In the first century, we learn of a wonderful Christian woman in the church at Joppa. Her name was Dorcas. She died and it broke the hearts of the members of her church. In verses 38 & 39 of Acts 9 it says, “All the widows stood around him (Peter), crying and showing him the robes and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was still with them.” The other widows loved this dear sister. Her departure caused them great pain.

That is as it should be.

In another instance, we find church elders from Asia greatly affected by the Apostle Paul’s announcement that he planned to depart from them. Look at the love that was on display by these grown men. Acts 20:37-38 says, “They all wept as they embraced him and kissed him. What grieved them most was his statement that they would never see his face again. Then they accompanied him to the ship.”

That is love.

The widows wept over the departure of Dorcas. The elders grieved over the departure of Paul. In neither case did Dorcas or Paul want to leave. In neither case was there any ill will. This is to say, that if and when you depart from your local visible congregation, you must leave Her lovingly. Even if you leave for illegitimate reasons, you should love Her.

Some further warnings for those who want to LOVE the Church:

1. If you love Her you will not leave the Church by just disappearing. In other words, it is not love to decide one day to up-and-stop attending. What kind of love for the church allows you to drop off the face of the map? What kind of family member would willingly disappear without saying a word?

Who would believe that a father loves his children if he just decides to walk away from his marriage and home and abandon his family? It is irresponsible. It is careless. It is selfish.

Rather, love demands communication. Love demands consideration. Love wants what is best for others. Like a good teammate, you cannot quit playing and leave the other members of your team to fend for themselves.

2. If you love the Church then you will not leave her in an act of self-righteousness. This means the leaver thinks he or she is more holy in their behavior, or more doctrinally precise than the others.

The person (or family) has decided that their current church colleagues have not lived up to their level of holiness, or have not attained their level of Scriptural knowledge. And so, they reason, if they continue with this body of Christians, they will pollute themselves. And so they move on to a purer Bride of Christ, one that they feel they can respect and join.

Frankly, there is no love to be found in the pursuit of perfectionism. Actually, the thing you learn about people who exhibit this (purist) kind of behavior is that they are not even pursuing God’s righteousness as much as self-righteousness. Otherwise, what should they do? They should stick around where they are needed – among sinners who need their Scriptural and behavioral support!

John Calvin remarked how easy it is to fall into this trap of self-righteousness, saying, “[E]ven the good are sometimes affected by this inconsiderate zeal for righteousness, though we shall find that this excessive moroseness is more the result of pride and a false idea of sanctity, than genuine sanctity itself, and true zeal for it. Accordingly, those who are the most forward, and, as it were, leaders in producing revolt from the Church, have, for the most part, no other motive than to display their own superiority by despising all other men.”

Wow!

3. If you love the Church you should not leave the Church in an effort to escape from the correction and accountability of the elders. Some people refuse the request of elders. They flee when the elders instruct them to do something that would require some form of submission and humility.

Yet, what are the marks of the true Church? There are three things that Christ wishes to perform in His Church. He made Her to preach God’s Word, administer the Sacraments and govern men to make them holy. And Jesus Christ saw fit for the Apostles to establish elders as God’s office-bearers over the local congregations. The elders are to serve as under-shepherds for Christ.

And so Christ’s office-bearers are to preach and teach. They are to administer the Supper and govern the souls of the Church members. This means, then, any attempt to leave the Church because you do not want to be corrected or held accountable, demonstrates defiance toward Christ’s authority structure, a disregard for the local congregation, which is ultimately to disrespect the Bride of Christ rather than love Her.

Is there ever a time to leave the community into which God placed you? This question could be asked for both your genealogical family and your church family.

In regard to the Church, Seymour was a man who did not like a particular teaching he heard from the pulpit. The teaching did not fall outside the boundaries of orthodoxy. It was something most would consider a much lesser matter. But Seymour could not get past how “wrong the teaching was.” He and his wife talked about it frequently. He tried to convince his elders to think they way he did about it. They wouldn’t. He found their position both untenable and unbearable. He decided to uproot his family and leave. He would not remain in a church that “did not respect the Word of God.”

This is the wrong way to leave a church. It is an unloving way to leave. You don’t get to simply discard the covenant community that God put you in.

And so the church elders told Seymour that he was not permitted to leave under these conditions. He didn’t like that, and he reassured them that it wasn’t their call to make. He refused their eldership informing them that he brought his family into the church by his own choice and therefore he could lead them out by his own choice. Bad form.

Even the prodigal son asked permission to do something stupid.

But does someone have to forever remain a member of the first church they join? Not necessarily. I do think there are situations where God wants us to leave: both a church and perhaps one’s family. However, to leave either, one should leave honorably. Lovingly. And it is ultimately best if a person’s leaving is attended by the blessing of those being left. In other words, the leaving is done on good terms.

I did a four-part sermon series called, How to Love the Church.1 The first sermon was, How to Love the Church When You First Come In To Her, the second was How To Love The Church As An Existing Member, and sermons three and four were both called: How To Love The Church When You Need To Depart From Her.

In sermons three and four I listed situations when leaving was appropriate and inappropriate. Here is the good reasons for leaving.

The first good reason for leaving the church is because you have just married and started a family with a spouse from another congregation. You and your spouse should have discussed church membership. Where should we go to church once we are married? Will we go to the Church you were raised in, or should we go to the Church I was raised in? Unless the newly married couple came from the same church this is a decision that will have to be made. Never should a couple go separate ways to church.

A second legitimate reason to leave your local church is when God’s calling on your life – His design for the things He made you to accomplish – when His calling requires you to move to another geographical location.

In other words, if God’s design of you was that you were to become a U.S. Senator, it means you are going to have to live much of the year in the Washington D.C. area. If God calls you to be a Medical research scientist then perhaps you will need to live nearby a major research hospital or university. You get the idea.

A third way in which members leave the church is by death. This was the case for Tabitha in our Acts 9 passage. She died and was departed from her local church. It was temporarily, as you would see if you read the rest of that Chapter, but she had departed nonetheless. I such situations God is taking you and we will look forward to worshipping with you some time again in the near future.

Fourthly: It could be you feel the need to leave the church because the office-bearers are unbiblical in their teaching and tyrannical in their ruling. For instance, perhaps the elders are demanding behavior from the church members that is outside the scope of their God-given authority. They are being abusive by teaching as God’s Word those things not in His Word.

The Roman Catholic Church began to operate in such a manner on a broad scale. The Pope’s divine decrees, combined with a system of indulgences and the paying of penance led to great oppression for the church. Those priests and congregants, who rose up against the tyranny of these manmade rules, were ostracized and even excommunicated. Luther, like many of the early Reformers, he did not want to leave the Church. He was forced out.

And so I think there is a time when love demands you take your family to a safer flock. When there is no system of appeals to a higher court – as some independent churches lack – or when the buck always stops at the place where the tyranny is rooted, then your only alternative is to extract yourself as painlessly and graciously as you can. You cannot allow the church leadership to take away from you the freedom that Christ has purchased for you.2

A fifth reason to leave a church is when your theology has changed significantly from the theology being taught and preached by the Church elders and denomination. For instance, when you are a member of a Reformed Church and yet you have become convinced to think in terms of Arminianism, then perhaps you should seek graciously to be released from your membership.

I would hope that you remain true to your membership. I would hope that your love would still be sincere for the members and leadership of the church. I would hope also that you were communicating your theological questions and discoveries as your thoughts and convictions were beginning to change.

So those are five good reasons why someone might not stay but leave. What are bad reasons to leave?

The first bad reason people depart from the church is because it takes too much effort to get yourself and your family to worship on Sunday mornings. It is pathetic. People don’t go to church because it is not important enough or exciting enough to get them out of bed, dressed and on the road. They do not feel the magnetic pull of Christ and His Bride. The grace to be found in the Lord’s Day Worship service is not near as seductive as their pillow and pajamas – or the late night of fun they had put in previously.

The second bad reason to leave the Church is because your spouse and/or children do not want to go. So you thought you would do whatever they wanted to do.

Excuse me? Just because your husband or wife is not interested in Christ or His Bride, it does not mean you should encourage that rebellion. Maybe your wife is not a Christian. The same goes for your children. However, if you are a man, you must lead your wife and children to church. If your wife refuses you, then correct her and take your children. The same goes for the wife pursuing church without her negligent husband.

You have been united to Christ. (Philippians 2:1) He has loved you himself. The Holy Spirit has chosen to fellowship with you. You are part of His Church now. You must become like-minded with the rest of us. You must have the same love and spirit and purpose. This is why we were joined together in the first place. God wants us to be devoted to one another. Never let your spouse prevent that.

The third bad reason for leaving the church is because you don’t want to be in the same church as your parents. I find it sad that something was neglected or else became unbearable in your upbringing that you would think church would be better if your parents were not in it. Church with your parents and grandparents is the ideal. It represents the coming together of your life and your religion. It should make perfect sense to worship alongside your parents if they raised you worshipping correctly. I would want my children to wonder, “Where else could I possibly go where my soul would be more nourished and my faith better instructed.”

The fourth bad reason to leave the church, and now we are getting a little more serious, is because you no longer like the people there. You have started to like other people more. You don’t feel you have any friends in the church.

How green the grass looks on the other side of the fence. And I tell you, once you start climbing the fence in order to get over to that grass you begin to dislike your own side so much more.

Yet, every one of us is un-likeable. It is the reason why Paul says we cannot go slack when it comes to zeal and fervor. (Romans 12:11) We have to keep energized in our devotion to the others in our church (Romans 12:10). You just have to commit to being a friend and liking the un-likeables.

The fifth bad reason to leave the church is because you want a church that offers more. You want a church that has extra stuff. The things that Christ wants to perform in His church, the true marks of a Christian church focus primarily on the following. She has been assigned to preach God’s Word, administer the Sacraments and govern to make men holy. Any other activities that detract from these specified tasks do not necessarily make for a good church.

The sixth bad reason for leaving the church is because you have now decided that a Christian does not really need to become a member of a specific church at all. This is a return to “the invisible church is the only church I need to worry about argument.” The person who believes that only the invisible church matters and therefore gives no heed to joining with any local church is a bit presumptuous.

Anyone who thinks they can determine who is a member of the invisible church, made up of God’s elect, must believe they have some radar capability that the rest of us do not.

The seventh bad reason to leave the church is because you want to be in a Church with less sinful people. You know the old saying, “Once you find the perfect Church, don’t go to it because you will ruin it by your imperfection.” Well I tell you I’ve heard of the beginnings of more than one perfect church that never got off the ground. There were too many disagreements between the three to four families that were its founders. And they couldn’t stand to be together any more.

The eighth bad reason to leave the church is because you believe there exists some doctrinal error in the Church. This was Seymour’s reason. And as I noted, there is a difference between minor and major error. All error is bad, but not all error separates you from Christ. Also, you cannot separate yourself from a church because they do not agree or abide with everything you have come to believe is true. You might be wrong?! Can you believe that?

These leavers think they will taint themselves, or be held guilty before God as compromisers, if they stay. They become regular leavers looking for the perfect church, one made in their image.

Though, of course, these church relations do not all share our ethnic heritage. In other words, it is not only you, your children, grandpa and grandma and cousins filling the church pews.1 The universal Church is made up of many nations. And even the local church will contain a mixture of the races.2

When I arrived at Alto CRC, I found myself in a heavy Dutch community. My role as a pastor/elder was to officiate in a heavy Dutch church. The Christian Reformed Church has long been Dutch in the extreme majority. This is something for which, I think, the denomination often unnecessarily, self-flagellates.3

In any case, I came into the church and community as a Swedish-Norwegian. No one asked what I was. As far as I know, no one cared. Since I’ve been there, another of our teaching elders came in who is German. While our third elder is Dutch.

I’ve been in Alto for 22 years now. Then the congregation was all Dutch - except for me and mine. Since then, God has melted in some Germans, Polish, English, and various strains of who knows what. Nobody asks. There was also a family with Italian ancestry for a time. They left. Figures!4

That aside, the point is that honoring your father and mother in your family tree goes hand-in-hand with honoring the people and heritage of your church family. And the church family is not determined by race. The church family denies no ethnic lineage but appreciates every one of them.

What is of vital importance to the church family is love for God and love for His people. Furthermore, those holding office in the church should be honored by its members, as if they were fathers given responsibility for the church.5

The New Testament makes clear the importance of honor: The Apostle Peter writes, “5Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” 6Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, 7casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”6

Just as it would be inappropriate to refuse honor to your mother or father,7 or government officials,8 so it is wrong to dishonor the church elders. They care for your soul and you should not stubbornly ignore them, but invite them to shepherd you.

This is the recommendation of Hebrews 13:17: “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.”

Just as in a family, a good father will stay and protect and train and build up and work alongside of the members and things that belong to his household, so will the man who God raises up to take responsibility for holding office in the church.

When we love God we don’t flee from responsibility we learn how to take it on. And it is because God gave us those people and things over which he wants us to be faithful stewards. To drop them, or cast off those responsibilities is to fail God’s trust (at best). At worst it is to defy God.

Ideally, the God-loving man learns responsibility in his youth. He learns to be a dutiful member. If the boy loves God then he knows he needs to love and honor his parents. He knows he needs to learn how to get along with and care for his siblings. He is taught the importance of respect for his grandparents and how proper it is that they are cared for as they age. He learns to be thankful for his roots.

A young man should not be taught, “When you are old enough, don’t stick around here, but go make a life for yourself!” That is telling him that he need not care for the household he grew up in. That is wrongheaded. It is unwise. It is not God’s way. It is to teach him to be selfish.

Of course, there may be instances in which the boy turned man has to walk a different road. It is not his first choice, but God’s call on his life1 will cause him to be geographically positioned on the other side of the country, or continent.2 There are only so many places where you can be a nuclear physicist or engineer rockets.

This geographical separation from the household he grew up in should cause him some heartbreak. Further, this geographical separation should not be a relational separation. God’s calling on his life does not divorce him from his parents, grandparents, siblings or the genealogical family tree.

Yet, it appears, his own house will be built at a distance. Perhaps he gets married and has children and grandchildren. As he excels at his calling, God will surely add to his dominion obligations. Still, God keeps him responsible for mom and dad and others. His heart has stayed connected to them, to his past, for it is the past God gave him.

If the specially called man ends up spending his entire life in a location far removed, then he needs to build up and teach his household to be stayers, there. He wasn’t cut loose to be God’s vagabond. No one gets to be a lone ranger. No one gets the right to self-define. Instead, he must learn what it looks like to love God and the people of his second community.

As it is in the family, so it is in the church. Some may leave to pursue God’s calling, but it should be according to the advice and blessing of the church. And the bond of brotherly love should remain. To leave without these is a sign of selfishness and of heartlessness.3

We are reminded of the two stories of men from the beginning of this chapter. They were leavers, transients, vagabonds. One would leave churches because he was never given a platform to teach. The other left churches because he never invested in the people of the congregation. And so when something got preached that he disagreed with, there was nothing that kept him glued to the church. It was never about how he should treat the people of the church. Such men should not be made into elders anywhere. They think too much of themselves and find it easy to leave.

And while he was with them he preached to them. The Apostle Peter refers to Noah as “a herald of righteousness.”2 Noah’s message was mankind’s only hope, but they refused to listen to him because they loved to behave wickedly. Genesis 6:5, describes the heart of a man as so terrible that, “every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”3

Noah did not write them off. He did not self-righteously stomp off with his wife and kids. He stayed and tried. He invested in the things God gave him to do. He built and he taught about God and His righteousness. His audience was comprises of terrible sinners. And certainly some were relatives and neighbors.

Noah’s first concern, of course, was faithful obedience to God and to properly steward the household for which he was responsible.

The Book of Hebrews gives this account of Noah’s faith.

“By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.”4

Reverent fear means holy respect for God. It was Noah’s way. It was not the way of his kinsmen, nor any other men on earth at the time. Reverent fear is shown by someone with a humble spirit, someone who knows he is a sinner, someone who has learned to be tender toward God.

Such a person will not be pompous. He will not come across as a “know-it-all.” Such a person knows what it is like to be tempted and to sin. He knows guilt and shame. Such a person knows that God’s love and grace and patience and mercy are all imperative to his wellbeing.5 He is not self-righteous. He realizes he wears a cloak of righteousness given to him by Christ. Therefore, such a person will not look down his nose at other sinners.

This kind of person requires years and years of time with God to become such a person.

This is why the Apostle Paul, while listing required characteristics for the office of elder, warns, “He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil.”6

And so the part of the Hebrews 11:7 verse that says, “By this he condemned the world…,” it is not referring to an attitude of condescension. Don’t picture Noah shaking a righteous fist at people. Neither should we envision Noah as a peevish “teacher’s pet” turning up his nose at the rest of the class.

The thing that Noah did that condemned the world was that he simply obeyed God, while the world had no intention to obey. Noah’s love and dutifulness shown for God was a stench in their nostrils. His desire to do the work of God was a symbol to the world of God’s displeasure of them.

So Noah, as well as Abraham, kept their first duty squarely in front of them. Life is about loving God with all one’s heart, mind, soul and strength. The Lord Jesus clarified this for his disciples when he said, “If you love Me you will keep My Commands.” Finally, the outworking of such a love is that you will then love others, even things, appropriately (in their place).

Genesis 11:27-32 records:

27Now these are the generations of Terah. Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran fathered Lot. 28Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his kindred, in Ur of the Chaldeans. 29And Abram and Nahor took 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 Iscah. 30Now Sarai was barren; she had no child.

31Terah 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 forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan, but when they came to Haran, they settled there. 32The days of Terah were 205 years, and Terah died in Haran.

So Abram went with his father, and his other brother (Nahor), along with their wives and Haran’s son (Lot) to the land that was called Kharan.1 It was in Kharan (or Haran) that Terah died. At that point, Abram continued the journey to Canaan. God had told him, even before leaving Ur of the Chaldeans, it was the land that He would someday possess. It was special revelation to Abram. God would make a unique covenant with him. He had grown up in a land of polytheists, but Abram was now a believer in the One True God.

So Abram separated geographically from his heritage. Leaving both Ur of the Chaldeans, and then leaving Kharan. But it was necessary, for he was responsible to God’s call on his life. He had no choice but to be faithful. Furthermore, it was a call that would some day save mankind. Abram did not leave to “chart his own course,” or “find himself,” or because Ur was in a “dead end, hodunk town” that offered him no possibilities. His was not an autonomous, self-righteous, or wanderlust impulse. God told him.

Stephen, the first martyr for Christ, retold Abraham’s history, saying, “Brothers and fathers, hear me. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, and said to him, ‘Go out from your land and from your kindred and go into the land that I will show you.’ Then he went out from the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran. And after his father died, God removed him from there into this land in which you are now living. Yet he gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot’s length, but promised to give it to him as a possession and to his offspring after him, though he had no child.” (Acts 7:2-5)

So Abram continued his journey with God by leaving Kharan after his father died. He headed to the land of Canaan with his large household; he also brought along his nephew, Lot, and whatever belonged to him. It was surely a blessing for Lot to tuck himself under the protective tent of his uncle. (Perhaps Nahor could have joined them as well?)

Certainly, Abraham thought more of Nahor and his relatives than he did of the Canaanites who inhabited the land wherein God brought him. In Genesis 24:2-4 it says, “And Abraham said to his servant, the oldest of his household, who had charge of all that he had, ‘Put your hand under my thigh, that I may make you swear by the LORD, the God of heaven and God of the earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell, but will go to my country and to my kindred, and take a wife for my son Isaac.’”

So Eliezer, the servant to whom Abraham spoke, went to Nahor (in the land of the Chaldeans) and came back with a woman for Isaac. Her name was Rebekah.2

“…Rebekah, who was born to Bethuel the son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham’s brother...” (Genesis 24:15)

But again, Abraham left the land of the Chaldeans because God’s goal was for Abram to become Abraham. He was to be set apart (separated to God) in order that he might draw all peoples to himself.3 God told him, “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram,4 but your name shall be Abraham,5 for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you.”6

Abraham was not someone who would leave and forsake those God entrusted to him. He was all about caring for the covenant community. He was all about caring for his family. But most of all, Abraham cared about how it was that God intended to care.

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A person’s responsibilities go backward as well as forward. God would have you care for your own wife and children and descendants onward into the future, but He also expects you to respect and care for your father, mother, grandparents and (to a degree) the things you inherited from your ancestors.

Furthermore, your household must be a greater priority for you than another man’s household. What I mean is that it would be ungodly to give all of your time and attention to make sure your neighbor’s children are fed if it meant your own went hungry. The same as it would be inordinate to demonstrate a husbandly love for your neighbor’s wife. No good person neglects the things God has committed to his care. No good person loves in ways out-of-bounds with God’s assigned role for them.1

The Apostle Paul instructed Timothy how people should be quick to take care of the widows among their relatives. He concludes the section by writing, “But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” (1 Timothy 5:8)

So even though we should love our neighbor, even though we should care for the sojourner in the land, even though we should show respect to our enemies, still God makes our household the first priority due to His concern for familial love. This is Bible 101.

Yet there is a progressive current that runs beneath the surface of society that wants to disparage the family, the household, ethnicity, and also multiplicity of languages, and national borders. The goal of this effort is to create a monolithic man. A universal mankind. Man as individual. No one more privileged than another. No place for favoritism. No family earned advantages. No people looking out for their own.

It is a constant effort to erase God-designed differences in order to force unity. Not surprisingly, it appears the destination is again, Babel.

But God gave us birth into a group or groups. And it is that group or groups that a person must answer for and answer to. It is a first priority. If any man does not think of his family’s provision as more essential than another man’s family, then he has forsaken his duty. If he mistreats and victimizes people in the society in which he lives, then he is not a good citizen of his city and/or country. If he doesn’t work alongside the members of his own church congregation but remains unengaged, then he’s hardly playing his part in the local body of Christ.

These relationships are gifts from God. They are each covenantal: family, church, and state. And the person who neglects these relationships, or attempts to isolate himself from them, is not acting in love. He is not behaving as a godly man. He should not be put in authority over others, for by example he will lead others poorly.

There are books I’d like to read (mostly theological ones) that have never been translated into English. I have hit God’s roadblock with German, French, Latin, and Dutch writers. I have to accept that God is glorified when He sets limits.

One such work is titled: ROEPING EN BEROEP BIJ CALVIJN DOOR W.J. AALDERS. It was written by W.J. Aalders. The work is an analysis of John Calvin’s view of the concept of Calling. Aalders wrote in Dutch, but He quotes Calvin in French, and other theologians in German and Latin. Yikes!

I tried to hire a Dutch man to translate the book for me. He directed me to Google Translate, an incredible program that is doing wonders to bridge the gap between languages. I translated it - each language of it.

When I was finished, the translation helped me to read the book, but it was quite clumsy. There were words that I couldn’t quite make sense of and the sentence structure was not “normal.”

There are other online tools attempting to translate too: DeepL, Reverso, Bablic, to name a few. I tried DeepL for a while. I paid a subscription but eventually went back to Google Translate. A good friend suggested DeepL. He uses it in his efforts to learn to speak Spanish.

Will God restore to man a universal language? Perhaps, if the motivation is upright.

Umberto Eco wrote a book called, The Search for the Perfect Language. The book explores and catalogs men’s pursuit of unified speech. What would such a language look like? Could there be an international language? Would people all speak the original language?

Eco cited a curious historical text written by Salimbene da Parma, Cronaca, 1664:

[Frederick II] wanted to discover which language and idiom children would use, on reaching adolescence, if they had never had the opportunity to speak to anyone. So he gave orders to the wet nurses and to the feeders to give the infants milk, prohibiting their talking to them. He wanted to find out whether the children would speak Hebrew, which was the first language, or else Greek or Latin or Arabic, or indeed if they did not always speak the language of their natural parents. But the experiment came to nothing, because all the babies or infants died.1

That is troubling. I imagine the children died being starved for affection.

The prophet Isaiah spoke of a future time when five cities of Egypt would speak the language of Canaan (Hebrew):

“In that day there will be five cities in the land of Egypt that speak the language of Canaan and swear allegiance to the LORD of hosts. One of these will be called the City of Destruction.”2

Theologian Martin Selbrede suggests these particular Egyptians will (would) literally work to learn the Hebrew language so as to better understand the Law of God to whom they’ve sworn allegiance.3 (This is similar to my motivation for trying to translate Aalders’s work.)

And the prophet Zephaniah writes, “For at that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may call upon the name of the LORD and serve him with one accord.”

Most commentators view this as figurative speech, not literal. They do not think this has to do with a universal tongue, but with a universal motivation to call upon the LORD. That it will be a time when all peoples want what God wants. The stress of the verse is “with one accord.” Pure speech is not sharing the same tongue but speaking from as a united people of God. What a contrast that would be to when men literally shared a universal language, but used the gift to build a tower in tribute to MAN.

In any case, though our tongues remain an impediment to communication and keep us separate on certain fronts, still the Gospel of God’s Son teaches us that the brotherhood and sisterhood of the family of God glues us together into one man.4

This is what we actually read in Acts 2:1-12:

1When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. 2And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. 4And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

5Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. 6And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. 7And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? 9Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, 11both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” 12And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”

It is quite incredible. Most of the disciples were Jews from Galilee. They hadn’t studied foreign languages in order to teach people from other nations. This was a work of God’s Spirit. The disciples who normally all shared the same tongue were now each speaking in a different language. And the reason was so that people present, from all over the world, would hear God being magnified by Jesus’ disciples in their own language.

Did the disciples language change forever? No. They reverted back to their normal language. This glossolalia1 happened for a moment. It took place for a specific reason. The reason was to send forth the gospel of the Son of God to the nations, prior to the Apostles’ arrival.

Indeed. At Pentecost God did not restore people’s tongues to that one original language of Noah and sons, that unified language spoken by all previous people to Adam and Eve in the garden. So if God intended to reverse the curse of many languages, His plan must have been to reverse it by slow drip.

Slow drip makes some sense. After all, Jesus taught that the leaven of His kingdom would work through the loaf slowly. Perhaps, God’s greatest glory is found in the time He takes for the knowledge of Him to cover the Earth as thoroughly as the waters cover the sea.

But there is also a good possibility that God never intends to return mankind to a universal language in the inter-Advental2 period. It is probable that a universal language does not even serve the greatest good.3

When Jesus returns at His second Advent, won’t there still exist many languages and nations to receive Him? Is it not to God’s glory that all nations flood to Him now? Isn’t it more beautiful that a multitude of different peoples and different languages worship Him?

Pentecost is better understood as the day that God salted the nations with the gospel by converting people from across the globe in one setting. Pentecost also served to prepare those different nations for future conversions when the Apostles and the Evangelists would arrive.

No. The Holy Spirit on Pentecost did not reverse the curse. He did not erase the different languages at all. He could have. But He didn’t.

That being the case, men will always be divided by language. And this means that there is appropriateness to things that make us different. And so the Apostle Paul could confidently exclaim:

“26And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us…” (Acts 17:26-27)

God made people distinct and separate and we can appreciate His handiwork. No one should be quick to dismiss his or her family roots. However, ancestry must be looked at for what it is: God given. He made the divisions. He determined the times and places, etc. Man is allowed no place for pride.4 We must never forget that all descend from the same fathers: Noah and Adam.

God did not give every person his own individual language. If that were the case, every man could only to talk to himself. At that point, no language would be necessary, for one can carry on a conversation with oneself without uttering a word. What I’m saying is that thousands upon thousands of languages did not come out of Babel, but far fewer.

How many different languages did God make? Today it is estimated that there are 6,900. However, of those 6,900 languages, the amount of language families1 is considered much less, somewhere between 94 and 120.2

Some Biblical interpreters maintain the number of languages first created comes from Genesis Chapters 10 and 11. This portion of Scripture is referred to as the Table of Nations. There are seventy different names mentioned in the list.3 And the names are listed as to ethnicity not as to individual persons. What does this mean?

George Rawlinson writes, “It may therefore be assumed, both from the cast of the passage itself, and from the light thrown on it be the rest of Scripture, that the object of the author of the tenth chapter of Genesis was to give us, not a personal genealogy, but a sketch of the interconnection of races. Shem, Ham, and Japheth are no doubt persons, the actual sons of the patriarch Noah; but it may be doubted whether there is another name in the series which is other than ethnic.”4

Rawlinson is not saying that no person ever existed by the name(s) Moses records, but rather that Moses use of the name had more to do with the people descended from that person or the geographical location those descendants were identified with.

Rawlinson says this of Genesis 10, “The document is in fact the earliest ethnographical essay that has come down to our times. It is a summary, like those which may be found in Bunsen’s ‘Philosophy of History’ or Max Müller’s ‘Survey of Languages,’ arranging the chief known nations of the earth into an ethnographic scheme.”5

This supports the idea that the ethnical lines marked out by the names of Genesis 10, could very well have been based on God changing languages.

Bill Cooper, author of the book, After the Flood, writes:

The Table of Nations had listed all the families and tribes of mankind in their correct groupings, whether those groupings were ethnological, linguistic or geographical.6

Cooper mentions the “seventy nations” as the number of people groups that Moses identifies in history. They were separated from one another and yet Moses still branched them back to Shem, Ham and Japheth. The Table of Nations was not necessarily language-based, or only language based, however language differences played a part in how they became separate entities.

Bodie Hodge suggests the families mentioned in Genesis 10 are directly representative of the language families7 that were separated at Babel. It is likely because of the sentences found throughout the chapter (v. 5; 20; 31).

Here is how those verses read:

Genesis 10:5 of Japheth’s descendants, “From these the coastland peoples spread in their lands, each with his own language, by their clans, in their nations.”

Genesis 10:20 of Ham’s descendants, “These are the sons of Ham, by their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations.”

Genesis 10:31 of Shem’s, “These are the sons of Shem, by their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations.”

And then also the end of the chapter concludes, “These are the clans of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies, in their nations, and from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood.”8

Hodge believes, “The total minimum number of languages that may have come out of Babel according to Genesis 10 may have been at least 78, assuming Noah, Ham, Shem, Japheth, and Peleg did not receive a new language.”9

What is important to my purpose is that we factor into our history both ethnicity, which is genealogical, but also the fact that God confused the tongues even of people who shared a common ethnicity. After which time, people migrated out from the east (where Babel was) and away from others who now spoke foreign languages. These separated peoples began to build new societies around their common tongues. It was pretty much practical.

So then, ethnicity did not begin with Babel, but it was arguably strengthened by it. When God confused the tongues, He in essence built verbal walls around families of people. Simultaneously, those verbal walls kept out families of people who spoke foreign languages.

A people’s language glues them together, and as they multiply and teach their descendants the tongue of the community, that community gradually spreads into the land around them. This is an oversimplification, but the general idea is correct.

Try communicating with a foreigner. We often equate that word foreigner with differences according to nationality - where a person is from. And that is not totally wrong. However, nations usually developed according to people groups (original families and their descendants) who shared a language.

I did something stupid. I scheduled a date and time to send a post that I had not finished writing. If you got it, ignore it. It will come out on Thursday morning.

Forsell

The word “relatives”1 describes these relationships. And the word “genealogy” is the study of family origins or the listing of one’s ancestors. The first clue to the meaning of the word genealogy is in the root "gene," as in "passed on through the genes." Add to that the suffix -logy, which means "study," and you get genealogy, the study of one's origins.2

This means your family and ancestors are going to be different from mine. It is in the genes. And yet, our ancestors are still three brothers in the Ark of Noah. Furthermore, we trace our lineage directly back to the Garden of Eden as well. So we are all still related.

Nevertheless, God means for us to benefit from our familial and ancestral relations and to value its heritage.3 He has given to each family an ancestry and a place in history. He has moved them about geographically. He has gifted all the different peoples specially in order that each might provide for the rest of mankind and bring glory to Him.

Thomas Sowell, an American economist and social commentator, in his book Race and Culture, provides examples of ethnic groups being proficient in a trade or skill. For example the Chinese are known for being effective retailers, the Germans for making pianos, the Italians for architecture and as fishermen, the Jews in the garment industry. The interesting point that Sowell makes is that though many would call this “stereotyping” the ethnic groups he cites have actually exhibited the skills over many generations and internationally having no proximity to the same ethnic group (relative) from the other parts of the world in which they are located. They share only a heritage.4

We see an example of this in Exodus 31:1-4.

1The LORD said to Moses, 2“See, I have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, 3and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, 4to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, 5in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, to work in every craft.

We need not read into this description some kind of miracle, as if God took a useless person from off the street and gave him wonderful abilities in a minute. Rather Bezalel is the son of Uri. Uri was the son of Hur. Hur is descended from Judah. When God tells Moses, “I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship…” in design, cutting carving and every craft, using gold, silver, bronze and wood, this should be seen as specially craftsmanship built into him by God throughout his life. And surely Bezalel’s father and grandfather and ancestors played some part in God’s preparation of the man.

This specialty given to a man, his family, and his ethnic lineage does not prevent other people from sharing in the knowledge and skill. We learn from one another and share from each others heritages. Marriage, migration, trade, education, even war and conquest, create a melding of peoples and their gifts, skills and interests.5

The United States of America has long been called The Great Melting Pot, as it welcomed into its land many different peoples: English, Dutch, Irish, German, etc. Even us Nordic types. All of these came in as groups. They settled among their own, because their own cared for them. They settled among their own because it is right to pay back your parents, grandparents, etc. They settled among their own because they spoke the same language. These factors are God-given and to be appreciated.

This was recently illustrated to me as I looked at my mom and dad’s high school yearbook. They attended Superior Central High School way up north, in Superior Wisconsin. Superior was a shipping port. It was heavily populated by Swedes and Norwegians.

In their 1956 Yearbook I saw that the school mascot was the Viking. And the last names of the boys on the varsity basketball team were: Lundgren, Anderson, Olson, Erickson, Sanderson and the like. Remember, my dad was a Nelson and my mom was a Carlstrom. All Nordic.

Again, this is good. You would expect people to congregate with family.

Nonetheless, the interaction of these many ethnic groups, over time, in a shared national cause, has broken down ethnic barriers to the benefit (and to the loss) of individual ethnic groups. The challenge is ever to garner the gifts God has given to each ethnic heritage without cutting off any ethnic group from the greater family of God.

After all, as Revelation 7 shows us:

9After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, 10and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

So each family (or ethnic tradition) has a shared and unshared history with all other families of the earth. God intended it to be that way.

Could you share this with one person?

This relational arrangement starts with the family. God made the family to be the bedrock upon which His kingdom and earthly society gets built. Families are the building blocks of human activity. He made fathers and mothers to be its governors. Its children are its members. The governors succeed when they love and train and protect and provide for and develop this human capital.1

One families’ human capital might look different from the next. A Gappa, for example, is likely to have a sense of humor which plays off of words. (Eg. “Papa, I’m hungry.” “That’s OK, I’m Czechoslovakia.” or as my dad used to say, “I’m semi-bulimic. I binge but I don’t purge.”)2 I believe he made that one up. He was funny. And it became part of the air I breathed.

A Gappa is also a reader. And we try to be writers. My dad was a reader. He also wrote from his reflections later in life. I can’t tell you if there are Japhetic or Nordic influences at work here.

I did learn that the Christianization of the Vikings3 contributed to the development of medieval literature in the Nordic regions. Christian monks and scholars began to write down and transcribe both Christian religious texts and secular sagas. This resulted in the promotion of literacy and education in Viking societies. Monastic schools and scriptoria4 were established to educate both clergy and secular individuals.

So perhaps the literary heritage of the Vikings had left vestiges in the Gappa spiritual, intellectual, and ethnic expression. Books are important to us. And I strongly support the scriptoria concept. I have a library collection of over 3000 books. Each of my children have also started their own collections.

To continue, a Gappa will most likely be juggling a few things at the same time (not always with success). My dad was this way. He was a teacher, but he also sold shoes at JC Penneys, plus he bartended. And on top, there were five kids in the house and mom. He called me lazy when I was younger. And you know how a father’s words can shape you, for better or worse? His haunted me. I don’t think I’m lazy anymore. I juggle many things too. Like dad.

Maybe, I’m still a little lazy. For sure, you don’t get away from wanting to please your father.

A Gappa is also entrepreneurial, these days. That was not in my dad. He taught for 35 years in the public school system. No business start-ups. Yet, my children are all working members of the family business (a products and services company) that I began in 2006. They also participate in a second business (real estate ownership and management) that we are all growing into with each passing day. We meet annually (and sometimes throughout the year) to discuss potential next business steps.

Most important to the idea of human capital, I hope my children and other descendants will be lovers of God. No matter what else. All human capital is spent and wasted if we live in denial of the Triune God who made us and governs us.

So parents are the governors, and in return children are to respond by honoring their parents through heartfelt obedience. As they grew into adulthood, they should take on mature responsibilities and perhaps get married and have children of their own. As mom and dad age, they should pay them back by providing for their care. Family relational bonds are the glue that holds together most successful multi-generational houses, including their businesses and their wealth.

Family is God’s key covenantal arrangement for taking dominion. It is the family that God has commanded to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And, to rule over it. This is a wonderful arrangement. The Church, alone, is the only covenantal institution that supersedes the family. One’s commitment to the Church takes precedence.5

It makes you wonder about the man who takes his family and up-and-leaves the church over small dissatisfactions. What does it teach his children about relationships? What does it teach them about the importance of Christ’s church? It definitely teaches them that dad is a leaver. It also teaches them that they can be leavers.

You may also wonder how I expect to prove the importance of staying in your community to become an elder, if my examples of godly men are Noah and Abram who both separated themselves from the community they had grown up in.

Furthermore, you might question whether staying in your community is doing the exact opposite of what God intended when he commanded Adam and Noah to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.1 After all, filling the earth implies moving away to remoter parts of it.

And, finally, when the LORD toppled the tower project, by confusing the languages and dispersing the people, wasn’t this His reaffirmation of His desire for us to separate rather than stay together?

I will work to bring these things together quickly.

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This would mean that at Babel (and since) I came from families that migrated from the plain of Shinar to the Nordic region.

And the language I speak, I adopted as a result of the familial history that brought me further to my landing place (my geography). I was born and raised in the state of Wisconsin, in the United States of America. I still live in Wisconsin.

My mother’s father, Andrew Källström (he had his named changed to Carlstrom when he arrived in America), was from Simeå, Sweden. At age 16, he left Simea and traveled to Canada, then came down to the United States through North Dakota, then on to Wisconsin. This all happened after his father had committed suicide. Andrew’s sister, Marta, and brother Knute came with him. Twin brothers Eric and John did not come. I’m not sure what became of his mother, Anna.

Andrew became a naturalized citizen of the United States, after completing his naturalization class in 1893.

The Norwegian part of me came from the fact that my father (Bruce) was born (out-of-wedlock) to a man named Hans Skudstad. My grandma - her name was Florence Nelson - was a young woman in love. She got pregnant and the two of them went to the courthouse to get a marriage license, only to find out Hans was already married. My grandma raised my dad as a single mom until he was twelve and she married a man named Leo Gappa (Polish). Leo Gappa adopted my dad. My grandma and Leo had no additional children.

All of that to say this: we come from a family tree. There are three main roots under that tree but only one taproot. Adam and Noah are the taproot. Shem, Ham and Japheth are the roots moving off laterally from their father.

We are supposed to be good fathers to our children. God wants it. We are to provide for them. We must train them to follow the LORD. They are members of the household God has entrusted to us. So we are obligated to involve them in His Word, in our worship, and in Jesus Christ’s kingdom-oriented dominion tasks.

It is more than an obligation, it is a privilege. We get to play a role in their individual callings by helping them to develop skills. We teach them to think, to speak, to write, to communicate, to labor, to love, etc. We are privileged to be able to love them. It is impermissible to neglect them or abandon them. To good men it is unfathomable.

I believe my grandfather, Andrew Carlstrom, was abandoned by his father when he killed himself. That was a sinful shame. I also believe my dad was abandoned by his natural father (Hans) after he impregnated my grandma, Florence. Though I never knew him, I resent him for it. My grandmother was a wonderful woman. How could he do that to her?

I didn’t decide when I was born or to whom. God decided.

It is just as the Apostle Paul said, “And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us…” (Acts 17:26-27)

I did not decide I would be Swedish and Norwegian, or that I would be born in 1963 in Rice Lake, Wisconsin. I did not decide my father would be brought up by a single mom during his important and formative childhood years. I cannot imagine the influence upon my mom’s dad when his father committed suicide, along with his own decision to float across the ocean to America. Yet all these things inform who I am in history.

I did decide to marry a German girl from my high school. I did decide to follow Jesus Christ in my sophomore year in college. I did decide to have as many children as the Lord determined for me. And I will continue to decide to try and lead all of my household in the ways of God. And I will not leave them, not any generation of them.

I believe a good father does not abandon his household. He stays. He thinks about the multi-generational effects of his decisions. He chooses for God’s purposes over his own and then works to become a benefactor and elder that will bless his heirs. It is difficult to put confidence in men who leave. I don’t want to be a man who leaves.

So, I pray for my Swedish/Norwegian/German children to grow in God’s grace and have households of their own. I also pray that they will learn to be stayers.

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At the Tower of Babel the language was one. The people could talk and listen to what one another were saying. That is the great benefit of a shared tongue. It promotes industry. It allows more time for ingenuity. Also, it is not hard to imagine how large populations can be rapidly taught and brought up to speed regarding a need or project. However, a shared language doesn’t mean communication is flawless.

The use of a single language by a people is still loaded with misunderstanding. Communication is difficult work: due to sin, deception, insufficiently shared vocabulary, unlearned grammar, illogical arguments, confusing non-verbal cues, educational discrepancies and contrary lifestyles.

It is possible for a man and his neighbor to have a credible conversation about the weather and lawn care, but can you imagine where communication obstacles might appear if one were a chemical engineer who loved to talk about his work, while the other was an assembly line worker for a toaster company who “worked for the weekends” to watch sports and drink beer?

Add other factors to this already challenged communication - say that one goes to church while the other plays in softball tournaments; one is a reader while the other hasn’t cracked open a book since the 8th grade; one is married with three children while the other does not want children and lives with his girlfriend. You decide which one is which. My point is that these factors all become the ingredients of effective or ineffective speaking and listening and interpreting what another person is trying to say or not to say. Though they share a common tongue, it is as if they are speaking different languages.

Here are two things that all mankind have in common:

1. we are made in the image of God.

2. we are by nature selfishly sinful.

What’s more is that we inherently know this about each other. We don’t even have to say a word and we know it to be true. It is our commonality. We have been created to represent God, and yet we are determined to represent ourselves! It is a stronger bond than a shared language.

So you can imagine the determination of those earlier people who wanted to build a city and a tower. Driven by their sin and gifted by God with some of his amazing characteristics,1 they set out to make a name for themselves and to stay united. Probably never before or since have sinners combined their efforts in a shared cause. Whole households came together and orchestrated a city-wide construction project. Time and effort were exhausted to build a place along with a cathedral. The god of the cathedral was self-determined mankind (autonomy).

This was unacceptable. As we continue to read in Genesis 11, we see how easily God throws a monkey wrench into the machine.

“5And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth.”

The judgment of God was simple. Make it nearly impossible for the various families to understand one another and they will no longer work to stay together, but will pull apart and disperse all by themselves.

These various households were still all descended from Adam and Noah, and so everyone of them spoke the same language, the basic language that God had given to Adam. It was a shared tongue. And, with this common language, unfaithful men began to define a world with a vocabulary and grammar built to exclude God. This tainted language was then used to teach their children how to speak and to think.

In his book, In the Beginning Was The Word: Language A God-Centered Approach, Vern S. Poythress writes, “According to his [God’s] own purposes, he has not created each individual human being in total independence of his surroundings, but has made him part of a family and a culture. And his connections with family and culture can have bad as well as good effects…We may conclude that one of the effects of idolatrous practices within a culture is to corrupt the thinking of that culture, to introduce confusion about the nature of the spirit world, and in the long run to corrupt the language as well.”1

Furthermore, they committed their resources of land, buildings, livestock, and produce to further their autonomous2 aims, promoting a view that replaced God with man (mankind) as the center of their world.

Also, since they shared the same language, communication and progress were verbally unhindered, or at least not so strictly limited.3 And so that early civilization progressed rapidly. Knowledge of building and growing and calculating and science was quickly communicated and disseminated, but unrighteousness held its hand and went with it. The knowledge of God’s creation was discovered but then quickly redefined by the interpretation of sinners.

This brings us to Genesis 11:1-5.

1Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” 5And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built.

The city and tower, in the plain of Shinar, represented the ideal of those ancient men. Self-government (autonomy) was the cause they shared. And as they built their city and tower, brick by brick, they worked against God’s will for them. What was their purpose? “Let us make a name for ourselves.” And they must have reasoned, “There is safety in numbers, so let’s stick together.” And, “If we all agree, then who can blame us?”

This is bad leadership. Where were the good elders (fathers, householders) while these unashamed defiers of God were ruining the culture as well as their descendants?

Of course, there were some who did not go along with the tower. God has always kept some who call upon Him, even when the majority rebels. These were the fathers, with their households, that the Scriptures say, “called upon the name of the Lord.” It appears that some of Shem’s descendants were like this.

We get this from what Noah said of the three lines of his descendants:

“Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem; and let Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant.”

The bible records that it is from Shem’s line that Abram descends. Abram was a righteous man of faith who subsequently trains his household to worship God. Abram appears in history after the Tower of Babel incident. Still, God’s people descend from Abram and therefore from Shem.

The rest of Noah’s descendants, stemming from Ham and Japheth, were not identified as worshipers of God. They presumably had similar goals to each other and combined their efforts to build the city and its tower. These were corrupt householders. Such leadership ruins a family. It hampers the church. It decays a nation.

In regard to concerted efforts of the wicked to be tower builders, God will show them how quickly He can break apart their alliances and dismantle their towers. In Babel, He divides the people by changing their tongues. The Lord will simply multiply the sounds of their lips and they will no longer understand each other. And this will become an important alteration to the course of humanity.

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This is what Paul says about God and mankind to those philosophers:

“26And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us…” (Acts 17:26-27)

Presumably, the “man” Paul refers to is Adam. Every nation of mankind is descended from him. However, it is also the case that we are all descended from Noah through his three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

What does this have to do with fathers and households and elders?

First, it should make us aware that fathers (in regard to their descendants) are the inviolable root.1 We all descend. We all have fathers. Beginning with our father Adam, down through our father Noah, we are born into mankind through one of three branches: Shem’s, Ham’s, or Japheth’s.

It is likely, that the Greeks to whom Paul was speaking were from the Japhetic family tree (specifically descended from Japheth’s son, Javan).2 History provides the best argument for it.

Sir George Rawlinson, the 19th century British scholar, historian, and theologian wrote in his work, The Origin of Nations (1877), “Javan is the nearest possible expression in Hebrew of the Greek term which we render by “Ionians,” the original form of which in Greek was Iafon-es. Why and how is uncertain; but the fact is indisputable, that the Orientals used this term, universally, as the generic name for the Greek race. The Assyrians called the Greeks of Cyprus the Yavnan; the Persians called those of Asia Minor and the AEgean islands, the Yuna. The terms “Greek,” “Hellene,” “Achaean,” “Dorian,” were unknown in Asia, or at any rate unused by the Asiatics generally, being superseded by the name “Ionian,” with which alone they were familiar.”3

The point is that we all descend from Adam, Noah and then one of Noah’s three sons. As people, we are not far removed from each other. We have a shared history, but we also arrive to our modern day coming with distinct ethnic roots and historical influences. It is also true, for everyone, that God has allotted periods of time and boundaries in geographical places that we might each live and grow and call upon Him from within our time and space. Furthermore, we are supposed to teach our descendants to do the same.

The preacher, Paul, was a Hebrew and therefore from the Semitic family tree. The Semites are descendants of Shem. This racial (or a better term, ethnic) line can be more biblically traced. The Scripture catalogs it for us because it wants to show the link from Shem to Abraham to David, etc. and eventually to Jesus Christ.

The beauty of the Gospel and the Church is that Jesus Christ has broken down the barrier wall that once separated the Jews from the rest of mankind. He brought the gospel of the Son of God to all tribes, peoples and languages. And this is what Paul is attempting to do by bringing the Gospel of Jesus to the men of Athens (men from the line of Japheth and Javan).

The Bible tells us that God calls into His Church people from every nation. Since the crucifixion, all lineages stemming from the ark of Noah are being brought into the safe haven of Jesus Christ’s Church. Shem, Ham, and Japheth all have access to the one way of salvation. Furthermore, God grows and develops church elders to lead from within those various people groups.

The last book of the Bible presents this glorious picture:

9After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, 10and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Revelation 7:9-10)

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Adam and Eve’s son, Seth, appears to have been an example of godly fatherhood. Cain was not. Both ruled productively. Both men were influential in the lives of their children, grandchildren, and the broader society built around them. But one produced offspring for God, the other produced them for self.

There should be no doubt, Cain’s descendants were industrious. They were a dominion-oriented people, yet apparently estranged from the Lord.

In Genesis 4:17-22, we learn:

“17Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. When he built a city, he called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch. 18To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad fathered Mehujael, and Mehujael fathered Methushael, and Methushael fathered Lamech. 19And Lamech took two wives. The name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. 20Adah bore Jabal; he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. 21His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe. 22Zillah also bore Tubal-cain; he was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron.”

Cain’s household produced people who worked. They developed skills. They made their way in the world. They were using the gifts God had given them, whether or not they chose to honor Him. There is no mention of godly fruit from Cain’s family tree.

It should’ve been asked, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?”1 This did not dawn on Cain. He built his life on the here and now. And, then, so did his descendants.

Horace Bushnell writes of such a man’s descendants, “The odor of the house will always be in his garments, and the internal difficulties with which he has to struggle will spring of the family seeds planted in his nature.”

Whereas, a sweet aroma might be the way to describe Seth’s descendants. He too planted family seeds in the nature of his household. Seth is the son God gave to Eve to replace the murdered Abel2 and of his lineage we are told some good things:

“To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time people began to call upon the name of the LORD.”3

We don’t know much of Seth or his offspring. The bible does tells us that from Seth’s line come both Enoch and later Noah. Regarding Enoch, we learn that he walked with God and “the Lord took him.” This phrase is different from the way the rest of Seth’s descendants come to an end. They all die, but Enoch is “taken”.4

And regarding Noah, well, we know of his character and his importance for preserving all of mankind and all animals too.5

We are not given much detail of the industriousness of Seth’s household, just this vital quality of Godward-ness. Godward-ness should be the first rule of every father. It is the primary command: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37)

Also, “5You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” (Deuteronomy 6:5-7)

My wife and I decided to homeschool our children from the start. So our firstborn became the test-run of what we hoped would be a thoroughly Christian education in contrast to the public school’s secular humanism that we both grew up under.6

My dad was concerned. He was a teacher in the public school; a good one. He felt we might deny my son “educational advantages” by homeschooling him. I told him, “I’d sooner have a mentally disabled child who loved the Lord than a genius one who hated Him.” Years later, my dad told me how glad he was that we educated the kids ourselves.7

When God is at the root of the family tree, the tree will flourish. It will become like the tree Nebuchadnezzar dreamed about, in which the entire world could find shelter.8 This should be the householder’s vision. This is what an elder should pursue. To accomplish such goodness, surely requires commitment to the cause (staying power).

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The household for which fathers were given responsibility included: wives, children, grandchildren, servants, livestock, vineyards, buildings, land, and anything or anyone that God might put under their care.

Interestingly enough, Abram1 was the head of a household without any of his own children for a long time. It was Abraham and Sarah and a slew of others, but no offspring - until Ishmael (born to Hagar) and Isaac came along.2

Yet Abram still had a household. It contained all that God had entrusted to him. A short definition of a household might sound like this: a household is that which includes all people, and property, for which God holds a person accountable.

Just a little investigative work, and you will notice that Abram’s household included tents, sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels (see Genesis 12:16). It was so massive that he could muster from within his household 318 fighting-aged men. That is incredible!3

Thankfully, even without children of his own, Abram was an effective steward. God told him He would make him the father of a multitude of nations.4 In other words, a good elder will likely have proved himself responsible for more than just his wife and kids – so to speak.

Abram was a good father. He was a godly householder. He showed interest in the wellbeing of all entrusted to his care. This required him to establish rules and teach them and enforce them (aka discipline). A godly father chooses God’s rules. An ungodly father chooses his own. And though discipline is a word that makes some bristle, biblical discipline is rooted in love.5

So then, historically, a good father made decisions for the benefit of his descendants. He acted as a Benefactor. He led and trained and provided for his children, grandchildren and all others for whom he had taken on responsibility.

A good father (think householder) does not abandon the people and things God has entrusted to him. He is going to stick with them. Furthermore, he will disallow disobedience and chaos to overcome and swallow his loved ones. This will require attention to law and order.6 And, in return, his descendants will honor such love, attentiveness, and loyalty. They will not want to leave him, for where would they go to find a better place and better care?

This is why it is irksome to me to watch a movie where a character is fed up, tired of living in the same community they grew up in. They see their town and people as a dead end, soul-sucking, dream-killing, etc. They want to escape! To be free from the chains of their upbringing! This character type aggravates me.

Yet, I imagine that if a person grew up in a household that abused them, or if they had no semblance of a household at all, then leaving would offer a nice change. Otherwise, Please! When I see those cliche scenes I think it sounds unappreciative and self-centered and judgmental. That was my rant. But to continue.

When a father acts as a good elder (householder) you begin to understand how a family might very well grow up in a community and stay there and participate in its life. Indeed. Why leave a people and a place that loves you? It would have to be for some higher purpose (a calling) of God that cannot be met by staying.

Without such a calling, you can understand how children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and aunts and uncles and cousins would remain in a community, and be found in close proximity to one another. They’d likely build homes within the community, work for the family business, or an uncle’s business, or they’d start their own. They’d probably attend mutual churches, celebrate holidays, influence local government, etc. These are not bad things but good things if the family is made of good people. It is good for the community too!

God desires for fathers to become good leaders. And as history developed from Adam to Abraham on onward, God saw fit to put these kinds of men into church life and into civil life. He would take experienced men and make them elders of these other jurisdictions and not merely the family.