I'll be reading this morning from Genesis chapters 10 and 11. Chapters 10 and 11. Hear the word of the Lord. Now this is the genealogy of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And sons were born to them after the flood. The sons of Japheth were Gomer, Magog, Meday, Gavin, Tubal, Meshach, and Tiras. The sons of Gomer were Ashkenaz, Rephath, and Tagrimah. The sons of Javan were Elisha, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. From these, the coastland peoples of the Gentiles were separated into their lands, everyone according to his language, according to their families, into their nations. The sons of Ham were Cush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan. The sons of Cush were Sheba, Havilah, Sabta, Ramah, Sabteca, and the sons of Ramah were Sheba and Dedan. Cush begot Nimrod, and he began to be a mighty one on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Therefore it is said, like Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Akkad, and Kalnath in the land of Shinar. From that land, he went to Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth, Ur, Kala, and Rezon. Between Nineveh and Kala, that is the principal city. Mizraim begot Ludum, and then Annamim, Lehabim, Naphtuim, Pathrusiam, and Castlehem, from whose name came the Philistines and the Cathetorum. Canaan begot Sidon, his firstborn, and Heth, the Jebusite, the Amorite, and the Girgashite, the Hivite, the Archite, and the Sinite. the Arvidite, and the Zimorite, and the Hamathite. Afterward, the families of the Canaanites were dispersed, and the border of the Canaanites was from Sidon as you go toward Gerar, as far as Gaza, then as you go toward Sodom and Gomorrah, Adma, and Zeboam, as far as Latia. These were the sons of Ham, according to their families, according to their languages, in their lands, and in their nations. And children were born also to Shem, the father of all the children of Eber, the brother of Japheth, the elder. The sons of Shem were Elam, Aser, Arphaxad, Lud, and Aram. The sons of Aram were Uz, Hol, Gether, and Mash. Arphaxad begot Selah, and Selah begot Eber. To Eber were born two sons. The name of one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided. And his brother's name was Joktan. Joctan begot Almadad, Shelaphaz, Shelaphah, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, Haderim, Uzal, Dikla, Obal, Abimele, Sheba, Ophir, Havilah, and Jobab. All these were the sons of Joctan, and their dwelling place was from Misha, as you go towards Zephar, the mountain of the east. These were the sons of Shem, according to their families, according to their languages, and their lands, according to their nations. These were the families of the sons of Noah, according to their generations, in their nations, and from these the nations were divided on the earth after the flood. Now the whole earth had one language and one speech, and it came to pass as they journeyed from the east that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. Then they said to one another, come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly. They had brick for stone and they had asphalt for mortar. And they said, come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top is in the heavens. Let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth. But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said, indeed the people are one and they all have one language and this is what they begin to do. Now nothing that they purpose to do will be withheld from them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from there, over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them abroad, over the face of all the earth. This is the genealogy of Shem. Shem was 100 years old and begot Arphaxad two years after the flood. After he begot Arphaxad, Shem lived 500 years and begot sons and daughters. Arphaxad lived 35 years and begot Selah. After he begot Selah, Arphaxad lived 403 years and begot sons and daughters. Selah lived 30 years and begot Eber. After he begot Eber, Selah lived 403 years and begot sons and daughters. Eber lived 34 years and begot Pileg. After he begot Pileg, Eber lived 430 years and begot sons and daughters. Pileg lived 30 years and begot Reu. After he begot Reu, Pileg lived 209 years and begot sons and daughters. Reu lived 32 years and begot Zerug. After he begot Zerug, Reu lived 207 years and begot sons and daughters. Serug lived 30 years and begot Nahor. After he begot Nahor, Serug lived 200 years and begot sons and daughters. Nahor lived 29 years and begot Terah. After he begot Terah, Nahor lived 119 years and begot sons and daughters. Now Terah lived 70 years and begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran. This is the genealogy of Terah. Terah begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Haran begot Lot. And Haran died before his father Terah in his native land in Ur of the Chaldeans. Then Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, the name of Nahor's wife Milca, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milca, and the father of Isca. But Sarai was barren, she had no child. And Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot, the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram's wife, and they went out with them from the Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan, and they came to Haran and dwelt there. So the days of Terah were 205 years, and Terah died in Haran. Well, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. You may be seated. Well, we can clearly see in the history of mankind that If God's will is to be done, it is God who must accomplish it. When man pursues the desires of his sinful heart, it does not lead to the fulfilling of God's good design. We saw that in the garden with Adam. In open defiance against God's revealed will, Adam made a choice to go his own way, and in doing so, failed to fulfill the covenant duties God had imposed upon him. We see this later in the biblical history, in the life of the prophet Jonah, who, if left to his own will, would not have fulfilled God's calling on him to preach repentance to the city of Nineveh. And there we see God intervening and forcing Jonah to do what God had expressly commanded him to do. Well, this morning in our text, we see mankind after the flood, refusing to fulfill the covenantal obligations given to Noah and his sons in chapter nine. They were to be fruitful, to multiply, and to fill the earth. In fact, what we see is a steadfast refusal to do what God has commanded and an intentional effort to do quite the opposite. God's design for Adam had been for him not only to multiply, but to subdue the earth. to expand the borders of the garden, to fill the entire world. To Noah and his sons, this commission was restated. They were not cultivating a garden temple as Adam was, but they were clearly supposed to take dominion over the earth as they spread out across the face of the earth, populating the earth with those who would be faithful worshipers of God. And what we see here in chapters 10 and 11 is a concerted effort to not spread across the face of the earth, but to stay in one place as one people. Now there's more to it than that, which we'll see as we work our way through it. But the story of Babel is sandwiched between these genealogies. So we need to know what's going on with these. Why are they here? Why is Babel interjected into the midst of these genealogies? And what is the point Scripture is making with these two chapters? When we last left the history of Noah and his sons, they had come off the ark and into a new world. They had been given a covenantal commission in the form of a blessing back in chapter nine, verses one and two. So God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. and the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, and on all that move on the earth, and on all the fish of the sea, they are given into your hand." So there we see a restating of the commission originally given to Adam to be fruitful and to fill the earth, and also a modification of the commission. Adam had been told to take dominion over the entire earth. But like the image of God in man, the commission to take dominion is marred because of sin, but it does remain intact. Noah's sons had begun to fulfill this commission. We saw in chapter nine that Noah had grandchildren. Canaan was specifically mentioned. We also saw Noah's fall and the curse and the blessing that he pronounced on his sons and their descendants. And chapter nine then ended with Noah's death. Chapter 10 begins with Noah's legacy. Chapter 10, verse 1, now this is the genealogy of the sons of Noah. So the line of descent from each of Noah's three sons is presented to us in reverse order, beginning with Japheth. First, and this is because the narrative is building towards the call of Abraham at the end of chapter 11, beginning of chapter 12. So it works from the outside in. to the line from which the promised seed will come. So we begin with the sons of Japheth. Obviously, these lists are not all inclusive. We're given seven sons of Japheth, then three sons of his firstborn, and four sons of his fourthborn. Some of these are names that you may recognize as important biblically, such as Tarshish or Kittim. But I'm sure the other five sons of Japheth had children as well, but we aren't given their names. Now there are several reasons for this. One is that this genealogy is not meant to be an exhaustive list of all of the children, but it's here to serve a purpose, and that purpose is to get us to Abraham. So it doesn't need to list every single family member of every single one of Noah's sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons. But these first two lines that we're tracing, Japheth and Ham, are not getting us to Abraham. So there must be some reason for their inclusion and some reason for which men are included and which are not. And one reason is to highlight the important people that we'll encounter later in Scripture. Of course, Moses didn't know that Jonah would hop on a ship for Tarshish in order to avoid his calling to go to Nineveh, but the Holy Spirit did, and so he included Tarshish in this genealogy. Another reason is one that we'll get to in a few moments, but it has to do with the nations in relation to Israel in later history. But here we have seven sons and seven grandsons of Japheth, 14 men are mentioned. And then we read this in verse five. From these, the coastland peoples of the Gentiles were separated into their lands, everyone according to his language, according to their families, into their nations. We will get to the separating in the next chapter, but notice a couple of things here. First, Japheth's descendants are the Gentiles. If you follow these people groups and ancient history, you will find that these groups are associated with the Greeks and the Europeans from which most of us are descended. So like I said last week, the blessing that Noah spoke over Japheth in chapter nine, verse 27, may God enlarge Japheth and may he dwell in the tents of Shem. and make Canaan be his servant. This was a foreshadowing of the inclusion of the Gentiles in the New Covenant blessings by our being grafted in to the family tree of those who are children of Abraham by faith. Second, notice that Japheth's descendants are the Coastlands people. That is, they are on the outskirts of the known world. If Israel is at the center of biblical history, the Gentiles are at the uttermost ends of the earth. But in the Psalms, the coastlands are mentioned, some of them by name, as participating in the worship of God in the coming days of the Messiah. Psalm 72 particularly says, he shall have dominion, speaking of the Messiah to come, he shall have dominion also from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. The kings of Tarshish and of the Isles will bring presents. The kings of Sheba and Seba will offer gifts. Yes, all kings shall fall down before him. All nations shall serve him. Isaiah picks up on this idea of the coastlands praising and worshiping the Lord in the end. In fact, of the 21 times that the coastlands are mentioned outside of Genesis 10, 14 of them are in the book of Isaiah, particularly chapter 42, where we read things like this, let them give glory to the Lord and declare his praise in the coastlands. So Isaiah makes the point that the Gentile peoples on the outskirts in the coastlands will in the end come to worship the Messiah. So that to me is just incredibly encouraging to see the promise of the blessing to Japheth. built up by further prophecy in the book of Isaiah and other places in the Old Testament, and then to see it fulfilled in the New Testament when the Apostle Paul goes to the Gentile nations with the good news of Jesus Christ. Finally, notice that it says that they were separated into their lands by language, family, and nation. So as we'll see in the next chapter, the people are scattered with each of these families mentioned having their own language and becoming their own nation. So what we have here in these first five verses, the genealogy of Japheth, is we have 14 Gentile nations named for us. Now those numbers will become important in a few moments. Verse 6 then uses the same formula, the sons of, to introduce the descendants of Ham. The sons of Ham were Cush, Misriam, Put, and Canaan. So here we have four sons. five grandsons and two great-grandsons. And then in verse 8 presents us with another grandson, a famous one. Cush begot Nimrod. He began to be a mighty one on the earth. So there's an interjection in the middle of this genealogy to tell us of this man Nimrod and his doings. And here is some language that should get our attention because it's familiar. It's reminiscent of chapter six of Genesis where we read about the sons of God coming into the daughters of men and having offspring who were mighty men, who were of old, men of renown. So there we said that those mighty men were likely rulers and tyrants who by strength in engaging in wickedness began to rule over other people. Nimrod is now called a mighty one on the earth. John Gill tells us the name of Nimrod is to rebel. That's what his name means. Because he was a rebel against God, as is generally said, and because, as Jarchi observes, he caused all the world to rebel against God by the advice he gave to the generation of the division or confusion of languages, the builders of Babel. So Nimrod, the rebel, began to be a mighty one, a tyrant on the earth. Gilligan comments and says, that is, he was the first that formed a plan of government and brought men into subjection to it. Verse nine elaborates, telling us, that he was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Therefore it is said, like Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord. Now to be a mighty hunter before the Lord sounds kind of good, especially if you're into hunting, but it isn't. In fact, the last time a phrase like this, before the Lord, is used was again in chapter six, where it says that the earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. So his being before the Lord is not a good thing. Calvin comments and says, the expression before the Lord seems to me to declare that Nimrod's attempt to raise himself above the order of men, just as proud men become transported by a vain self-confidence that they may look down as from the clouds upon others. As to his being a hunter, it's possible that Nimrod won renown for himself by hunting those animals that were particularly dangerous predators in the post-flood world. And by doing so, he drew the praise and the glory of men to himself. But it's also possible that he is named a hunter because he was a hunter of men. Micah records for us, the faithful man has perished from the earth and there is no one upright among them. They all lie in wait for blood. Every man hunts his brother with a net. John Gill put it this way, besides his being in a literal sense a hunter, he was in a figurative sense a tyrannical ruler and governor of men. And so next we see that Nimrod begins to build his own kingdom in verse 10. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Achad, and Chalna in the land of Shinar. The beginning of his kingdom was Babel or Babylon. But then he begins a conquest of other territories in verses 11 and 12. From that land, he went to Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth, Ur, Kilah, and Rezan between Nineveh and Calah, that is, the principal city. Just as the descendants of Japheth were listed in their post-Babel families, and nations, so it is likely that Nimrod's conquest of other territories may have taken place post-Babel as well, since the vast majority of men seemed to be united at the beginning of chapter 11. So these genealogies are telling us of the dispersion, and then chapter 11 will tell us how and why it happened. With Nimrod, we get the first mention of this city of Babel or Babylon, and he was its founder and likely the king and ruler of the government there. Next, we're given more of Ham's descendants. The Philistines are mentioned in verse 14, but particular attention is paid now to the descendants of Canaan in verses 15 through 18. And then something interesting happens in verse 19, and that is, we're told particularly of the land the Canaanites occupied. And the border of the Canaanites was from Sidon as you go toward Gerar, as far as Gaza. Then as you go toward Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboam, as far as Lasha. Now this is of interest because the history is working its way to the nation of Israel, who will eventually inherit that promised land when God decides to punish the Canaanites for their wickedness and fulfill the curse that Noah had pronounced on his grandson back in chapter nine. The account of Ham's descendants then ends with the same formula that ended Japheth's line in verse 20. These were the sons of Ham according to their families, according to their languages, in their lands, and in their nations. Now there are a lot more names in this line of Ham, but if you count up the sons, the grandsons, and the great grandsons of Ham, the total comes to 31 men. So 31 nations of Ham, Hamite nations. The next section is interestingly introduced with a different formula. We have the sons of Japheth, the sons of Ham, but Shem's line is introduced differently. In verse 21, it says, and children were born also to Shem, the father of all the children of Eber, the brother of Japheth, the elder. The reason for this is that Shem's descendants are actually divided into two lines, and the account of Babel divides them. Shem is the one who was blessed by Noah. It is through Shem that the promised Redeemer will come. But we're told here that Shem was the father of all the children of Eber. Now this is important because, as we'll see, the line diverges with Eber's two sons. This paragraph traces the line from Shem to his great-grandson Eber, and then to Eber's two sons in verse 25. To Eber were born two sons. The name of one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided, and his brother's name was Joktan. A special mention is made of Peleg because his name means division. And it was around the time of his birth that the account of Babel takes place in the next chapter. But then the line of his brother, Joctan, is followed in this paragraph. And the genealogy ends with the same formula that the others did in verse 31. These were the sons of Shem, according to their families, according to their languages, in their lands, according to their nations. Now here the count, excluding Peleg, who will be included in Shem's descendants after the account of Babel. The line here is traced through Joctan, but we have 25 Shemite nations. The entire thing is summed up in verse 32. These were the families of the sons of Noah according to their generations in their nations, and from these nations were divided on the earth. from these, the nations were divided on the earth after the flood. So this chapter is commonly known as the Table of Nations, since it describes the dividing of mankind into families and nations in the post-flood world. Now we're about to examine how and why that division took place, but as we went through this, I kept count of the nations that were named from each of these three lines, 14 Gentile nations from Japheth, 31 Hamite nations, 25 Shemite nations, and the total comes to 70. 70 nations are numbered here in chapter 10. Now remember, I said this is not an exhaustive genealogy, but one with a purpose. And one of those purposes is in this number 70. 70 is an important number in the Bible. It denotes fullness or completion. So chapter 10 presents the fullness of humanity represented in these 70 nations descended from Noah. But more than that, near the end of Genesis, we will read of Jacob and his extended family going down to Egypt. And in chapter 46, we read this, all the persons of the house of Jacob who went to Egypt were 70. And the significance of this is found later in the book of Deuteronomy. As Moses speaks to the children of Israel one last time before they enter the promised land, he sang a prophetic song. It says, in the hearing of all the assembly of Israel. And that song is recorded for us in Deuteronomy 32. And in that song, he says that the other nations of the world, other than Israel, are not the children of God. And then in verse eight and nine, we read this. Here, when the Most High divided their inheritance to the nations, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel. for the Lord's portion is his people. Jacob is the place of his inheritance." Seventy nations were divided and 70 people was the number of the children of Israel who entered Egypt. God took for himself those 70 people to be his special people, a nation dedicated to the Lord. and that is presented for us here in Genesis 10 with the 70 nations of the world. This is a common biblical idea. We see this as God takes the Levites to be his special servants in the temple instead of the firstborn from each family, and so they number them, and the difference must be accounted for. But here, God numbers the nations ahead of time in order to account for the people that he would later claim to be his own special people out of all the people on the earth. So this is the purpose of this genealogy in chapter 10. But now we have to deal with the scattering of these people into these nations in chapter 11. Now the whole earth had one language and one speech and it came to pass as they journeyed from the east that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and they dwelt there. Now before the people are scattered into their respective nations, they're still gathered as one people with a common language and a common purpose. And so we read in verses three and four, then they said to one another, come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly. They had brick for stone and they had asphalt for mortar. And they said, come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top is in the heavens. Let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth." So we can clearly see that their purpose was to openly defy the decree of God. He had given to Noah and his sons the covenant duty to fill the earth and subdue it. But the people, likely under the leadership of Nimrod, the rebel, have decided to rebel against God's command. They want to build themselves a great city with a high tower. And when it says that the top of the tower would be in the heavens, I don't think it means they were literally trying to reach the throne of God. But in Deuteronomy 1, speaking of the Canaanite cities in the promised land, the people ask Moses, where can we go up? Our brethren have discouraged our hearts, saying, the people are greater and taller than we. The cities are great and fortified up to heaven. In other words, they had imposingly high walls. I think that is how this is being used here in Genesis 11. It means that they were building a great city with an impressively high tower. Whether this tower was to be used for some sort of idolatrous religious purpose or merely to serve as a monument to the greatness of its engineers, either way, it is part of their plan to circumvent God's design for humanity. John Owen comments, saying, the true reason is that they were so full of pride and vainglory that they wished to establish a name and reputation for themselves by the monumental structure. Their stated purpose was to make a name for themselves and to avoid being scattered. This temptation that they fell prey to is still common. We still fall prey to the same temptation, to make a name for ourselves. We desire the praise and the glory of men. We desire to make a name for ourselves rather than making great the name of God in the earth. But these two things that they expressly desired to do, to make a name for themselves and to avoid being scattered, were two things that were exactly opposed to God's purposes. The children of men bearing the image of God aren't supposed to make a name for themselves, but to declare the glory of God and His name in all the earth, to make Him known. And God's design was for them to fill the earth, not stay in one place. They were essentially doing the same thing that Adam and Eve did in the garden, attempting to hide from God behind the walls of their great city with its impressive tower while directly disobeying His command. Now, sometimes the Bible includes a bit of humor for us, and that is certainly the case here. They are attempting to build this great city with a tower whose top will be in the heavens, and then we read verse five, but the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. The Lord came down to see the tower whose top was in the heavens. The Lord who sits enthroned in heaven came down to see this high tower. It's supposed to make us chuckle. So the Holy Trinity holds counsel with himself in verses six and seven. And the Lord said, indeed, the peoples are one and they have one language. And this is what they begin to do. Now nothing that they purposed to do will be withheld from them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language that they may not understand one another's speech. They are seeking to defy God and to act in direct contradiction to his expressed will. They are headed down a path that ultimately would lead them back to where humanity was just before the flood occurred. Psalm 2 seems to speak to this situation, and I would like to read Psalm 2. Why do the nations rage, and the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed, saying, Let us break their bonds in pieces and cast away their cords from us. He who sits in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall hold them in derision. Then he shall speak to them in his wrath and distress them in his deep displeasure. Yet I have set my king on my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree the Lord has said to me. You are my son. Today I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron. You shall dash them to pieces like a potter's vessel. Now, therefore, be wise, O kings, be instructed, you judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish in the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him. The men of Babel, under the leadership of Nimrod, were defying the Lord. They did not want the Lord's anointed to rule over them. Nimrod intended to rule. They did not want to be scattered across the face of the earth. They intended to stay together. They did not want to make the name of the Lord great. They wanted to make their own name great. And he who sits in the heavens laughs and holds them in derision, who plot in vain to do such things. So God is going to intervene to accomplish His will even if His creatures won't obey on their own. Verse 8, so the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth and they ceased building the city. Therefore its name is called Babel because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth. Just as Adam, after his disobedience, had been exiled from the garden, so now the people are exiled from the plain of Shinar and scattered across the earth. Just like Jonah attempted to flee to Tarshish to get away from Nineveh, but God sent him there anyway, so now the people attempted to stay safe within the confines of their great building project, but God sent them to the ends of the earth anyway. The confusion of the languages of man resulted in those families who spoke the same language separating themselves from those who spoke a different language, and they spread out into various nations as described in chapter 10. The confusing of the languages was a form of judgment from God that carried consequences for all of mankind. John Owen said that the loss of that language, by which he means the common language they all spoke, which he identifies as Hebrew, served as a punishment. The loss of that language served as a punishment. Nehemiah Cox, our particular Baptist forefather, points out two particular consequences of this loss of that original language. First, he says, it was virtually a kind of excommunication from the church then in being, who retained the Hebrew tongue, although it was from this time unintelligible to the greatest part of the world. Only the line of Shem through Eber and then Peleg retained what would come to be known as the Hebrew language. So the people of the world in mass were cut off from the language of the people of God in a sort of excommunication. This is because the second consequence that Cox notes was that, quote, they were left destitute of that blessing which, of all others, was the greatest Israel had, the oracles of God, which were committed to them in the Hebrew tongue. Consequently, for many ages, they remained strangers to the covenant of promise, living in the darkest cloud of ignorance and idolatry, and so without hope and without God in the world. Reformed Baptist Pastor Richard Barcelos put it this way, the confusion of the languages caused the loss of revealed theology over time among all but the faithful Shemites. These were the reasons why mankind gradually drifted into the practice of all kinds of idolatry. The judgment of exclusion from God's self-revelation to man would remain on the nations until the time of the New Covenant, when God poured out His Spirit at Pentecost so that the disciples spoke in various languages. At Babel, God confused man's language. At Pentecost, man was confused. when God dramatically overcame that division and confusion of the languages. Acts 2, beginning in verse 5 says, And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together and were confused, because everyone heard them speak in his own language. Then they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, Look, are not all these who speak Galileans? And how is it that we hear each in his own language in which we were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontius and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs. We hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God. So they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, whatever could this mean? What could it mean? It meant that at that time, God was fulfilling the blessing that Noah had spoken over Japheth and bringing the Gentiles into the tents of Shem to dwell by faith in the promised seed who had finally come. Mankind in general attempted to avoid God's calling to fill the earth and subdue it. But God came down from on high and saw that His will was done. And as we have seen before, the commission to Adam and Eve is to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth and subdue it. It was not fulfilled by Adam and Eve. That commission was then passed on to Noah and his sons, whose descendants sinfully tried to avoid the fulfilling of that commission. In the end, the last Adam, who is Christ, creates a new covenant people, the church, born again of the Spirit, a new creation. And he gives his church the same commission to go and make disciples bearing spiritual fruit and to fill the earth with worshipers. He said in Matthew 28 that they were to go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, the nations named in chapter 10 of Genesis. And he tells them in Acts chapter one, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. And in Acts 2, the Spirit comes and inaugurates this mission with the gift of tongues. But then for six more chapters, the church stays put in Jerusalem. They don't go to the ends of the earth. They don't go to the coastlands of the Gentiles. They stay in the city, just like the people in Genesis 11. So what does God do? Once again, God accomplishes his purposes. Stephen is stoned in Acts chapter seven and at the beginning of chapter eight we read this, now Saul was consenting to his death. At that time a great persecution arose against the church which was at Jerusalem and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria except the apostles. And devout men carried Stephen to his burial and made great lamentation over him. As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering every house and dragging off men and women, committing them to prison. Therefore, those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word." They were scattered, just like the people in Genesis 11. And when they went, they preached the word, making the name of Christ known, rather than making a name for themselves. Then a chapter later, the instrument of persecution that had caused this scattering is dramatically called by God, who said of him, he is a chosen vessel of mine to bear my name before Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel. And the Apostle Paul became God's vessel to take the message of salvation through faith in Christ to the ends of the earth, to the coastlands of the Gentiles. It's not according to the will of men, but according to the will of God that God's design is fulfilled. Now to wrap things up back here in Genesis 11, we're presented with one last genealogy, and this one is introduced differently than the rest. It isn't just the sons of Shem, it is the genealogy of Shem. This time the line diverges at Peleg and is traced through his descendants down to a name that is very familiar to readers of the scripture in chapter 11, verse 26. Now Terah lived 70 years and begot Abram, Nahor, and Hattan. Verse 27 and following, then expand on verse 26, giving us more details concerning the line leading to Abraham. This is an interesting little thing that happens, again, with the numbering of the names here. Notice that in the genealogy of Shem, the format went back to the format we last saw in the genealogy of chapter 5. We are told a man's age, when he had a particular son, and then how much longer he lived and the fact that he had other sons and daughters. That's how the genealogy in chapter 5 read, but unlike the earlier ones here in chapter 10, which did not tell us those things. We're meant to see the connection between this genealogy and the genealogy in Chapter 5. In Chapter 10, the genealogies contained odd numbers of sons and grandsons and great-grandsons that added up to a total of 70. But the genealogy of Chapter 5 relates only one named son of each man tracing the line from Adam to Noah across 10 generations. The genealogy of Shem here takes that same format and relates the names of 10 men from Shem to Abraham. But then we're given the genealogy of Terah in verses 27 to 32, but we're only given eight names, not 10. This serves to leave the reader in suspense. We should know from this that Abraham is not the promised seed. He's not the one we're looking for. We're still waiting for the promised seed. But who are these other two men that are left off the list? Why is the number not complete? Even more, we're told in verse 29, then Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, the name of Nahor's wife, Milcah, the daughter of Pharan, the father of Milcah and the father of Iscah. But Sarai was barren and had no children. Well, how will the promised seed come to be since Abram's wife is barren? Of course, we know Abraham begot Isaac, and Isaac begot Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel. This is where the history is going, and those two men complete the list of 10. This is the greatest story ever told, and it is so well written, it leaves the reader in suspense at the end of chapter 11. It is leading us to a chosen people from whom all of the promised, from whom will come the promised seed who is Christ, the one who will finally fulfill the promise of Genesis 3.15 and crush the head of the serpent. But all of this happens not according to the will of man, but according to the will of God. For it is, as Paul writes in Ephesians 1, in Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace, which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will. according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth in Him. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory. not a name for ourselves, but a name of renown for Christ, the praise of His glory, because it is His will that accomplishes all God's purposes in the salvation of sinners. Let's pray.