This is Jesus' blessing to the nations.
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Listen to what it says.
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Revelation 5, verse 6, it says, "...and between the throne and the four living creatures, and among the elders, I saw a lamb as though it had been slain, with seven horns, and with seven eyes, and with seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.
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And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne.
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And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.
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And they sang a new song, Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people of God from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation." See, here's the point.
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This table of nations in Genesis 10 represents people who will sit at the table of the Lord at the feast of the Lamb.
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That's a wonderful truth because it reminds us we don't evangelize by color.
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We don't evangelize by continent.
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We don't evangelize by what somebody looks like or talks like.
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What we do is we take the gospel to every nation, knowing that in the end, Christ will save people from every tribe, tongue, and nation.
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You don't have to look at your genealogy to know if you can be His.
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All you must do, the Bible says, is believe on Him.
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Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, no matter who you are, and you will be saved.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word, what power there is even in the genealogies, what great reminders there are even in our own family history.
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Lord, I pray now as we focus our attention on the table and the body and blood that was given for people from every tribe, tongue, and nation, I pray that You would bless us as we partake.
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And Lord, if there are those who do not know You, Lord, let them not look for salvation in their genealogy, but let them look for salvation in Him who is the very Bread of Life, Jesus Christ.
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And it's in His name we pray.
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Amen.