Genesis 10-11 - Part A

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That's connectwithskip.com. Now, let's get into today's teaching from Pastor Skip Heitzig. If you were to read the Bible out loud, and I don't know if you've ever done that, but it can be quite fun to actually read a chapter or two or more out loud and then listen to yourself or listen to somebody reading it. If you were to read the Bible out loud at what is called pulpit speed, that is slow enough to hear, it would take you, I'm told, straight through 71 hours. You could do it in 71 hours, read from Genesis to Revelation at pulpit speed.

That averages out to be about 12 minutes per day in a year, 365 day year schedule. Now, it is fun to do that until you get to Genesis 10. Because the names that are difficult, hard to pronounce, let alone here, poses a challenge. We find ourselves in Genesis chapter 10 tonight. There's a lot of names in chapter 10 and 11.

I'll probably do most of the pronunciation more along the English way rather than the Hebrew way, simply because that's what we're used to if you've ever read this chapter or these chapters before. There's a lot of names, and I know that it's always popular for parents to find unique names for their children. Especially unique Bible names for their children. I'm just going to give you a word of advice.

Skip this chapter. There's a lot of weird names. You don't want to name your kid Nimrod.

You'll find out why. You probably don't want to name your boy Arphaxad. Arphy for short.

It just wouldn't be a good deal. There are some better names like Peter, James, John, and other New Testament names that might be more suitable, but I'd stay away from some of these now. Genesis has been about beginnings. The beginning of the universe. The beginning of everything, really, except for God himself. We've seen the beginning of the earth, the beginning of the universe, the beginning of mankind, the beginning of marriage, the beginning of the family, the beginning of the Sabbath, as God rested on the seventh day, the beginning of sacrifice, the beginning of the gospel. In Genesis 3, 15, we call that the proto-evangelium.

That is the gospel preached in advance, proclaimed in advance. We've seen the beginning of human government last week in chapter 9. And now we come to the beginning of nations in chapter 10. Chapter 10 is called the table of nations. It is after the flood. The boat has landed.

Everybody gets off. And those eight are now told to be fruitful, to multiply, and to fill the earth. So we have now the re-peopling, if you will, or the re-populating of the earth. Three boys that Noah brought on the ark and their wives, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Shem was the youngest, Ham was the middle boy, Japheth was the oldest boy. They are mentioned in that order in chapter 9. And they're mentioned that way because in order of importance, redemptively, Shem is first.

We'll see why tonight. But in chapter 10, it begins in chronological order with the oldest boy first, that is Japheth, and then Ham, and then Shem. Everybody tonight in this room is a descendant of Noah. Can trace his or her lineage all the way back to Noah through one of these three boys.

Or a combination of these three. Because after all, peoples have multiplied on the earth, migrated to different parts of the earth, married and married and intermarried, etc. So we have a wonderful now ethnic population in our modern day world, but it all stems back to these three. Altogether, there are a list of 70, 7-0 nations that came from these three boys. Out of Shem will come 26 nations that are listed. Out of Ham, 30 nations that are listed. And out of Japheth, 14 nations that are listed. Everyone is related. So the table of nations, name after name after name. A list of people. God is interested in people. You might be interested to know that Genesis 10 is one of the oldest ethnological tables or lists in the world.

And many scholars believe it is the oldest ethnological list in the world. Now I know that if you ask the average believer who is a Bible student and you say, hey, what is the theme of the book of Genesis? They're going to say it is a book of what? Beginnings. That's the theme. It's where everything begins. May I suggest to you another theme, perhaps the real theme of the book of Genesis, not beginnings, but the book of blessings. Because what we see is God being very, very selective in picking out and isolating a people group, getting a hold of a group of people, a nation in particular, through whom his promised Messiah, that he promised way back in chapter 3, verse 15, the one who will crush the head of Satan, that Messiah, that deliverer who we know is Jesus Christ, that all of the world would be blessed through him.

And we're going to get that promise in chapter 12, whenever by God's grace we get to chapter 12. But God will say to Abraham that in you all the nations of the earth may be blessed. So we're going to see some very selective genealogical gathering as God will ferret out Japheth and Ham and focus on Shem.

Why Shem? Because out of Shem will come Nahor. And out of Nahor will come Terah. And from Terah will come Abram.

And Abram will marry Sarai. And God will change their names to Abraham and Sarah. And from that man will come the nation of Israel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the 12 tribes. And the story will go on and culminate in Jesus Christ. And we find God reaching people and he does it through the line of Shem. And we're going to find that as the focus of the last part of the chapter, chapter 10, beginning around verse 21 is the line of Shem. We'll cover Japheth, Ham, and then Shem, and then chapter 11 as well, which will take us all the way to Abraham. If I were to give a title to chapter 10 and 11, I would call it My Three Sons. Now I say that tongue in cheek because I'm thinking of, I'm really dating myself by even saying that name. How many of you remember My Three Sons?

Show of hands. God bless you. Because that goes all the way back to black and white television from the 1960s on NBC and ABC with Fred McMurray, right? Who played that aeronautical engineer and his three boys. It was the story of My Three Sons. Well, this is Noah and his three sons. We begin with Japheth for it says, now this is the genealogy of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

And sons were born to them after the flood. Now go back with me to chapter 9 just briefly and notice verse 27. Since the name Japheth means to expand or to enlarge, notice the prediction. Verse 27 chapter 9. May God enlarge Japheth and may he dwell in the tents of Shem and may Canaan be his servant. Japheth and his lineage, and I'm going to be very basic and then specific, made their migration and settlement in Europe and became the basis for what is called the Indo-European language.

I'll get back to that in a minute. For years the Japhethites, the ancient Europeans, were known as uncivilized, uncouth barbarians, ungodly. Some of the worst atrocities ever committed are on record by the settlers, the ancient Europeans. There was a change from their dark ages, their dark ways, to a more enlightened stage when the God of Shem, the true and living God, the Judeo-Christian God, was adopted by them in Europe. And God blessed them because of it.

And they grew and they expanded and they enlarged their territory even to the point of settling from Europe to the United States of America and being among the first settlers to open the doors to migration of people from all over the world to this country. God enlarged them. You're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before we return to Skip's teaching, if you want to understand something, it's important to examine its foundations. That's why studying the book of Genesis is so vital to understanding the rest of the Bible. In Skip Heitzig's book, You Can Understand the Book of Genesis, he takes you on a fascinating journey to where it all began, from Adam and Eve and the fall of man to the birth of the nation of Israel so you can understand the amazing story of God's love and our redemption in Christ. We'll send you a copy of You Can Understand the Book of Genesis as thanks for your gift of $50 or more to reach more people with God's love through Connect with Skip Heitzig.

Go to connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888 and request your copy when you give. Now, let's get back to Skip for more of today's teaching. Now, I mentioned a language group called Indo-European. This goes all the way back to JFET. Now, just that term Indo-European sounds a little contradictory because typically we in the West set up an artificial barrier and say, well, East is East and West is West. And you have Eastern peoples, they don't like Western peoples and Western peoples don't understand Eastern people. And so we think that originally we came from a different stock. But ethnologists and linguists know that there is a language base called the Indo-European language base.

That is why linguists, when they want to get to the root of our language, will actually travel to India and study ancient Sanskrit. Because originally these peoples settled ancient Europe, Iran, India, and some of those areas, even Central Asia. And from there they sprung out, the sons of JFET.

Now, let's go through the list and find out who they are. The sons of JFET, verse 2, were Gomer. That is from Mayberry. No, that would be a different Gomer. This is not Gomer Pyle. Golly. Gomer were the ancient Chimerians and Scythians.

Now, I want to be, I hope, helpful. I said Chimerians. I know it's originally pronounced Sumerians.

But we get a little confused because there's three people groups that sound similar that are very different. There is first of all Sumerians, S-U-M-E-R. That's ancient Babylon, et cetera. Then there are Sumeritans, which are the northern part of Israel that were in the New Testament times. And then there are the Sumerians, or I said Chimerians, C-I-M-M-E-R, et cetera. And these were people who settled in Asia Minor. And so these Gomerites settled in Asia Minor but then expanded westward into parts of Europe, Central and Eastern Europe.

Later on, there was a place called Gomerland, which became Cumberland, or Cumberland, which is northern England and encompassed northern England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, et cetera, all from this stock of Japheth through the sun Gomer. Then notice the next one, Magog. Now, I know you're thinking, boy, at this rate, Skip, you'll never make two chapters. And you may be right. But this is foundational.

And because it is early Genesis and it is foundational and all peoples will be based upon this division, it's important to cover it now so we don't have to cover it later. So the next on the list is Magog. Keep that name in your mind for a long time until you get to Ezekiel 38 and 39. That's going to be a long time.

The Lord may come back before then. But Magog is part of the group in the end times that will form an alliance and come from the northern parts, the area of Russia, and come down in attacking Israel in the last days as predicted by the prophet Ezekiel in chapter 38 and 39. Magog was the forefather of the ancient Russians, Slavs, Bulgarians, Bohemians, and Poles. Oh, also the Croatians. That's Magog. According to Josephus, Magog was the father of the Scythian race that became the stock of Russia.

These are in his writings. And then there's the Chinese who have in their country the Great Wall of China. I've been there. It is unbelievable.

I've seen pictures of it, but to stand on it was amazing. The ancient Chinese used to call the Great Wall of China the Wall of Magog because it kept them safe from their long-time historic enemy, the Russians, or the Magogites. Now, I'm bringing some of this up just in case you've been the victim of people saying, you know, these Christians and their prophecy tagging, you know, they like to take these nations and they say, this speaks of Russia and that people group, and they just make these things up.

No, we don't. You can find some of the ancient writings of Herodotus, 5th century B.C., Josephus, who was a Jewish historian a couple thousand years ago, et cetera, who bring to bear the mention of these names and their assigned locations and the people who settled in that region. So we have sons of Japheth, Gomer, and Magog. The next one is Madai, and the Madai is the father of the Medes who settled in Persia. The Medes and the Persian Empire will come out of Madai. We'll find that later on when we're in the book of Daniel. From this individual and his family came the stock that filled up the country of India, Iran, Afghanistan, and the Kurdish people.

Now, let me just throw something in the mix. For years, Iraq and Iran have been mortal enemies. They're neighbors, but they hate each other. And you might think, well, that's because it's divided between those two lines of Islam. Oh, no, it goes back much further than Islam.

It goes back to this time because, you see, Iraq was settled by Shemites. Iran was settled by Japhethites. And the Iranians are not sons of Shem. They're not an Arabic people at all. They have certain culture and custom that might look similar to a Western mind or a Western eye. But Iranians speak an entire different language base known as Farsi.

They are Persian. They're from a whole different lineage. And the animosity goes back all the way back from these two settled brothers, Shem and Japheth, who settled in different areas, and they happen to settle next to each other.

And the animosity goes that far back, just to throw that in the mix. Next is Javan or Yavan. These are the Greeks and the Macedonians.

And what some believe were the Romans, and eventually the Italians, came from Javan. Tubal and Meshech. Keep those names in your mind also for Ezekiel 38 and 39.

They'll pop up again. It's believed that this also is the area north and northeast of the Black Sea, which became the area of Russia. In fact, ethnologists and anthropologists will trace these two names, Meshech and Tubal, to two Russian cities, Moscow and Tobolsk. Tobolsk on the Tobol River and Moscow on the Muskva River that came from these two sons named Tubal and Meshech. And then we have Tyrus. And according again to Josephus, Tyrus was a father of the Thracian and Etratian races that settled the far coast of the Aegean Sea of Asia Minor. So we have a pretty good handle on two verses.

Verse three. The sons of Gomer were Ashkenaz, Rephath, and Togarmah. Within Judaism, well, let me back up.

I'm speaking a little bit out of line, and some of you know where I'm going with this. Ashkenaz, or the Ashkenazi people, were those that settled north of Israel at first, but then they made their migration westward to Eastern Europe and especially Germany so that you have a line of Jews known as Ashkenazi Jews who will trace their lineage back all the way to the area of Poland, Eastern Europe, or Germany. Now, within Judaism, that's the thought I started to get into a little too quick. Within Judaism, there has been a little bit of historic tension between Ashkenazi Jews, Jews that settled in Germany, and another group called Sephardic Jews that come from Portugal and Spain and some of the other coasts of the Mediterranean. If you go to Israel, you'll notice that you have a wonderful blending of many ethnic peoples who are Jewish from all over the world, and you can spot readily an Ashkenazi Eastern European Jew by their dress, their customs, their manners, their language, and the Sephardic Jew.

They're different in the way they look, they're different in their mannerisms, and there had been, for years, a tension between these two groups, basically because of looks and culture. Now, again, these are sons of Shem who migrated to the European area or the area of Japheth, but there was this tension between these two groups of Jewish people. The tension between these two groups really ceased when, in the 1940s, a Japhethite decided that he hated all Shemites, and he was anti-Shem-etic. Literally, that's where anti-Semitic comes from. And he was the quintessential anti-Semite, this Japhethite by the name of Adolf Hitler. And his persecution of all who were Jewish and his extermination of six million forced a migration of Ashkenazim, or Ashkenazi Jews, and Sephardic Jews back over to Israel, to the Middle East, where they dwelled together, and because of that, and since then, a lot of those differences have greatly diminished.

They're happy to be alive, happy to be back in the land, and happy to be celebrating Judaism together. Sons of Gomer, Ashkenaz, Rifath, and I'm not gonna cover every name here for obvious reasons, will be in this chapter for 12 months, so we gotta go on. Togarmah. Togarmah is ancient Turkey. Parts of Asia Minor.

Armenia and that part of Turkey is Togarmah. Keep that also in mind for Ezekiel 38 and 39. The sons of Yavan or Javan were Elishah, Tarshish.

Does that ring a bell? What Old Testament prophet decided to flee from the presence of the Lord, and was really down in the mouth because of it? Jonah. God told him to go to Nineveh, and he decided to go 2,000 miles west off the coast of Israel to Tarshish, which we believe is ancient Spain, even perhaps the Gibraltar area, or England, and we're not quite sure which. We just know it's in that area. It's the distant coastlands, and it is one of those areas. Kitim and Dodonim.

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're glad you joined us today. Before you go, remember that when you give $50 or more to help reach more people with the gospel through Connect with Skip Heitzig, we'll send you Pastor Skip's insightful book, You Can Understand the Book of Genesis, to help you better understand the story of God's great love and his amazing plan for our redemption. To request your copy of You Can Understand the Book of Genesis, call 800-922-1888.

That's 800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate. For more from Skip, be sure to check out the many resources available at connectwithskip.com slash store. Come back next time for more verse-by-verse teaching of God's Word, here on Connect with Skip Heitzig. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the crossing. Cast all burdens on his word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever-changing times.