Paganism versus Promise
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2019 · 14 July 2019
Well, let us study Genesis 11, in our ongoing study of origins. Here is an accurate account of the history of man. In Genesis 1 through Genesis 9, you go from Adam to Noah, with a very carefully laid out genealogy. Then, in Genesis 10 and 11, you go from Noah to Abraham. From Abraham, you go to the patriarchs, to Isaac, to Jacob, who is renamed Israel, to Joseph and through the 12 tribes.
God's covenant people are established as His witness nation, and that we see from Genesis 12 to Genesis 50. Exodus begins with the death of Joseph, about 1800 B.C. Israel is in Egypt by then. Exodus 2 is the birth of Moses, who then leads Israel out. Forty years of wandering in the desert, and they finally arrive in the land of Canaan, established as the Land of Promise.
The rest of the Old Testament is the story of Israel. It's a story of blessing and cursing. The Old Testament closes about 400 years before the birth of Christ. The silence is broken by the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, just about two thousand years ago. The whole story of man, up to now, is about six thousand years. Now, this is simply what the Bible says. Anybody who reads Genesis can know this.
So we saw in Genesis 10 that the nations are scattered all over the world. And in Genesis 11:1-9 we are told how they were scattered by a divine twofold miracle. God altered their language so they couldn't understand each other. Therefore, they collected into groups who could understand each other. And God not only changed their language, but also miraculously scattered them all over the earth.
Now, in Genesis 10, you have this general listing of the genealogies that flow from the sons of Noah. But as we come to Genesis 11:10, the focus is on Shem. Here it narrows down the focus on one line, the line of election, the line of Shem that goes directly to Abram, who is the father of Israel, and next to Jesus, the most important man in the history of redemption.
And after the flood, there is that ongoing contrast of paganism versus promise. The Scripture from Genesis to Revelation diagnoses man and drops him into those categories. Since the fall, which is recorded in Genesis 3, all men are sinful, wicked and in constant rebellion against God. Man is opposed to God. Mankind is dead in sin, bound in the grip of paganism deep within his nature.
Romans 3:10-18, “There is none righteous, no, not one; 11 There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. 12 They have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable; there is none who does good, no, not one.” 13 “Their throat is an open tomb; with their tongues they have practiced deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips”;
14 “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.” 15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood; 16 Destruction and misery are in their ways; 17 and the way of peace they have not known.” 18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” Notice that it is all in quotes and caps, because every one of those statements is taken from the Old Testament. That is a universal diagnosis of the wretchedness of man.
So the story of man is a story of paganism and rebellion. But it is also a story of promise. In Genesis 3:15, in the middle of cursing the serpent, cursing the ground and cursing the environment around them, verse 15 produces a Godly promise, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.”
It is true, man chose Satan's word over God's, Satan's world view over God's. But it is also true that man was not fixed irretrievably forever in that disastrous condition. Unlike the angels who fell and could never be redeemed, man is granted a promise that One will come who will crush the head of Satan. Satan thought that after the fall of man, man would be as irredeemable as his demons. He was wrong.
God said in Genesis 2:16-17, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” The reality was that spiritual death did set in, but certainly not physical death and not necessarily eternal death. Instead, they did eat, but life still was produced by His grace.
Adam was so confident that they were going to live, that he called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. He believed in the promise that she was going to produce life, and she did. So in the midst of the curse, the disaster, the rebellion, sin and fallenness, there was God’s promise. Paganism flourished and developed, but God always keeps His promises.
And so it would be through Noah that the seed would come to bruise the serpent's head. And of Noah's sons, it would be through Shem. And of Shem's progeny, it would be through Abram, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, or Judah, that the Messiah would come. And so the record moves inexorably toward the arrival of Messiah. And you will see this continual contrast between paganism and God’s promise.
This formal pagan religion was launched at Babel. Then this religion was formalized at Babel in the ziggurat, which was a form of pagan worship. And when the people were scattered all over the world, they took their religion with them. Some of the truth of the real God was perverted by whatever form of paganism had developed at Babel that flowed out across the whole world.
So in Genesis 11, we see Shem, in verse 10, all the way down to Abram, who appears toward the end of this genealogy for the first time in verse 26. Abram's family were pagans and idolaters. They probably worshipped the gods of astrology that had been invented at Babel. The worship of the moon god, was a cult that really flourished in ancient Mesopotamia.
To understand the family of Abram, turn to Joshua 24, for a moment. Even after the flood, the development of all these families and nations after Babel, was pagan. In spite of the fact that the flood had happened and they had eyewitness testimony that it had happened, because the survivors of the flood were still around, nonetheless, they descended into paganism.
Joshua 24:2, “And Joshua said to all the people," gathering the tribes to Shechem there in verse 2, “Thus says the Lord God of Israel: ‘Your fathers, including Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, dwelt on the other side of the River in old times; and they served other gods.” Abraham's father was an idolater. He served other gods. He was a pagan in every sense of the word.
The world didn't develop a higher kind of religion. It went down from the truth of God, down from the reality of faith in the true and living God who is the Creator, down from salvation by grace, repentance, faith, down from worshipping and loving God, down into idolatry. Romans 1, from the heights of worshipping the true God to the sin of idolatry and demon worship.
And by Abraham's time, the whole world was idolatrous. Well, they had been before they were scattered, and they were just as idolatrous after the scattering. And they still are like that today. But there was at least one true worshipper. Turn to Acts 7 where we read the great sermon of Stephen, which is a recitation of the history of God's work through Abraham with Israel.
Acts 7:2-4, “The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran, 3 and said to him, ‘Get out of your country and from your relatives, and come to a land that I will show you.’ 4 Then he came out of the land of the Chaldeans and dwelt in Haran. And from there, when his father was dead, He moved him to this land in which you now dwell.”
Here was a man like Noah who was a true believer, and through that man, God would shape a nation to tell the world of idolaters about Him. So Abram becomes critical as the father of this people. In the midst of a sea of paganism, even the pagan family in which he lived, he had come to believe in the true God. So it was Abram that would be the father of the nation and the ancestor of the Messiah.
What was prevailing before the flood was death, judgment. What was prevailing after the flood was the promise. This genealogy goes from Shem right on down to Abram. The genealogy in Genesis 11 follows a different son of Eber, Peleg, because he is the line to Abram. This is the elect line, the covenant line. God is sovereignly controlling history, people and events to fulfill His will.
Lives are overlapping. Terah, for example, Abram's father was 128 years old when Noah died. So Noah was alive for 128 years of Terah's life. He had a firsthand eyewitness who survived the flood. The Messiah's line was: Adam to Noah to Shem to Peleg to Abraham to Isaac to Jacob to Judah to Jesse to David to Solomon to Hezekiah, Josiah, Joseph then Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew and Luke.
Here is Genesis 11:10-11, “This is the genealogy of Shem: Shem was one hundred years old, and begot Arphaxad two years after the flood. 11 After he begot Arphaxad, Shem lived five hundred years, and begot sons and daughters.” Shem is the elect line. He lived a hundred years, and he had a son. That's interesting, because Abraham was also a hundred years old when he had a son.
Noah was 500 when his first son Japheth was born. Shem was likely born two years later. So Shem would be 100 years old two years after the 40-day flood and he lived 500 years after he became the father of Arpachshad, and had other sons and daughters, a total of 600 years. His father lived 950 years. Here we see that life span is shortening quickly. Then comes Arpachshad, who lived 438 years.
Verse 12-13, “At 35, he fathered Shelah after which he lived another 403 years. So, again, the life span is dropping. He had other sons and daughters. Shelah was a man's name, who in verse 14 at 30 years, became the father of Eber. Eber is the term from which we get "Hebrew." Then, verses 16-17, "Eber at thirty-four years, became the father of Peleg; and Eber lived four hundred and thirty years.
Peleg means divided and in his days, the earth was divided, which signals that he was born at the time of the scattering at Babel. This particular son of Eber is the chosen line. His brother, Joktan, fathered Arab tribes. But Peleg fathered the people of God. Verses 20-21, “He lived 239 years and he became the father of Reu, and he had other sons and daughters." And so their life time continues to diminish.
Notice that they're having children younger now. Nahor, in verse 24, who "lived twenty-nine years, and became the father of Terah." Nahor is Abram's grandfather. He lives one 119 years after he becomes the father of Terah, he had other sons and daughters." So Nahor lives only 148 years. And Abram lived only 175 years, so you can see, their lives are beginning to shorten even more.
So the impact of sin, and the impact of the flood on the environment, is shortening life. Now, in verse 26 Terah didn't become a father until he was 70. But when it tells us that he had three sons when he was 70, it means that he began to have these sons at the age of 70. And in Genesis 11:32, it says the days of Terah were 205 years and he died. So after his father died, Abram left.
Now, Terah was not a believer in God. Joshua 24:2 says he served other gods. So these three boys, Abram, Nahor and Haran, mentioned in verse 26 were born into a pagan family. Also the birthplace of Abram, the town of Ur, was known by archaeologists as the major center of the worship of the moon god in ancient Mesopotamia. And in verse 27 we find out that the son of Haran is Lot.
Abram became Abraham in Genesis 17: 5, which means "father of many nations." Nahor was named after his grandfather. One of his brother's sons was Bethuel, the father of Rebecca, who married Abraham's son, Isaac, and became the mother of Jacob and Esau. Marrying your second cousin was certainly allowed. The third son was Haran. Now, all three of these names are well known in Jewish history.
Verse 29, "Abram and Nahor took wives for themselves. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai; and the name of Nahor's wife was Milcah.” The name of Abram's wife was later changed to Sarah, in Genesis 17: 15. Sarai means "my princess." Sarah means "Princess." without the "my." Why? Because she was going to literally be the mother of all nations. So her name was changed from Sarai to Sarah.
In verse 30, and we read, "And Sarai was barren; she had no child." The worst possible situation but absolutely crucial to the faith of Abraham. Because here is the example of faith for all who will ever believe. God comes to Abram and says, "I'm going to make out of you a great nation," Abraham had faith in the promise of God, faith through which God justified him, and made him to be the prototype of faith.
Verse 31, "And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife; and they went out together from Ur of the Chaldeans in order to enter the land of Canaan; and they went as far as Haran, and settled there." Why did they leave that place? The answer comes in Acts 7, "the God of glory appeared to our father Abraham.”
It is in Genesis 15:5-6 that God says, "'Look toward the heavens, count the stars, if you are able to count them,' and He said to him, 'So shall your descendants be.' Then he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteous." His actual justification is here described. Mankind, believing in the Word of God, escapes paganism and is delivered to eternal realms of divine promise and salvation. Let's pray.