Genesis 9–11

Genesis chapter 9, and we have just gone through the great flood; the global flood, where the Lord dealt with the sin of mankind because in the days of Noah, the earth became corrupt. And as we looked at last week, it appears that the Lord took care of some things that were going, that was going to give the earth a fighting chance to continue with, I don't know if I can say a little less corruption. We looked at a verse last week that showed how from the Book of Jude, you might remember, how it talked about how the Lord has imprisoned some angels that had departed from their specific place. And we connected that with the possibility, the possibility, that perhaps it was angels that were involved with the daughters of men and who produced a group of people called the Nephilim. We discussed all of the questions that go along with that and all of the difficulties that passage can and has presented throughout the years. But the days of Noah are days that we remember because in the days of Noah, God brought judgment, and of course we know that judgment was a global flood. But what we learned and saw last week is that we're kind of looking for that same idea here in the last days. You'll remember that Jesus said, “as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of man.” (Matthew 24:37) And so, the same kind of darkness, the same kind of corruption that we are seeing in our world today, I believe is very similar to what was happening in the days of Noah. And it's important for us to understand that God is going to meet the corruption of the days of Noah that will again be reflected in the world that we live in. He is going to respond with judgment again, it won't be the same judgment, there won't be a global flood. We'll talk about that in these chapters that God promised never to do it again with a global flood, but that doesn't mean judgment won't come. Judgment will come and the days of Noah are a key to understanding that.

Anyway, Genesis chapter 9, it begins by saying,

(ESV) Now, you'll remember, this is exactly what God had said to Adam and Eve and so they're receiving the same command from the Lord. The same directive to be fruitful, to multiply, scatter to fill the earth, okay. And that's a very important thing that you must remember as we get into the final chapter that we're going to be looking at here tonight. But it goes on to say in verse 2 that,

And you kind of read that, verse 2, and you think, well, why was that necessary? Why did God just kind of come out of the chute at this point and say, “I'm going to put the dread and fear of you upon all of the animal kingdom.” Well, He actually explains in the very next verse. Verse 3 says,

And so God factored in this element of protection if you will, to the animal kingdom, so that from then on they would be afraid of man and they would run. And they would at least give them some opportunity to escape otherwise, the animal kingdom could be completely wiped out in a short period of time if they were all acting like domesticated animals and so forth. Because now God is telling them that, “I am giving all these things to you as food” and He even ends that verse, verse 3 by saying, “…And as I gave you the green plants, (I now and that's I'm throwing in the word now) I (now) give you everything.” So it appears very clearly from this passage, that prior to the global flood animals were not eaten, man was strictly on a plant-based diet. All of the vegans in the room are like, “yeah, finally, we're justified” or something like that. But now God is saying animals will be introduced into the human diet and then of course, giving that protective element to the animals where they would be fearful of man. But here's an interesting point, He says, but in keeping with the permission to eat animals, He says, verse 4,

And this is just a very simple command given to Noah and his sons, but later He's going to factor this into the Mosaic covenant where He's going to speak to the people of Israel concerning this same prohibition: never to eat meat that has not been properly drained, okay. And that's essentially what He's saying and this is outlined, by the way, in the Book of Leviticus. If you're the kind of person who takes notes, you might make a notation of Leviticus, chapter 17 and verses 10 and 11, and then verses 14 as well. Because in that the Lord says, “if anyone of the house of Israel or of the strangers who sojourned among them eats any blood,” He said, “I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will actually cut him off from his people.” And that sounds like, wow, that's a pretty strong sort of a prohibition to give them about that sort of thing. But God went on to explain that the life of the flesh is in the blood. And then He said, “I've given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your lives.” And so God was explaining to the people of Israel later on, something He didn't explain apparently to Noah and his sons, that the life of an animal is in its blood and that lifeblood would be used for sacrifices and offerings as the creature stands in symbolically for the worshiper. And of course, God was conveying the idea of a sacrificial gift that involves one standing in for another, what we call a “substitutionary sacrificial death.” And that was the whole purpose behind the sacrificial system of Israel to teach them that one must stand in your place and shed its blood for atonement. And of course, that was perfectly fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. But the importance of the blood or the lifeblood is part of this directive and then it goes on speaking about blood, concerning the directive of murder in verse 5 and following. And it says,

And these, just these couple of verses right here are the foundation for every civilized kingdom and nation on earth who has ever looked at this matter of the taking of human life through murder. And by the way, the Bible is very clear to differentiate between killing and murder. Murder is a premeditated taking of life apart from justice and you can see right here that God acknowledges that there is a place for the taking of life for justice. And so you'll notice that He says, “there will be 2 reckonings when a murder takes place.” Did you catch that? First, God says, “I will require a reckoning from man” and what that means is even if a murder takes place and there's no resolution to it, or they never find the murderer, of course, we refer to that as an unsolved murder case today and those things do happen. Even when that happens, the murderer is not going to escape because he will still stand before the judgment of God, right. So an unsolved murder might be unsolved as it relates to men or to mankind, but it is not unsolved as it relates to God. And so God says, “I will require a reckoning,” in other words, “I will hold that person accountable.” But you'll notice that He also goes on to talk about how judgment among mankind must also take place. He says, “whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed,” and again, this is where we get our understanding of capital punishment. And it is interesting that more and more, our country and many other nations of the world, are moving away from capital punishment in favor of lifelong prison sentences or prison sentences that probably in our estimation ought to be lifelong, but are not. But you can see that as man gets farther and farther away from honoring God in His Word, we're getting farther and farther away from this idea of capital punishment. And the reason for capital punishment, God explains also in this passage, He says, it's because “God made man in his own image.” That's why capital punishment is laid out as a reckoning from the Lord because to murder someone is to take away a life that is like God, or is in the image of God and is ultimately seen by God as not just an attack on man, but as an attack on Him, on God, because He is the one who gave life. And so this whole theme that we're seeing running through these, just these couple of verses, helps us to understand our embracing of the idea of the sanctity of life. The reason we believe in the sanctity of life is because of these verses. God says, “I made man in my image” and it is not for man to indiscriminately take the life of another man, he may not do that. Now again, there is the taking of life in justice and there is the taking of life in warfare, but that is not considered murder. But when murder takes place, God says, “I will reckon that action by the murderer.” In other words, “I will hold him accountable and man must also hold his fellow man accountable for such a thing.” Next, notice in verse 7, God goes on to say, “And you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth (and of course, the inference there is to spread out) and multiply in it.” And I suppose that was a good thing to remind them of. Again, this is the second time we've read this in this chapter because, there's only 4 couples on the earth right now and they got a lot of work to do, right? I mean, there's a lot of filling to take place so He's reminding them once again. So verse 8 goes on,

and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast of the earth.”” And here's the promise that goes along with the covenant. “11 I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” Is God saying there will never be a flood? No, He's saying there will never be a global flood that will cut off all life from the earth. And this is by the way, what we refer to as “The Noahic Covenant.” It's important to understand that this statement by the Lord, when He says, “I won't do this anymore,” this is not an apology and this is not an admission of wrongdoing. We say that sometimes as an admission of wrongdoing when we've done something we shouldn't do, “I'm not going to do that ever again, I promise I won't do that ever again.” But God is not admitting to any wrongdoing here. Things had gotten so bad that the only option was to start over with the family of Noah. And you'll remember, that when it gets that bad again, that's when Jesus returns, when it comes to, “as it was in the days of Noah.” Verse 12 goes on, “And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations:”” You should be fairly familiar with signs of covenants by now. This is the first sign of the covenant that is given and we know that what that sign is going to be, I assume we'll go on and read it in a moment. And then we will later on deal with the sign of the covenant that God made with Abraham, and that sign was circumcision. And then we move into the people of Israel and when God creates, sets his law before the people of Israel, the sign of the covenant is the Sabbath. And so this is a very common sort of a progression in the Word of God that He gives a sign from the covenant. And here is a sign, verse 13, where God says,

and by the way, this is the same word that is used to describe a bow and arrow because it's basically the shape of a bow but because it's in the clouds, we know that it's the rainbow. And He says,

And by the way, I firmly believe that this is the very first time that a rainbow was ever seen. And the reason I believe that is that it would have been made possible now by the waters of the heavens being poured out upon the earth. We talked about the fact that when the flood took place, there were actually 3 sources of water, it wasn't just rain that fell out of the clouds. The Bible tells us that the storehouses of the heavens were opened and we believe that was the vapor barrier that surrounded the earth, that made kind of a greenhouse effect around the earth, and that was opened up and deluged the earth. And then in addition to the rain that just came from the clouds, we're told that the great deep burst forth as well. In other words, the water that was under the surface of the earth burst forth from the ground and from those 3 sources, the earth was flooded, which is interesting. If you read the Bible, you can see those 3 sources but do you know that today modern scientists say that there's no possible way that it could have rained hard enough for a global flood to have come over the entire earth and been sufficient enough to cover even the mountaintops. Well, they're ignoring the fact that these other sources of water came upon the earth at the same time. Well, because this vapor barrier or this canopy of vapor has been expended in the global flood that now makes it possible for the rainbow to appear in the sky. And it's also interesting to note that rainbows are spoken of elsewhere in the scripture, but not a rainbow in the sky. Rainbows are defined, when people, particularly Ezekiel and John in the Book of Revelation are describing the Throne of God. And they speak of a rainbow that surrounds the throne of God and it's a beautiful picture and it's obviously something that God feels very strongly about. And so we, we get these beautiful descriptions of the rainbow which has essentially been stolen from believers, from the Bible and you know what I'm talking about. It has been stolen in our culture to refer to something that will in fact bring judgment once again ultimately upon the earth. But that's just kind of the way things go. Now, as we continue on here in verses 18 and following, we're going to be reading about how the descendants of Noah began to come about. But the first thing that we're going to see here in verses 18 and following, is a particular narrative about something that happened with the sons of Noah. Verse 18 says, “The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. (and then it gives us this parenthetical comment that) (Ham was the father of Canaan.)” And that's not the first time you're going to hear that, but that's an important comment because we're going to hear a lot about

Canaan in the future and of course, Canaan would be the father of the Canaanites. Verse 19, “These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the people of the whole earth were dispersed.” And then we're told in verse 20 and following that, “Noah began to be a man of the soil, (so he took up farming and particularly, it says) and he planted a vineyard. 21 He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent.” You might find it interesting to note that this is the very first time in the Bible when drunkenness is mentioned and then we're told in verse 22 that, “And Ham, (again, we're told) the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside.” Now I want you to stop there for just a moment because all we're told here in this passage is that Ham saw his father lying inebriated and unclothed in his tent but we're also told that he did nothing about it, except to go and tell his brothers. And the inference here is that rather than protecting the dignity of his father, he chose rather to just simply go and tell his brothers about it, which was a way of humiliating his father by doing nothing, talking about it instead. And we read that when his brothers heard about it, it says, “23 Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned backward, and they did not see their father's nakedness.” And so what do we see here? We see that Shem and Japheth protected their father's dignity despite his poor decision to become inebriated with the wine that he had grown. And then we're told that, “24 When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, 25 he said, (and this is a very fascinating statement) “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.”” Now this is very interesting statement here, because first of all, the text says nothing to us about whether or not Canaan had even been born at this time, or, if he had been born, we're not told of any involvement he might have had in this event of kind of exposing the shame of the father of Ham. But interestingly enough, as I've already mentioned, we've kind of been prepared for this statement because twice now we've read, “Ham was the father of Canaan.” It wasn't said that about any of the other boys, just about Ham. And so the narrative is preparing you and me, the reader, to understand that Canaan is going to play a significant role in what we're going to be reading from this point forward. But, we're still left with the question of why was Canaan given this curse; he's the son of Ham, when in fact Ham was the one who committed this particular offense against his father. And I don't believe, by the way, that this is a matter of the son being cursed for the sin of the father, I don't think that's what's going on here. Instead, I think the way we should look at this is that Noah's curse should be seen as prophetically recognizing in Ham's actions toward him, the moral depravity that is going to ultimately define Canaan, the son of Ham as his life plays out among his descendants. Now, on the flip side of this curse that is spoken against the descendants of Ham on Canaan and his sons, we also read in verse 26 that, “He (Noah) also said, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem; and let Canaan be his servant.” Now you need to know that among Shem's descendants are the Jews. In fact, we believe that Shem is where we get the word “Semite.” You've probably heard of antisemitism, which is the hatred of Jews and that comes from this whole idea of a Semite. Interestingly enough though, when you look up the word “Semite” in any sort of a dictionary, it doesn't just refer to Jews, it refers really to any of the people who spoke a Semitic language, including Jews and Arabs. And yet anti-Semitism specifically refers to an anti-Jewish sentiment. But again, we believe it all derives from the name of Shem. And then he goes on in verse 27 to say, “May God enlarge Japheth,…” And we believe that Japheth is the father of those who went out and began to move toward Europe and beyond. “27 … and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant.” By the way, I need to tell you that this very verse where it talks about Canaan being the servant, or if you will, slave, this verse was used incorrectly by men at one time in our history as a justification for slavery. Because it was believed that the Canaanites later inhabited what we know as the continent of Africa today. And so it was used as a justification that God had pronounced this curse upon the African natives and that it was therefore okay to force them into slavery because God is the one who determined that, even prophetically through Noah. However, the Canaanites did not move deeply into Africa at all and it was a complete misuse of the word of God and is not a proof text for anything of the sort. But it's important to know, people can use the word of God for whatever they want, you know what I mean? If you want to use something in the Bible to justify your stupidity or your hatred or your offensiveness towards others, you can find probably a verse somewhere to misquote and use if you want to.

And people do it all the time, it doesn't mean it's right at all. And that's why we as believers are told to rightly divide the word of truth so that none of that is, none of that is happening with us. The final verse of the, or final 2 verses rather, of the chapter says that, “28 After the flood Noah lived 350 years.” Now we know that he was like 600 or 500 when he began building the ark and so he's an old man, took him a 100 years to build the ark. He was 600 when the floods came, and now he lives another 350 years. And so it says, “29 All the days of Noah were 950 years, and he died.” Chapter 10. All right, here's what you need to know about chapter 10, we're going to go through this pretty quickly. This chapter is referred to as “The Table of the Nations.” It describes and outlines the ancestral origins of the nations of the ancient Near East, you're going to notice that Ham is going to be kind of at the center of this, whose descendants would come to occupy that area that we would know as “Canaan” or, later, “Israel.” I guess it's also referred to as “Palestine” while the descendants of Japheth and Shem spread out to the surrounding regions, including that of Canaan eventually. But we have to keep in mind with this chapter and this is important that although God established the boundaries of the nations, Israel was His special nation, His special creation. And so what we're going to see because of that is that this list that we read here is going to specifically highlight those nations that are relevant to Israel and important to the ongoing narrative and that's the way it is with the Bible. People say all the time, “well, why doesn't the Bible talk about, why doesn't the Bible talk about, why doesn't the Bible talk about?” Well, it's because it wasn't, it wasn't germane to the narrative; it wasn't important to the narrative. God had a purpose for the narrative and in the Old Testament the purpose was the Nation of Israel, the covenant that God made with Israel, the law that He revealed through Israel, and the calling that He gave upon the nation of Israel that speaks of the coming of Messiah. And then He had a purpose for the narrative of the New Testament which is to reveal the Messiah, all that He would come to do, and all who would come to faith in Him. And that's why the Bible doesn't go into great detail about things that aren't part of the narrative, do you understand? It's kind of like asking, it's like picking up a cookbook and saying, “why doesn't this cookbook tell me how to change the oil in my car?” Well, because it's a cookbook and if you pick up the owner's manual in your car, it's not going to tell you how to bake a cake. Because the purpose of your owner's manual is to tell you how to maintain your car. God had a purpose when writing the Bible and the purpose is to show you and me the way to be saved, to reveal Himself and ultimately show us the way to be saved. And there are things that are just simply not necessary in the goal that God established in giving the Word, okay. So that's an important thing to remember. So, verse 1, it goes on to say, “These are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Sons were born to them after the flood.” And then it begins to say, “2 The sons of Japheth: …” And as you look at some of the names here in this list of names of Japheth, you're going to recognize that some of them are used elsewhere in scripture as it relates to nations and prophecy. Have you picked any out yet? Names like Magog, names like Tarshish, right? And these are some of the names that we see here and by the way, these names associate themselves with current nations today, not by the same name, but by a very similar name. And then it goes on, skip down to verse 5, it says, “From these the coastland peoples spread in their lands, each with his own language, by their clans, in their nations.” Now notice that it says, “each with their own language.” So what is the Bible doing right here? It's skipping ahead, isn't it? The languages of the world haven't been confused yet, that happens at the Tower of Babel in the next chapter. So what is the Bible doing? It's skipping ahead and what it's doing is it's giving you this table of nations, telling you how they spread out, and telling you that they did so because of their own languages. And then what the Bible is going to do is it's going to say, “okay, now that we've told you that, now we're going to go back and we're going to explain to you how those languages got confused.” And you have to understand the Bible does this all the time. We American people, we assume that books are always going to be in chronological order and most of the time they are, unless they have what we call “a flashback.” When you're reading a novel, you'll read a book and it'll tell the story and then it'll flashback. I hate flashbacks, I do, I can't, I can't keep track if they keep flashing back. I've watched some movies where they'll tell a story and then flashback to 10 years early and then they tell more and then they flashback again. By the end of the movie, I'm totally confused, I don't even know what happened. But the Bible does that too and you need to understand that the biblical writers weren't all that concerned about chronology. And if you read the Bible like an American, you're going to be confused. In fact, just this last week, I got an email from someone asking about these very chapters and they said, “Pastor Paul, are chapters 10 and 11 out of order?” I said, “yeah and get used to it.” So that's just the fact of the matter, all right.

So, verse 6, “The sons of Ham: (you'll notice some of these too) Cush, Egypt, (gee, never heard that name before, you kidding? Still going today) Put, and Canaan.” Then it gives us, “7 The sons of Cush: (and you can see those five son names right there) Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabteca. …” It goes on to say, “7 …The sons of Raamah:…” So it's picking up on just one of the sons that were listed earlier and then it mentions those sons, “7 …Sheba and Dedan.” And then verse 8, “Cush fathered Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man. 9 He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. (and so because of that, they started to have a saying. It says,) Therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the Lord.”” In other words, he became the standard of mighty hunters and if someone else rose up as a fairly mighty hunter, they'd say, “hey, like Nimrod, he's kind of like that guy.” Yeah, so anyway, verse 10, it says, “10 The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.” And Shinar is the ancient name for Babylon, all right. “11 From that land he went into Assyria and built Nineveh, (you guys remember Nineveh?) Rehoboth-Ir, Calah, and 12 Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city. 13 Egypt fathered (and it gives the names of his sons) Ludim, Anamim, Lehabim, Naphtuhim, 14 Pathrusim, Casluhim (from whom the Philistines came), and Caphtorim.” We don't necessarily have to read them all, if you're picking out baby names, you might take some notes here. But we're told on the last one, notice there's a parenthetical comment after Casluhim that says “(from whom the Philistines came), and Caphtorim.” And then verse 15, it says, “Canaan fathered Sidon his firstborn and Heth, 16 and the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, 17 the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites, 18 the Arvadites, the Zemarites, and the Hamathites. …” There's a lot of “ites” there. “18 …Afterward (it says) the clans of the Canaanites dispersed. 19 And the territory of the Canaanites extended from Sidon in the direction of Gerar as far as Gaza, (we hear about the Gaza Strip even today) and in the direction of Sodom, Gomorrah, (that’s south) Admah, and Zeboiim, as far as Lasha. 20 These are the sons of Ham, by their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations.” So that was important for us to get all that information because we're going to hear about many of those as we get further into the Bible, particularly into the Book of Exodus. Then in verse 21, it says, “To Shem (remember, Shem is the father of what will later be the Jews) also, the father of all the children of Eber, (and by the way, that's where we believe the word Hebrew comes from, the son of Shem being Eber) the elder brother of Japheth, children were born. 22 The sons of Shem: Elam, Asshur, Arpachshad, Lud, and Aram. 23 The sons of Aram: (are listed for you there) Uz, Hul, Gether, and Mash. (that’s a weird name, and) 24 Arpachshad fathered Shelah; and Shelah fathered Eber. 25 To Eber were born two sons: the name of the one was Peleg, (and then it makes this note) for in his days the earth was divided, …” And incidentally the word or the name “Peleg” actually means in the Hebrew “division.” And so we assume that it was during the generation of Peleg that the next chapter occurs, ultimately, which is the confusion of mankind's languages and the divisions of the peoples according to their languages by the Lord. “25…and his brother's name was Joktan.” Verse 26, “Joktan fathered Almodad, (and all of those guys) Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, 27 Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, 28 Obal, Abimael, Sheba, 29 Ophir, Havilah, and Jobab; (and in verse 30…, so it just keeps naming) all these were the sons of Joktan. Verse 30, it says, “The territory in which they lived extended from Mesha in the direction of Sephar to the hill country of the east. 31 These are the sons of Shem, by their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations. 32 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.” All right, now we come to chapter 11. This is the last chapter we're going to do this evening. And now we're going to go back in time for an explanation as to how this scattering of languages took place. Verse 1, “Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.” Well, that's obviously going back in time because we've already heard the people were scattered with their languages. So when we hear that there was only one language, we know we've gone back in time. “2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar (remember, that's ancient Babylon) and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, (and I want you to take note of how they speak here and what they say) let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”” I want you to stop there for just a moment and I want you to take a moment to look at the statement that is being made by the people of the earth at this time.

The first thing they say is, “come let us build ourselves a city.” I want you to notice the emphasis on themselves, the emphasis on what they're doing and what is for them. It is all self-focused and we learned, way back when we went through Genesis chapter 3, that self-focus is part of the fall of man. It's what we all deal with, we're all self-focused and so this is one of the things that we battle against as believers. The Holy Spirit is working to get you and me less self-focused and more God focused, but it's a lifelong battle and we fight it for all of the days that we're on this earth. But you'll notice they've just given themselves to this attitude of self- focus, “come let us make ourselves or build ourselves a city.” And then, and they even stated even further in that verse, verse 4, when they say, “let us make a name for ourselves.” And that means we want to have an enduring remembrance of who we are. “We were the people, the special people, the strong people, the mighty people of the earth. We're going to make a name for ourselves that we might be remembered.” People, this is the pride of life. You remember, there's only 3 sins that are divided against for all of mankind: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. And this is nothing else but the pride of life, “make a name for myself.” And then I want you to notice the last thing they say, “lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” Do you remember what God had told them? And they remembered, this was obviously something they remembered, this had been passed down. God said it to Noah, He said, “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” and that implies spread out. And what do you see mankind doing here? He is looking at God in the face and he is saying, “no”. It's just like a spoiled child who is given a directive by a parent and who brazenly looks up to that parent and says, “no, I will not obey.” And that's what's going on here. This is not just a motive to build something, this is defiance and rebellion, pure and simple. Man saying, “I will not follow the Lord.” So let me ask you a question, do you still see defiance today in the world or have we kind of done away with it? We see it everywhere, don't we? We see it everywhere, we defy the Lord all the time. In our personal relationships, when God is joined together, let man not separate.

God says there are 2 genders; male and female. Man

--- says, “oh no, you don't, there's a ton more genders than that, in fact, I can be whatever I want to be.” That's just defiance, it's the same attitude that is happening here in Genesis chapter 11. The same thing, nothing's changed. This is simply mankind thumbing his nose at God and saying, “I don't care what you say, you say that marriage is between one man and one woman, forget that. I say,” and this is, and we saw this, in the last decade here in the United States of America. What did the Supreme Court do? They said, “no, marriage is legal between a man and a man and a woman and a woman, we've redefined it. We know God defined it in the Bible, that doesn't matter, we don't take God's definitions, we make our own definitions. I defy the Lord to define my life, He will not define my life. I define my life because I have only one master and it is me.” Do you hear it? Do you see it? Do you see it in the world that we live in? Rather than an attitude of surrender and submission? No, man says, “I will be my own God and there will be no…” And we create God's in our own image. Did you hear about the sparkle creed? Did you hear about that in the news? The sparkle creed, they've rewritten the Apostle’s Creed to encompass the whole gay community, they've rewritten it, they've rewritten and it was done by a woman. She was in some position of leadership, I don't know what church but yeah. Apostle's Creed is no longer the Apostle's Creed, it's the sparkle creed. Yeah, what is that? And hey, listen, but can I tell you something? It doesn't do any good to get mad about this stuff. We're never going to win anybody to Jesus by shaking our fist in their face, okay. So don't let this raise your blood pressure, this is just defiance is what we've been seeing all along. Yeah, we've gone through periods of time when it seems to be a little bit, it eases a little bit, but we are in a full-on defiance now. I mean, the world that we live in today is full on, we are just going for broke, defiance against God, rebellion. And this is the way it's going to continue to go and that's why we are nearing, we are very close today, I believe, to the days of Noah. The first time the days of Noah came about, God said, “here comes the flood,” the second time we reach that level of darkness that are consistent with the days of Noah, God is going to say, “here comes my Son.” But judgment either way. And like I said, it doesn't help to shake your fist, it doesn't help to get angry, it doesn't help to weep and wail. ---

We need to be doing what we can in this day and age to just share the Lord with as many people as we can. We need to be telling as many people as possible that Jesus is Lord, there's only one way to be saved and He's it and you need to get right because He's coming back. He loves you, He died for you, He wants you to be His, but you have to surrender to Him and you have to let go of the defiance and let go of the attitude and let go of the pride and the rebellion and say, “I am a sinner and I need a Savior.” That's what it takes. So all this stuff that we're seeing here in Genesis, this is the same stuff we're seeing today, it's been going on a long time. Verse 5,

By the way, can I just tell you, God always gets His way. Can I just throw that in there for you? You can rant, you can rail, you can kick, you can scream, you can bite, you can yell, you can curse, God's going to get His way, okay. So God said, “go and spread out and multiply,” they said, “no.” He goes, “well, then here…,” right? And what happened? They spread out, they ended up spreading out anyway, wouldn't it have been easier just to obey? Verse 9,

And now, as we finish out this chapter, because the coming narrative is going to be focused on the Jewish people, we're now going to look at the generations of Shem. Again,

You can imagine in another 500 years, he had a lot of time to have a lot of sons and daughters and they had got married and they had children and then those children got married and they had children and you can see how this thing would multiply very quickly. “12 When Arpachshad had lived 35 years, he fathered Shelah. 13 And Arpachshad lived after he fathered Shelah 403 years and had other sons and daughters. 14 When Shelah had lived 30 years, he fathered Eber. 15 And Shelah lived after he fathered Eber 403 years and had other sons and daughters.” You might be saying, “why are they only mentioning one of the sons of these guys?” Because they're the ones that are in line in the narrative to what we're going to talk about, which is the Jews, all right. That's why only one son is being mentioned. Verse 16, “when Eber,” I'm sorry, verse 14, “When Shelah had lived 30 years, he fathered Eber. 15 And Shelah lived after he fathered Eber 403 years and had other sons and daughters. 16 When Eber had lived 34 years, he fathered Peleg. 17 And Eber lived after he fathered Peleg 430 years and had other sons and daughters. 18 When PWAS 2cweleg had lived 30 years, he fathered Reu. 19 And Peleg lived after he fathered Reu 209 years and had other sons and daughters. 20 When Reu had lived 32 years, he fathered Serug. 21 And Reu lived after he fathered Serug 207 years and had other sons and daughters. 22 When Serug had lived 30 years, he fathered Nahor. 23 And Serug lived after he fathered Nahor 200 years and had other sons and daughters. 24 When Nahor had lived 29 years, he fathered Terah. 25 And Nahor lived after he fathered Terah 119 years and had other sons and daughters. 26 When Terah had lived 70 years, he fathered (okay, here we go) Abram, (who of course is going to be later known as Abraham, the father of the Jews) Nahor, and Haran.” And then we get to Terah's descendants. “27 Now these are the generations of Terah. Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran fathered Lot.” Remember, Lot had to later be rescued by Abraham. “28 Haran died in the presence of his father Terah (so he died while his father was still alive) in the land of his kindred, in Ur of the Chaldeans. 29 And Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, (of course, she will later be named Sarah) and the name of Nahor's wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and Iscah. 30 Now Sarai was barren; she had no child. 31 Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan, (in other words, that was their intention, but we're told) but when they came to Haran, they settled there.” So they didn't make it as far as they thought it could be because Terah just got too old, didn't want to travel anymore, we're not really told.

But then we're told that, “32 The days of Terah were 205 years, and Terah died in Haran.” And now the stage is set for God's call upon Abram to take his wife and his nephew and to travel into the land of Canaan and there we will begin to see the beginning of the Jewish people. So we'll pick it up in chapter 12 next time, so let's pray. Father, we thank you for this time tonight to go through Your Word. We thank you God, that we see here a consistency in the scriptures that lays out for us your purpose and your plan among mankind. And we see, Lord God, that you purposed to call into relationship the Jewish people that from them the world might be blessed and ultimately has been through the coming of Messiah, who died on the cross for us, our Lord Jesus Christ. Help us, Lord, to continue to see the purpose and plan that you have given us in the scripture, and help us, Lord, to hang on to that thread of consistency that we might understand better the Word of God, and see in it what you want us to see, to learn, to know, and to take from our times of study. We thank you and we praise you for loving us and keeping us in your love, and we commit our evening, what remains of it to you in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior. And all God's people said together, amen. God bless you, have a good rest of your evening.