Good morning, I hope you had a great weekend. Monday draws it to a close as we see a new workweek before us. Marge and I continue to do some fun little projects in the backyard. I grabbed a bunch of “beater boards” before we left Maui (old surfboards) and we mounted some to the back fence to give it a fun beachy vibe. We also had a first, we built an outdoor shower. We built the enclosure out of wood and then mounted another surfboard to it and installed the shower head through the board. It turned out really well and now on these hot summer days you can just walk over and cool down with a cold shower. It’s a lot cheaper than a swimming pool!
This morning we take a look at another genealogy in Genesis chapter 10. The first one was pre-flood and of course this one is post flood. The importance of this geneaology cannot be stated enough. If any person on the planet wants to trace their ancestral line, it will ultimately come back to one person named here in chapter 10. But this morning is much more than that, it is the beginning of the family tree of all mankind. From the three sons of Noah and their wives comes all the races of the world. You might say, “well how can all races come from just three sons.?” I’m no ethnology major but the key seems to lie more with the wives than the sons. It’s believed that all three sons married different races, which would have been very common back then as they were living in the same close regions. But since we’re not given the wives names in God’s Word, we can’t accurately track their genealogies. But it does make major sense that the races of Europe, Africa, and Asia had to stem from somewhere. And the place where they branch off the tree is right here in Genesis chapter 10.
You can do some research (or a lot) and find out exactly what races ethnologists believe came from each of the son’s unions. It’s very fascinating but can also be somewhat time consuming and even dry if your just not that into genealogy research. The main thing I take away from this chapter is how thorough our God is. He did not supply us with a flimsy, hollow book that just has a few motivational sayings in it. He left us a bulletproof book that even after thousands of years, critics cannot disprove. Oh, people have tried but none have succeeded. You know scientists and even most unbelievers are so quick to discount the Bible and everything that’s in it. Most consider the Bible to just be an archaic, out of touch history book that somehow popped onto the scene a few thousand years ago. But there’s something funny about whatever side you tend to be on when asked about believing what’s in the Bible. If you believe the Bible, the other side will say that you are narrow minded, not based in concrete science and that your just not using common sense. And they might be right on some of that, some of the Bible doesn’t make common sense to us. But I believe the Bible to be the actual Words of God and I believe that by having Faith in Him and His promises. But what if you don’t believe the Bible. How do you make those assumptions? Can you PROVE the Bible isn’t true? No you can’t. Just because you don’t believe that Jonah was swallowed by a huge fish doesn’t mean that you can PROVE it didn’t happen. Just because you don’t believe it doesn’t make it untrue. So, what do you base your unbelief on? The same thing I base my belief on….faith.
When I was working at Tommy Bahama in Maui, I had a coworker that was a staunch atheist. We had an amiable relationship and we would often talk about God (or to her no God). One day we were talking about the creation of man and the world and something struck me. I said, you have more faith than I do. She stopped and said, “what?” I said, “it just occurred to me that I have the Bible, the living Word of God to tell me that all of this is true, but you just believe it on your own.” In order to just believe that all on your own you have to have a lot of faith! You see no matter what you believe, you have to have faith in it. That same young lady left Tommy Bahama but several months later she came back into the store to let me know that she had accepted Christ and had been baptized at a local church there on West Maui. Praise God, her faith properly directed, led her straight to Christ!
So our chapter this morning tells us of the foundations of all mankind. I’m thankful that God is so thorough in His accounting and history. The more time I spend in this wonderous book, the more I realize what a living miracle it is and how utterly blessed we are to have it. Do yourself a favor and become an expert on at least one thing in this life. God’s Holy Word.
Be blessed in your journey with God and His Word.
Comments