God has limits for nations. This is clear from passages such as Gen. 15:16 and Dan. 8:23. Indeed, there will be a day when “the fullness of the Gentiles has come in” (Rom. 11:25). The church age will end and, with it, God’s special outpouring of grace upon the Gentile nations, which has gone on now for two millennia. God’s work on the Earth will again be focused on the nation of Israel.

Another Memorial Day is upon us—a wonderful time to remember those who sacrificed to preserve our freedom, and to reflect upon all who have passed a spiritual legacy forward to us and blessed us—even in our own families.

During this patriotic season, it is also important to consider how God uses nations, and to meditate on the place that our nation occupies within the spectrum of Biblical teaching regarding the Lord’s dealings with the people groups of this world.

The first point that we must recognize is that God is the author of nations. I understand that Genesis 10—which is known as the table of nations—follows Genesis 11 chronologically and describes the outcome of God’s disbursement of humanity at the Tower of Babel. There all people had gathered in unified defiance against God and His post-flood commission to mankind: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” (Gen. 9:1).

God supernaturally dispersed these people into groups formed around newly created languages. The result is listed in Gen. 10:32: “From these the nations were divided on the earth after the flood.”

Why does God desire for people to organize themselves into nations? There are numerous reasons, but perhaps the most obvious is that there is significant danger with any system that unites all people—affected entirely, as they are, by the power of the sin nature—in a single alliance that has the potential to be profoundly corrupted, with no available alternative. Just as the branches of our government were designed to offer a check and balance on each other, so it is with the nations of the world—as Hitler himself profoundly discovered before the end of World War II.

Yet, just as everyone disobediently came together in one block, attempting to form the kingdom of man at Babel, near the beginning of history, so it will be at the end of history. Once again, the world will unify around the city of Babylon to form a worldwide religion and government—combined under the Antichrist to oppose the one true God.

Secondly, we must recognize that God first created (see Isa. 43:1-15) and then chose the nation of Israel. His covenant with the father of the nation, Abram, in Gen. 12:1-3, is foundational to all of God’s work in all the rest of Scripture, and of history. God would use this man—taken from the very geographical area of Babylon—to build the kingdom of God in a new land that He would provide.

Implicit within the promises of this covenant is the provision of salvation to the whole world—through a Jewish Savior, who is revealed in the Jewish Scriptures (both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament), and who will bring a Jewish kingdom to the world. When we believe in Him, we become the spiritual children of Abraham (see Gal. 3:7, 29).

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