Encountering God’s Providence

ENCOUNTERING GOD’s PROVIDENCE—Genesis 11:10-32

Attention:

The House that Jack Built—All things are tied to others so that their relation one to another cannot be fully discerned.

Need:

Genesis records the immediate familial path to Abram.

We continually walk within the paths of God’s providence.

Where do we encounter God’s providence?

3 encounters within God’s providence.

PROVIDENCE:

“The continuing action of God by which He preserves in existence the creation which He has brought into being, & guides it to His intended purposes.”...It is the governance of God by which all events in the universe “fulfill His plan for it.”—Millard Erickson

“From the beginning God has ordered the course of events toward Jesus Christ & His incarnation.” “...the world & our lives are not ruled by chance or by fate but by God, who lays bare His purposes of providence in the incarnation of His Son.”—T. H. L. Parker in EDT

*Minimally 3 Players in Providence’s continuance:

-Freedom—Individual & Group(familial to global) choices & decisions.

-Actions—God can Prevent, Permit, Direct or Limit activity(Christ-honoring &/or sinful).

-Circumstances—Good & bad—Governed by any means perceived & unperceived.

BACKGROUND:

Much of the wording of this genealogy is reminiscent of Adam’s genealogy in chapter 5.

However there is one glaring difference...there is no specific mention of death except :28, 32! Chapter five is interlaced with the words, “& he died.” This may be a hint that the world was wholeheartedly moving toward an inevitable death with the Flood. By contrast, the obvious sparsity of a specific mention of death in 11:10-32 may signal mankind’s movement toward life thru God’s promises.—John MacArthur

This is a more focused genealogy of Shem than in 10:21-30.

10:21-30 follows Shem thru Joktan.

11:10-32 follows Shem thru Peleg.

10:22 recognizes 5 sons of Shem—

“The sons of Shem were Elam, Asshur, Arphaxad, Lud, & Aram.”

It concisely mentions Shem’s grandsons thru Aram.

It also follows Shem’s lineage thru Arphaxad to his son, Salah...Salah to his son, Eber..& Eber’s sons Peleg & Joktan. Peleg’s progeny is not mentioned & Joktan thus becomes the focus of this(Gen. 10:25-30) genealogy.

11:10-32 follows Shem’s line through Arphaxad only. There is no mention of siblings as these have been dealt with in 10:21-31. Thereby 11:10-32 brings only a cursory mention of other children stating in :11 only that, “After he begot Arphaxad, Shem lived five hundred years, & begot sons & daughters.” Besides this, the focus of this chapter is to bring us to Abram so that we know his beginnings, as he is of vital interest to the remainder of the story of mankind in relation to God. Abram is indeed not mythical but is the same as you & I as will soon be reported in following chapters & indeed thruout the rest of Scripture.

“This is the elect line, the covenant line. And it reminds us again that God is sovereignly controlling, moving history, people, events to fulfill His will. So here is the line of the promised seed.”—John MacArthur

Here(11:10) we are also told that Arphaxad himself was born “2 years after the Flood.” It is thereby to be inferred that Arphaxad’s birth occurred after Noah’s family departed from the Ark.

“Terah, for example, Abram's father, if you put the numbers together, 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. In fact, Noah died probably two years before Abram was born.”—John MacArthur

1—We encounter/touch God’s Providence in/thru...

FAMILY(:10-26+)

Explanation: (:10-26+)

:10-11—“This is the genealogy of Shem: Shem was one hundred years old, & begot Arphaxad two years after the flood. After he begot Arphaxad, Shem lived five hundred years, & begot sons & daughters.”

Gen 10:22—“The sons of Shem were Elam, Asshur, Arphaxad, Lud, & Aram.”

Shem himself was a son of Noah thru Adam & Eve’s son Seth thru Enosh by whom “men began to call upon the name of the LORD(Gen. 4:26).

Can God bring about His will thru my FAMILY?—YES!

But HOW will He do it?—Largely unknown...yet we have the mind of Christ(1Cor. 2:16).

1Cor. 2:13-16—“These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For “who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.”

“Mind”—nouv—1) The mind, comprising alike the faculties of perceiving & understanding & those of feeling, judging, determining; 2) A particular mode of thinking & judging, i.e Thoughts, feelings, purposes, desires. Nouv is distinctly the reflective consciousness.