The Origin Of The Nations – Part 1 of 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.

Hundreds of cultures, billions of people. The earth of the 2020s is a seething cauldron of unrest. When things seem to slip out of control, don't forget this. The God who made the nations is moving them into position for the climax of this present age. Today, we begin a series to outline his purposes.

From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, give us a look ahead into your series on God and the Nations. Dave, as you already mentioned in the intro, one of the purposes I have in this series of messages is to show that God has ultimate control of the nations. As a matter of fact, when the Apostle Paul was preaching there on Mars Hill, he said as much as he even talked about the boundaries of the nations. And what God wants us to see in those chapters in Genesis is his total sovereignty and the fact that he supervises human history.

He supervises it, and of course he has ultimate control. So this should be a series that should give us hope, that should give us steadfastness in our faith, and the deep belief that ultimately God is in charge of what is happening in his world. When you read about the collapse of the old Soviet Union, when you read about the rise and the fall of nations, what comes to your mind? What we want to do in this series of messages is to train ourselves to think biblically about history, because history is not simply sound and fury signifying nothing. History is going somewhere. In fact, it has been said that history is his story. It's God's story.

So what kind of a story is God writing? I hope that as a result of this, first of all, that we not only have a biblical view of history and understand how God judges history, but secondly, that we'll have a deeper appreciation for God, that we'll worship more abundantly and more enthusiastically when we see the providence of God among the nations. But also, I hope that as a result of this, we are given some insight as to how to interpret the events, even here in the United States of America. The last message in the series is entitled God and the United States. How shall we understand terrorism? What is the interpretation of it? Why does God use terrorism? What is his intention? And what is his intention for us as believers in the midst of a world that is becoming increasingly uncertain?

Washington keeps reminding us of the terrorist alert. And so that's the agenda. Join me for the ride on God and the nations. When God created man, he said that there are two mandates that I want to give you, Adam.

He said, first of all, you should know me. God created Adam in his own image. Adam and Eve created in the image of God so that they might know God. And Adam and his wife walked with God in the cool of the day, in the Garden of Eden, which is in modern day Iraq.

That's where it was. And then God said something else. He said, I want you not only to know me, but I want you to subdue the earth.

I want you to control it, not to misuse it, but to control it, to subdue it. And nations are going to be evaluated and judged on the basis of what they did with the original mandate. Now what I'd like to do in the next few moments, and I trust that you will follow with me, and I fully expect you to because I believe that this is going to have insight that will be transforming, is for us to take a few moments to simply look at three different stages, three different stages in our understanding of the nations. The first two stages are historical, and the third is theological or philosophical.

First of all, now, the origin of the nations. And for that, I invite you to turn to Genesis, Genesis chapter 9. Someone told me this past week that the reason that she does not bring her Bible to church is because by the time she turns to the passage, I have already read it. So could I pause right here and say Genesis chapter 9? All right, chapter 9.

I'm waiting for you now. Chapter 9, verse 18. Verse 18. The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan. These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered upon the face of the earth. Universal wickedness, but only Noah and his family spared in the ark. After the flood subsides, you have Noah who has three sons, and from those three sons, all the families of the earth are derived.

Well, you know the rest of the story. Noah was a very righteous man, but he is caught in a very unrighteous moment. He begins to work with vineyards, and he becomes drunk, and it says that he lay uncovered inside the tent.

Verse 22. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father's nakedness and told his two brothers outside, but Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders. Then they walked in backward and covered their father's nakedness.

Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father's nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, he said, cursed be Canaan. The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers. He also said, blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem. May Canaan be the slave of Shem. May God extend the territory of Japheth, and may Japheth live in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be his slave. Wow.

What a prediction that was actually fulfilled. How do we regard the three sons of Noah, and where did they land? Ham, known as the youngest of Noah's sons, and that will become important as we'll see in a moment. Ham, the youngest actually of Noah's sons, became the Canaanites.

Ham had four sons, by the way. We certainly don't have time to look at this in Genesis chapter 10, but it's all there. He had four sons, and they became the Canaanites, the people in Phoenicia, the Egyptians, ancient Egyptians, not modern Egyptians. Modern Egyptians are actually Arabs. And then the whole civilization of Sumer, which also has been identified with the plain of Shinar that we shall talk about. Then you have Shem, and from Shem you have the Jews.

You also have the Arabs. Remember Ishmael. Ishmael also is a descendant of Abraham. And then you have Lot, who was a nephew, of course, to Abraham, and he had two sons, Ammon and Moab. And the Ammonites in Ammon, Jordan today, and the Moabites, they also are descendants of Shem because of the fact that Lot was related to Abraham. In fact, in Moody Church today, we have at least one person that I know about who is an Ammonite from Ammon, Jordan.

That's one of the beautiful things about Moody Church. There may be many Ammonites that are here that I don't know about, but that is their origin. What's interesting is that when you see the conflict in the Middle East today, when you see that being played out, it is really being played out among cousins. It's a family feud because they are descendants of Shem. The family isn't getting along very well, is it?

And then you have Japheth, Greece, Germany, England, all of the Indo-European nations that we generally think about. That's where they went to. Now, what I'd like to do in the next few moments is to answer a question that is in your mind. And the question obviously is this, namely, what's going on here in the text? What did Ham do wrong? What about the curse of Canaan? That's been a major controversy sometimes within the Christian church.

Let me say this. We don't know exactly what it is that Ham did to his naked father. We don't know. Some people have read into the text homosexuality. Others have found something else that they think might have happened.

The simple fact is we don't know. What seems plain from the text is that he must have delighted in seeing the nakedness of his father while the other two sons walked backward and covered their father with a blanket. But whatever it was, when Noah awoke, he said this, Ham was his youngest son. Now there was going to be a curse on Ham's youngest son who was Canaan. And throughout the text, you always read these words, Ham, who was the father of Canaan. But Ham had four sons. Canaan was his youngest son.

And we must interpret the curse this way. First of all, Canaan was not judged because of his father's sin. It isn't this way that God says now, Ham, you're the one who sinned. And because you sinned, Canaan is getting punished.

No. But God did say, Ham, you sinned. You will be judged. You will have a son by the name of Canaan who will be very specifically judged as well for his own sin, to be sure.

But the judgment is inevitable. Secondly, the curse was fulfilled. It was fulfilled because we have many instances in the Old Testament where the Canaanites ended up serving the descendants of Shem, namely the Jews. And then when God enabled Joshua to take the land, the land was displaced and the Jews took it over. In that sense, the Canaanites became the servants to the descendants of Shem.

And for the most part, they were exterminated. And then number three, obviously, the curse does not apply to anyone who's living today because the Canaanites are no longer in existence. So this passage of scripture cannot be interpreted in any way to make any kind of a racial statement. But here you have God saying that this curse has come upon Canaan and the curse was fulfilled in the severe judgment that God brought to the Canaanites who turned out to be very evil and depraved people. By the way, if you're a Christian today, I want you to know that regardless of your heritage, you are not under any curse, whether it's a family curse, a generational curse, because Jesus Christ bore our curses. And in Jesus, we are a free people. Just that much regarding the origin of the nations, you can tell that this is going to be brief.

We are taking a plane ride today. Secondly, the scattering of the nations, the scattering of the nations. If you look at chapter 11 verse 1, that's chapter 11 now of Genesis verse 1, it says, now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plane in Shinar and settled there.

Now, isn't that interesting? They were all unified. But in chapter 10, we have the table of the nations, about 70 different nations and their origins. So it seems clear that the author of Genesis decided to move in the text thematically rather than chronologically. You see in chapter 11, we are told why the nations are scattered. And in chapter 10, he gives us how and where they were scattered to. Now, that only makes sense because you see at the end of chapter 9, he's talked about the three sons of Noah. So now what he wants to do is to simply tell us where they ended up after the experience of the Tower of Babel.

It's best to look at the text that way. Now, you know that the nations were united. God had said, fill the earth, but they decided to live together. It says in verse 3 of chapter 11, come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.

They used brick instead of stone and tar for mortar. They said, come, let us build ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth. But God says, if they get away with this, he says, they have begun to do this. Nothing they plan, verse 6, to do will be impossible for them. And God says they did not scatter willingly. I shall force them to scatter upon the face of the earth.

What's going on here? They go to a plane in Shinar, which is really modern day Babylon, and they say to themselves, we are going to build a tower that will reach the heavens. Now, remember that stars are often identified with satanic powers. That's why the Bible says that Satan reached and a third of the stars went with him.

So what they wanted to do evidently, and this becomes clear later on when the Bible talks about the sins of Babylon, what they wanted to do is to build a tower by which they would be able to actually not reach the stars, actually, but communicate with, quote, the stars, the powers that be, the demonic spirits basically in the heavens. Now, remember, when God created the stars, he said of the sun and the moon that they shall be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years. And some people believe also that the stars were for signs, and there's evidence of that. Years ago, I read a book entitled The Gospel in the Stars, and I was very critical of the book, but I was amazed at how many messages God might have wanted to communicate via the stars. Did you know that in the book of Job, there's not only a reference to the constellation Orion and several others, but in chapter 38, Job uses the word Maseroth. And if you look that word up, it very probably refers to the zodiac.

Now, here's what happened. If God was going to use the stars as signs, clearly, the stars were not created randomly. They had to be created in certain relationships to one another, certain juxtapositions so that there could be some sense made of them and some images in the heavens. And that's the way, evidently, evidently, God created and intended the stars to be a kind of Bible that people would be able to look at and read. But here's what happened in Babylon.

They perverted it. And astronomy, which has to be one of the most exciting sciences one could be involved in. If I could go to college again and have an opportunity to study a course in astronomy, I would take it. The beauty of the heavens, the juxtaposition of the stars, the various constellations, what a study. But astronomy collapsed and was perverted into what we now call astrology. People began to look at the stars now for individual guidance. Am I born under this sign?

Am I born under that sign? That's going to determine what I'm going to do. And God says over and over again in the Bible, I hate it.

It is an abomination. Because you're supposed to seek me for guidance. And you can read into the stars anything that you want. And behind astrology, behind astrology is the spirit world. But it's the wrong spirit world. And so God hated what happened in Babylon. And throughout the Bible, you have frequent references as Babylon, as the mother of all abominations. Because what they were going to do is to set up a humanistic religion that did not rely on the living God, that relied on the creature and not the creator.

God says, I'm going to scatter you. So what he did is every family, every family unit suddenly began talking a different language. And so they couldn't get along together. There was no way that they could communicate. And so this family group had to go in this direction and find its way without any roads, without any compasses.

This family group had to go its way. And so the nations were scattered. And in the 10th chapter of Genesis, you have where they were scattered to.

Isn't it interesting that during the day of Pentecost, what God did is he reversed the curse of the Tower of Babel. Because as we shall see, one of the purposes God has in history is that while sin scatters and divides, at the end of time, God is going to reconcile and bring together. And Pentecost, among other things, was a brief look at the way in which God is going to bring people from every tongue and tribe and nation and have them understand each other and be unified once again. Now we've spoken very briefly about the origin of the nations, also about the scattering of the nations. And now, what is God's purpose in the nations?

How do we understand that? For this, you have to turn to the New Testament, the New Testament book of Acts. Remember Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts.

Am I being clear today? God bless you. God bless you, all those of you who have your Bibles. And may he even bless those of you who didn't bring your Bibles. And he will bless you because he knows you're going to bring them next week.

That's the wonderful thing. Notice in the 17th chapter of Acts, Paul is on Mars Hill, and he's giving his famous speech. And it says in verse 24, page 979, if you have a Bible like mine, the God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. Now notice, from one man, King James says, one blood, he made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth.

And notice, he determined that times set for them, he determined how long they would last and the exact places where they should live. Is God involved in the nations? That's why the second message in this series is entitled God's providence among the nations, because you can't understand a phrase like that unless you believe in the providence of God. Well, my friend, this is Pastor Lutzer. I think it's very important for us as Christians to recognize that God is in charge.

Now let me be very clear when I say this. We do not understand all of God's ways. God is exceedingly mysterious to us. But for those of us who believe in him, for those of us who have come to saving faith in Jesus Christ, and therefore we know God, we know him, not exhaustively, but we know him truly, we believe that what he does is right. As a matter of fact, even as I speak about that, I'm reminded of the verse of Scripture in Isaiah chapter 40 where it says that the nations are like a drop in a bucket.

They are like dust on a balance. So when you begin to fear thinking of what is happening and what might happen in the future, remember, my friend, God is in charge. At the same time, I do believe it is important for us to understand our own culture so that we might know biblically how we should respond to it. That's why I've written a book entitled We Will Not Be Silenced. Of course, there are many people who are optimistic about our present situation, thinking to themselves that all of our battles for free speech and other kinds of issues are over.

Not so, my friend. We must understand that there are certain cultural currents that are very powerful, cultural currents that are really anti-Christian, and those have not stopped. That's why I've written this book because it discusses issues such as freedom of speech, yes, what is being taught in our universities regarding America. Also, I have a chapter on propaganda, how that works. I believe that this book will be a tremendous help in your journey in the Christian life, and it would be a great book to give to others, particularly those who are caught up in all of these cultural issues.

Here's what you can do for a gift of any amount. We're making it available for you. Simply go to rtwoffer.com.

That's rtwoffer.com, or pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337. As a matter of fact, because I think that this book is going to be such a help in your journey, I'm going to be giving you that contact info again. But I also want to thank the many of you who support this ministry.

You've heard me say it before, but because of you, running to win is in 50 different countries in seven different languages. Well, I hope that you have a pen or pencil handy. Here's what you can do.

Go to rtwoffer.com, or pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337. The title of the book, We Will Not Be Silenced. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. That was Erwin Lutzer, who today brought part one of The Origin of the Nations, the first in a six-part series on God and the nations. Next time, more about the Tower of Babel and the scattering of the human race. Plan to join us. This is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.