Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Origins are important. That's why God recorded the beginnings of human history in the book of Genesis. Here, we find out where we came from as members of the world's nations. Today, a wrap-up on how everybody can trace their roots back to the sons of Noah.
Stay with us. 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, some say humans existed before the Genesis 2 account. Otherwise, how could Cain have gotten a wife?
Well, Dave, just for the sake of the record, I totally disagree with the idea that human beings existed before Adam and Eve. Where did Cain get his wife? Well, obviously, he married a sister. As a matter of fact, if you think about it, how else could the human race begin? There were brothers and sisters who were marrying. There were cousins.
And that's the way it got started. So, we don't need to go into some kind of a theory to give an explanation for Cain's wife. By the way, I hold in my hands a book. Dave Jeremiah, on the cover, says, if I could, I would put this book into the hands of every Christian in America. It's a book I've written entitled We Will Not Be Silenced, Responding Courageously to Our Culture's Assault on Christianity. I want you to have a copy for this reason.
I believe that it will put a lot of the issues that we are confronting in America into perspective, into biblical perspective, and help us think through where we should stand. For a gift of any amount, this book can be yours. Here's what you do. Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337.
That's 1-888-218-9337. Now let's go to the pulpit of Moody Church where we find out the origin of the nations. Listen carefully. 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. 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. But notice, Paul goes on to say God did this, verse 27, so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he's not far from any one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being.
Even as one of your poets have said, we are his offspring. Paul is saying that God in a mysterious way, and we certainly don't understand how, determined the places and the times of various nations. Now, of the 70 nations mentioned in the 10th chapter of Genesis, by far the most of them are no longer in existence. But God says, I am determining that and giving all the nations of the earth an opportunity to seek me. When the King James says that they might grope after God, that's a good translation, that they might in their frustration and needs and challenges and in the face of their demise and death, that they might seek God. And Paul says in Romans that God gave them two means of revelation. First of all, the starry heavens. He says the heavens declare the glory of God, and it shows God's eternal power in Godhood. Paul says that anyone looking at the heavens should know that they didn't happen up there by themselves. I was at a retreat yesterday with some students from some colleges, and one of the students said that he has a friend who's basically an atheist, doesn't want to have anything to do with Christianity, is tired of being preached to by Christians, but he's into astronomy. And he was looking through the telescope at one star, a beautiful star, and he backed away and said, you know that I'm not religious. He kept saying, you know that I'm not religious. You know that I'm not religious. But that couldn't have happened by itself.
Wow, I'm not religious, but that could not have happened by itself. God's eternal power and Godhood. And then the light of conscience, the fact that we are aware of our sinfulness. This should have caused men and women to seek God, and had they sought God, as some undoubtedly did, God gave them further revelation, more revelation that they might come to know him. But for the most part, they turned away to idolatry, to creating God in their own image, and you look at the history of the nations and you will find by and large the nations are far from the living God.
Well, how do you like that for a brief survey? But don't think that the closing prayer is coming quite yet, because we are having four transforming conclusions. I know your notes say two, but you say, well, Pastor Luther, how come your notes say two and your sermon says four?
You have to understand, I have to get the notes in by Wednesday evening, but God keeps talking after that, do you understand? First of all, I want you to remember, number one, the unity, the unity of the nations. Fundamentally, we all came through Mr. and Mrs. Noah. That's why Paul says he hath made of one man or one blood all the nations of the earth. And you can go from one end of this world to another and you can see all of our different characteristics, and all of the ways in which we live that are so different in our different speech and our different habits and our different cultures, which are radically different. But you always come to this that every human being upon the face of the earth is created in the image of God and is seeking God with great thirst, though many of them do not know they are.
And so they're drinking from pagan fountains, trying to find meaning. But it's inbred within us because we're all members of the same family. Secondly, there is a tendency of nations to follow the character trait of their ancestors.
There's a tendency of nations to follow the character traits of their ancestors. We can see this in the case of Ham. Now Ham had a moral weakness, evidently. And that moral weakness turned out to be a curse, the curse of the fathers, sometimes to the third and fourth generations. And it was translated as a curse in the life of his youngest son, Canaan, as we explained. And the Canaanites were unbelievably perverse, morally.
In fact, archaeologists who have unearthed things in Canaan say that the kinds of perversion practiced in Canaan are hardly even known in cultures today and their perversions. And we can see this also in Nimrod. This is in the 10th chapter of Genesis.
You can read it on your own. Nimrod, the Bible says, was a mighty hunter. He was a mighty warrior. And what does he do? He begins the city of Nineveh, and you have the Assyrians beginning who were mighty warriors, oftentimes cruel.
Now I have to say this very, very hurriedly. Those are the ancient Assyrians. Because we have Assyrians here at Moody Church.
We have one on the pastoral staff, a very wonderful man. We have ushers who are Assyrians. And you know that we have whole families that are Assyrians. And one evening I had the privilege of participating in a Bible study in the home of some of our Assyrians.
And I want you to know today that they not only are beautiful people, but they are hospitable and gracious and have awesome Assyrian tea that they served to me. But now what I'd like us to do is to simply look at some of the traits of the nations. And I'm smart enough to not tell you which nation these traits belong to. I said to myself when someone in the church was doing a little bit of research for me, I wondered what nation is the most deceitful. And I discovered not to even begin to go there because there are many nations in which deceit is simply a part of their culture.
Early in life, children are told and explained and obviously have before them the model of lying and cheating and using people. And their only rule really is don't get caught. All nations have that. Some do it superbly.
Deceit. But let's look at some of the other, some of the other characteristics that sociologists have come up with. Some are inscrutable. Obviously, these characteristics can apply to any nation. Some are ruthless in achievement of objectives. Some are fanatically nationalistic and prideful and whole wars have been fought and blood has been shed by the hundreds of thousands because of fanatical nationalism. Some are greedy for wealth and power.
These, as you might have already caught on are the negative characteristics. Ruthlessness hidden behind a facade of politeness. Militaristic, cruel but obedient to authority.
Illogical. Will pursue incompatible opinions to absurd ends. How do you like to do business with a nation like that? Given to sensuality without restraint. These are some of the characteristics. And then you find some positive characteristics and aptitude for the arts, for music, for art, for sculpturing. Some especially excel in that. Some have practical and technical bends.
They are the inventors. Some have philosophical minds and become great thinkers. Some nations are more peace loving. Some emphasize physical strength.
But here's the point I want to make. You and I, because of marriage, because of intermarriage, because of one nation going out of existence and another coming into existence, you and I are a very interesting confluence of genes. And I want you to know today that God not only knows about that but made us that way and it is his intention to take the negative traits, the negative traits that we would have naturally, the negative traits that would come to us because of our culture, because of our heritage, because of our parents, because of our background. And what God does is he overcomes those negative traits and begins to build in us the positive traits of the fullness of the spirit and love and joy and peace and long suffering and gentleness and to take some of the strengths of our particular culture and to use those strengths for his honor and his glory. That's what God does in what we call salvation.
Let me give you a third, a third observation. Without God's intervention, without God's intervention, all people would be completely lost. All people would be completely lost. When you look at the nations, as I've already mentioned, always there is entropy, going to randomness and to paganism.
It's everywhere. Just think for a moment. Universal paganism and wickedness upon the earth so great that God could not stand it, but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Noah has three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, as we noticed. From them, all the families of the earth are scattered. And what do we have by the time we get to the end of Genesis chapter 11?
Universal wickedness, paganism, and idolatry, rampant in the whole earth. And what does God do? He sovereignly chooses. He chooses Abraham. Abraham, of course, a Shemite, and it's from Abraham that all the families of the earth are going to be blessed because that's where Jesus is going to come. And so God intervenes and he chooses Abraham out of idolatry and says, Abraham, I'm introducing myself to you because you would not go looking for me.
I am coming looking for you and I'm going to save you and I'm going to make you the father of a great nation. Here you have Canaanites and we spoke about the curse of the Canaanites. And in the midst of that awful curse and that evil that the Canaanites committed, here you have a prostitute by the name of Rahab who believes in Jehovah. She is saved by the grace of God and even makes it into the list in Hebrew chapter 11 where you have all of the heroes of faith.
She's listed there. And God's grace was extended to other Canaanites as well who came to know Jehovah and to trust Jehovah God. So what you always see is this universal wickedness but God is always drawing out. God is always intervening. But I want you to know today that without God's intervention, if we were left to ourselves, we would become idolaters, self-serving, and we would not come to know the Lord.
And do you know that it's the same today? I can take you to families where there are no Christians on either side in the family. Grandparents who perhaps were into occultism, grandparents who had no time for God, and then parents who equally had no time for God. And in the midst of a family like that, God will choose a young woman and she will get saved. And through her, blessing will come to others and her family will never understand it. Or God will choose a young man. I know a young man who's a pastor today who comes from a thoroughly anti-Christian family and he's the only one saved in his family and God reached down and saved him out.
Why? Because if God did not rescue us from our sin, we would remain in it. That's the hope of the gospel. And you see, the reason that we share the gospel of Jesus Christ is we know that God's means of rescuing people is to have them understand Jesus Christ and then use that information to use that information to cause the Holy Spirit of God to work in their hearts to know that God is in the rescuing business and save sinners, even big ones.
And that's why we have evangelism explosion. Because we know that God's purposes, God's purposes in this era are all focused on Jesus. There's a fourth and final observation, and that is that in the end, representatives will be in heaven from all the different families of the earth. The Bible says in Revelation chapter 5 verse 9 that there will be members that Jesus purchased from every tribe, from every language, from every people, from every nation, and they all will be there. What is God doing today?
God is going to the nations of the earth, and we are going to the nations of the earth, inviting men and women to believe on Jesus so that there will be more tongues to give glory to God and that that representative group that we will have a part in it because we are part of God's plan to rescue people from their sin through Jesus. I simply conclude today with this thought. If you are here today as a Christian, I want you to know, if you know anything about history, that you are an exception. You're an exception. Somebody hearing that on the radio or on the internet says oh yeah, that's the problem with you Christians.
You are so proud. You think that you're so special. I want you to know today that if you're thinking that, you have the opposite response to what you should have. If we are the exceptions, it is all because of God's grace, his undeserved grace that saved us out of millions and millions who do not know the Savior. In future messages, we will learn that God has two purposes. He has a purpose for the unconverted, and he has a purpose for the converted, and both of them converge in his matchless grace and glory. How could I preach a message like this without in the end inviting you to believe in Jesus, to trust you, especially if you think of yourself as marginalized or rejected because you belong to this tribe, this nation, this culture, this particular background. No matter who you are, the Bible says, if there's a desire in your heart to respond to Jesus and be forgiven and to be reconciled to God, you can be a part of that eternal company.
History is going somewhere, and next time we'll learn that God is guiding it in the process. Would you join me as we pray? Our Father, today we want to thank you that you can overcome any barrier, any background, any confluence of genes that made us one way and not another, and that your grace loves to reach deep, that your glory might be clearly seen in the lives of the redeemed.
May no one listening to this think that they are beyond God's grace, and may no one listening to this think that they are too good to receive or need your grace. Help us as we exalt Jesus, the focal point of history. We pray in His name. Amen. Amen. Well, my friend, this is Pastor Lutzer. We have to believe that God is the God of the nations and at the same time recognize that nations often have been terribly deceived. Did you know that Karl Marx still rules much of the world from his grave? Can you distinguish what is called Marxism from cultural Marxism? What's going on in our culture? What should we be aware of? These are the kinds of questions I ask and answer in my book entitled We Will Not Be Silenced, responding courageously to our culture's assault on Christianity. For a gift of any amount, it can be yours. Here's what you do.
Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. It's time once again for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. Recently, we got a listener question about the very Bible passage from which Running to Win got its original concept and name, the image of a race being run on earth with a very special audience in the stands.
Here is the question we received. Please explain the term cloud of witnesses in Hebrews 12.1. Are these individuals in heaven who are encouraging us along the way? Well, my friend, thank you so much for asking that question because absolutely Running to Win came from this passage. Therefore, since we have such a cloud of witnesses, let us run with patience the race that is set before us.
I still remember the time when I sat down with our producer, Dave McAllister, and we were discussing what we should call the program. And this passage of scripture came to mind and so we agreed on running to win. But the cloud of witnesses, I do not believe that these are people who are in heaven who are watching us on earth. What we need to do is to understand the Bible in context. Remember that chapter 11 of the book of Hebrews talks about all those heroes of faith who went on before us. So I see the cloud of witnesses. It is not as if these heroes of faith in chapter 11 are looking at us, but rather we are looking at them. They have gone on. This 11th chapter is not so much about the miracles, it is about their endurance, their ability to continue to believe no matter what. In light of what they have done, we are inspired.
And so that's the way in which I interpret it. Now I do believe that people in heaven could ask questions of Jesus. I could imagine, for example, a husband asking about how his wife is doing on earth. But I don't think that the saints in heaven see us.
They have better things to do. But thank God because they are there and because the record of their victories has been recorded for us in scripture, we continue in the presence of those witnesses to run the race that is set before us. Thank you for asking. God bless you and have a good day all day. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60614. Today Erwin Lutzer concluded The Origin of the Nations, the first in a six-part series on God and the nations. Next time join us to learn all about God's providence among the nations. Thanks for listening. This is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
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