Genealogies
Notes
Transcript
Call to Worship
Call to Worship
I will extol You, my God, O King; And I will bless Your name forever and ever.
Every day I will bless You,
And I will praise Your name forever and ever.
Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;
And His greatness is unsearchable.
One generation shall praise Your works to another,
And shall declare Your mighty acts.
I will meditate on the glorious splendor of Your majesty,
And on Your wondrous works.
Men shall speak of the might of Your awesome acts,
And I will declare Your greatness.
They shall utter the memory of Your great goodness,
And shall sing of Your righteousness.
This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
Introduction
Introduction
Last week, we saw the first murder;
fratricide
The killing of one brother by another out of jealousy
one sacrifice was accepted, while the other was not.
Again, we saw God being slow to anger and rich in mercy.
Ultimately, Cain was cursed, and instead of repenting, hardened his heart and built a city for his ungodly offspring.
At the end of Chapter 4, we were briefly given a genealogy of Cain’s lineage.
Not exhaustive, but at the end of the given lineage, we see Cain’s descendant, Lamech, continuing the legacy of his father Cain, heaping up sin and defying God.
And then we see that Seth was given to Adam to replace Cain and Abel
and then Seth had a son.
This sets up to competing lineages:
Wicked line of of Cain v Godly line of Seth
This chapter is mainly the genealogy from Adam to Noah and his sons via the Godly line of Seth.
Genealogy-
An account or history of the descent of a person or family from an ancestor; enumeration of ancestors and their children in the natural order of succession.
Pedigree; lineage; regular descent of a person or family from a progenitor.
From the same Latin and Greek where we get ‘Genesis’.
2 Timothy 3:16–17 “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
Even the genealogies and lists given to us in Scripture are inspired by God and are for our good.
Not all portions of Scripture are equal, but all are the Word of God and all were intentionally placed there by God.
So let us see what we can glean from the genealogy given to us.
Genesis 5
Genesis 5
This is the book of the genealogy of Adam. In the day that God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female, and blessed them and called them Mankind in the day they were created. And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. After he begot Seth, the days of Adam were eight hundred years; and he had sons and daughters. So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died.
Again, God created man, in the likeness of God
God created them male and female
God called them Mankind
Man did not create himself.
Man is not the captain of his own destiny, but is at the mercy of God
Man was named by God,
After 130 years, Adam begot a son in his own likeness, after his image.
Many sons and daughters and been born since Cain and Abel’s births
Seth was probably conceived and born not too long after Abel’s murder.
In contrast to God making Adam in his own image and likeness, Seth is made in the image and likeness of fallen Adam
Seth born “after his image”
The image of God, corrupted and defiled is now passed on
Grace does not run in the blood, but corruption does. A sinner begets a sinner, but a saint does not beget a saint. - Henry
After 930 years, Adam, the first man, died.
Again, Matthew Henry: He died, according to the sentence passed upon him, to dust though shalt return. Though he did not die in the day he ate the forbidden fruit, yet in that very day he became mortal. Then he began to die; his whole life afterwards was but a reprieve, a forfeited condemned life; nay, it was wasting dying life: he was not only like a criminal sentenced, but as one already crucified, that dies slowly and by degrees.
So because of Adam’s sin, he died.
He passed on the curse of death to all his descendants
Many today will reject the doctrine of original sin, the teaching that all men inherit sin from our father Adam.
Many will say “that’s not fair”
“Why do I get punished for something I didn’t do?”
This concept is called “Federal Headship”
It is a universal principle.
If your nation’s leader declares war on another nation, you personally are at war with other members of that nation whether you want to be or not.
This is part of the hierarchy God built into the Creation
In Romans 5, Paul explains how Federal Headship is a good thing for us.
Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned—(For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification. For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.)
Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous.
Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Seth lived one hundred and five years, and begot Enosh. After he begot Enosh, Seth lived eight hundred and seven years, and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years; and he died.
Enosh lived ninety years, and begot Cainan. After he begot Cainan, Enosh lived eight hundred and fifteen years, and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Enosh were nine hundred and five years; and he died.
Cainan lived seventy years, and begot Mahalalel. After he begot Mahalalel, Cainan lived eight hundred and forty years, and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Cainan were nine hundred and ten years; and he died.
Mahalalel lived sixty-five years, and begot Jared. After he begot Jared, Mahalalel lived eight hundred and thirty years, and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Mahalalel were eight hundred and ninety-five years; and he died.
Jared lived one hundred and sixty-two years, and begot Enoch. After he begot Enoch, Jared lived eight hundred years, and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Jared were nine hundred and sixty-two years; and he died.
Not too much to pull out from this portion.
We get names of more descendants of Adam via Seth.
We get a greater and more complete genealogy of the sons of Seth than the sons of Cain received.
We don’t know the ages of Cain, his descendants, or when they had their sons.
What is notable, is the length of lives
Adam lived 930
Seth lived 912
Enosh lived 905
Cainan lived 910
Mahalalel lived 895
Jared lived 962
It seemed like maybe they were trending down until we got to Jared, where he lives 32 years longer than Adam
Also to note is that all these men and many sons and daughters.
The name of the son recorded is not necessarily the first son either.
We know Seth’s first son was Enosh at 105, but all the others could have had older son and daughters before the named son.
We are only given the son in the lineage between Adam and Noah, father to father.
Another thing to note is the repeated phrase “and he died”
As Paul noted in Romans 5, death is truly reigning in the descendants of Adam.
While we cannot know for sure, it would seem that the line of Seth would be more godly than other lines from Adam, especially that of Cain.
While God can save anyone, God primarily uses ordinary means to save people
This means for us, that children born in Christian homes, brought up in the Christian faith, are more likely to be God’s elect.
A lot of Evangelicals, especially baptistic minded ones, struggle with this idea.
But it’s true.
We want to act pious: we don’t save, God saves.
It’s not about how well someone presents the Gospel, it’s the work of the Holy Spirit.
Yes, that’s true. God can use idiots and bad Gospel presentations to save people.
But that doesn’t mean God usually uses, or prefers to use bad Gospel presentations.
He usually uses faithful parents that no one knows the names of, to pass the faith on to their children, who pass it on to their children, who pass it on to their children.
Most Christians throughout history have not been/ are not, first generation Christians.
They were given the Gospel by their parents or grandparents.
Or taken to Church by a family member where a seed was planted.
If I was to pluck a random person out of Pakistan and a random person out of America, which one would most likely be Christian?
The American.
Why? For the aforementioned reasons
We have a Christian history in America, which came from Europe, which was heavily christianized, moreso than the rest of the world.
At this point in history, there are more Europeans in heaven than any other ethnicity, especially if we only look at new covenant believers.
Because of this way God ordinarily works, most would believe that Seth’s line was composed of believers, but a couple of them really stick out.
One of them being Enoch.
Enoch lived sixty-five years, and begot Methuselah. After he begot Methuselah, Enoch walked with God three hundred years, and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.
Enoch walked with God.
In a way that was unlike anyone since Adam, Enoch had a deeper relationship than any other of his forefathers.
If his forefathers were indeed believers, Enoch’s faith exceeded all of theirs
An abrupt break in the pattern of death with Enoch.
Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.
Only one other man is said to have “walked with God”: Noah
With this exceeding faith, God spared Enoch from death.
He lived a mere 365 years, and then was no more.
He was translated
raptured to be with God
Like Elijah would be later
Like the saints that remain alive at the return of Christ.
Methuselah lived one hundred and eighty-seven years, and begot Lamech. After he begot Lamech, Methuselah lived seven hundred and eighty-two years, and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred and sixty-nine years; and he died.
Methuselah is the longest living person recorded: 969 years.
If you plot out all the life spans and the timeline given here in the next chapter, you will realize that Methuselah died the same year the flood came.
Many would say that this was because he was killed in the flood.
He was not righteous; only Noah and Enoch before him.
But if one is being optimistic, and believing that God preserved a faithful line through Seth, then the faith was passed down to each of these men.
Methuselah’s life was not cut short at 969.
Rather, God extended his life as an act of mercy.
Since we know that God does not destroy the righteous with the wicked (Genesis 18:25)
God did not send the flood until after his servant Methuselah died.
Therefore, it shows God’s mercy to the antediluvian world, that he extended Methuselah’s life, giving the people more time to heed the preaching of righteous Noah.
When Methuselah died, God sent the flood.
Lamech lived one hundred and eighty-two years, and had a son. And he called his name Noah, saying, “This one will comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord has cursed.” After he begot Noah, Lamech lived five hundred and ninety-five years, and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Lamech were seven hundred and seventy-seven years; and he died.
And Noah was five hundred years old, and Noah begot Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
Perhaps prophecy was given about Noah, being the reason his Father Lamech gave him his name
“This one will comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord has cursed.”
Maybe they believed him to be the prophesied “seed of the woman”
He was not, but he was a shadow of Christ, the coming Snake Crusher.
We went through meaning of names in previous weeks, and we will do so again today.
Names throughout most of history have been very intentional.
Parents wanted to convey something about their child.
We see this throughout Scripture.
Too often today, parents pick something trendy that has no connection to reality.
When we look at the names, some interesting things happen.
Adam - Man
Seth - Appointed
Enosh - Mortal
Cainan - Posession
Mahalalel - Praise of God
Jared - He shall come down
Enoch - Dedicated to God
Methuselah - His death shall bring
Lamech - Conqueror
Noah - Comfort
String those together and you get something like: Man, Appointed mortal. Possession of the Praise of God, He shall come down, dedicated to God. His death shall bring Conqueror and Comfort.
Clearly a prophecy of Jesus, right?
I don’t know, a lot of speculation.
I believe there is meaning in those names, but I’m not sure God wants us to know for certain at this point.
It was probably more clear to the Hebrews Moses wrote this for.
Others have come up with similar translations, forming the name into prophetic sentences.
The problem is that Hebrew is such an imprecise language that word meaning is determined by context.
Sometimes a word can mean opposite things depending on where it is found, or even unrelated.
You could get this string of names to say dozens of different things, even different things prophetic about Christ.
Were they all intended by God? Maybe, but we don’t need a word puzzle from Genesis to believe God is God when we have all of Scripture and the work he has done in us already.
So my take away: It’s cool. I’m sure it is prophetic in some way about Christ, but I’m not going to place my faith on it.
Noah was the first in this succession to be born after the death of Adam.
Amazing to think about, but Noah’s father lived while Adam was still alive.
If we assume full years for the genealogy given, Lamech was 56 when Adam died.
Adam was Noah’s 7th Great Grandfather.
Lamech would die sometime before the flood.
The Masoretic Text says he lived 777 years, putting his death 5 years before the flood.
The Septuagint says he lived 753 years, putting his death about 30 years before the flood.
Was Lamech more wicked than his fathers, so he died younger?
Maybe, but again, if I’m being optimistic, I’m thinking that Noah was discipled in the faith by his dad, who had been discipled by Adam for part of his life.
We know the world was increasingly wicked before the flood; perhaps Lamech was murdered?
Noah had 3 sons.
Seems like he only had these 3, since no other sons and daughters being begotten are mentioned, unlike his forefathers.
Though Shem his mentioned first, it seems like Japheth was actually the oldest
Genesis 10:21 “And children were born also to Shem, the father of all the children of Eber, the brother of Japheth the elder.”
If this is the case, Shem is listed first because he is the one who the “seed of the woman” will come through.
Shem if the father of all semitic peoples.
Semite does not just refer to Hebrews or Jews, but to all the descendants of Shem.
Kind of a modern misnomer to use antisemitism to only refer to modern Jews.
Arabs are also descendants of Shem, through Abraham.
So technically, it is anti-Semitic to not like Arab Muslims.
So Shem is listed first, because is the most significant of these three brothers for those who Moses is writing this to.
We will talk more about Noah’s sons in the coming weeks.
Genealogies are important (Conclusion/Application)
Genealogies are important (Conclusion/Application)
Biological genealogies are important.
God put this genealogy here, showing his faithfulness in preserving the promised seed against the the ungodly.
From Adam to Noah, the faith was passed on and preserved from father to son.
In our lives, or own genealogies are important.
In 1 Timothy 1:4 and Titus 3:9, Paul warns of endless genealogies.
This does not mean that knowing where you came from is worthless.
I found a free genealogical site (run by the Mormons) and found some interesting things I didn’t know about my family.
Even went back and found where my ancestors came to this country, most of them before the Revolutionary War.
Went back further and found I was related to men like Braveheart (his brother that wasn’t included in the movie)
Descended from King John (the bad king in Robinhood)
Descended from Alfred the Great.
Pretty cool, right? To know you’re descended from actual kings that you can read about.
From there found a connection to a Holy Roman Emperor.
All very cool, until I had a friend using the same website find out he was related to Jesus through Mary Magdalene...
Looking into this stuff is cool.
It is important to have some idea of where you came from.
You didn’t just get here from nowhere
But don’t get caught up in it,
More important, is knowing that there is a genealogy of your faith.
You might not be able to trace it all the way up your tree to the apostles, but know that if you are in the faith today, it is because at some point, the ministry of the disciples, reached someone, who reached someone who reached someone, and eventually came to you.
Continue the genealogy of faith to others
Your children and beyond.
Another way genealogies are important, is the genealogy of ideas.
Where did certain beliefs have their origin.
Communism/socialism/evolution/egalitarianism/feminism/yoga/pilates
Rotten fruit comes from a bad root.
Ideas don’t just pop out of thin air.
they originate somewhere, mutate and change through the years.
In the church, why do we do certain things?
Weekly communion?
Why did churches start using grape juice instead of wine in North America?
The songs we sing
Why don’t we do more contemporary worship?
Baptism
Why don’t we baptize babies?
Why do we wear what we do?
Should we be formal, less formal, or somewhere in the middle?
Why did Christian women practice head covering universally for over 1900 years until the 1960s?
Why do we want the kids to stay in for the worship service?
If a practice in the church cannot be traced back to, and defended by, Scripture, be very suspicious of it.
As Christians, we don’t want to reinvent the faith
we want to be tied into our fathers in the faith.
But we also don’t want to follow blindly.
We want to do things that other Christians have done, because that is what Scripture teaches.
All these issues, within the church and culture, where did they come from?
The genealogy of all the issues we face today can be traced back to the first few chapters of Genesis.
As we conclude, let today’s Scripture be an encouragement of God’s faithfulness and providence to bring you here today,
be thankful for the faithful ones in the genealogy of your faith that brought you salvation
and continue to proclaim that Good News, being the link in someone else’s genealogy of faith.
be aware that ideas and beliefs have a genealogy of their own
We want our beliefs to trace a genealogy back to Scripture
We want to abandon beliefs and practices that trace their Genesis to the Serpent in Genesis 3.
