Genesis 10-11 Study ID#12ID1337 Alright, shall we open our Bibles tonight to Genesis 10. If you're just joining us on Wednesday, you're only nine chapters behind. So you can catch up, all of those are online, they are in video, they are on audio. We are working on translating all of our studies online into Spanish. It'll take awhile, but it's being done. We are also transcribing every study so that you can have a written copy of all that's said. You won't have to worry about notes. It'll all be there, the Scriptures will be there. So that's also in the process. It'll take awhile, but that's the goal and the direction we're heading. So you can keep that in your prayers. Tonight we want to continue in our in-depth study of this book of beginnings, the book of Genesis, and we've seen a lot if you've been with us. We looked at the beginning of the earth, and the beginning of the universe, and the beginning of mankind, and the origin of marriage, and the beginning of the family, and the beginning of sacrifice and worship, and the beginning of the gospel message, way back there in Chapter 3, verse 15, when the LORD promised One who would come that would crush the head of the serpent, preached in advance. We've gone from creation to the fall, from the curse to its conseQuences. We watched Abel and then Cain in a very ungodly line that God doesn't track very far. And then Seth, another one of Adam and Eve's children, and His line, the godly line. We got all the way to Noah and the flood, sixteen hundred and fifty six years from the time that Adam and Eve fell. And then we came to the repopulation of the earth, and we ended last week in Chapter 9 with Noah's death, nine hundred and fifty years old and he died. Tonight is really the hardest chapter in the book of Genesis. It is great information. In Chapter 11 we begin to get a view of really the direction that the LORD is taking us. By the time we get to Chapter 12 next week we will be with Abram, and we will be with him for quite some time. But tonight in our chapters, in Chapters 10 and 11, but especially Chapter 10, we come to what was called the ethnic table. It is where God divides the men into nations. And He does so with the purpose of dividing away from them one people for Himself that we might focus our attention on and from them will come the Messiah, the Savior, that promised One who will fulfill Genesis 3:15. Genesis 10 and 11 provide the historical link between Noah and Abraham. And if you've ever wondered where people came from, or countries originated, or ethnic folks, where they can draw themselves back to, you will find the answer here in Genesis 10. We are having a baby boom in our church lately, a lot of young parents having children. And I know it's important when you're young to find uniQue names for your children especially uniQue Bible names. May I suggest that you stay out of this chapter. (laughter) No one wants to name their kid Gomer anymore, or Ham. Much in Chapter 11 precedes that which you read in Chapter 10. It is a common way of writing in a Hebrew style in the sense that you get the big picture and then you get zoomed into some of the details, but Chapter 11 for the most part happens before and during Chapter 10. It was much the same when you went through Genesis 1 and 2. There is the big picture, and then God focuses in in Chapter 2. Verse 1 of Chapter 10 tells us that this is the genealogy of the sons of Noah. Remember the repopulation of the earth has begun. "Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And sons were born to them after the flood." The last verse of Chapter 10 says, "These were the families of the sons of Noah, according to their generations, in their nations; and from these the nations were divided upon the earth after the flood." So those are kind of the bookends of the chapter. The boat has landed. Everyone has gotten off. God has given them direction to be fruitful and multiply, given them authority over man, given 1 them the approval to eat all kinds of moving and creeping things for their health. We spent a long time last week looking at some of those principles that God established with this new generation and this repopulation of the earth. But notice that all of the earth came from Noah's three sons, or a combination of them, right, because they migrated and multiplied and married and intermarried, and so we have this wonderful kind of ethnic culture that we have today. But we're all related in one-way or the other. Shem was the youngest. Ham was the middle son, always put Ham in the middle. (laughter) And Japheth was the oldest. And so it's listed chronologically in Chapter 9, verse 18, again in Chapter 10, verse 1, but beginning in verse 2 we are given the genealogy that starts with Japheth the oldest, and from these three, and get that right, all of the nations of the world began after the flood. It is certainly the most ancient ethnological chart that is available to man. In all of these we are given seventy nations, represented here. Fourteen families came from Japheth and moved to certain areas. Thirty more from Ham. Twenty-six more from Shem. We would like to quickly be taken through some of the select genealogical information, but know this, God soon wants to turn from Japheth, and He wants to turn away from Ham at the tower of Babel, and He wants to turn to Shem, who will bring forth Nahor, who will bear a son named Terah, who will bear a son named Abraham, who will marry a woman eventually named Sarah, and God's intention is to then bring you to Isaac and Jacob and the twelve tribes of Israel so that He can take us forward to Jesus. We've said a few times, God doesn't write the Bible to give you information about everything. He writes it with prejudice and with great purpose. He wants to take you from the beginning to the Savior. He wants to lay those things out. And to the extent that you get information about certain periods, man you're wonderful to have, praise the Lord, thank You God for showing us. But there's so much more that we maybe want to learn that God's not interested in telling us. He wants us to move forward to the greatest act of salvation, the greatest act of love, that the world has ever seen. He wants it all to be about His son. So whenever you get even into these chapters there's, "Here you go, but let's move along." And indeed we will do that by next week. Abram will be told in Chapter 12, verse 3 that through him all of the nations of the earth will be blessed. Now here's the nations, here's the scattering of the nations, and then in Chapter 12 now through you Abram all of the nations will be blessed. So keep that big picture in mind, if you will, as we go through it because we are given this table of nations only to be brought to the one nation God wants us to know. For by them and through them Jesus will bring blessing to all of the earth. So tonight we want to go through for a little bit of time these names that you might want to learn as best as you can. We learn that the Japhethites moved north into Europe and eastward into India. We know that the Hamitic people went south, and the that the Shemites, it'll eventually become Semites, were given the center of God's focus in Israel and its surroundings. So Asia and Africa and Europe find the common land God pledged to Abraham between the Euphrates and the Nile. So take notes. I especially want to point out some of the names that will appear most often in the Bible. There are some that you will read here and you'll not see again. We're really not so concerned about them because we literally don't know what to do with them. But there are other names, and especially early on here, that are repeated over and over, and it would behoove you to know them well as we go. So verse 1. "This is the genealogy of the sons of Noah: Shem, Ham, Japheth. And sons were born to them after the flood. And the sons of Japheth were Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras." You see what I'm saying about those names? "And the sons of Gomer were Ashkenaz, Riphath, Togarmah. And the sons of Javan were Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. From these the coastland peoples of the Gentiles were separated into their lands, everyone according to 2 his language, according to their families, and according to their nations." Now, in Chapter 11 we'll have the dividing of the people and language, so this now, of course, is the big overview.