Clans & Confusion

If you would open with me to Genesis chapter 10. We've been walking this semester through Genesis 1 through 11,! and we've come now to our last part of that, so we'll finish this up tonight.

We'll only go through the first nine verses of chapter 11, because after that it gets into another genealogy leading to Abraham, which is a new section. So we'll stop at the end of verse 9 in chapter 11.

But if you remember back a few weeks ago when we were in Genesis 1 and 2, there's some interesting things going on between Genesis 1 and 2. In Genesis 1, God gives us a high-level overview of the whole creation week from 30,000 feet.

He created all the tiny molecules on earth, all the distant galaxies and stars in outer space. And then in chapter 2, he kind of goes backwards in time today, 6, and gives us a zoomed-in view of the creation of Adam and Eve.

And in Genesis 10 and 11, there's something similar going on chronologically. So chapter 10 actually comes after the first nine verses of chapter 11.

And so Moses isn't writing in a strict line here, going exactly chronologically. I'll explain this as we go through it. But there's a similar pairing of these chapters, kind of like what's going on in chapters 1 and 2.

In chapter 10, Moses gives us an overview of Noah's descendants. And they moved away. They scattered throughout the earth according to their families and their languages.

And then Genesis 11 comes back and gives us an explanation of where those languages came from. Why did they start speaking in different languages? So tonight, we'll see clans and confusion.

Clans is a funny word. It's like clash of clans. But clans and confusion. And in chapter 10, we get a look at the clans. And so in chapter 10, verse 1, it says, These are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

And that word generations is important to the book of Genesis. It's kind of like the backbone of the book of Genesis. It structures it. And so in chapter 2, verse 4, we saw these are the generations of the heavens and the earth.

In chapter 5, verse 1, these are the generations of Adam. And we saw the generations of Noah. And now we get the generations of the sons of Noah, who are Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

And it says, Sons were born to them after the flood. And so in God's providence, none of the ladies who went onto the ark were already pregnant.

There were just eight people who were saved on the ark. And they did not have more children until after the flood. And so that's where all these sons come from. The Lord saved eight people on the ark, and that's it.

And then they started to fill the earth again according to God's commandment after that. And if you look at verses 2 through 31, this is all a genealogy.

And we're not going to read every single word of this, but it is critically important. It's a very detailed account. It's really the most detailed account of these people we have from anywhere in the world.

It gives us information that nothing else really has. So it's critically important that we understand this. But this genealogy has a name. It's called the Table of Nations.

It's a list of 70 people who began to produce nations from their family. And so pretty much all of the names listed in this lengthy genealogy are the names of countries.

And so we'll see names like Egypt. We'll see names like Assyria and Babylon. These were men. These were the names of men who became so prominent and had so many children and family members that they became their own nation.

And this list of 70 names explains the origin of these earliest post-flood peoples. And so they all started in the Turkey area.

That's where Noah's Ark landed. And they spread out from there. And this gives us the names and places that will feature prominently throughout the rest of the story of the Old Testament.

And so we'll see some of these names. We'll see Magog. That'll play prominently in the book of Ezekiel and appears again in Revelation. We see Tarshish, which is where Jonah was trying to run to from God. We see Egypt, which is where the Israelites were enslaved.

We see Canaan, the land the Israelites conquered. Sheba, the queen from there, came to honor Solomon. Babylon and Assyria show up all the time in the prophets.

Those are the countries that destroyed Israel. We see Nineveh, the city that Jonah was sent to eventually. We see the Philistines. We see Sodom and Gomorrah.

We see all kinds of people that are going to play prominently throughout the rest of the Old Testament. And so this is a critically important list of people. The Israelites would have run-ins with many of these people for the rest of the timeline of the Old Testament.

And almost all of these people mentioned here are incredibly wicked. We don't have a lot of information about them in chapter 10, but based on who they produced from their line and what those countries were like, we can understand that these people were themselves very wicked.

This is like an origin story for all the bad guys. It's filling in some background of where they came from. Many of these men were highly, highly ungodly. Did incredibly horrible stuff and their countries continue, even to this day, to do horrible stuff.

And being ungodly and sinful is always wrong. It's always wicked. But what's shocking about the wickedness of these people is their dads or their granddads were on the ark.

Noah and Shem and Ham and Japheth were on the ark. And their own sons did not obey God.

Their own grandsons did not listen to the Lord. They had seen and these descendants would have received first-hand accounts of how God was gracious to them, but how God's judgment was unrelenting, and they held God in contempt.

And this genealogy doesn't skip any generations. I suspect Moses only highlights the most prominent of this line. He does not skip any generations, but he gives some highlights of the men who became the most prominent.

And I'll read the first one. So verse 2. That last verse is kind of a summary that gets repeated a couple times.

If you look at verse 20, these are the sons of Ham by their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations. Verse 31. These are the sons of Shem by their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations.

And so these men themselves became nations. They became their own clans. This kind of bigger than a family but smaller than a nation. Weird kind of name for a group of people.

But it's an explanation of where they came from. And so Japheth is listed first. Secondly, verse 6, we see the sons of Ham. Some big players here.

Cush. That's in modern-day Ethiopia. Egypt. Put. And Canaan. Canaan is the land the Israelites would eventually take over. And there's someone mighty that comes from the line of Ham.

And if you remember, Ham's line was cursed. Canaan was cursed. And in verse 8, Cush fathered Nimrod.

What a name. Anyone ever met Nimrod before? I have. Lowercase n. It was a joke. Thank you. Appreciate it. Take a second.

So his name was Nimrod. He was the first on earth to be a mighty man. He was a mighty hunter before Yahweh. Therefore, it is said, like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before Yahweh.

The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Akkad, and Kalna in the land of Shinar. From that land, he went into Assyria and built Nineveh. Rehoboth-ir, Kala, and Rezan between Nineveh and Kala.

That is the great city. Nimrod is renowned for his hunting skills. And that seems like kind of a strange thing to be renowned for. But super manly, am I right?

In that time, that would have been critically important. Now, when we think about hunting, that word, most typically that does refer to hunting animals. And so that's a natural reading of this text.

It's possible he became mighty through his ability to hunt and provide for his clan, which just sounds like a super manly thing to do. I'm providing for my clan. So its normal usage is to refer to hunting animals.

But let's look at some of the other descriptions of Nimrod. He's said to be a mighty man. And twice he's said to be a mighty hunter, even in the eyes of Yahweh.

And so he was, in essence, a king. And it even describes in that way, the beginning of his kingdom was, and lists out these four cities in the land of Shinar.

And so he's essentially a king in this ancient world. What does his name mean? His name literally means, let us revolt. Let us revolt.

And so being a hunter isn't bad. Building cities isn't necessarily bad. Being a mighty man isn't necessarily bad. David was a mighty man. He had mighty men surrounding him.

But given this description of Nimrod and what his name means, this guy was a really bad actor. And many pagan religions have a Nimrod-like figure that could be the Nimrod of the Bible.

We're not certain on that. But with him being a king and a ruler, it's also possible that he was a hunter of men. That he would enslave people and rule over them in order to become mighty.

And he had these cities that he either conquered or built. He built Nineveh. It's possible that he could have overtaken Babel after the events that we'll read about at the beginning of chapter 11.

But the cities that he built or conquered, they were, and even to this day, still are seedbeds of evil and wickedness and violence.

So this is kingdom began with Babel. And as we'll talk about later, Babel is the exact same word for Babylon. So he founded Babylon, Assyria, and Nineveh.

Babylon is in Iraq or Iran. It kind of crosses the boundary line. Assyria and Nineveh are in Iraq today. These places have been marked by sin and wickedness from this time, from the days of Nimrod.

In verse 10, it says, the beginning of his kingdom was Babel or Babylon. He builds a kingdom that starts with Babylon and ends with Assyria. And these two nations would eventually be the ones that God used to destroy the nation of Israel.

These were horribly wicked men and women living in these places. And they can trace their origins back to this guy named Nimrod. And so he was a wicked man.

He did evil, even though he became great in the earth. So he founded his kingdom in the land of Shinar. And skipping down to verse 15, it goes next to Canaan, who was the son of Ham, who was cursed.

And all these names that appear here that he fathered, that were his sons, all these people inhabited the land of Canaan that the Israelites would later destroy.

Or were called to destroy, at least. And so we see Sidon. We see the Jebusites. Those were the original inhabitants of Jerusalem, the city of David, where he set up his kingdom, at least.

I'm sorry. The Amorites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites, the Arvadites, the Zimorites, the Hamathites, and afterwards the clans of the Canaanites dispersed.

And so these people are the ones that Israel would eventually be called to go and drive out of the land. This is a list of people who oppose God and oppose his people.

Skipping down to verse 21, we move on to Shem and his descendants. And first of all, it says he was the father of all the children of Eber.

And that's interesting because Eber is going to be like fourth or fifth down the line, but this is where the word Hebrew originates from. And so he was the father of the people who would eventually be called the Hebrews or the Jews.

And then verse 25, to Eber, this is where he shows up in the lineage, were born two sons. The name of the one was Peleg, not Pegleg, but Peleg. For in his days, the earth was divided.

And his brother's name was Joktan. And so Peleg means division or divided. And so his name was prophetic for what would happen, or for what did happen in chapter 11, that the earth was divided.

Now, some people think this is a reference to Pangaea breaking up. I don't know if you remember us talking about that. Like, there's one landmass being there. Some people take this as a reference to that landmass breaking up and the land literally dividing.

I think that's probably an over-reading of this text. And this just refers to the division that resulted from what we'll read about in chapter 11. And verse 32, to sum up this genealogy, these are the clans of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies, in their nations, and from these nations, spread abroad on the earth after the flood.

So those are the clans. Secondly, we move on to confusion. Confusion. We see this in the first nine verses of chapter 11. So, Moses takes us back now to pre-chapter 10.

So, how do we know that? Well, if you remember in chapter 10, the marker at the end of these people groups was, they were broken up by their clans and their languages. But chapter 11, verse 1, says, Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.

And so what's following in chapter 11 takes place before these events in chapter 10. Does that make sense? You following with me? Okay. So, Moses describes that they had one language and they had the same words.

So, he tells us a story in chapter 11 of wickedness and rebellion. And this wickedness and rebellion actually caused all of the languages that we see even in our earth today.

All these languages that people speak around us are a result of what happened in chapter 11. It says, One language and the same word. So, they spoke the same language.

They shared a vocabulary with each other. So, really, they could communicate perfectly with each other. There was no confusion in their communication as they spoke to one another. This is roughly our experience in the United States.

Pretty much anywhere you go, you can understand and be understood unless you go to Louisiana or parts of Arkansas. But we have one language and we have the same words.

Now, why does Moses need to say one language and the same words? Why does he need to say both? Aren't those the same thing? Well, it is possible to have one language but different words.

And just for an example, if you compare us, the United States, to England or Britain, not our Britain, but the other, the Great Britain, we have one language but different words.

Okay? We've got words they don't have, like riz and stuff. They have cooler words that we don't use. They say chuffed. That means like pleased.

I'm happy. I'm really chuffed. Kind of a fun word. They say bloke. That's for reference to a man or a dude. They say bloke. And then this one's my favorite. I learned it from a friend, but it's moorish.

M-O-R-E-I-S-H. That means you really like something. So if you're eating some chips and you're like, what does it taste like? They'll say, it tastes really moorish. Like I want some more of that. We have s'more, which is close, but we need to start saying moorish.

Anyway, that's an example. We share a language but have different words, whereas at this time, Moses is clarifying, not only did they have one language, they even shared the same vocabulary and so they could speak to anyone wherever they went.

There's one dialect. Now verse two says, and as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.

Now I think I'm reading from the ESV. I think the way they render this is a little bit confusing. I think this should say, as people migrated to the east or in an eastward direction.

The Hebrew word can mean from the east or to the east or in the east, just depending on context. I think this reference makes sense for them to travel to the east.

And the reason for that is because where the ark landed generally was west of where they ended up. So they had to travel east to get there. So it's a little bit confusing to translate, but it's kind of like in our weather system.

Anyone pay attention to the weather at all? Okay, I only do when it's storming. I'm getting old because I like to turn the TV on and watch storms. But I used to be so confused as a kid because they'd say, oh, it's a really cold north wind.

I'm like, does that mean it's coming from the north or going to the north? I'm so lost. And maybe a thousand years from now, if someone looks back on our society, they'll be like, what do they mean by north wind? Was it coming to the north or from the north?

That's kind of how this word is. So I think they were traveling to the east to get here, which from Turkey to Shinar, they would have had to go to the east. So they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.

Shinar is in Babylon, or as the Bible calls it, Babel. And those two words are identical in Hebrew. And it's actually fascinating. They settle in the land of Shinar in Babylon.

And what do they do? They start to build a tower. And the plains of Shinar, the land of Shinar, will be really important later on in the story of Scripture because there's another king in Babylon in the land of Shinar who also builds a monument to himself, King Nebuchadnezzar.

He is repeating the sin that these men committed all the way back in Genesis 11. In the same land, similar location, similar motive.

They settled there. Verse 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.

Then they said, Come, 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.

They said to one another, So they settled here in this land. What had God commanded them to do? Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

They were to go out across the broad plain of the earth and fill it up with people bearing God's image. But they said, Nope, we're staying right here. We're not moving another inch.

This is our place. We are going to dwell here and make this our home. And they encouraged each other. They not only disobeyed God, but they encouraged everyone else to disobey Him too.

They said, Let us do this. Let's keep going in this. We're doing a good job. Let's keep disobeying God together. And that happens in our day all the time. That happened in Paul's day in Romans 1.32.

He says, Though they know God's righteous decree, that those who practice such things, and such things are sexual immorality, idolatry, lying, stealing, that he mentions in that context, that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them.

And so these people in Paul's day aren't only disobeying God. They're looking at other people who are disobeying God and applauding them, celebrating them.

And that happens in our own day too. This is a sin as old as Babel because we see that they're encouraging each other to disobey the Lord together. And this is a first in the Bible.

This is the first mention in the Bible of a group of people collectively working together to rebel against God. Certainly there were a lot of bad people doing wicked stuff before the flood.

But you look at Adam and Eve, they didn't really conspire together. Eve was tempted and Adam alone rebelled. You look at Cain, he just decided to kill his brother in rebellion to God.

You look at Noah and his drunkenness, that was a sin that he committed by himself. The people of the world before the flood were incredibly wicked. That's why God destroyed them, but there's no indication in the text they were working together on this plot to try to overthrow God or disobey him together.

So this is the first description we get of an entire civilization vowing together and encouraging each other to disobey God. But this civilization loved each other.

They were perfectly united. They experienced so much peace and harmony together. They worked and played so well together. They were friendly to each other. Isn't this what we want for society and culture and for our world?

But they were going in the wrong direction. They were all together. They experienced peace and harmony, but they were moving in a way opposite of what God had commanded them. And so I think we all want unity.

I think we all want harmony. We all want peace. But those things aren't an end in themselves. What are we united around? What harmonizes us?

These people were in perfect harmony, but they were going in the wrong direction. And any time I think of the wrong direction, I think of one direction. But I also think of, I also think of a time when I was at Shepherds Conference.

It's a conference I get to go to each year at John MacArthur's church in Los Angeles. And me, Michael, and Jeff have gone for a number of years. There have been other people in and out of that group.

But one year in particular, we were there. It was me, Jeff, and Michael in an SUV. We had just gotten gas. Jeff was driving. And he went to pull out and turn left onto this road.

Well, he turns left, and as we get onto the road, we see it's a divided highway that he just turned the wrong way on. You can't just jump the curb and get to the other side. So now it's like 9 o'clock at night.

We're going the wrong way down the interstate in Los Angeles, which thankfully, no one lives in Los Angeles, so there's no problem. But these cars are just flying past us. It was so scary.

So we're just going the wrong way. There's no way to turn around. So he's just got to keep going until we can find a place to turn off. And the weird part was no one was honking at us. They were just like going around us like it was nothing.

Like, ah, just another Tuesday night. And so they were just like, just didn't think anything of it. No one honked. Everyone just went around us. It was great. But were we in harmony in that moment?

Like, we were all together. We wanted to kill Jeff, but we were all together in the car, but we were going the wrong direction. And so this is what was happening at the Tower of Babel.

They were united. They were at peace with each other, but they're going the wrong direction. So unity and harmony cannot be an end in themselves, but what are we united around?

What harmonizes us? And if you remember back to COVID, there were these commercials from like car dealerships. They'd try to sell you a car and at the end they'd say, hey, we're in this together.

Like, what? What? How? You want me to buy a car and sell it like we're trying to fight the world together? Like, what do you, how are we in this together? Well, that makes no sense. And then at the Olympics every year, I know one of my friends in here has a problem with this too because we've talked about it, but there's always like these commercials of like people from all over the world watching the Olympics and it's like, hey, we're all one.

We're all united. It's like, no, I want the United States to destroy you guys at Water Polo. Like, we're not united anyway. Don't push this one world stuff on us. Like, we're, I don't know what you mean by we're all in this together.

Like, so what is it that unites us? That's more important than being united because being united can lead to bad places if it's not around the truth.

So as a church, we want to be united around the truth of God's word. And ideally, we'd have peace. Ideally, we'd be perfectly united and in harmony, but it needs to be around the truth so that we're moving in the right direction if we do experience that harmony and unity.

So now, look at what they say. Verse 3. Let us make. Does that sound familiar?

That's how God speaks when he creates mankind. Chapter 126, let us make man in our image. Now these men are using the creativity that God has given them to make an image or an altar to themselves.

They're using their God-given creativity to prop themselves up. They're using their God-given talents and skills to rebel against him.

And because this civilization was united around evil, they quickly became confused and shattered.

And what was their motive? What motivated them to do this? Verse 4. Let us make a name for ourselves. Pride is what motivated them.

This is soaring pride. We're saying, we're going to rebel against God and we want to be remembered for it. We're going to stay here and we want all the generations after us to remember our names.

We want to be immortal on this earth because we did this project together. We're going to be remembered forever. We want to make a name for ourselves.

They wanted to fulfill their own desires rather than following God's decree. They used their God-given creativity just to benefit themselves and try to make a name for themselves and so many people do this today.

And you know, it seems humble. Like, every Heisman Trophy winner ever is like, I was just a kid trying to make a name for myself. It seems so humble, seems so honorable, and yet it's laced with pride.

It goes all the way back to Genesis 11. People trying to make a name for themselves and prop themselves up and make their own names great. You see this on social media all the time.

At the end of the day, they want likes and follows whatever they have to do. Why? To make a name for themselves. To prop themselves up.

And we may not have clout on social media, we might not be A-list celebrities, but this sin can still infect our hearts. So what is it that motivates us?

Why do you do what you do? Do you strive to be known by people? Or are you striving to know God and be known by Him?

What is it that motivates us at the base level, at our hearts? We cannot serve two masters. Do we want to be known or do we want to make God known?

These people wanted to make themselves known. And they did this at the end of verse 4, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. Let's stay here, let's be remembered here so that we don't get scattered everywhere.

And they intended to make a tower to the top of the heavens, with its top in the heavens. They wanted to build something that would outlast them. And it's also possible they were trying to build something that would outlast another flood.

In case something like this happens again, we're going to build something that will last through it. And there are a lot of pyramids all over the world, I'm sure you know that. A lot of them have a very similar story behind it, that people were building these to survive a catastrophe.

And it's really fascinating. The text does not mention that that's why ultimately their motivation was pride to make a name for themselves. It's also possible they did it as a potential shelter in case things happened badly again.

So they said, lest we be dispersed. They refused to follow God's plan. They refused to be obedient to God, which he commanded them to spread out in the earth and fill the earth. So why did they rebel?

Well, maybe they had forgotten how severe God's wrath was. Maybe they had just forgotten how full and complete God's judgment was of the previous generations.

Or, maybe even more wickedly, they knew God had promised to never flood the earth again. And they thought because of that that he wouldn't deal with their rebellion.

They picked and chose what they wanted to believe. They had heard he would never flood the earth again. That would have been knowledge handed down to them by their forefathers. And perhaps they thought God would be lax on sin because he promised to never flood the earth again.

They thought God would be passive towards them and they wanted to seek immortality on earth where everything is passing away, which is incredibly foolish. Now, verse 5, and Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower which the children of man had built.

Now, this is ironic. They're like, we're going to build a tower to the heavens. We're going to build it all the way up and then God's like, oh, that's a sick tower, guys. Nice. That's kind of what I do with my kids.

They build Legos or something like, Dad, built a huge tower and I walk in and I'm like, oh, nice. It's like four blocks high. They're just proud it hasn't fallen over but I've got to hype it up because I'm their dad. And so that's kind of what's happening.

God is having to crouch down to even see this thing. It's a funny picture the way Moses words this. He has to squint to even see this thing that they built to immortalize their names forever.

In verse 6, Yahweh said, behold, they're one people and they have all one language and this is only the beginning of what they will do and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

And so the Lord, he knows their hearts. He sees that a greater rebellion is inevitable. At some point, this will lead them further down the road of rebellion and wickedness.

And so what does God plot to do? Verse 7, he says, come, let us go down and there confuse their language so that they may not understand one another's speech.

Imagine the confusion. They all of a sudden can't communicate with each other and it's kind of funny to think, like, how quickly did this happen? Like, was this super quick? Like, they're out there building the city and they're like, hey, can you pass me?

It's like, what? Like, did it happen mid-sentence like that? Or maybe it took place slowly over a day or a week and it's like, I'm going crazy. Like, I'm only picking up like every six words.

He said, like, what's wrong with me? Like, every six words there's a word I don't understand and by the end of the day they just can't understand each other at all. So we don't know exactly how quickly confused their language.

The only thing I can relate to in this situation was when I was like 10, my dad played indoor soccer with my uncle because it's what dads in the early 2000s did and so we were at this indoor soccer game and I'm with my younger cousin.

He's like eight. He had just drank a strawberry shake and it must have been like bad strawberries or something because he was like feeling sick. So we walk over to this trash can and it's like the old school like outdoor trash cans with a plastic top and that flapper I don't know what it's called but it's like super hard to push in so you gotta get your hand all dirty just to throw your food away and it hasn't been washed in like five years.

So anyway, I'm like holding this flapper open for him to puke in and as soon as he starts throwing up he like steps back. I don't know why he did that but he just starts spewing all over the floor and immediately like 10 people started yelling at me in Spanish and I'm like what?

I don't know what you're saying. It was the most confused I've ever been in my life. So anyway, I can't imagine the confusion I just think of like a bunch of minions yelling at each other and you're like what in the world is going on?

And so the Lord confused their language and they could no longer work together they couldn't live together anymore. The Lord did not destroy them just like he promised.

He had promised to never flood the earth with water again and he stayed true to that promise but he utterly disrupts their plans and it's kind of funny because they never would have known what happened.

Like they're going home to their wives like it was the craziest thing like we were just talking and then I never understood another word. Don't know what happened. Like they never would have figured out what exactly took place that day until the Lord spoke this to Moses.

They would have just walked away confused. The Lord shatters their language and it scatters these people. This scattering isn't voluntary they just couldn't understand each other.

There was a huge barrier between them now and even even to this day language is a huge barrier. This is why missionaries jobs are so hard. They have to train for years just to understand the language before they can even start to speak to the people or understand the people.

Language is a massive barrier and these people experience that first hand. God scattered them in judgment. He made good on his promise to never destroy the earth again with water but that doesn't mean he won't punish sin.

It's ironic that he scatters them because this is exactly what they were trying to avoid. They're like hey let's build a tower so that we don't get scattered and here they're getting sent to the ends of the earth.

They're getting scattered everywhere. And people would not have only talked differently very quickly they would have started to look differently as well. And so basically there are 70 names listed in that genealogy in chapter 10 and so I think it's safe to say there were at least 70 languages that were just created that day.

And so these languages fell along family lines and so they just reassociate with their families and their clans and just move off. They go somewhere anywhere else. And so what that does is that limits the gene pool and so everyone from that clan that's all the genes that they've got and so it would just get passed down to the next generations and so whatever that clan kind of looked like is what their progeny would look like.

And then also the climate would affect that. If they go someplace warm their skin's going to be more resilient in the heat and under the sun. Their skin's going to be darker. If they go somewhere cold their skin's going to be more resistant to the cold and be fairer and lighter.

And what's fascinating is blue eyes. Anyone in here blue eyed? A lot of you? So if you have blue eyes and you marry someone with blue eyes you only have blue eyed kids which are so cute by the way.

But you only have blue eyed kids because blue eyes are recessive. And so if you imagine a people group that consists of blue eyes that's what they're going to look like down the line.

And so you scatter different places and limit the gene pool in different ways and that's why we see the diversity of looks we have in terms of humanity today across the earth that God has made. So verse 8 they leave off building the city.

Yahweh dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth and they left off building the city. And so they seem to have completed this tower but they stopped even trying to complete the city because they couldn't speak to each other.

And so the Lord very easily does away with their rebellion. Just very quickly gets rid of it. Sends them away. Be careful rebelling against God.

If you're an unbeliever you've lived your whole life in rebellion to God. He is far stronger and far wiser than you are and can very quickly get rid of your rebellion and very justly and easily punish your sin.

And for us as believers we need to be careful too because our sins are committed against God as well and this is the God we're dealing with who is so wise so much wiser than us so much more powerful than we are.

And the name of that place was called Babel because Yahweh confused the language of all the earth. Babel is the same word as Babylon.

It means confused. And so the Lord is saying you want to make a name for yourself? I'll give you a name. Your name is going to be confused. Your name, I'll give you a name. It's not a name you ever would have wanted.

I will give you a name that will be remembered forever to declare how foolish you were in thinking you could get away with rebelling against me. They received a name which is exactly what they were seeking but it's not a name they would have chosen.

And it's interesting because on this day all these languages leapt into existence. And you can go back in history and trace the evolution of languages to a point.

So English has gone through old English, it's gone through middle English, now we're in modern English I guess where we say riz and clout and weird stuff but that's an evolution of language.

You can kind of track that. But it only goes back so far. You would expect that from all the languages we have today we could easily and naturally kind of make a language tree that goes back all the way to one language but we can't do that.

There's a point in time where all these languages just exist. The only explanation for that is Genesis 11. Nothing in the world has the power to explain that phenomenon other than Genesis 11.

The Bible is true in every word and has explanatory power for our world today. So the language was confused from there Yahweh dispersed them over the face of all the earth but one day Babel would be unbabbled.

One day Babylon would be unbabylonized and it happens in the New Testament. In Acts chapter 2 Peter and the other disciples receive the Holy Spirit and they start to speak in tongues or languages.

And instead of these people being scattered with different languages all these people are in the city of Jerusalem hearing the same language as Peter and the other apostles and other disciples declare the mighty works of God in their own language.

They can understand each other. And Peter preaches this sermon saying you have killed the Christ, you killed the Messiah, the one who came to save you, your only hope is repentance and faith in him.

You cannot work your way to God which is really what the Babel builders were trying to do. No matter how many works you accomplish those are nothing to God. He'll disperse them and scatter them.

You cannot earn righteousness with God. We do not need to work towards God. He came down to us in Jesus. The way to God, the way to righteousness with God is not through self promotion but self denial.

The way to God is through repentance and belief in Jesus. And one day if you're a Christian we will experience this one language, same words kind of experience in heaven with all the saints that God has saved.

It's kind of funny, people will sometimes say like man if I could just go back and sit at the feet of Jesus and listen to him. And I get what they're saying but it's like you know Aramaic bro?

Like you think time traveling just like makes you a language genius? Like you wouldn't have been able to understand him. And like oh if I could just go back and hear Moses it's like you know Hebrew? You can listen to Hebrew?

Like there's a language barrier even as we go back across time but one day in heaven we'll be able to speak to Moses, we'll be able to speak to Jesus and we all have one language and the same words.

As we finish Genesis 1-11 I want to just kind of take a step back and look at it on the whole. Over fall break my family and I got to go to Branson, went to Silverado City, SDC baby and we're there ran into the Christie's and we're talking to them, yeah Laney and Hayden and Mike and Bree, don't want to leave her out.

We're talking to them, hi Mike at the back, Mike was like hey I rode every ride in the park or something like that. He's like you need to do it and I was not planning on doing anything because I was with my kids but I didn't want to, I'm too competitive so I was just like alright bet, yeah it's on.

And so I text him, the first ride I rode was the Firefall which is like a mass, it's kind of like the Superman in Fort Worth, you know the one that goes up and down except it's way shorter so it's like a mediocre woman instead of Superman but anyway so it just launches you up and takes you back down, launches you up, takes you back down and you just kind of like get this huge view of the park and then this very small view of the park and that's kind of what is going on in Genesis 1 through 11 over and over again.

We get this massive survey of everything in Genesis 1, Genesis 2 brings us down to see the details of Adam and Eve in the garden. In Genesis 4 we get a zoomed in shot of Cain killing Abel, in Genesis 5 we get this massive genealogy taking us from Adam to Noah, in chapter 6 we get a big view of the world and its wickedness and in chapter 7 we get a zoomed in view of who Noah is and how he obeys the Lord and the same thing happens in 10 and 11.

Big view of all the people that exist at this time and in 11 we get this zoomed in shot of their rebellion at the Tower of Babel. And this continues throughout the book of Genesis, this high view and this zoomed in detailed view.

What is that teaching us? God is at work in both ways. God is at work in the big picture overview details and he's at work in the intimate details of our lives.

He's faithful to bring about his promises as he oversees everything and yet knows how many hairs are on our heads which takes less counting for some people than for others.

History then is not just an aimless array of random events and people. We see God's hand woven throughout every detail as he directs and governs the affairs of men for his purposes.

was Noah just a chance? Did the universe exist just by chance? Were Adam and Eve just a chance that they existed in the garden?

Was Noah just a chance that he was born when he was to save his family? No, God's in control of everything leading up to Noah's birth and even after Noah's birth.

Is it just mere chance that you exist? Is it just mere chance that you're here tonight? Is it just mere chance that your parents are who they are or your friends are who they are?

No. God who made you in his image is in control of your life. God wasn't just sovereign over the nations in the beginning. It's true today as well.

God is more powerful than America ever has been or ever will be because he is the ultimate sovereign and yet he cares for each of us as individuals. And we call this God's transcendence, his bigness, his otherness, and his eminence, his closeness to us.

And while all these stories we've read about and considered happened in the beginning, the God who made everything and was working in the beginning hasn't stopped being himself.

He is continuing to work in the same way in our world today. And this transcendence and this eminence are true in Jesus. He is the Lord over all creation and he's the one who knows each one of us.

He's the one who is there and who created in the beginning and he's the one who knows the details of our lives and knows all of our sins. God's love. But the good news of the Bible, the gospel, isn't just that Jesus knows us, but that he saves his people.

He offers forgiveness through his death. So that all who look to him by faith and contemplate him by faith will find healing in his sacrifice and in his resurrection.

Genesis 1-11 forms the foundation of our worldview, the way we see the world, and also our faith as we see Christ. It points us to Jesus who is God in the flesh.

And so if we want to be faithful readers of Genesis 1-11, if we want to be faithful readers of the Bible, we must believe in Jesus, the one about whom all these things were written, the one to whom all of Scripture points.

This world was made by Jesus and was made for Jesus. And we as creatures in this world, as image bearers of God, were made by Jesus and for Jesus.

And so you can run after satisfaction, but you will not find it outside of Jesus because he is the one for whom you were made. You can chase pleasure if you want. You won't find it except in Christ because he died to pay for our sins.

That is our chief and primary problem. Just like at the Tower of Babel, we have rebelled against the God who made us and gone against his word. So we don't just need to modify our behavior.

We don't just need to act better or do better. We need to be made new. And all the way back in Genesis 3-15, the promise of the one who could do that was made.

The seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. He has done that and offers forgiveness. Believe in him. Look to him. Our Father, we thank you for Genesis 1-11.

While all of your word is inspired and without error and incapable of leading us astray, it's difficult to overlook the importance of Genesis 1-11.

It's the foundation of the rest of what you've told us. And so Father, I pray we take you at your word, that we believe you and that we live accordingly. In the name of Christ we pray.

Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.