March 7, 2021

Genesis 10

What’s in a name?

What will happen to the human race as it starts over after Noah? Will they have learned anything from God’s righteous judgment through the Great Flood? Will they pass on the spiritual lessons to their families? Or, will they turn their backs on God and continue down the same path of worshiping at the altar of autonomy as did their predecessors? And much more importantly, how then will God respond to them? Join Pastor Jim as he sheds some light on the Table of Nations in Genesis 10.

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Sermon Notes

In the beginning…

World population numbers:

  • 1804: 1 billion
  • 1927: 2 billion
  • 1960: 3 billion
  • 2020: 7.8 billion
  • 2050: 9-10 billion

Genesis 10: What’s in a name?

  1. God’s providence and sovereignty encompass all nations.
  2. God is in pursuit of a people He can call His own.
  3. You are fully known and truly loved.
  4. God has been planning your redemption for a long time.

Resources

  • C. John “Jack” Collins: Reading Genesis Well
  • Prof. John Lennox: Seven Days that Divide the World
  • Dr. John H. Sailhamer: Genesis Unbound
  • Robert Alter: The Five Books of Moses
  • Derek Kidner: Genesis

“It should be observed that representing the origins of nations as a genealogical scheme
preserves a thematic continuity with the divine injunction after creation to be fruitful and multiply
and sets the stage for the history of the one people whose propagation is repeatedly promised
but continually threatened.”
Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses

Genesis 10 Table of Nations reminds us…

  1. Bible is set in space-time history.
  2. Humankind is united, with all its diversity, under one Creator.
  3. The significance of every human life, from the womb to the tomb.
  4. The Divine oversight of redemption history.
  5. God’s sovereign grace in all His choices.

“But now thus says the LORD,
he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
‘Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the LORD your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.’”
Isaiah 43:1-3a

“We should be astonished at the goodness of God, stunned that he should call us by name, our
mouths wide open at his love.”
Brennan Manning

“To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our
greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is
what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our
self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.”
Tim Keller

“You can never take God by surprise. You can never anticipate him. He always makes the first
move. He is always there ‘in the beginning.’ Before man existed, God acted. Before man stirs
himself to seek God, God has sought man. In the Bible we do not see man groping after God;
we see God reaching after man.”
John Stott, Basic Christianity

Transcript

We study through books of the Bible here at the Village Chapel, and it’s my great delight to be leading us through Genesis 10. We’re about to study what is typically called the Table of Nations, and I was doing a little bit of research on the population of the world and trying to figure out how many people are there now. And how many might there have been back then? And all that sort of thing. And one of the things that I noticed was it wasn’t until 1804 that the world population was estimated to be about one billion. But if you take all of the people, all of the years before that, you wouldn’t have come up with one billion on the planet at the same time until 1804. Well, just to 1927, it doubled from one billion to two billion, 1960 to three billion. And here in 2020, just last year, 7.8 billion.

So, you can see the growth curve is really sharp. The G-forces are intense. By 2050, it’s projected that we’ll have nine to 10 billion people on the planet. And so, if you, my friend, are an introvert, the trajectory is not very promising. Where did all these people come from? Are we all distant cousins from some founding couple many eons ago? Or did our ancestors arrive on planet Earth in a giant spaceship from some distant solar system? What is the origin of all things?

These are great questions. Genesis is awesome about helping us begin to answer some of those questions. We’ve come through chapters one through nine, and we just finished up the narrative of the great flood. And God has instructed Noah and his family to repopulate the Earth. But while there was rising hope for a fresh start for humanity, chapter nine ended with a very sobering reminder that humanity’s sin problem still existed.

As we read there, Noah was portrayed as a drunken and very self-indulgent man, who ends up passing out in his tent, and then he’s disrespected by one of his sons, and even mocked, if you will. And it’s just not a very good start when they’d been given such a great opportunity for a completely new beginning.

So, what will happen to the human race is the question you’re left with at the end of chapter nine. What will happen as they begin again or start over? Will they have learned anything from God’s righteous judgment through that great flood? Will they pass on the spiritual lessons to their families, to their descendants in the years to come? Or will they turn their back on God and continue down the same path of worshiping at the altar of autonomy? That seems to be our proclivity and the kind of thing that we all drift toward. And then, more importantly, how does God respond to them?

And this is the amazing story of the entire Bible. Let’s read the text, and here we’ll see, as I say, another genealogy. Call me crazy, but I love the genealogies, partly because I love wrestling with the pronunciation of the names. And some of you probably enjoy watching me struggle with that. But I’m going to challenge you to open your Bible and look with me. And as I pronounce them, perhaps you’ll ask yourself the question: How would you have pronounced that yourself?

All right. “Now are the records are the generations of Shem, Ham and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and sons were born to them after the flood.” And so, the author of Genesis is very intentional about contextualizing the record we’re about to read. It is post-flood. He wants us to know that. And this is sort of the phrase that we read throughout Genesis. These are the generations, it’s sort of a marker, if you will, that there’s a new story or kind of a new part of the story that’s going to be told. This is the Table of Nations, and it goes like this: “…the sons of Japheth were Gomer, Magog and Madai, and Javan and Tubal and Meshech, and Tiras.”

All right, so these are Hebrew names and they’re typically going to be called “the sons of.” And you must understand there’s no Hebrew word for grandfather, sometimes the generations that are listed are literal and sequential, and you’re supposed to read them that way. Other times, in genealogical records in the Old Testament, we find that there’ll be generations that are skipped. Later, we find that out by reading it in like 1 Chronicles or some other book. But the idea is that these are the “descendants of…” okay.

“The sons of Japheth were Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal Meshech, and Tiras.” I’m doing okay on the names so far, and I assume you would too. “The Sons of Gomer were Ashkenaz and Riphath and Togarmah. The sons of Javan were Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. From these, the coastlands of the nations were separated into their lands, everyone according to his language, according to their families, into their nations. And the sons of Ham were Cush and Mizraim and Put and Canaan. And the sons of Cush were Seba, Havilah, Sabtah and Raamah and Sabteca; and the sons of Raamah were Sheba and Dedan.”

How are we doing? You hanging in there with me? I hope you are. What’s interesting about this record and this set of genealogies, unlike chapter five, is instead of getting the number of years that a person lived and then they died, here’s what we’re getting more — the emphasis is not so much on just the genealogy as it is on the geography here.

And so, verse eight, “…now Cush became the father of Nimrod; he was a mighty one on the Earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord.” If you look it up, and I’m no Hebrew expert, I just know how to use the tools, if you look it up though, the word “before” the Lord could also be translated against. And, of course, in English that would have a completely different meaning, wouldn’t it? But given what we read later about Nimrod, it’s at least interesting to know that.

“Cush became the father of Nimrod; he became a mighty one on the Earth. He was a mighty hunter before [or against] the Lord; therefore, it is said, ‘Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before [or against] the Lord.’ And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel.” And that’s where the music goes, dun, dun, dah, dun. Okay, because Babel will become the Tower of Babel in the next chapter. And much, much later, even in the book of Revelation, we’ll read about Babylon.

And of course, in 586 BC, we know that Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon comes and overruns the southern half of Israel and captures all of them, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, those guys are all dragged into Babylon. And it becomes a sort of symbol, Babylon does, especially in Revelation for all that has set itself against God. And it’s interesting that that word could be translated “against” as well as “before.”

And he becomes the one who sets up or establishes Babel and Erech and Accad and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Basically, Mesopotamia, over in that general direction. So “…from that land he went forth into Assyria, and built Nineveh and Rehoboth-Ir and Calah and Resen between Ninevah and Calah; that is the great city.” And so, what we have here is not only the names of some of the descendants, but the names of some of the cities, the names of some of the countries or nations that are formed and people groups as well.

Verse 13, “Mizraim became the father of Ludim and Anamim and Lehabim and Naphtuhim and Pathrusim and Casluhim from which came the Philistines.” Oh, that one was a lot easier to pronounce, wasn’t it? “…and Caphtorim. And Canaan became the father of Sidon, his firstborn, and Heth, the Jebusite and the Amorite and the Girgashite and the Hivite and the Arkite and the Sinite.” And I always like to say, and the termite and the flashlight, because these are all the people… These are the names that… The Jebusites will become… Jebus is the ancient name, before Jerusalem was called Jerusalem, it was called Jebus.

You start to see that these names of places correspond to names that we know later. When you do a little triangulating, and you find out, “Hey, this record is actually talking about real places in real people.” “And the Arvadite and the Zemarite and the Hamathite; and afterward the families of the Canaanite were spread abroad.”

Verse 19, “…and the territory of the Canaanite extended from Sidon,” and that’s a coast land, city of Tyre. And Sidon we will read about those even in the gospel records with Jesus as you go toward Gerar, as far as Gaza; as you go toward Sodom and Gomorrah and Admah and Zeboiim, and as far as Lasha. And so again, names we know. Sodom and Gomorrah we will read about later, and just want to remind us that all of this is a record anyway, is not just fable and myth; it’s actually real names, real people, the whole thing.

“The sons of Ham, according to their families, according to their languages, by their lands, by their nations.” And notice that because again, the record here is not just of people, but it’s of progress. It’s the migration of people. It’s the generating not only of people, but the generating of culture as well.

Verse 21, “…also to Shem, the father of all the children of Eber, and the older brother of Japheth, children were born.” And this is just fascinating. This is the early roots of Israel because Abram, and Abraham known as both, will descend from Shem. So, verse 22, “…the sons of Shem were Elam and Asshur and Arpachshad, Lud, and Aram. And the sons of Aram were Uz and Hul and Gether and Mash. Arpachshad became the father of Shelah; and Shelah became the father of Eber.

And two sons were born to Eber; the name of the one was Peleg, for in his days the Earth was divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan.” Again, you get this little insert of something about history “in those days the Earth was divided.” In what way was it divided? Perhaps it’s a reference to what happens in the next chapter with the Tower of Babel and how God scatters the people. We certainly know what it’s like to live in a land divided, don’t we? But there is this indication here, again, that we’re talking about space-time history, which I think is so important for us to at least notice that. And as we read through these genealogies, we don’t want to miss those kinds of things, do we?

So, then you have verse 26, “…and Joktan became the father of Almodad and Sheleph and Hazarmaveth and Jerah and Hadoram and Uzal and Diklah and Obal and Abimael and Sheba and Ophir and Havilah and Jobab; all these were the sons of Joktan. Now their settlement extended from Mesha as you go towards Sephar, the hill country of the east. These are the sons of Shem, according to their families, according to their languages, by their lands, according to their nations. These are the families of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies, by their nations; and out of these the nations were separated on the Earth after the flood.” And thus, ends the reading of chapter 10.

Wow. Now, I don’t know about you, but again, I read something like that, and I’m fascinated by the names. I mean, if any of you are pregnant out there and you’re going to look for a name, Genesis 10, you can find all kinds of great names. Sometimes people choose names for their children for all kinds of different reasons. Back in the day, in times that we read about anyway, in biblical times, a lot of times their name might be changed along the way. So, Simon in the New Testament might become Peter, and we find that there’s some event or some character trait that surfaces. It just seems that we should call that person by that name, because it tells us more about who they are.

Well, Genesis has been classified as myth by some who claim that it’s all a fantastic fairytale thought up by an ancient dreamer, and there’s no way anyone could ever know, with specificity or with certainty, all of these kinds of things. Others, like the ancient Near East historian, Thorkild Jakobsen, have called it mytho-history. It’s a combination of history and mythological, pre-scientific knowledge, if you will. But weightier and more credible, more historic than something that’s mere myth. While others take a more literal approach to the interpretation, and when it says God created everything in seven days, that means exactly one Earth week.

So, which is it? How should we interpret Genesis? Well, the answer probably depends on how one understands and interprets terms like history and myth. The term myth, for instance, is sometimes conflated with fairytale, with folklore, with legend. So, if we’re trying to decide if Genesis describes history, actual history, real history or fictional mythology, we must at least, first, ask the question of the text: How does Genesis present itself? And when you read what I just read in Genesis 10, ask yourself that question: How does it present itself? What does it actually say? What can we determine about what the author intended to convey there? What is apparent? I mean, as you read it, you ought to be able to say, “Well, I think this guy’s trying to communicate something. What is it?”

And so, is it historical record? Does it sound like they’re real places, real names of real people? Whether we have any ability to corroborate it or triangulate and check it against something else or whatever, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about how does it present itself. And I think that’s worth asking as you go to your Bible, and you read it.

For instance, Star Wars and The Mandalorian, these are fiction, all right? The Babylonian Enuma Elish and the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, they might be mytho-historical. They might be the mixing elements of historical reality with a pre-scientific understanding of what lies behind it all. But what then is Genesis, you might ask. Well, here we do find 70 names, real people, real names, who lived in real places, and those places even had real names, some of which we can indeed cross-reference with extra-biblical sources.

Many of these individuals raised families, they developed into real nations. We’re told they even developed their own languages or tongues and made real culture. So, this is a great chapter to call “What Is In a Name?” And that’s what we’re going to call it. The storyline moves, I think, toward not only giving us data, but also toward giving us an idea of the progress of redemption history. And even though we’ve come from that end of chapter nine, where things were kind of dark in the sense that Noah looks a bit like a fool, and a drunken fool at that, after being told much earlier in chapter six that he was a righteous man, that he walked with the Lord. And we can’t look down our noses as we sort of sit in so many years later and say, “Oh, the guy was a hypocrite,” without also pointing the finger at ourselves.

I’m a hypocrite. If you’re trying to get away from hypocrites, you’ve got to leave the planet. There’s just nobody… and then you’d still be with you, and that’s the problem. See, hypocrisy is everywhere. It’s universal in that regard. But here the storyline does indeed move in a certain direction, and as we see, and as we will continue to see throughout Genesis, it moves in the direction of God’s redeeming power, and God being in pursuit of a people He can call His own.

But we’re going to call this study “What’s In a Name?” I think it’s a great title for this particular chapter. What’s in a name? Do individuals, for instance, even matter? If I’m just one of eight billion people on this dust-ball-sized planet right now, in a massive universe, can my little human life have any significance, any meaning? And can I find purpose to get out of bed tomorrow morning and have a mission in life at all?

What is in a name? We’re small, fragile. We live in a massive, complex, beautiful, but sometimes dangerous universe. In many ways, we feel insignificant often, most of us do. And we are highly vulnerable. I mean, just look at how humanity has been not only threatened, but ravaged, by a virus so small that it’s invisible to the naked eye. But in spite of this, you think, “What’s in a name?” Genesis tells me that we aren’t here by accident. Genesis tells me we are not alone. Genesis tells me we were made in the image of God. You were made in the image of God. Your roommates, your household, family, whoever they may be, they were made, every single human person – made in the image of God!

And so, you see that, from the Bible anyway, what we get is that human life has intrinsic value, simply because it’s made in the image of God. Male and female made He us we’re told, in the first chapter of Genesis. And it’s our great joy to lean into and to rest in this divine design of our creator God, who’s made us all in His image. How well does Genesis comport with what we’ve learned from modern science, cosmology, astrophysics and archeology?

Well, there’s lots of material to explore, if you’re curious. I suggest online videos, books and articles. And here’s a list of some of my favorites to read: C. John or Jack Collins, Reading Genesis Well; Professor John Lennox, Seven Days that Divide the World; Dr. John Sailhamer, Genesis Unbound; Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses; Derek Kidner, one of the best commentaries you can buy, just simply called Genesis. And that’s just to name a few. In the weeks and months to come, as we study through to the rest of it, I’ll post some more choices for you.

But for our purposes today, Genesis 10 focuses on the dispersion of humanity after the great flood, and the development of a variety of ancient nations and kingdoms. These are all descending from the three sons of Noah, Japheth, Ham, and Shem. While the genealogy that we read in chapter five, focused on the progeny, this chapter, chapter 10, focuses more on the geography. The dispersion of humanity and the establishment of nations and ethnicities, which we celebrate. It’s a wonderful thing in so many ways, isn’t it?

And that same theme, God’s people coming from every nation, every tribe, every tongue runs all the way through; it doesn’t stop in Genesis. It runs all the way through the Bible – all the way to the Book of Revelation. And there you catch the glimpse of the throne room in heaven and the worship of God in heaven, and it’s just beautiful. And it’s people from every tribe and tongue and nation. And that’s why the Christian Gospel is to me, the most inclusive of all world religions.

This is an amazing offer, and it doesn’t matter where you’re from, doesn’t matter what color your skin is, doesn’t matter whether you’re wealthy, poor, rich, whatever your background – none of that matters. What matters is that there is an offer on the table for you from God. See, He’s done everything necessary for you and me to be reconciled to Him. And this is beautiful and powerful. The question is, will we repent and believe? Will we turn to Him and believe?

As I said, Genesis 10 lists 70 descendants: 14 from Japheth, 30 from Ham, and 26 from Shem. It is at least a little interesting to me that the sons of Noah are mentioned in reverse order from when we first learned about them at the end of Genesis chapter five. And by the way, God is often doing things in ways that disrupt my penchant for predictability. I’m sort of drawn to predictability. I like to know what’s around the corner. Are you that way? I like to know why something’s happening, or why it’s not happening. I like to know what God is up to and what His plans are.

And I often advise Him on the timing and the process, and you probably do too. And when I stop and think about that, though, I just start to see how ridiculous it would be that a little tiny ant such as myself would ever need to advise Almighty God, who created everything out of nothing. And who shaped and influenced human history down through the ages, so that we could be here on this day, studying this storyline that is so old, but just continues to drive home so many great timeless truths from God’s Word.

Well, these are lists of real persons, as I said, real cities, nation names and all of that. The progression of migration and all of that, to me anchors Genesis, the narrative of Genesis, in history. There are sections of Genesis though that are poetry or songs. There will be sections of Genesis that we’ll read that I think are meant to not be taken with literalism in mind. And the problem, of course, is the “ism” part of that. Where it presents though, as naming real names and real people and all that sort of thing, I have great confidence that this is God’s word to us and it’s credible.

Here is a map I want to throw up on the screen that shows the development of some of the ancient kingdoms. And just to help orient you, where it says domain there, that’s just an agent name for that section there, the Mediterranean Sea section there. But you see north of that, the Hittite Empire, you see the Empire of the Assyrians, the Babylonian Empire, and that’s over in the land that was mentioned there, Shinar. You see the Egyptian Empire there.

And what you don’t see, but you might be able to see, if you look real carefully, there is Jerusalem, which is what it will become later. Now it’s Jebus, but it’ll become Jerusalem later. And you see that in the background. So that gives you a little idea that that is the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea, and Jerusalem, that’s where the southern kingdom of the two kingdoms of Israel, the northern kingdom/southern kingdom will be in that region.

But that’s the relationship. And what’s happening is humanity is spreading out and beginning to sort of disperse and occupy different parts of the world. What’s in a name? What do we really learn here? Well, let me quote one of those books that I just mentioned from Robert Alter, brilliant scholar. His book, The Five Books of Moses, is not only his own translation of the first five books, but also some running commentary by this excellent scholar.

He says,

“It should be observed that representing the origins of nations as a genealogical scheme preserves a thematic continuity with the divine injunction after creation to be fruitful and multiply, and it sets the stage for the history of the one people whose propagation is repeatedly promised but continually threatened.”
Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses

He said that really well. Summarizes it so beautifully and eloquently. And so, when we look at this genealogical record, please understand, it’s starting out really wide, but it’s kind of starting to focus, and the lens is zooming in, and it’s just turning it real slow, and it’s becoming more narrow.

And we’re going to get to, in a while, we’ll get to the story of Abram, who becomes Abraham and the stories of Isaac and Jacob. Jacob who becomes renamed Israel by God. And of course, the story of Joseph closes out our Book of Genesis. What’s in a name though? Genesis 10. What is in a name? And what about this whole Table of Nations?

Well, my first point of this, maybe three or four that I want to make, anyway, is that God’s providence and sovereignty encompass all nations. And you’ve got to look at that, and you’ve got to actually see that, I think, when you look at chapter 10 here. God is providentially leading and guiding human history, and He is sovereign over it all as well. It’s His sovereign prerogative as the creator. Since everything belongs to Him, including people. I belong to Him. I don’t belong to me; I belong to Him. You belong to Him. Whether you know it or whether you’re even not willing to admit it, doesn’t matter. You belong not to yourself; you belong to God.

And that’s why all of us are chronically longing. We’re always longing for something that we can’t see, taste, touch, smell, or hear, because we’re longing for eternity. God has put that in our hearts. We’re longing for God Himself. And I’m so glad to be able to tell you that He’s done everything necessary for you to be reconciled to Him in the personal work of Jesus. So, His providence and His sovereignty are over all, and they encompass all around, all nations, which is great.

That’s why He can offer salvation to anyone from any nation, any tribe, any tongue, any background. No matter how far they’ve run away from God, no matter if they’re a drunk lying in a tent like Noah was. No matter if they are Nimrod and known as a mighty hunter, even against the Lord. He goes on to establish Ninevah, for instance. God sends Jonah, the reluctant prophet, to go and preach in Ninevah. And so many years later, after Nimrod, Ninevah will repent. Isn’t that amazing that God would be so kind as to send the message of salvation through the prophet Jonah, to the people of Ninevah, the descendants of Nimrod, even though he has been against the Lord in all these ways?

So, what am I saying here? What I’m saying is the Lord is in pursuit of the people He can call His own, including you, including me, no matter how far we’ve run, no matter what the disposition of our heart currently is. He’s after you and He’s after me in a great way, because He’s coming with rescue in His hand. He’s coming with redemption as a gift for you and for me.

Genesis 10, the Table of Nations, reminds us of at least these five things: This is under point one – the Bible set in space-time history. Humankind is united with all its diversity under one creator. In other words, it traces back to an original founding couple and their progeny. Three, the significance of every human life from the womb to the tomb. You see the Table of Nations, each of these names are mentioned, and the inference there, of course, is that each name is so important to God.

You, your name, He knows your name. He knows my name. All of you, He knows our name, see. And as He knows us, that suggests that each one of us has intrinsic value. So, the significance of every human life from womb to the tomb. Number four, the divine oversight of redemption history. And again, reordering the focus of the line of Shem, through whom will come, Abraham, all of that, it just continues to narrow the focus of the lens of the camera, if you will, of history through Genesis toward the line of redemption.

And then, five, God’s sovereign grace in all His choices. I mean, Noah and Nimrod? Noah, again, just these two guys, they’re kind of inconsistent at best. And you know what? That’s me. And that’s you as well. So, thank God for His grace and His mercy. Nimrod is where we leave here, and chapter 10, and this will move then into the story of Babel, which you’ll study next week.

But for now, I want to go back to the overall “What’s in a name?” theme of Genesis 10. And the second point is that God’s in pursuit of a people He can call His own, as we’ve said. Some of the people listed in these genealogies will indeed turn their backs on the Lord. But look at the way the prophet Isaiah says this,

“But now says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, formed you, O Israel, ‘Fear not, I’ve redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.’”

I love this.

“‘When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;’”

think of Noah, okay?

“‘And through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.’”
Isaiah 43:1-3a

Think about Daniel; think about all of us too. Think about any kind of natural disaster or tragedy or just the pressures of the fallen world around us – the despair of it all, the dark cloud of despair. There’s the division of the land and the acrimony and the difficulties of living in a world where people can’t get along well, and people are just canceling each other left and right. How are we going to survive all of that? Well, we don’t belong to ourselves. We belong to Him. And He’s called us by name. And when we pass through all of those things, “‘I the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel,’” He becomes our savior as it says right there in Isaiah 43. We can trust Him.

And I love the way Brennan Manning said this,

“We should be astonished at the goodness of God, stunned that he should call us by name, our mouths wide open at his love.”
Brennan Manning

And I’ll tell you right now, brothers and sisters, mine is just, duh. It’s just hard to believe, honestly, knowing how, if we’re all honest, if we could just for a minute set aside our pride and acknowledge our need; we can see ourselves in so many of these characters, because they’re all faulty and frail as well, vulnerable. They can be tempted so easily. They get angry so quickly. They get frustrated just like we do. And they make bad choices just like we do and just like others do. And sometimes it costs them, but sometimes it costs us as well.

The world is broken in so many ways. We need the salvation of God. So thirdly, you’re not alone. I’m not alone. Why? How do I know that? Well, because we’re fully known and truly loved. As Tim Keller has beautifully pointed out,

“To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear.… “

We don’t want anybody finding out the truth about us, because we’re afraid we won’t be loved.

“…But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, it’s a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.”
Tim Keller

I know it’s so true in our culture. I feel it myself. We drift towards self-righteousness. It’s so easy to be self-righteous in social media and self-righteousness is everywhere. It isn’t just them. It’s you. It’s me. We all fall to it. There’s no repugnant other out there. We are the ones that are guilty. We’re the ones that need to repent. We’re the ones that need to repent before we hit it and send it, post it, whatever you want to call it.

But the good news is we’re fully known by God, and we’re truly loved by God. And He’s proven that in the person and work of Jesus who, in spite of the fact that the entire world had gone nuts during the time of Jesus, in spite of the fact that darkness was so dark, Jesus came. Jesus, the greater one than Noah, much greater than Nimrod, much greater than anybody else we’ll read about because He comes. When you talk about the question “What’s in a name?” He’s the only one that has ever lived up to His name. And we’ll talk about that in just a minute.

But fourthly, God’s been planning your redemption for a long time. Mine as well. John Stott says it this way,

“You can never take God by surprise. You can never anticipate him. He always makes the first move. He’s always there ‘in the beginning.’ Before man existed, God acted. Before man stirs himself to seek God, God has sought man. In the Bible, we do not see man groping after God; we see God reaching after man.”
John Stott, Basic Christianity

So, I ask you again folks, what’s in a name? The name Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Yeshua, or its longer form Yehoshua, Joshua, if you will. It’s the same name. And Jesus, the shorter version, means “God saves.” The longer version, Yehoshua, means “God is salvation.” And this is such a wonderful thing as we study and look through Genesis 10, and even in calling this “What’s In a Name?” All these names are important, but it’s wonderful to be able to point all the way forward to the New Testament, to Jesus, and to know what’s in His name. God’s salvation is in His name. That’s where we find salvation is – in the name of Jesus. And no one has ever lived up to their name like Jesus, folks.

What’s in a name? Jesus. And we want to sing of His name, and we want to praise His name forever. How about you join us?

(Edited for Reading)