Beginnings (Genesis 1-11) / Lesson 11: The Origin of Nations

All right, we ready to get going? All right, well listen, I apologize first of all about not being here last week. I was concerned and so I put that recap together and if you were here, I hope it helped. Just I know that for many of us that have been coming to this and been walking through this, it's been kind of like drinking through a fire hydrant and you're just kind of being knocked back every week with some things that maybe you hadn't thought about that way and so I thought maybe that would help a little bit to try to get us to a place that kind of restating it enough that it might start clicking a little bit. This week, we're gonna go and so this week and next week are the last two weeks by the way and so this week, we're covering Genesis chapter 10 and we may have, you may have heard it called the table of nations and then next week, we're gonna be in chapter 11 with the Tower of Babel. These two chapters, 10 and 11, actually go together. What you find sometimes is when you think about it from a historical standpoint, we might think, well, they should have put chapter 11 first because everything we read about in chapter 10 pretty much, well, not all of it but several things in it come following what happens in chapter 11 but rather than doing that and I think it's a masterful thing that was done is that we have all of the nations

in those that were dispersed in chapter 11. Does that make sense? So we find all these nations are listed and then we find out why they were dispersed next week so that's the way it kind of is laid out for us but I can tell you that if you ever read through your Bible and you get into these lists of names, that is just a big yawn for most of us and it's kind of, you know, every time I read through in the One Year Bible every year and get to the list of names, man, the temptation to just buzz on is there and because you can't pronounce half of them but it's just a difficult time and Genesis chapter 10 can be the same way. However, I would encourage you not to do that and in Genesis chapter 10 especially simply because this is just critical for us to understand. As a matter of fact, if you have your outline and you just wanna write this down at the very first of it is just, I thought let's just start off with kind of a key statement that I wanna help us with as we get into this chapter is just simply this statement that understanding the significance of this list of nations will open your spiritual eyes to seeing God's plan of redemption unfolding through Scripture. Things are gonna begin to make sense that we find in Scripture

that we haven't really thought about in this way and so as we look at it, I hope that it will help us. As a matter of fact, as we're looking at it and I don't know if I ought to go there now but I guess I could. This morning in my one year reading, I think it was this morning or yesterday morning, pretty sure it was this morning. Um. Joshua's talking, I'm in Joshua 24 and 23-24. Let's see here. Well, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to do it in the New Living Translation or whatever I read in the mornings but yeah, he says, Joshua said to all the people, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, long ago your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and Nahor and they served other gods. Then it goes on and tells about how then Abraham was taken out of that. So he's actually talking about a time that came during kind of, well, we'll read about it in chapter 11, the last part of it. We'll see it but it's kind of during this table of nations time after the dispersion that people were worshiping other gods and Terah and Nahor.

Abram and Nahor were also part of that in that dispersion. And so anyway, as we come to this, there's some things I want us to see. Now, whenever you look at this table of nations, there's some things that I'm hoping I can say this right. Okay, I'm gonna try to say it clearly because I don't want it to be misheard. But let me just go on and I'll just read what I have here. So as we're looking at this, this is a kind of a divine census of the ancient world. Now, here's a statement and it's kind of a theological statement. And this is where it can be misunderstood. So I'm gonna try to make sure we understand it. Genesis 10 is not an exhaustive ancient census, but a profound declaration. All nations are under God's sovereign gaze. The number 70 symbolizes completeness. And we're gonna come to this at the end as well. And totality in biblical literature. So let me tell you what I'm not saying real quick. What I'm not saying here is I'm not saying that there are nations that didn't come out of Genesis 10. There are. There aren't any nations that are not in Genesis 10, if that makes sense. But the ones mentioned in Genesis 10 represent every nation. So I don't know, I'm about confusing myself here. Here'd be some questions that maybe somebody might have.

Well, what about the American Indians? Where are they? Are they in this list? And they aren't in one sense and they are in another. And let me, I'll explain that in just a minute. Let me go on and I'll come back to that. But what I want you to understand this is, there is nothing like Genesis 10 in ancient history anywhere. No civilization has this. And this is what we're gonna focus on. And we're gonna see why it's here. So let's just go on and look at this as I'm talking about it. Is that you got these three sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And Genesis 10 stands entirely unique in ancient literature. No other civilization taught the universal brotherhood of mankind, tracing all diverse peoples back to the singular dual pattern of Abraham and Noah. Nobody taught this. And that is significant for us when we think about the gospel, when we think about scripture and the uniqueness of our Bibles. You know, somebody might say to you, for instance, well, listen, all religions kind of get to the same place ultimately.

And, you know, I mean, the people in India, they have their creation stories and they have their understanding of worship and the people in, you know, Iran or in China or any of those places. I mean, why would we say ours is, you know, the only way, Jesus is the only way. And they might come to you like that. And you maybe say, well, you know, well, one of the things, and this is about Genesis 10 that's important for us to understand, is that Genesis 10 being unique is unique because of the purpose of scripture and the purposes of God. No other nation had in their mind to go and save other nations. They had in their mind to conquer them, but they had nothing in, their gods had nothing that they worshiped, had nothing in their minds to say, hey, let's get everybody to follow our way because our way's right. They didn't have that. They had every other nation has in their history that they are not, that they are unique and distinct from other nations, if that makes sense. And yet this Genesis chapter 10 says that is not true. And actually, science proves this to be accurate.

And we'll look at that in just a minute. So as we're coming to it, let me just kind of say some things that we've got here. In Genesis chapter 10, verse one says, these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Sons were born to them after the flood. And so we have this going on. Now, I'm gonna go on and just go to verse 32 of Genesis chapter 10, because I wanna make sure that I'm clear on what I'm saying here. It says, these are the clans of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies in their nations and from them. these, the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood." Now here's what it's saying. From what we have here, all people on earth came from this. Okay, I want to make sure you know that's what I'm saying. However, Genesis 10 is not a census of every clan. Does that make sense? In other words, if we took a census of Rankin County, they would have everybody in there, every name would be in there, correct? That would be a census. This is not that. However, Genesis 10 represents all the people throughout history, okay? In other words, our forefathers, our ancestors are in Genesis 10. Am I making sense? I just want to make sure that's clear because I didn't want to make that sound weird or wrong. Basically, here's what we find in Genesis 10. We are all one race, the human race. We really are. We all come from the same lineage, all of us. We all come from the same lineage, all of us. In the New Testament days, Paul was preaching in Athens in Acts chapter 17. While he's preaching, now you have to understand, he's preaching to these philosophers who are highly intellectual, who think that Greece is kind of one up on everybody else and they're more together than any other nation and they don't see themselves even remotely like other nations or even from the same background. They see themselves as a unique people group,

different and distinct. As he's preaching the gospel and bringing the gospel to them, why do they need to hear the gospel? I mean, why would they want to hear what happened in Israel, in Jerusalem? I mean, they're Greeks. They're intellectuals. They come from a whole different place. They serve their gods. You serve your gods. In the midst of that, as Paul is preaching, he says this in Acts 17 verse 26. He says, and he, as Paul is preaching, God's who he's referring to, 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. Now we hear that and we go, well, yeah, you know, we get that. You have to understand this was mind blowing. Those philosophers did not believe this. They did not think that they came from the same ancestry as the Jews. So whenever, for instance, just a side note, so when the Nazis believed that there was an Aryan race, that was not new. That was not new. That was not unique. That's the way the world thinks, but that's not the way God speaks. Does that make sense? You see, understanding this is going to help you understand your Bible and your responsibility as a believer and who we are and what our responsibility is to the world we live in. So as we're going through this, we're going to just start walking through these three sons of Noah and their lineage, and I'm going to get into some things and say some things along the way, and I hope it helps. But as we're looking at them, we're going to go on and start with the way they did the list. Now, if you look at the list, it's really kind of interesting because he starts with Japheth, and we're going to look at him first, but as you look at the geographic view of the world that he's naming all these 70 nations, is he starts out here and he works inward, and it's the way it's laid out in Genesis 10. So it starts with the sons of Japheth. In Genesis chapter 10 verse 5, it says, From these the coastland peoples spread in their lands, each with his own language, by their clans, in their nations. And so we see that this is something that we have here. We've got these nations that are spread out in their nations. They're here and they're functioning. And we're going to be looking at, at these different nations as they're out there, looking at those, we have the next one, the sons of Ham. He says it this way, Genesis chapter 10, verse 20. These are the sons of Ham by their clans, their languages,

their lands, and their nations. Notice some more verbiage that he keeps saying over and over. It's similar to what Paul said in Acts chapter 17, a similar type thing is said about the sons of Shem. Genesis chapter 10, verse 31. These are the sons of Shem by their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations. And so here, I want to show you this, what we find in Genesis 10, and really it's in scripture, and we're going to see how this works. On what I'm just calling, I'm going to call it the four, the human condition, basically in four stages. I think I've got this in your outline, right? The human condition. So we've got Japheth, we've got Ham, we've got Shem, and then we're going to go through those in just a minute. Let's go on and do this first though. The human condition in four stages. I'm going to give you these. The first thing the Bible teaches us, and the first thing we see is the word unity. And that is, we are all one people. So know that God created us as one people. We came from the same common ancestry. What's interesting about that, side note, DNA has proven this to be true. Actually, DNA has proven that God was telling the truth whenever he said this. Why is that? Why is that important? Well, that's important because what I said earlier, no other nation taught this. No other nation taught this. They would have assumed that the DNA of people from China would be nothing like the DNA of people from Africa or people from India, because these

are different human groups, but the Bible says, oh no, we're one people. And that's important for us to understand. That's why the most non-racist person should be a Christian, because we understand that all of us come from one common ancestor, we all are that. So that's stage one. And the human condition. And so we see that that's the way God had it. That's the way God said it. It's the way he set it up. But then we see in the middle of it that there was something that happened after that, and the second stage would be what I'm just calling diversity. And that is, we are one people, but we have many families and there are multitudes of families. So you have, Japheth had a family and Shem and Ham, they had families, but they're still one people. And as we see that spreading though, we know that, that, that what happens and what we're going to see next week in Genesis 11 was stage three was division. A division took place. Now we're going to talk about it more next week, but I just say it here that divided by gods, we're going to see that in Deuteronomy 32 and divided by languages. So we'll, we'll see that more next week. I've talked about it already. And then stage four, did everybody get those down by the way? Okay. Stage four is what I'm calling dispersion. So, so that's where God sent everybody out and we were, each, each nation was given territories that were sent out into territories that they began to disperse into over time. Okay. So as you're, you're reading in scripture, what you're finding is that

this is exactly what he was saying. He was saying, this is what happened and that he spread people out. Let me just read that. That verse again to you that, that we see it. Paul says, and God made from one man every nation of mankind to live on the, on all the face of the earth, having determined a lot at periods and the boundaries of the earth, the boundaries of the earth, the boundaries of the earth, the boundaries And the boundaries of their dwelling place, they were set apart that way. And so, as we're looking at that, we see that that the Bible is telling us that we were created one people. We had families. But in the middle of that, there came a division, a point that happens in next week, we'll see it in Genesis 11. And because of that, a dispersion. Of people going around the world. So let's go back and let's look at the sons of Japheth and in Genesis chapter. 10 verse 2, we read this, it says, the sons of Japheth, and it names seven of them, Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshach, and Tiras. And so as we see those names, let me just kind of give you some things about them as we're going and looking at them. First of all, let me just kind of give you, this is, the name Japheth itself actually means expansion or it means God will enlarge. That's what it means. And that's exactly what the family line of Japheth did. They went everywhere. And we're going to see that as we're looking at this in just a minute, and we're going to see some places that they went and, and, and all around the world they went and they just, in fact, there's two kinds of things that they, that were developed through the lineage of Japheth that were unbelievable kind of things that they did. One was the, the taming of the horse and the lines of Japheth, his family lineage, and

we'll see that in a second, had a group that learned to not only do that, but learned how to, because they were a warring people, learned how to go and take areas by riding horses with bows and shooting arrows from a horse. That's where it actually came through. Japheth's line learned how to do this. So let's just look at some of the things we'll see. Some of these names, there's Gomer and Magog and that last picture I had the picture. Yeah, there, let me go back to that. That's the areas, the region. So if you're looking at it, you can kind of see, this is Europe. You come down, you've got a Caspian sea. Let me see if I can find it here. If you can kind of see there's Italy down here, Javan, Javan, Javan, Javan. That's actually Greece. And so you've got those areas and I'll talk more about them in just a second, but let's just look at some of them and see what we find here. Magog, let's start with that one, or excuse me, let's start with Gomer, however you want to say him. Gomer is primarily the people that would be considered modern day Turkey. In New Testament times, it was called Galatia, which is actually a wording from the name Gomer. Jewish historian Josephus records that the people were called Galatians or Gauls in AD 93, and previously were called Gomerites, Gomerites. They migrated westward to what is now called France and Spain. As a matter of fact, for centuries, France was called Gaul for Gomer, it comes from that. It was just a wording there. Northwest Spain is called Galatia to this day. Some migrated on to what's now called Wales. Here's an interesting side note. The Welsh historian, his last name's Davis, he records a traditional Welsh belief that

descendants of Gomer landed on the Isle of Britain from France about 300 years after the flood, and even goes on to say that they believe that their language was the original language of the family of the Gomerites. In fact, he records that the Welsh language is called Gomerog. It's interesting, and this is why I'm saying this, is because here you've got people hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years later having those names out of Genesis 10 that have, through the travels, coming down. Other members in that same group settled in what is now called Armenia, and so we see that you've got all kind of groups from that. They really dispersed heavily along the way into various areas. You ever heard of an Ashkenazi Jew? Ashkenaz is a word for German, from the German area. So there were German Jews that left and went out. So anyway, you got that. You go on down, you got Magog. Many of you probably heard of Magog in Revelation and some things like that. But the Greeks called them Magogites, if you will. They called them Scythians. They now were, they included parts of Romania and Ukraine. Scythia was in that area. Medi, which would be the next one there, Medi, would be people that were not only along with Shem's son, Elam, but people in Medi, the ancestry of modern day Iran. So I know we kind of go, well, really, if you look at the spread of Japheth, it would be the entire Indo-European group of people, which is a humongous group of people

that went out from there. You've got, oh my gosh, there's so many other ones I could spend time on. You have the Medes who came through that. The Medes also, they settled not only in India, but they went on into, I mean, in Iran, but also into India. Then you've got Javan. Many of you may have heard of Javan or Javan, however you want to say it. If you were reading in your Hebrew Bible in the Old Testament, of course, scriptures, and you came across the word that may be translated in ours, Greece, it's Javan in Hebrew. And it comes from that Genesis 10. Daniel refers to the, you know, in Genesis, I mean, Daniel 8, 21, to the king of Graecia. It's literally called the king of Javan. So you've got places like you may remember in a guy who wound up deciding he was gonna go to another area called Tarshish. Didn't quite make it there, but he was headed that way till he had to jump boat and the fish took him back where he was supposed to go, named Noah. It goes on. You've got so many like this. You've got areas like Mishak, which is actually the ancient name for Moscow.

You have Tiris, which is the name of the Thracians, would be what that'd be. Many who now live in Yugoslavia came from that area. Anyway, it goes on and on like that. One interesting one out of Tiris is the group, this group that went that way were the ones that really went strong into the horse riding. I talked about taming the horses. They were a very aggressive, warlike people. And they worshiped, the ones who came under Tiris, worshiped a god that they had started off naming after their ancient ancestor, Tiris, but later it was changed into the name Thor, the god of thunder. Comes from the name out of Genesis 10 for that ancestor there. So anyway, that's some of those. I know that's exciting literature to be able to know and hear, but the big thing is to see how the Bible is showing us how this works. It goes on into the sons of Ham. You get into Genesis 10, verse six, the sons of Ham, Cush, Egypt. It's actually not said that way, but just have it here. Put, R-P-H-U-T, it's still put, and just, it's not, we make P-H sound like an F sound. It doesn't in the other languages. And then Canaan all came from Ham. And these were, these descendants,

they mainly went in Southeast Asia and Africa. It's interesting that you find about the sons of Ham that is talked about in scripture in Psalm 105, verse 23. It says, then Israel came to Egypt. Jacob sojourned in the land of Ham. In verse 27, it says, they performed. his signs among them, and miracles in the land of Ham. So it uses the term there out of Genesis 10 whenever it's talking about even being in Egypt because Egypt came from that area. So if you were to look at it, civilizations that came out of there are huge, in fact some of the greatest civilizations in early mankind came from the lineage of Ham and you find them there. You've got, of course, Put or Pohut, you've got Mizraim, which is the name used in the Old Testament for Israel, and then you have Cush. One of the side notes, just to kind of say as you're looking at me, just going to put it up here, let me say some things about them here is, well I'll say it in just a second. So with Cush, they settled in primarily ancient Ethiopia, Upper Nile, produced a guy we're going to look at a little bit later, maybe, he was named Nimrod, I didn't really talk about him here because I wanted to focus on this, which I believe was the first world ruler and he was from an area called Nineveh and Babylon, and actually the whole area was called Shinar, it's talked about in Revelation. Mizraim was Egypt, which is one of the first great civilizations, and then Canaan, let me talk about Canaan in just a second. So here's one of the things, in fact years ago, whenever I taught, actually taught Genesis in Africa, and whenever I was teaching them in Africa, they had been taught by some Europeans who were using colonialism tactics to control people, and so they brought their Bibles in and started teaching them, that you see that the reason that you are poor in Africa, and the reason that your color, your skin color is the way it is, is because Noah cursed Canaan, cursed Ham, that's what it says, actually cursed Ham, well actually it wasn't Ham that was cursed, it was his son Canaan, if you remember, right?

You remember the story? And so I just was there teaching them, and whenever I came to this, I asked them, how many of you have heard that the reason Africa is poor is because of the curse that was put on by Noah? Every one of them raised their hand, and I said, well you've been lied to, because that is not the truth, because Canaan never went to Africa, Canaan went to the land of Canaan, where people like the Hittites, and the Jebusites, where the Phoenicians lived, and you may tell you something was crazy, whenever I showed them that, well let me just say, that African people get a little bit more excited than Americans do, when they hear something that is just really great. They just started jumping up and down, and just carrying on like fools, because they had always believed a lie that they would never really amount to much, they were always second class, even before God, because God had cursed them, and that's a lie. But again, that's what nations do, but not what God does, anyway. So let's go on, let me go on down to the sons of Shem. So as we come on down and we're looking at these, we've looked at all these different ones, I wanted to get down to, really get down into the sons of Shem, and then really kind of bring it together for just a minute. In Genesis chapter 10 verse 22, it says the sons of Shem, and then it names these, Elam, Arpachshad, Lod, and Aram, and as we see these names here, there's some things that is pretty interesting. When you look at the map again, Javan went everywhere, they went all out everywhere. And then you come in a little bit closer and a little bit more southern, and you've got, this is where the lineage of Ham went, and then whenever you come to Shem, it's a very small kind of inner area is where they kind of focused in at. And so as we look at it, Elam is really the ancient name for Persia, you've probably heard of the Persians, which is actually another name for Iran, which is Elam, remember I said about Elam, but you also had some from Japheth that went there as well. And then Ashur is the founder of the mighty Assyrian Empire. empire you may have heard of. And then our Pakshad, you've got, well I'll talk about

him in just a second, let me do Aram first, the ancestors of the Syrians. And what's interesting is so in Aram that their power was so great in that area that their language actually became the universal language of that area. And so you may have heard it in a different way of saying it, called Aramaic. And Aramaic was actually what Jesus spoke. So when you see it, you begin to see when languages do that, when languages do that, it's not just Aramaic. So when you see it, you begin to see when languages do that, become universal, it's really a power issue. It's a political power issue. So that family line, that group had taken pretty strong control of that area where they could do that. For instance, we don't think anything about the fact that English is the universal language now. It wasn't the universal language 500 years ago. In fact, it wasn't even close to that. But it is now which nations do that. That's why Greece did what they did. Everywhere they went they forced everyone to learn Greek because it was a power thing. It's a control thing. It's the way you control a people. And any people that speak that language, especially if it's their native language, they just have an advantage. Can I tell you a quick funny story that is just way offside? It doesn't even matter. You'll go away going, I don't even know why I told that. So I was in a Latin class and we were learning Latin and my professor was super smart and he had several languages he knew. And he actually did his PhD work at the University of Paris and then post-doctrinal work at Oxford in England. But as he was teaching us I began to ask him, how can you tell if somebody is a native of their language or not? And he says, it's in our phrases we use. And he said, he had a friend of his that, he said, I've known him 20 years. And he said, I assumed he was from England. And we were talking one day and as we were talking the guy just said, well, you know, it's not every Dick, Harry or Tom that will do this. And he looked at him and he said, where are you from? You're not from England. And the guy was from Russia. And he was such a great English, he'd learned it so well you couldn't tell. But you know, we don't say that. We say every Tom, Dick and Harry. And we, why do we put them in that order? We don't know. But if you grew up speaking English, you just know that's the way you say it. And so anyway, I told you it'd be totally irrelevant to anything I'm saying, but isn't it kind of interesting though just the way languages are kind of interesting. Let me go on these last two. Our Pakshad is actually, this is important I think for us

to just kind of keep in mind. It's the ancestor of the Chaldeans. You may say, why do I say K instead of Ch? Because Hebrew letter there is a K sound. But anyway, it's Chaldeans whose line leads directly to a guy named Eber. And guess who comes from Eber? You've got it up there. Hebrew. And so the Hebrews came through a guy named Eber. So in that list in Genesis 10, of course, another one that came through that line was a guy named Peleg. He was a twin, you may remember. And in scriptures, it talks about whenever he was born that that was whenever the nations divided. And anyway, through Eber, one of the sons, Peleg, was where the lineage on to the Hebrews all ultimately to Jesus came. So anyway, I thought I'd put that up there. All right, let me go back to the 70 names because whenever we read this list, most of us don't count them and don't worry about counting them. But there are 70 family lines here in this. And they break out into Japheth. There were, if you want to, I think I've got this in your notes. Japheth has 14 nations that are mentioned. Ham has 30 nations mentioned. Shem has 26 nations mentioned and this totals 70 nations. Now what does it matter? Well the number 70 is important. Biblical numerology is, now there's a numerology out there that is unbelievably pagan that you don't want to get involved in, but their biblical numerology is pretty important and in fact there's several things in that I've taught before. For instance, in John 21 where he talks about they caught 153 fish and I've taught on that about what that is and it comes out of Ezekiel 37 and anyway, that's another day for another time. When we come to this, the number 70 is important and God doesn't do anything by accident. He's telling things. He's wanting us to see. He's telling a story and this number is important because the number 70 is a combination of the numbers 7 and 10 and in your outline I think I have on there, the number 70 represents, and I said it earlier, but it represents completeness in totality. So the number is, it's this idea that these nations, this is the world of all humans here. That's why it's important to see it that we're one people, multiple families. Genesis 11 just kind of messed it up because it brought division with languages and following other gods, which then dispersed us around the world. But as we look at that and think about that, we know that the Bible uses that number and it's interesting. For instance, many of you may know this, but whenever Joseph went to Egypt and then finds out his dad is good and says, hey, come. It says all of Jacob's family went into Egypt and it specifically

tells us how many. Do you know how many? 70. Very good class. Genesis 46 verse 27 talks about that. It's interesting that whenever Moses was assembling the elders that were going to be leading Israel, that God gave him the way to do it and the number came out to be 70. There were 70 elders that were there with Moses to lead the people. It's found in Numbers chapter 11 verse 16. What's interesting is that group of 70 elders later in Jewish history became known of what we know of in the New Testament as the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin that are in the New Testament, there were 70. They represent, now here's what's important. This is why I wanted to even go here before we leave tonight, is that Israel, God made it very clear and I didn't put the scripture in here, I should have, where he tells them that the people of Israel are a nation of priests. They were the priestly nation. Their responsibility was to be the priests, God's priests for all the nations of the world, the 70. That was their job. Now they didn't do too good at it, but that was their job. God had 70 elders talking about completeness, totality, talking about the wholeness. What's interesting about that number, let me give you some other things, that whenever they didn't follow God, they chose to rebel against him. They said, we're not going to do it your way and God deported them to Babylon for how long according to Jeremiah? 70 years. It was a completeness of judgment on them. But what's also interesting about that number is whenever we think about it, is that, just side note, that in the Feast of Tabernacles, they make offerings and if you counted them up, the priests make 70 offerings. Now the purpose of that 70 is that they are to be making offerings for the nations. That was the purpose of God saying that, because you see, the world was always on God's heart. Whenever we read, that's why, why is this important? Let me tell you why it's important. When we read the Old Testament, it sounds like he's hacked off all the time at people. I mean, he's just smoking one here and one there, and you know, take them out, all of them, and you know, all that, and we read it,

and we go, my goodness. He just seems like he's a little angry sometimes. When in reality, he has the world on his heart. And the reason that he dispersed everybody, and we're gonna see this next week, was because together, we were always, all choosing to rebel against him in such a way that he said, they're not gonna get through this. So he divided them, and even divided Satan's troops up into different areas, and they started fighting among themselves to kind of calm it all down, until ultimately, he brought the seed of woman. But whenever we think about even Jesus, whenever he is doing the mission, and he starts talking about the mission, and starts sending his own, and he sends out in Luke 10, the 70. Now, some say 72, and that's all right, but it was the 70 that he sent out. Why? Because he was representing the world. He was sending us out on the mission to the whole world. Why is that important? And let me just end this way. It's important because history is not random. The reason Satan wants us to think we're nothing more than a biological accident is because he knows the truth.

And he knows that God is on a mission to redeem humanity, and that he loves the Iranian as much as he loves the African, as much as he loves the Chinese, as much as he loves the ones in Japan, or Iraq, or America, or anywhere else. Whether they work on Wall Street, or they're homeless beggar on the streets of New York, in God's eyes, they are people. We're all one. Does that make sense? So for us, and why is this important? Because in this, when we look at this, we understand that when God says to us through 1 Peter chapter two, that you are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that we might declare to the world. What he's saying is you're picking up the responsibility that was to be given to Israel all the way back in Genesis chapter 12. God has the world on his heart. He really does. It's not somebody else's job. If you're a believer, it's us. It's on us. To fulfill the divine assignment that's been given to us. And so lastly, history's not random, and the dispersion was the setup for global redemption.

And we're gonna see that more next week. So I know this one's a teeny bit boring. I hope it wasn't too bad. But I hope what it helps us see is that God's heart has never changed. And that he divided the people up into all the nations. And then he came and chose one man named Abraham and chose him out of a man who was worshiping other gods because he was part of the dispersion. And then he says, I'm gonna take you to a land that you don't know. And ultimately, that's why it's so big in Genesis 15, whenever God takes Abraham out and Abraham knows he can't have children. His wife can't either. I mean, my goodness. They're too old. And God says, well, I want you to look up in the stars. Can you count them? And the key, probably the most important verse in that whole thing, and Abraham believed. God. God credited that to him as righteousness and birthed a nation and brought the seed of woman who brought redemption for mankind and is fulfilling God's plan that he began all the way back in Genesis chapter three. Amen. Well, let's pray together and we can go. Father, thank you. Thank you that you love people. Lord, I know that with me, you have to remind me often that people are just people and we're all goofy and yet you love each one of us with a radical love that we cannot comprehend. But it doesn't matter how messed up we are or how much we think we've got it all together. Lord, you know that you love us and long for us to know you. So I pray father that as we see this,

that Lord, as your children, as we go from here and to work or school or wherever we're doing in our neighborhood this rest of this week, you would give us opportunities to see people, not just see them as someone to pass by, but see them the way you see them. Give us opportunities to just in some tangible way, share the love of Jesus with someone this week. And in that father, I believe that we're helping fulfill your divine desire for mankind. So lead us out of here and protect us as we go. We give you all the glory and pray it all in Jesus name. Amen.