Red, Yellow, Black, and White — Could Every Race Come from Adam, Eve, and Noah?

00:00:00.000 | Here's a question from the inbox.

00:00:06.720 | Dear Pastor John, my name is Jeremy, a 30-year-old living and working in Hollywood.

00:00:10.600 | My question is about the Tower of Babel, where God confused their language as punishment.

00:00:15.420 | Was this the beginning of all other ethnicities separate from Israel?

00:00:19.640 | I've always stumbled over the vast racial representation on earth stemming from just

00:00:24.760 | Adam and Eve or just from Noah.

00:00:27.480 | Does the Bible imply anything about this or is it simply a mystery?

00:00:32.860 | Let me try to give what I think is a probable answer to the question as it relates to the

00:00:40.160 | Tower of Babel and Noah, but then shift the focus onto what the Apostle Paul does with

00:00:47.800 | this answer, which I think is far more important than the precise answer to when and how all

00:00:56.600 | the thousands of different ethnicities came into being.

00:01:01.080 | After the flood, in Genesis 9, verse 19, it says, "These three were the sons of Noah,

00:01:09.780 | and from these the people of the whole earth were dispersed."

00:01:15.440 | So, all the people—people, I haven't said peoples yet, I haven't said ethnicities,

00:01:21.400 | I'm just saying people—all the people of the earth derive from Noah's offspring.

00:01:28.640 | Then, at the end of chapter 10, and we haven't gotten to Babel yet, that's chapter 11, at

00:01:34.160 | the end of chapter 10, verse 32, the author delineates, I mean, in this chapter, he delineates

00:01:41.400 | the genealogies, the whole chapter's genealogies of Noah's children.

00:01:45.720 | Then he says, "These are the clans of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies,

00:01:54.040 | in their nations, and from these the nations, the families, the ethnicities, spread abroad

00:02:03.080 | on the earth after the flood."

00:02:05.600 | That's Genesis 10, 32.

00:02:07.240 | So here he makes explicit that not just people in general, but nations, different nations,

00:02:17.040 | and that's not political nations, but ethno-linguistic nations, families, ethnicities spread across

00:02:24.960 | the world.

00:02:26.120 | Then, in chapter 11, surprisingly, comes in kind of reverse chronological order, comes

00:02:36.400 | the story of the Tower of Babel, and there we see the immediate cause of the linguistic

00:02:44.720 | diversity of the nations that scatter across the lands.

00:02:50.340 | They were in rebellion against God, trying to build this tower, as it were, to reach

00:02:55.760 | into heaven and make a name for themselves, so that God intended for them to be now fractured,

00:03:04.560 | so that their rebellion did not have a united front.

00:03:09.120 | So this is what he says, Genesis 11, 7, "Come, let us go down there and confuse their language,

00:03:16.200 | so that they may not understand one another's speech."

00:03:20.800 | So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, just like he had

00:03:28.800 | said in 919, over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.

00:03:36.440 | Now the way John Salehammer in his Genesis commentary puts it is like this.

00:03:42.260 | What he has described, what the author has described geographically and linguistically

00:03:48.400 | in chapter 10, he will describe theologically in chapter 11, namely God's judgment of Babylon

00:03:59.220 | and the dispersion of the nations.

00:04:02.440 | Now here's one of those paradoxes in God's ruling over the history of the world.

00:04:08.400 | On the one hand, the division of humanity into languages and ethnicities was a kind

00:04:14.300 | of judgment.

00:04:16.240 | Nevertheless, on the other hand, it was clearly part of God's overarching intention in the

00:04:24.760 | plan of salvation that Christ would be known and loved and praised, not by a single ethnicity,

00:04:33.960 | but by thousands of peoples and ethnicities and languages, because Christ gets more glory

00:04:42.240 | by being honored from a diversity of peoples than a single people.

00:04:46.920 | So this is another example of how evil in the world is orchestrated and overruled by

00:04:53.600 | God for Christ-exalting, saving purposes in the end.

00:05:00.280 | Now watch the apostle Paul, watch what he does with the diversity of peoples when he

00:05:09.120 | is confronting the ethnocentricity and arrogance of the Athenian elite in Acts 17.26.

00:05:17.960 | Here's what he says, "And God made from one man every nation of mankind to live on

00:05:27.560 | the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling."

00:05:33.360 | So he stresses, "One man and from him every nation, both the so-called brilliant Athenians

00:05:45.100 | and the so-called barbarians, both of them sprung from one ancestor."

00:05:51.480 | In other words, you bright, arrogant, racist men of Athens have the same blood flowing

00:05:58.920 | in your veins as the barbarians do whom you despise.

00:06:04.360 | You have the same great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, and Paul does that explicitly to undermine

00:06:12.360 | the pride and racism and ethnocentrism, arrogance of the Athenian philosophers.

00:06:20.440 | This is the message that Hitler and the Nazis and all white supremacists needed and need

00:06:27.360 | to hear.

00:06:28.840 | And then the apostle John elevates the diversity of the nations to an even higher level when

00:06:37.000 | he connects it with the purposes of God in the shedding of the blood of Jesus in Revelation

00:06:42.080 | 5.9.

00:06:43.080 | "They sang a new song, saying, 'Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its

00:06:47.720 | seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe

00:06:56.400 | and language and people and nation, and you made them a kingdom and priest to our God,

00:07:03.280 | and they shall reign on earth.'"

00:07:05.040 | In other words, Christ died in order to ransom and possess a people of his own from a diverse

00:07:13.240 | peoples.

00:07:15.600 | And then in chapter 7, verse 9, John gives a picture of the great final multitude.

00:07:21.480 | "After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude, that no one could number from every

00:07:28.160 | nation, all tribes and peoples and languages standing before the throne and before the

00:07:35.560 | Lamb."

00:07:36.560 | So, whatever the precise way God brought these diverse ethnicities into being, it is clear

00:07:44.520 | he intends for us to reach them all with the gospel and count them in Christ as our brothers

00:07:51.320 | and sisters in the hope of a common kingdom and a common glory.

00:07:57.160 | Amen.

00:07:58.160 | That's an incredibly helpful overview, Pastor John.

00:08:02.000 | Thank you.

00:08:03.000 | Excellent question, Jeremy.

00:08:04.000 | Keep them coming in to us.

00:08:05.360 | And for more details about the podcast, to catch up on past episodes or to subscribe

00:08:09.800 | to the audio feed, even to send us a question of your own if you have one, go to our online

00:08:13.480 | home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:08:15.880 | Well, speaking of really good questions, how do you explain the glory of God to children?

00:08:25.200 | John Piper will make some suggestions for pulling this off tomorrow, and even if you

00:08:28.880 | don't have kids, this is an episode you don't want to miss.

00:08:32.280 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with longtime author, theologian,

00:08:36.480 | and Pastor John Piper.

00:08:37.720 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:08:39.160 | We'll see you tomorrow.

00:08:39.960 | [END]

00:08:40.960 | This is an uncorrected transcript.

00:08:41.960 | For more information on this program and other programs, please visit us at www.desiringgod.org.

00:08:41.960 | [END]

00:08:43.960 | This is an uncorrected transcript.

00:08:44.960 | For more information on this program and other programs, please visit us at www.desiringgod.org.

00:08:44.960 | [END]

00:08:45.960 | This is an uncorrected transcript.

00:08:46.960 | For more information on this program and other programs, please visit us at www.desiringgod.org.

00:08:46.960 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Red, Yellow, Black, and White — Could Every Race Come from Adam, Eve, and Noah?

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