Monday, July 6, 2020

Sunday School Lesson at Lake Marburg Baptist Church given on Sunday, July 5, 2020 - Genesis 11:5 to 12:13


Genesis 11:5 ¶  And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. 6  And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 7  Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. 8  So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 9  Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
There are a number of verses that refer to God coming to earth and to watching what is happening from a distance.
Genesis 18:21  I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know.
Exodus 19:11  And be ready against the third day: for the third day the LORD will come down in the sight of all the people upon mount Sinai.
Psalm 11:4 ¶  The LORD is in his holy temple, the LORD’S throne is in heaven: his eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men.
Psalm 33:13  The LORD looketh from heaven; he beholdeth all the sons of men.
Psalm 33:14  From the place of his habitation he looketh upon all the inhabitants of the earth.
However, the doctrine of the Lord’s immanence or presence everywhere is also a major doctrine of the Bible.
Jeremiah 23:23  Am I a God at hand, saith the LORD, and not a God afar off? 24  Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the LORD. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the LORD.
This doctrine applies even to seeing the inside of a person, his thoughts and intentions, as the following examples know.
Genesis 6:5  And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
Proverbs 20:27  The spirit of man is the candle of the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly.
Psalm 94:11  The LORD knoweth the thoughts of man, that they are vanity.
Psalm 139:23  Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
Matthew 9:4  And Jesus knowing their thoughts said, Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?
Hebrews 4:12  For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
The common sense application of verse 5 is for God to turn His attention to this activity just as earlier in 8:1 to remember Noah did not mean that he had been forgotten but that God’s attention was now turned to his plight.
Here, God recognizes that man’s intention is to disobey and stand united against His will. This is why a one world government run by man will fail because it will inevitably be founded on opposing God as all of the many facets of current-day globalism have borne out. The powerful nations wish to impose their corrupt modern sexual morality, manipulative banking, business, and finance practices, and a bland, uniform and non-threatening religion around the world focused on materialism and submission to a world-wide plan of a faceless power behind the scenes. The control demanded by the Beast and his henchman, the False Prophet, at the end, as expressed in the Book of Revelation, which is too detailed to go into here, is in direct opposition to God’s authority over mankind.
A mirror of this can be found in God’s statements to Samuel about Israel’s desire for a king like the nations around them in 1Samuel 8.
Here is the beginning of the languages of the world, usually unintelligible to each other, but having a common root in man’s unique ability to form sentences, sentences within sentences, figures of speech, and all of the things that make man’s ability to communicate with words different from the abilities of the beasts of the earth, as far as we know now. Not only this but the people have been scattered across the face of the earth. This may have been done by not only locating certain families everywhere from the jungles of South America to the bush country of Southern Africa but also initiating the beginning of the great migrations from the Near East to the rest of the world, from Siberia to Central Mexico. As the earth is still in the drying out process after the Flood of Noah mankind has constantly been on the move, one family conquering and murdering another family to take their land only to be displaced by another family moving in. Kingdoms, empires, and even modern-nation states like America and its globalist evangelists have been trying to recreate this first great effort to unite all of mankind under one head, under one banner, controlled by one city, and one method of government, one ideal, and one view of the world with one tower or religion reaching to heaven. The final consequences will play out in the book of Revelation.
Babel is the same word that Babylon is translated from, that infamous city in the land of Shinar, the fount of all false religion and rebellion that spread with man across the globe.
Genesis 11:10 ¶  These are the generations of Shem: Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood: 11  And Shem lived after he begat Arphaxad five hundred years, and begat sons and daughters. 12  And Arphaxad lived five and thirty years, and begat Salah: 13  And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters. 14  And Salah lived thirty years, and begat Eber: 15  And Salah lived after he begat Eber four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters. 16  And Eber lived four and thirty years, and begat Peleg: 17  And Eber lived after he begat Peleg four hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters. 18  And Peleg lived thirty years, and begat Reu: 19  And Peleg lived after he begat Reu two hundred and nine years, and begat sons and daughters. 20  And Reu lived two and thirty years, and begat Serug: 21  And Reu lived after he begat Serug two hundred and seven years, and begat sons and daughters. 22  And Serug lived thirty years, and begat Nahor: 23  And Serug lived after he begat Nahor two hundred years, and begat sons and daughters. 24  And Nahor lived nine and twenty years, and begat Terah: 25  And Nahor lived after he begat Terah an hundred and nineteen years, and begat sons and daughters. 26  And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
From this passage, if my math isn’t wrong, Shem, the son of Noah, lived to see Abram’s birth. Genesis 10:25 showed us that it was in Peleg’s time the earth was divided. Assuming this refers to the scattering at Babylon that took place between 101 and 310 years after the Flood. Check my math and let me know if you think I’m wrong. It happened within Peleg’s lifespan. According to 9:28 Noah himself lived 350 years after the Flood so he would have been alive as well.
Genesis 11:27 ¶  Now these are the generations of Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot. 28  And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees. 29  And Abram and Nahor took them wives: the name of Abram’s wife was Sarai; and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah. 30  But Sarai was barren; she had no child. 31  And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son’s son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there. 32  And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran.
Terah took his family, Abram and Lot, his grandson, Abram’s nephew, and left Ur, an ancient city in the general geographical area of Babylon. It was a coastal city near the mouth of the Euphrates then although it is well inland now due to the coastline shifting over thousands of years. Ur was a metropolis with its patron god as Sin, in Akkadian, the moon god. A bull was one of his symbols. Remember what was said about the alphabet earlier. Some Christian writers have put forth that Sin, who was known to Ur as the god of wisdom pictured as an old man with a long, flowing beard, eventually became Allah, the god of the Muslims. Early archaeologists found in Sin’s temples the crescent moon as a symbol of his presence. I have done an extensive study, for a non-scholar, on the etymology of Allah which, while not politically correct, I think should give one pause about who a great many of the religious adherents of the world actually worship.
The entire family is led by their father Terah to Canaan, to Haran, either named later after Haran, or perhaps Haran was named after the town. The reason for this journey we will find out next.
Genesis, chapter 12
Genesis 12:1 ¶  Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: 2  And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: 3  And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
What had been brought about in the land of Babel, Babylon, was a religion counterfeit to the true worship of God. It was not long after men and women left the ark of Noah. What I said in my comments on 4:16 bears repeating a little at this point.
From Cain’s time the ancient city had become religious entity, a type of church, started all at once with invited families who would share in the same worship and the same gods as can be seen in Plutarch’s Lives of Illustrious Men, although the individual family would have its own singular worship and gods which represented their lars familiaris or familiar spirits (see Leviticus 20:27), the guiding divinities of ancestors dead.[1] It is likely that Cain’s false religion was carried on through his city and it is possible and likely that Shem, Ham, and Japheth would be worshipped as venerable ancestors in different names under the confusion of languages long after their death.
In addition, each home in the ancient world was to have a sacred flame which was the religious center of the home and must not be permitted to go out.[2] This eternal flame, like the lamp in the tabernacle in Exodus 27:20, must never go out. This was a counterfeit city in the ancient world, a city of man’s creation, man’s poor attempt to replace what God intended. Cain’s false religion, which infected the rest of human history after the Flood, began to be expressed by his brethren in his city, Enoch, and the eventual religion of the city-states of Canaan, Greece, and the worship of Rome and India would have begun there, reinforced by Babylon after the Flood.
The king of an ancient city was also the high priest, who offered up sacrifices, and was the highest religious authority. This is evident in a number of ancient writers such as Aristotle, Euripides, and Demosthenes. Sometimes there were two kings, a most famous example being Sparta of Greece or the two consuls or Rome and, we will see later, perhaps in ancient Canaan.[3]  This is the world that Abram moved and lived in, a world awash in everyday religious ritual, a world that had no problem believing in a distant God the Creator but also a whole pantheon of gods that were much closer to him and had more of a role in his daily home life. Every man or group of men desired to have a personal god, it would seem, to make up for the lost relationship with their Creator, which their ancestors had willfully eliminated in disobedience. Perhaps also this worship of gods represented the power the sons of God who had come to earth, mated with women, and produced giants, the mighty men of renown worshipped in deities whose presence on earth had been remembered and spoken of by Noah and his three sons and their wives.
Some things to note about the ancient world include that from this earliest time human relationships, such as a family, were a religion symbolized by the meal they would take together. Also, in their minds all authority must have some connection with this religion. Law was just another part of religion. In addition, it should be noted that two cities were religious associations that did not share the same gods. When war was made it would be made, not only against the soldiers, men, women, and children of a city but against its crops, its slaves, its gods.
Here is the reason for the family leaving Ur. Abram is commanded to do something very brave, to leave the protective confines of the gods of the hearth, of the family, where the dead were worshipped, where the eldest son had no choice but to inherit his father’s property, and his gods, and the father and the son were joint owners of what the father possessed.
Here, now, God calls Abram to come away, not only from a city, but from an entire worldview, to renew the relationship with the one who created him, something lost to mankind as the darkness spread to every corner where men and women had been scattered. He is called to obey God, to leave this world while living in it.
He promises to make of Abram a great people and that he will be a blessing to the entire world. Those who curse him God will curse and those that bless him God will bless. Now begins a process of God turning mankind back to Himself. He will use Abram as the conduit through which this blessing will pass. Abram’s journey out of Ur does not end in Haran.      
Genesis 12:4 ¶  So Abram departed, as the LORD had spoken unto him; and Lot went with him: and Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran. 5  And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.
Abram obeyed God and took his nephew with him, the servants and possessions they had acquired in Haran, and entered the land of Ham’s grandson, Canaan. Haran was a village which ruins some believe lie in Southern Turkey. The question might be asked, did Terah found the village and name it after his dead son? Haran is used as a person’s name later as well. Abram, who will eventually be renamed Abraham, left the religious associations of his father as commanded.
Joshua 24:2  And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods. 3  And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood, and led him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed, and gave him Isaac.
They traveled northwest from Ur several hundred miles and settled in Haran, from whence Abram and company would travel southwest to Canaan. Haran, when translated from the Greek language, rather than the Hebrew here, will be spelled Charran in Acts 7:2,4. The CH is pronounced as a K when you find it in the Bible transliterated from one of the original languages. Think of Nebuchadnezzar or Michael. But when we moderns say Cherubims we use the CHA sound, not the K sound. Words that are directly from English like checker in 1Kings 7:17, of course, would be exceptions to this rule.
Abram, being 75 years old, is not elderly in the way we would think today. Prior to this time, as you read, many people lived hundreds of years. Their natural abilities, their appearance, would have remained far more youthful than we would consider a 75 year old’s body to be today although the upper age limit of men was rapidly falling in the new environment after the Flood and Abram will consider himself old and beyond the age of fathering children fairly soon.
Genesis 17:1  And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect…17  Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?
Terah, Abrahams father, lived to be 205. (Genesis 11:32). When the dispersal at Babel occurred the lifespan dropped dramatically. See also in chapter 11 Peleg’s lifespan of 239 years as opposed to his father, Eber, who lived 464 years.
Regarding the word souls, in the Old Testament, as the operation of God in separating the soul from the sins of the flesh referred to in Colossians, chapter 2, has not taken place yet, soul and souls are used to include the physical presence of the person or beast spoken of as well as the soul, which is tied to the flesh until Christ’s resurrection and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in those people who believe and are given faith.
Numbers 31:28  And levy a tribute unto the LORD of the men of war which went out to battle: one soul of five hundred, both of the persons, and of the beeves, and of the asses, and of the sheep:
For those who do not believe that some beasts have souls and spirit also note;
Job 12:10  In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.
Ecclesiastes 3:21  Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?
Genesis 12:6 ¶  And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh. And the Canaanite was then in the land. 7  And the LORD appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the LORD, who appeared unto him. 8  And he removed from thence unto a mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west, and Hai on the east: and there he builded an altar unto the LORD, and called upon the name of the LORD. 9  And Abram journeyed, going on still toward the south.
Sichem is another spelling for Shechem. Noah built an altar to the Lord and offered sacrifices upon leaving the ark in 8:20 acknowledging thanksgiving and God’s mercy. Abram here builds an altar to the Lord confirming his acknowledgment of God’s promise and direction. In between Noah and Abram there was a great deal of counterfeiting of the religious impulse placed in man by God that carried on through the centuries, even today where we don’t necessarily refer to God directly but call our god by the names of Self, Ambition, Science, Entertainment, Sports, Country, etc. etc. But, modern man does build altars quite regularly acknowledging his relationship with his god.
After Noah, perhaps in remembrance of the sons of God who led the pre-Flood earth in rebellion and eventually in veneration of elders who died such as Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, men accepted that there were gods everywhere, little gods, gods that could easily be made angry because they were so irritable and malevolent. This belief, “crushed man with the fear of always having the gods against him, and left him no liberty in his acts.”[4]
For Abram to turn from this powerful social and religious impulse of man, to leave his own responsibilities for the family religion, to turn from the gods to THE God, this return to monotheism, as a scholar might say, was remarkable evidence of God’s interaction with him in choosing this man out of thousands to reveal Himself to a fallen world and APPEARING to him in the form of the Lord Jesus Christ, the visible image of the invisible God (John 1:14; 14:9; 2Corinthians 4:4; Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:3).
Not having God walking physically with them as Adam and Eve enjoyed in the garden in Enos’ time man called upon the name of the Lord.
Genesis 4:26  And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the LORD.
And again, in this age of man, which some call “the church age,” we bring into our minds the authority of our Creator over us and He establishes a relationship with us and His Spirit indwells us by our calling upon His name and acknowledging His sovereignty over us and over all that exists.
Romans 10:13  For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
But, God, in the form of His physical presence, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word by which all things were created, appeared to Abram. One cannot see the soul of God, the seat of His will and self-identity, God the Father, so an angel, which is an appearance of someone or something which is someplace else actually, or a vision, or the physical presence of the pre-incarnate Christ is what Abram could see. And the Lord appeared unto Abram and made this covenant and promise.
Genesis 12:10 ¶  And there was a famine in the land: and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine was grievous in the land. 11  And it came to pass, when he was come near to enter into Egypt, that he said unto Sarai his wife, Behold now, I know that thou art a fair woman to look upon: 12  Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall say, This is his wife: and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive. 13  Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister: that it may be well with me for thy sake; and my soul shall live because of thee.
Later, we will get the definition of famine which is a period of little food and a poor return for farmers. We look at a word in context and compare its use against like phrases in the verse or passage.
Genesis 41:27  And the seven thin and ill favoured kine that came up after them are seven years; and the seven empty ears blasted with the east wind shall be seven years of famine.
Grievous is shown later to mean that there will be no surplus during a famine. It will then be a grievous famine.
Genesis 41:31  And the plenty shall not be known in the land by reason of that famine following; for it shall be very grievous.
Grievous is an abundance of calamity in the curses on Egypt in Exodus 9 and it is a very difficult burden to bear in 1Kings 12 and 2Chronicles 10. Grievous causes grief, obviously, but it is important to see how the Bible defines words in context and I want to reinforce that for you to help in your own personal reading.
Abram does what we would consider a cowardly thing rather than trusting in God to deliver him. He tells his wife, who is in her 60’s but still at that time still a fair woman to look upon, to lie and say she is his sister, not concerning himself in this whether she will suffer humiliation but in preserving his own life.
Abram, as Abraham, will do this again in Gerar in chapter 20. His son, Isaac, will also do this with his wife, Rebekah, in chapter 26 in Gerar, as well. Apparently, by this, we know that it would not be uncommon for a man to be murdered so that someone could obtain his attractive wife as a sexual resource.
We know that fair to look upon means that a person is sexually desirable. In our modern world women seek to dress and look like this although if they considered the assortment of characters they would be attracting, most of which do not look like their favorite movie or music stars, they might think better of it. Sarai, like other women, had little choice in the matter and was little better than a commodity or a pack animal under prevalent laws and customs. It is only in Christ that woman’s status rises.
Galatians 3:28  There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
Unless, of course, she is an Independent Fundamental Baptist, in which case she is typically still in Egypt.
In this general time, although you cannot seriously accept the dates put forth without absolute proof of which there is none, Mizraim’s Egypt (see comments on 10:6) was ruled by a Pharaoh, a king, who held absolute power. Later, the Greek historian Herodotus will tell us that there could be as many as 12 rulers leading from various places claiming all to be THE Pharaoh. This makes any attempt to put the Pharaohs and their dynasties in any absolute dating plan difficult. In addition, the commonly accepted method for dating ancient Egypt is not without its detractors and is controversial. So, when reading about Old and New Kingdoms, Intermediate Periods, Dynasty dates, etc. etc. be very skeptical and cautious about accepted conclusions. Egypt’s ancient history is probably much more compressed than current scholarship would be willing to let on.
In any event, depending on the flooding of the Nile River to irrigate crops, rather than an abundance of rainfall, Egypt was the place to go in most famines in Canaan. Egypt was also the superpower that would have held the kings of Canaan as tributaries in those times when other empires were not in control such as the Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians.  Soon, we will see that part of Canaan at this time was held in tribute by several kings from further east; including Elam and Babylon.


[1] Numa Denis Fustel De Coulanges, The Ancient City: A Study of the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome (1864, repr. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2006), 134.
               
[2] Ibid., 25.
[3] Ibid., 173.
[4] Ibid., 211.

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