Here's a question from the inbox. Dear Pastor John, my name is Jeremy, a 30-year-old living and working in Hollywood. My question is about the Tower of Babel, where God confused their language as punishment. Was this the beginning of all other ethnicities separate from Israel? I've always stumbled over the vast racial representation on earth stemming from just Adam and Eve or just from Noah.

Does the Bible imply anything about this or is it simply a mystery? Let me try to give what I think is a probable answer to the question as it relates to the Tower of Babel and Noah, but then shift the focus onto what the Apostle Paul does with this answer, which I think is far more important than the precise answer to when and how all the thousands of different ethnicities came into being.

After the flood, in Genesis 9, verse 19, it says, "These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the people of the whole earth were dispersed." So, all the people—people, I haven't said peoples yet, I haven't said ethnicities, I'm just saying people—all the people of the earth derive from Noah's offspring.

Then, at the end of chapter 10, and we haven't gotten to Babel yet, that's chapter 11, at the end of chapter 10, verse 32, the author delineates, I mean, in this chapter, he delineates the genealogies, the whole chapter's genealogies of Noah's children. Then he says, "These are the clans of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies, in their nations, and from these the nations, the families, the ethnicities, spread abroad on the earth after the flood." That's Genesis 10, 32.

So here he makes explicit that not just people in general, but nations, different nations, and that's not political nations, but ethno-linguistic nations, families, ethnicities spread across the world. Then, in chapter 11, surprisingly, comes in kind of reverse chronological order, comes the story of the Tower of Babel, and there we see the immediate cause of the linguistic diversity of the nations that scatter across the lands.

They were in rebellion against God, trying to build this tower, as it were, to reach into heaven and make a name for themselves, so that God intended for them to be now fractured, so that their rebellion did not have a united front. So this is what he says, Genesis 11, 7, "Come, let us go down there and confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech." So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, just like he had said in 919, over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.

Now the way John Salehammer in his Genesis commentary puts it is like this. What he has described, what the author has described geographically and linguistically in chapter 10, he will describe theologically in chapter 11, namely God's judgment of Babylon and the dispersion of the nations. Now here's one of those paradoxes in God's ruling over the history of the world.

On the one hand, the division of humanity into languages and ethnicities was a kind of judgment. Nevertheless, on the other hand, it was clearly part of God's overarching intention in the plan of salvation that Christ would be known and loved and praised, not by a single ethnicity, but by thousands of peoples and ethnicities and languages, because Christ gets more glory by being honored from a diversity of peoples than a single people.

So this is another example of how evil in the world is orchestrated and overruled by God for Christ-exalting, saving purposes in the end. Now watch the apostle Paul, watch what he does with the diversity of peoples when he is confronting the ethnocentricity and arrogance of the Athenian elite in Acts 17.26.

Here's what he says, "And God made from one man every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling." So he stresses, "One man and from him every nation, both the so-called brilliant Athenians and the so-called barbarians, both of them sprung from one ancestor." In other words, you bright, arrogant, racist men of Athens have the same blood flowing in your veins as the barbarians do whom you despise.

You have the same great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, and Paul does that explicitly to undermine the pride and racism and ethnocentrism, arrogance of the Athenian philosophers. This is the message that Hitler and the Nazis and all white supremacists needed and need to hear. And then the apostle John elevates the diversity of the nations to an even higher level when he connects it with the purposes of God in the shedding of the blood of Jesus in Revelation 5.9.

"They sang a new song, saying, 'Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you made them a kingdom and priest to our God, and they shall reign on earth.'" In other words, Christ died in order to ransom and possess a people of his own from a diverse peoples.

And then in chapter 7, verse 9, John gives a picture of the great final multitude. "After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude, that no one could number from every nation, all tribes and peoples and languages standing before the throne and before the Lamb." So, whatever the precise way God brought these diverse ethnicities into being, it is clear he intends for us to reach them all with the gospel and count them in Christ as our brothers and sisters in the hope of a common kingdom and a common glory.

Amen. That's an incredibly helpful overview, Pastor John. Thank you. Excellent question, Jeremy. Keep them coming in to us. And for more details about the podcast, to catch up on past episodes or to subscribe to the audio feed, even to send us a question of your own if you have one, go to our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

Well, speaking of really good questions, how do you explain the glory of God to children? John Piper will make some suggestions for pulling this off tomorrow, and even if you don't have kids, this is an episode you don't want to miss. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with longtime author, theologian, and Pastor John Piper.

I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you tomorrow. This is an uncorrected transcript. For more information on this program and other programs, please visit us at www.desiringgod.org. This is an uncorrected transcript. For more information on this program and other programs, please visit us at www.desiringgod.org. This is an uncorrected transcript.

For more information on this program and other programs, please visit us at www.desiringgod.org.