Sunday School Oct. 16th - One Race, Many Nations

Review

Prayer Requests

Last week’s topic: God’s covenant with Noah

Word Study leading to Noah’s name

Covenant Theology

Noah’s Curse on Canaan and it’s connection with the crucifixion of Jesus

Our Text: Gen. 10:1-11:32

Context of Writing

An important thing to have in mind when reading any passage of text is the rough context in which it was written.

Psalms are better understood when read from the perspective of the situation in which they were written.

Historical context is valuable when considering how to interpret the text and from that interpretation exegete an applicable principle.

One of the reasons context is important is because literary styles, intended audience, and the purpose of writing all play into the interpretation of these scriptures.

The Pentateuch is written at least partly, and probably largely by Moses.

Obviously there are parts that couldn’t have been written by Moses, such as the final portions of Deuteronomy and all of Joshua.

There is some debate about the Mosaic authorship of Genesis because of some of the language patterns that shift throughout the book, but we have to remember that these were oral traditions passed down from generation to generation until the time of Moses, so he is largely acting as a type of editor, compiling these different portions of Hebrew tradition, as God inspired Him to write.

So Moses is writing sometime after the Exodus, possibly throughout their time in the wilderness, compiling a history of the Hebrew people.

In other words, Moses is writing to the Hebrew people, from within the area that is named after many of these people we see in these genealogies, encountering people groups throughout their time that are descendants of these legendary men, who have become cities and nations.

Why is this important for our text today? When we are looking at these genealogies, they are not intended to give the names of every person on earth up until the time of writing. Rather, they highlight some of the important lineages that have led up to the time and place of the writing.

Moses is explaining how we got to this point in the wilderness since the very beginning.

An example of this would be if Pastor Gary started sitting with the people in this congregation, listening to their stories about how this church began, and he writes a book explaining the last 100+ years of history in a quick synopsis.

The difference is, the bible describes this process as Moses being “carried along” by the Holy Spirit in his writing, meaning God inspired it and oversaw it, introducing a supernatural element to it, rather than simply being a man compiling records.

From this context, when the Israelites would read this, they would recognize many of the names throughout these genealogies as names of cities and tribes who were apparently descendants of these men.

In fact, if you look at many of these names on a map, you would see that each of these men and their descendants represent a specific region and the reader would be visualizing the lands around Israel moving around Israel as they read.

Examples of this are found throughout scripture and you will see these names come up over and over, because this is the surrounding of Israel.

You probably recognize some of these and associate them with stories from later in scripture:

Magog - (V. 2 Gog and Magog)

Tubal & Meshech

New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update Chapter 38

2 “Son of man, set your face toward aGog of the land of bMagog, the 1prince of cRosh, dMeshech and dTubal, and prophesy against him

Canaan (V. 6 the land of Canaan)

The covenant we see with Abram in the next chapter that makes him Abraham is an extension of the curse put on Canaan from Noah, which makes sense because the Hebrew people are about to enter into the land of Canaan which we also call the promise land because it was given to them through the covenant with Abram, but the process was seen as a product of the curse from Noah.

Nimrod (V. 9 from whom came the Babylonian and Assyrian empire)

V. 11 - Nineveh is a mighty city in Assyria where Jonah later preaches

So we can see this as an explanation of the surrounding peoples and places and their origins, which is what v. 32 explains:

Genesis 10:32 NASB95

32 These are the families of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies, by their nations; and out of these the nations were separated on the earth after the flood.

Of course, everything points forward to Christ, so what we can see throughout this process is a description of lineages that eventually are used by Luke and Matthew to trace the lineage of Jesus.

The Guide has a great breakdown of the geography described under the heading “Japheth, Ham, and Shem”

Reaction Question:

Read Genesis 6:10 & 10:1. Why might Noah’s sons be listed in a different order in the following verses of Chapter 10?

The answer: They are listed first by birth order, but Genesis 10 lists them by geographical orientation as represented by V. 5, 19-20, 31

Genesis 11:1-4 (Humanity Plans to Settle)

The whole of scripture is pretty good about exalting God and making subtle points about His superiority to the idols of man including humankind’s idolatry of self.

I.e. god’s of egypt in the exodus

This is a perfect example of this. It starts by describing how much mankind thought of themselves, “we will reach heaven and make a name for ourselves!”

You get this idea of a huge tower, but then we see the perspective of God in verse 5:

Genesis 11:5 NASB95

5 The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built.

Even when man thought they would build a tower to the heavens, God still sat high and exalted. He had to come down from His place of superiority and majesty to observe what man thought was their crowning achievement.

How often do we get stuck in our own perspective, seeing our problems or achievements like this tower as something huge, but it’s still a small thing to God.

Shouldn’t this empower our prayer lives? “God, I know it is so big it seems impossible for me, but it’s just a small thing for you.”

With a nod of your head, you could dismantle all the nations of the earth.

Legions of angel armies stand at attention, awaiting the word for you to send them.

The cosmos is ever expanding beyond our wildest imaginations, declaring your glory with it’s immeasurable breadth.

Do you realize that as big as you imagine God to be, He’s bigger than that?

That’s why He can do exceedingly, abundantly, more than we can ask or even think… He’s a big big God.

Ultimately, this Big God narrows His focus down to individuals.

We see this with His focus on Adam, then on Abel, on through Noah and all of this was a setup to explain the arrival of Abram on the scene in chapter 12, where the story of Israel really begins.

Eventually, it is through these individuals that become nations that Jesus is born and God provides and avenue back to Himself for all mankind.

God did for us what we tried to do for ourselves, but failed every time.

Even the tower of Babel reflects this as God confuses the language in Genesis, but unites the nations in Acts, showing the culmination of all that He had been leading up to for millenia.