And So, the Nations

This morning and Genesis chapter 10, if you haven't peeked ahead to see what was coming, is a genealogy. So we're in genealogies again. I can kind of hear the silent groans of someone saying, you know, man, I hope my friends don't ask me this week, like, what did you learn at church on Sunday? And I'm going to tell them, hey, we're looking at genealogies again.

That's kind of thinking of Paul's words to Timothy, where he said, remain on in Ephesus and do what? Instruct certain men not to teach endless genealogies. Kind of feels like we might be bordering on that. I know we've spent some time in genealogies so far, but here we are again.

And as has been what we have seen in the past, there is profit for us, even in something like a bunch of names on a page. I want to ask you this morning, when you think about the nations of the earth, how it is that we got here, how it could be that there are so many nations? In fact, it's estimated tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of nations have existed over the course of human history. No one actually even knows how many nations there are.

You start to kind of think about the nations and you think, well, who are they? Where are they? How did they get there? Why do they exist? And this morning, we're going to at least see some of why the nations exist, why they are in the first place. If we were to start with what a nation is, it's defined in various ways, but biblically, we see the basic components of a nation. I mean, things that would define a group of people, such as common language and culture, typically religion and geography.

And so we see generations come forth through the nations and we see entire nations that reject God and entire nations that would turn themselves to the Lord throughout history. And so where we are in Genesis is we're coming to the end of this first section that is sometimes known as primeval history, okay? This is kind of the ancient history that begins with creation in Genesis chapters one and two, the fall accounted in Genesis three, four, and five, the flood in Genesis six through nine. Now kind of the establishment of nations in 10 and 11, and then starting in chapter 12, we're onto the patriarchs and that's the rest of Genesis.

So we're kind of nearing the end of this first portion of Genesis, and we're coming here this morning to the beginning of the nations. And so entitled this morning's message, and so the nations, and so the nations. We've seen a lot of beginnings this morning.

We're going to see the beginning of the nations. And so if you're keeping an outline this morning, the first point, which is pretty much the main point, and the primary point that we're going to cover this morning is the Genesis of nations, okay? The Genesis of nations. This is the beginning of nations.

This is where it all started. It's where it all came from. And I'm not going to read through it all ahead of time.

I'm going to save myself and yourself the pain of hearing me pronounce all those names. We will read it as we go. But we start here with kind of the setup for this so-called table of nations in verse one.

Moses writes, now these are the generations of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and sons were born to them after the flood. And when you read that word generations and you hear it, it should kind of trigger a little sense of, okay, I think I know something about that because we've already seen that in Genesis. In Genesis chapter 2 verse 4, we saw the generations of the heavens and the earth, the Toledot in Hebrew.

And in Genesis chapter 5 verse 1, the generations of Adam, his lineage. The generations of Noah in Genesis chapter 6 verse 9. And now the generations of Noah in chapter 10 verse 1. This is a key feature in Genesis. It's teaching us the origins, okay? People who preceded or were preceded by other people.

And so we come to this text and just maybe by way of kind of setting this up in our mind's eye, we're reading here the generations of the sons of Noah. This was being written down by Moses. And if you kind of think of the time stamp, Israel is coming out of Egypt.

So Israel's just come out of Egypt, and Moses is recording here the generations. Essentially, where Israel came from and where the nations around them came from. It's kind of the backstory.

And so people are often interested in knowing where they came from, kind of knowing a little bit about their origins. It's kind of universal amongst humans. We enjoy learning things about our origins.

And so for Israel, they're learning right now the backstory of their own nation, as well as the nations around them. And as we work through this list, some of these names you're going to read, and they're very familiar to you. They're ones that you find elsewhere in the Old Testament.

And some of them, you really just don't know a whole lot about them. Now, when we're in Genesis chapter 5, if you remember the genealogy we looked at there, was a very specific kind of genealogy. I'm really hoping that someone somewhere remembers this.

We called it a vertical genealogy, okay? A vertical genealogy. And if you remember, the purpose of a vertical genealogy was to connect one individual to another individual. So what was our genealogy in Genesis chapter 5? It was to trace the lines from Adam to Noah.

How do we get from Adam to Noah? So people are left out along the way, but there's a purpose in a vertical genealogy, one individual to another individual. Well, if you look at chapter 10, this is completely different. It's not one individual to one individual.

It'll be like that when we get to the next genealogy that we encounter in Genesis. But this one here is a family record, but it serves a different purpose, okay? This is known as a horizontal genealogy. What is the purpose of this genealogy? Well, it is to display who the predominant tribes are in and around Israel, okay? So we're going to learn about the founders of various tribes and clans and cities and territories.

It's kind of showing the who's who around the ancient Near East. And this is not comprehensive. It is merely a sampling.

This is representative of known tribes on earth. There's going to be 70 descendants of Noah recorded here in this chapter. 14 from Japheth, 30 from Ham, and 26 from Shem.

And so really, this is not showing us ancestry from one individual to another, but rather the political and the geographical and the ethnic affiliations as Noah's sons spread out. Because if you think of Noah just for a minute, what we know about his sons, he had three of them. Two thirds of his sons were blast, and one third of his sons were cursed.

This is starting to show how those sons multiplied and began to spread out. So this morning, we're going to begin to talk a little bit more about how it is that these nations spread out. And I just want to highlight for a moment what the purpose of this table of nations is, okay? Why is this here? And we're not going to spend weeks and weeks and weeks tracing out every name and every location and every detail.

We need to get the grasp, really the sense of why this is here. What is the purpose? So here it is. First of all, it's functional and practical, okay? This is just functional and practical.

It helps Israel understand all the other nations around them, their relationships with them, and maybe if we could put it this way, who their enemies are and why they're enemies. And if you were to understand even now what's going on in the Middle East, you got to go back a little ways. And you got to go back more than just a decade or a couple of decades.

We're talking centuries to understand the conflicts that are taking place in the Middle East. Well, so it is with Israel here. They're understanding the origin and the source of their enemies and the nations around them.

Furthermore, this is the record of how mankind began to spread out on earth. If you remember, that was God's design. His instruction back in chapter 9 verse 1 was not only to be fruitful and multiply, but to do what? Remain in one tight little huddle in one location? No.

Genesis 9 when he said, spread out. Go fill the earth. And so this is the record of how that happened.

Now, we're going to understand that it did not happen in obedience. And in fact, if you want to know kind of sequentially what I think is happening here in Genesis is not that we read of the nation spreading out in Genesis 10, and then chronologically, we get to Genesis 11, and everyone's huddled at Babel. And then they spread out at Babel.

But rather similar to how Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 both look at the creation week, but from different vantage points. Genesis 10 is describing really the who and the where of the spreading out of nations. Genesis 11, Babel is describing why that happened, what happened.

So what we're reading about here in Genesis 10, and I'll show you as we go through this, I believe is describing where everybody went on what we're going to read next in Genesis 11 at Babel. So this has a functional and practical benefit. It shows Israel's relationship with other nations.

It also shows how mankind spread out on the earth by God's original design, although not really in obedience, but kind of because they were required to. And then it shows that we're all from one people. We're all from one race.

You know, sometimes people use the nomenclature about races and different races. There's actually just one race. In Adam, recapitulated here in Noah, there's an interrelatedness.

And so humanity always struggles with partiality, different groups asserting dominance over other groups, or exalting themselves in some way, having a disdain for other ethnicities. If you were to look just around the world in the last decade, the number of lives that have been lost to genocide, people assert dominance over other people groups. And here we're to understand that we're all from one people and one race, one origin, even as these nations spread out.

So there's a functional and a practical purpose, but there's also a theological purpose. And these genealogies show us blessing and cursing. Blessing and cursing.

This is a key attribute in Genesis. That there are those who God in His sovereignty has poured blessings out upon. Those who He's graciously shown favor to.

Those who are the faithful. Those who express faith in God. And then there are those who are cursed.

Those who are cut off. Those who are separated from God. If you remember here, when Noah was speaking of his sons, and really pronouncing an oracle because he was looking at their character and seeing who they would be, he said in verse 25 of chapter 9, And so this table in Genesis 10 is beginning to show the outworking, the fulfillment, the faithfulness of God in blessing the line of Shem in particular, as well as the line of Japheth.

And then Israel's great enemy, Canaan, who experiences cursing. And so as we go through, we're going to read the son of, the son of, the son of, the son of, the son of. That's kind of the most typical form here.

There's also a word called beget, Yalad in the original. And when you read that, it's going to say the father of, the father of, the father of. And this is used primarily to highlight Canaan, because that was the line that was cursed.

That will be Israel's enemies. And then also the line of Shem, the line of promise. And so embedded in all of this, then, is the awareness of really how generations are brought up in the faith.

How generations are brought up in the faith. I want you to think as a parent, or if God is giving you grandparents, I mean, grandchildren, or if you have some kind of influence over young people in the church, to understand that God has invested influence in those who are older, to pour out upon those who are younger, the knowledge of God. Psalm 78 reads this way, I will open my mouth in a parable, I will pour forth dark sayings of old, which we have heard and known, and our fathers have recounted to us.

He's being the psalmist, and he, the psalm, and he's saying, I've, I've learned about the knowledge of God from my parents. My parents poured this into me. It said, which we have heard and known, and our fathers have recounted to us, we will not conceal them from their children, but recount to the generation to come the praises of Yahweh and His strength and His wondrous deeds that He has done.

He goes on and says, He commanded our fathers that they should teach them to their children, that one generation might know, even the children yet to be born, that they might arise and recount to their children. See, the picture in Scripture is that one generation influences the next generation. And so this begins to play out in Genesis chapter 10.

What was Ham's issue? Ham had a wicked heart. He didn't like his dad, he didn't like his dad's God, and then he trained up his sons in the same way. And Canaan followed his dad in the same degradation, and guess what? He taught it to his children.

And Canaan ended up being a dark and wicked nation, trained in it, trained in iniquity, enslaved, in bondage to sin. And then on the other side, God's design in a godly lineage would be that one generation is telling of the faithfulness of the Lord to the next generation. They're recounting the deeds of the Lord, Psalm 78.

So there's multiple purposes here. We see in the theological perspective here, blessing and cursing. We see generational obedience and generational disobedience.

And then finally, we see the messianic line. We see the messianic line. So you remember there's this great battle, and this explains even the conflict between Canaan and Israel, between the seed of the woman, which would ultimately be Christ, his lineage, and Satan's opposition.

Well, that battle's taking place and playing out throughout the nation of Israel's history, as Israel has many enemies that are seeking to wipe them off the face of the planet. So those are the purposes. So that being said, we'll just begin to dive into this, and we'll walk through it, and we're going to make some comments briefly as we go.

So in the Genesis of Nations here, we kind of see this set up in verse 1, and now we look at the sons of Japheth in verses 2 through 5. Okay, the sons of Japheth. Verse 2 reads, the sons of Japheth were Gomer, and Magog, and Midiah, and Javon, and Tubal, and Meshach, and Tyrus. The sons of Gomer were Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Tagramot.

The sons of Javan were Elisha, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. And from these, the coastlands of the nations were separated into their lands, everyone according to his tongue, according to their families, into their nations. The sons of Japheth.

Hey, this is the origins, they're just thinking big picture here, of the Indo-Europeans. Okay, so Japheth is those who went north, north of the ancient Near East. Now Moses tells us very little about Japheth's descendants.

In fact, he's going to get the least amount of air time here. There's discussion as to why that is. Some suggest that Moses wants to get the least significant out of the way first.

So Japheth here is the middle child, it's kind of like adding to that complex a little bit. The thought being maybe, in reality, that God blessed the land of Shem from which the Messiah would come, and then Canaan was cursed. So those two kind of need the most attention.

We're going to talk about Japheth first. It's also quite possible that it's because these were the descendants that were the furthest away geographically from Israel. Okay, so when you think of Japheth, those kind of Indo-European nations, they were the northern most from Israel, and Israel doesn't have a tremendous amount of interaction with these people groups.

We do read about them in various prophetic writings, like Ezekiel 27, Ezekiel 37, 38, and 39 speak of these nations. We read about them because they traded a bit with Israel. And so if we were just to read through this list, we could mention generally the locations by which we know them today.

Gomer would be modern-day Russia. Okay, that's kind of the direction that they went. Magog was the land of Gog between Armenia and Cappadocia.

That's not Armenian, but Armenian. Okay, those are two very different things. This would be Asia Minor or modern-day Turkey.

Okay, the Midi would represent the the Medes east of Assyria, kind of southwest of the Caspian Sea. So think modern-day Iraq or Iran, those areas. Javan was a word for the Hellenistic region.

So Greeks and kind of that influential western people would have come from Javan. Tubal and Meshech were northern military states north of Turkey. Tyrus was kind of a people group that was a predecessor to the Greeks.

And then those remaining groups they're spoken of, their future descendants were all kind of around the Aegean Peninsula, Asia Minor, and even the island of Cyprus. So these were the coastland nations. And if you look at verse 5, it says that they were separated.

Okay, so nations are individual here. They're separated from one another. They're according to their families, each into their nations, and it says everyone according to his tongue.

Everyone according to his tongue. So we don't know how many languages Noah's family spoke. Could have been bilingual or trilingual or known many languages, but we know at least they spoke the same language.

They would have come off of the ark. And according to Genesis chapter 11 verse 1, if you flip over there it says, now the whole earth had the same language and the same words. They had the same language and the same vocabulary.

Everybody understood everybody. So that's why I think that here in chapter 10 what we're reading about is what took place after God broke up the languages by the families and the tribes and dispersed them around the earth. Because here in verse 5 of chapter 10, we read about these people grouping naturally by those who could interact with one another, speaking the same vocabulary, and having the same words.

So Genesis chapter 10 is telling us who went where. Genesis chapter 11 is telling us why and how. So Moses tells us about the sons of Japheth, those Indo-European northern nations.

And then he comes to the sons of Ham in verse 6. This is the cursed son. Verse 6, the sons of Ham were Cush and Mizraim and Put and Canaan. And so I want you to think here of family resemblance.

Okay, family idolatry, family rebellion, family rejection of God. It's being trained, it's being rowed into the next generation. It's being modeled in antiquity.

And the nations that come forth from Ham are wicked nations opposed to God and opposed to Israel. It always works that way, the way God has designed influence to take place in cultures. It's interesting, Paul would write to the church in first Corinthians chapter 7 and he would talk about the situation that sometimes believers would find themselves in, where they got married as an unbeliever, perhaps two unbelievers.

One spouse gets saved. Now they're trying to figure out what to do. And what does Paul say? Well, if you can't stay in the marriage, why? Because the unbelieving spouse is going to be sanctified by the believing spouse.

The unbelieving spouse is going to be influenced. It's going to be a redemptive influence in the home. And the children are going to be sanctified.

The children are going to be influenced and benefited by the fear of the Lord and the passing on of the faith. What we see from Ham's descendants is the exact opposite. The children who were raised, raised to reject the knowledge of God.

And so you can look at any nation. That's why it's appropriate to be alarmed about things that are taking place in our nation. It's appropriate to be alarmed when you see a nation that is training its children in ungodliness.

Our nation today trains children in iniquity. We teach kids that pornography is harmless. Could even be a good outlet, actually, because no one gets hurt.

And therapists teach them that their feelings ought to be trusted and correction is harmful. And anything but full affirmation of and support regarding homosexuality or free love or transgenderism is unloving and bigoted. Listen, that's not an accident that children are taught to think in certain ways.

It has an impact for generations to come. Nations, entire nations can become in bondage and enslaved to sin by the transfer of godlessness. And so Ham's descendants here are going to be characterized by opposition to God, enmity to God and his people.

And so we read about Ham's descendants, his progeny, Cush, Mitzrayim, Put, and Canaan. And so as we go through this, these are various groups that come forth. We read the sons of Cush in verse 7 were Seba, and Havilah, and Sabta, and Ramah, and Sebteca.

The sons of Ramah were Sheba and Dedan. Now Cush was the father of Nimrod, and he began to be a mighty one on the earth. He began to be a mighty one on the earth.

So now we have kind of this first individual that's highlighted in this way. I was just thinking about this was a man who was singled out as a mighty man. Even a mighty man before the Lord, he had a proverb stated about him.

I think, boy, if you did not struggle with pride before, how hard would it be to be humble if there was a proverb about how mighty and great you were? And that was just the statement. It would be compared to who you were. Be like Mike when I was growing up, you know, Michael Jordan.

That was kind of what we would hear. Here the idea is Nimrod is a mighty hunter before the Lord. He's mighty on earth.

It was said in verse 9, like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before Yahweh. Now that does not mean that he feared the Lord. Rather, as we're going to see, he actually settled cities, and he was a wicked man.

His name itself is apparently connected with the verb to rebel. So he was a man that would have had tyrannical power. He founded imperial world powers such as Babylon and Assyria.

This idea of his manhood was that he was a really a macho man, okay? A macho man, a dominant figure. And so the recognition here is that he had a sense of power, perhaps violence. He was a hunter.

He had great power. And in that, he was not giving glory to God. He was out of the line of Ham, and he was a wicked man.

Not only that, but we read about the kingdoms that he began, verse 10, Babel, which we'll come to in the next chapter, Erech, and Achad, and Chalna, and the land of Shinar. From that land, he went out to Assyria and built Nineveh, and Rehoboth, and Chalna, and resined between Nineveh and Chalna. That is a great city.

So this man was filled with political prowess. He was a dominant figure. He was very successful in founding what would become very wicked cities.

It was the transfer of his character in these places. And so God wanted Israel to know Nimrod, that macho man, who was opposed to God, was the one who originated all of these godless cities that would eventually become Israel's great enemies. And as we said, there's always an opposition between God's people and those who hate God.

If you're to think of it this way, Jesus the Redeemer, Jesus the Messiah, wasn't dropped out of thin air by a messianic stork delivery service. He came through specific bloodlines. He was born of a woman, and that woman was out of the nation of Israel, from a real family.

And so it explains here this opposition to God through the line of hand that resulted in people that hated Israel. Entire cities and nations that would come up against them. To continue to trace down the list, we come to Mitsrayim verse 13, and that would be Egypt.

That's the plural there of the word from which we'd get Egypt, that nation. He's the father of Ledim and Annamim and Labim and Naphtahim and Paruthasim and Chalcohem, from whom came the Philistines and Kapturim. Okay, so now what you have is the nation of Egypt, and those that would settle in and around the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula, and the various coastal shores of what is today Africa, all throughout that region.

And the Philistines here may or may not be the Philistines that we're going to read of later, that were opposed to David. It's possible that these were different people, but these end up taking nations that will be superpowers around the nation of Israel. Verse 15, we read Canaan was the father of Sidon, his firstborn, and Hath, and the Jebusite, and the Amorite, and the Girgashite, and the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Sinite, and the Arvidite, and the Zemurite, and the Hamathite, and afterward the families of the Canaanite were scattered.

So these are the names that we're going to begin to see. The Jebusites were in Jerusalem that would become the city of David. You're recognizing names that you'd read about in the battles that take place throughout the Old Testament regarding Israel with the opposing people groups.

And in fact, we start to see the the national boundaries that will one day be the nation of Israel. In verse 19, a geography lesson, we read the border of the Canaanite extended from Sidon, that was up on the coast, that was still in the place at the time of Jesus north of Galilee, as you go toward Gerar, as far as Gaza, as you go toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and Adna and Zeboam, as far as Lasha. These are the sons of Ham, according to their families, according to their tongues, by their lands, by their nations.

Canaan was a family that spread out a wicked influence among a people who were idolatrous, they worshiped other gods, they were filled with sexual immorality, they were filled with violence. These made up the neighboring communities around God's people Israel. Then after the sons of Ham, we come to the sons of Shem in verse 21, the sons of Shem.

Now Shem, interestingly here, is called the father of, there's kind of that beginning word that we were talking about, we saw that back up in verse 15, Canaan was the father of Sidon, it's kind of that editorializing, the grammatical marker that Moses is making to indicate there's something specific to pay attention to here. Shem was the father of all the children of Heber, and the older brother of Japheth, children were born. The sons of Shem were Elam and Asher, and Arpachad and Lod and Aram, and the sons of Aram were Uz and Hol and Gether and Mash.

Archipchad was the father of Shelah, and Shelah was the father of Heber. Now two sons were born to Heber, the name of the one Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided, and his brother's name was Joktan. I remember when I was in seminary, we were hosting families and admissions conference, and so we had a young man who came to stay with us from Spain, and his name was Heber, and he said, yeah my name is in the Bible, and I was like, I'm not sure that it is, and so he opened up to Genesis chapter 10, and I realized I don't know my Bible as well as I thought I do.

His name is Heber, but interestingly enough, this name has great significance because Heber is related to the word Hebrew, okay, Hebreet, and so when you read Heber, we're beginning right here in Genesis 10 to start to see that bright glimmer of hope in the midst of dark and crooked and perverse generations, that among Noah's sons there would be a blessed line, and there would be those who loved and feared the Lord. Heber is related to Hebrew, and of course this is the line from which Abram will come, a great, great, great, great, great, great, I think two more great, grandson of Noah, and so we see here is that the earth was divided, verse 25. This is probably that time stamp then that's referring to what took place at Babel, and many people have different ideas as to how the migrations took place.

We don't actually know whether after the flood there was a bit of an ice age, and some of the water levels were lower, and people could cross land bridges as they were migrating, or whether they traveled on boats to places like the Americas and Australia, but it's here that it is clear that Peleg was alive. His days were when the earth was divided. I believe that is when Babel took place, and then we read about Joktan, verse 26, the father of Almadad, and Shaleph, and Hazarmath, and Jerah, and Hadaram, and Uzzal, and Dikla, and Obel, and Abimele, and Sheba, and Ophir, and Havilah, and Jokab.

All these were the sons of Joktan. Now their settlement extended from Misha as you go toward Sephar, the hill country of the east. These are the sons of Shem, according to their families, according to their tongues, by their lands, according to their nations.

And so when you hear Shem, that's the Semites, the Semitic peoples, the people that really settled there in the Arabian Peninsula. And so we have Japheth's tribes and nations going north. We have Ham's tribes and nations going predominantly south, and then throughout part of that Arabian Peninsula.

And then we have Shem's line, the line from which the Messiah will come, settling there in the Arabian Peninsula. So here we have this chronology. As we said, there's a purpose behind it.

It's functional and practical. It helps Israel understand their relationships to other nations, helps them understand kind of who's who, and where they are, and why they're there. Shows the nature of mankind spreading out on earth, which was God's original design.

How they did it unwillingly, how they kind of had to be coerced into it through the breaking up of languages. Shows our solidarity that in the human race we're all one people. Starts to give sense for the cursing and blessing as we read about how these nations throughout the Old Testament would be blessed by God and also experience His cursing.

We understand many relationships rooted in the text here. But I think there's one question that a text like this raises, that isn't answered immediately here, and that's this. This is the genesis of nations.

But what is the goal of nations? This is the genesis of nations. What is the goal? Why do nations exist in the first place? If you notice, it's highlighted in our passage. Verse 1, these are the generations.

So there's this generational line. And then in verse 5, we read from these, the coastlands of the nations were separated into their lands. Everyone according to his tongue, according to their families, into their nations.

Go down to verse 20, these are the sons of Ham, according to their families, according to their tongues, by their lands, by their nations. Verse 31, these are the sons of Shem, according to their families, according to their tongues, by their lands, according to their nations. And then as Moses wraps up the entire genealogy in verse 32, these are the families of the sons of Noah, according to their generations, by their nations.

And out of these, the nations were separated on the earth after the flood. What's the point? Why so much attention on nations? National sovereignty, individual languages, individual customs, individual geography, individual people groups. And we certainly understand nations, we belong to a nation.

Now we use the nomenclature, but what is the goal of the nations? And I tell you that the goal of the nations, God's plan for the nations, is to magnify himself over them and through them. God's plan for the nations is to magnify himself over the nations and through the nations. What do I mean by over the nations? Psalm 2, but as for me, I've installed my king upon Zion, my holy mountain, I will surely tell of the decree of Yahweh.

He said to me, you are my son today, I've begotten you. It's the father speaking to Christ. He says, ask of me and I will surely give the nations as your inheritance and the ends of the earth as your possession.

You shall break them with a rod of iron, you shall shatter them like a potter's vessel. To all these nations, warring against one another, seeking power and prominence, warring over territory, battling for control, taking pride in their identity, all of that is going to serve under the glory and the majesty of Christ who rules them all. And God's plan for the nations is to rule over them, certainly to judge and conquer them, but also to redeem them, also to redeem them.

When you read throughout the Old Testament, you find this vision, which was amazing, a vision that God gave to Israel, that one day their coming king would be reigning and that when their coming king reigned, nations would come to their king. Isaiah chapter 2 says that the mountain of the house of the Lord will be lifted up above the hills and all the nations will stream to it. Daniel was viewing the son of man coming as king.

He said in Daniel chapter 7, verse 14, and him was given dominion, glory, and a kingdom that all the peoples and all the nations and men of every tongue, that's every language, might serve him. Zechariah 8, 22 through 23, it will be men from every tongue of the nations. Isaiah 60 would say that the nations would come to a light.

Jesus came and said that he was a light to the Gentiles. He was a light to the nations, the other countries, the other peoples. And very soon, Abraham is going to receive a promise, what? That in his seed, all of the nations of the earth will be blessed.

He's saying God's plan is to save not merely individuals, and we think oftentimes about our own salvation. God saved me personally, and that's good and right. Rejoice in your own personal salvation, you should.

We give testimonies of our personal salvation, but do you understand that your personal salvation is part of a much bigger story about the majesty and glory of Jesus Christ having a people that he reigns and rules over, made up of every tribe and tongue. Isaiah 49, Christ was given as a light of the nation so that God's salvation might reach to the very end of the earth. How's that going to happen? Well, God gathers people to himself.

Isaiah 66, he's going to gather the nations, he's going to gather the tongues. And the prophet says that when that happens, they shall come and they will see his glory. They will see his glory.

And what will happen? Well, according to Psalm 22, the families of the nations will come and they will worship. The families of the nations will come and they will worship. You understand the magnitude of that? I mean, what a remarkable reality.

The plan is not to erase or dismantle national identities, but to redeem nations all united under the banner of King Jesus. I mean, I was just thinking about this week, October 24th, is United Nations Day. Okay, I would like to hear how you celebrated that day.

I hope you didn't miss it. So to celebrate the forming of the United Nations 80 years ago on October 24th. 80 years ago, United Nations was formed to bring about peace and justice and prosperity on the earth and among the nations of the earth.

And they're celebrating themselves. You know, I don't see a problem with that, but it's been unsuccessful, wildly unsuccessful. You look around and you see of the nations of the earth, warring, persecution, genocide, terrorism, corruption.

The biblical depiction of United Nations is nations united under the lordship of Jesus Christ. Nations united under his majesty, brought together in the praise and worship of King Jesus. A new people, a new nation that's new in Christ.

So we're all one people in Adam, divided up into nations throughout the earth. Those nations now come together in Christ under his majesty. And so the refrain of scripture is, that the nations are to praise the coming King.

Paul writes in Romans 15, 11, praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, all you nations, all you peoples, and let all the peoples praise him. Let all the peoples praise him. I mean, I think John Piper gets it right, that the goal of missions, the ultimate goal of missions is worship.

It's worshipers. And writing on John, on Romans 15, 11, John Piper says this, that's when Paul says, praise the Lord, all you nations, and let all the peoples extol him. He is saying that there is something about God that is so universally praiseworthy, and so profoundly beautiful, and so comprehensively worthy, and so deeply satisfying, that God will find passionate admirers in every diverse people group in the world.

His true greatness will be manifested in the breadth of the diversity of those who perceive and cherish his beauty. His excellence will be shown to be higher and deeper than the parochial differences that make us happy most of the time. His appeal will be to the deepest, highest, largest capacities of the human soul.

Thus, the diversity of the source of admiration will testify to his incomparable glory. You understand what he's saying there, that what will unite the nations is something much greater than even their personal national identity, rather to look out and wonder and say, well, people from every tribe, and every tongue, and every nation, with all their cultural backgrounds, and all of their preferences, and all the things that used to unite them, are now united with one voice, praising and worshiping Jesus. This is the testimony of Scripture, that God was sending out messages to the end of the earth through the proclamation of the gospel.

Acts 17 26 says, and he made from one man every nation of mankind to inhabit all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times at the boundaries of their habitation. What nation were you born a part of? How much control did you have over that? God determined that. He determined where you were born, what nation you were a part of.

And he had a purpose in it, verse 27, that they would seek God if perhaps they might grope for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. And so you and I are part of the fulfillment of the gospel going forth in God's redemptive program to the ends of the earth. You understand how far away we are from all of these nations, the table of nations.

We're across the pond. We're thousands of years later. God is getting glory through people gathered here, speaking a different language, a different tongue, a different culture for his namesake.

As you read this table of nations, you're to think to what is coming, and God's grand plan for saving people, the most unlikely people at times, and understand the grace that we've received even through generational faithfulness of generations who've gone before us. I invite you to pray with me. Father in heaven, thank you for calling us by your name.

Thank you for choosing to set your name upon us. Lord, we recognize that there's entire people groups that don't even hear the message of the gospel. Lord, that have had ancestors that have gone before them in rebellion, that have shut out the light and silenced the light.

Lord, through no doing of our own, you brought us light. You showed us Jesus, the light to the Gentiles, the light to the nations. And so, Lord, we thank you for your grace and bringing salvation to us.

Lord, we recognize that left to ourselves, we would happily stay and remain in darkness, content with our sin. And Lord, we thank you for the hope that one day, all of the national unrest and all of the evil will be set aside. We'll be together, bowing our knees and raising our voices, setting our eyes on you and on your majesty.

Lord, we long for your kingdom to come. That's to be our prayer often, bring your kingdom to come, Lord. That will be truly the greatest nation that the earth has ever conceived of.

So we love you, we pray and ask you to come quickly, Lord Jesus, and establish your kingdom in Jesus' name. Amen. We'll stand and sing together.