Sermon Tone Analysis

No man is an island,

Entire of itself.

Each is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thine own

Or of thine friend's were.

Each man's death diminishes me,

For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for thee.

-John Donne

Genesis is full of origins including creation, life, humanity, marriage, and sin, but one of the origins in Genesis is actually a sort of end as well.

When Adam and Eve rebel against God’s good provision for them and seek to make themselves gods, one of sin’s consequences is certain death.

But this death isn’t only for Adam and Eve, it is for all of humanity.

Chapter 4 makes it clear that sin is congenital, Adam passed it on to Cain who passed it to his children through to Lamech emphasizing that we are all sinners needing to on the name of the Lord for deliverance.

Chapter 5 makes it clear that death is congenital too.

Did you notice the repetition in the genealogy, “And he died; and he died; and he died.”

The differences between chapters 4 & 5 emphasize the reality of generational death.

In chapter 4 we are introduced to Cain, the first murderer, and his lineage who try to make a name for themselves without God.

Cain tries to immortalize his name by naming a city after his son Enoch.

Lamech’s kids make a name for themselves through their exploits, and Lamech himself brags to his two wives about his murder of two men.

Chapter 4 is a lineage of those banished from the blessing of God and rebelling against God’s authority and glory.

But chapter 4 ends with a new line, Seth and Enosh, and people humbly refusing to make a name for themselves and instead making God’s name great by calling on Him for deliverance from the chronic sin problem illustrated in Cain’s line.

Chapter 5 follows with the line of Adam through Seth, a line that seems to be calling on the name of the Lord all the way through to Noah.

But these genealogies share some similarities as well.

The genealogies share two names: one being Enoch.

In Cain’s line Enoch is Cain’s son after whom he names his city, and in Seth’s line Enoch is the pinnacle of faith who walked with God.

The other shared name is Lamech.

In both lines, the only one who speaks is Lamech.

In Cain’s line, Lamech is the pinnacle of sinfulness taking two wives and bragging about his murderous exploits, but in Seth’s line, Lamech humbly hopes that his son Noah will be the one to fulfill God’s promise to reverse the curse.

The two lines share another couple of interesting connections: Both Enoch from Seth and Lamech from Cain are the same number of generations from Adam (seven), so the pinnacle of faith and the pinnacle of sinfulness both come in the seventh generation; also each genealogy ends with three sons, Lamech’s sons Jabal, Jubal, and Tubal-cain in chapter 4 and Noah’s sons Shem, Ham, and Japeth in chapter 5.

These connections between the generations emphasize that these genealogies were not intended to be isolated from each other; indeed, together they draw our attention to larger realities in this world.

Sin and death are both generational.

Sin becomes obvious in Cain’s line where nothing is said of death, but death becomes obvious in Seth’s line.

We might think that perhaps Seth’s line is immune from death because they called on the name of the Lord, but even the righteous die; it impacts all of us.

So here we sit, around six thousand years later, and what do we see?

Its the same generational death from congenital sin that affected Cain and Seth’s descendants affecting each of us.

This weekend our society celebrates Memorial Day, a day set aside to remember those who have died for our country.

It’s just another reminder of the reality of death.

Day by day we hear of humanity’s sinfulness; day by day we are confronted with the realities of death, and so John Donne reminds us, “Send not to know For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.”

It’s only a matter of time for each one of us.

We are all terminal.

So what are we to do?

We could let this reality paralyze us with fear, but we are reminded by Jesus that worry can’t change anything:

mt 6:

We learn elsewhere in Scripture that God ordains the days of our lives.

Since worrying is a bad and ineffective option, and since God sovereignly controls how long we will live, the best response to the reality of sin and death is faith in God.

Isn’t that the example we have here in Genesis?

When faced with the reality of congenital sin and generational death, the line of Seth called on the name of the Lord.

They recognized their need and sought help from God.

They believed God and acted on it; so must we; thus it is this fact that I want you to take home with you this week:

In the midst of generational death from congenital sin, we must hope in God’s grace.

Why must we hope in God’s grace?

There are two evidences of God’s graces in Seth’s line that provide us with hope that God can overcome death from sin.

God’s grace is evident in the defeat of death (v22-24)

Chapter 5 is Adam’s record of his family line.

It starts out with short account of his creation in God’s image with God’s blessing before the genealogy begins.

gen 5:1-The record that Seth was in Adam’s likeness seems to be a subtle reference to the fact that although sin marred God’s image in humanity, we still maintain that image since Adam was in the likeness of God and the Seth is born in Adam’s likeness.

The line then settles into a pattern.

This man lived so many years and had this son, after he had that son, he lived so many more years and had other sons and daughters, so that man lived the total years of his life, then he died.

The record that Seth was in Adam’s likeness seems to be a subtle reference to the fact that although sin impacted the image of God in humanity, the image wasn’t done away with.

Then v3 begins a clear pattern: This man lived so many years and had this son, after he had that son, he lived so many more years and had other sons and daughters, so that man lived the total years of his life, then he died.

You can see this pattern in v3-24.

We may be tempted to stop paying attention as we read this repeated pattern of names and years, but if we do we might miss v22-24 which stand out because they break the pattern.

We expect v22 to say, “Then Enoch lived x number of years, etc.”

But it doesn’t.

It says, “Then Enoch walked with God.”

What does it mean to walk with God?

The phrase is relatively vague, but its implications help us derive an idea of what Scripture means.

The only two people in the entire Old Testament who are said to walk with God are Enoch and Noah.

Others are said to walk before God (like Abraham in ), and we often see the idea of walking in His ways (like Moses commanded the children of Israel in ).

The idea of walking with God seems to indicate an intimacy of relationship, because relationships grow as two people walk together.

This idea is perhaps lost a bit although not completely on our culture since we drive nearly everywhere, but when we were in Spain last fall with Seth and Crystal, we walked a lot.

Most of our walking we spent talking and fellowshipping, and through those walks we built our relationship.

I don’t think we are reading to much into Enoch walking with God to say it was intimate fellowship.

Walking with God thus also indicates salvation.

Sin broke humanity’s fellowship with God because God cannot tolerate fellowship with sin.

Consider

2 Corinthians 6:14-15 seems to corroborate this point:

If God cannot tolerate fellowship with sinful humanity how could he tolerate fellowship with Enoch?

The Bible offers only one explanation: faith.

Listen to

If God cannot tolerate fellowship with sinful humanity how could he tolerate fellowship with Enoch?

The Bible offers only one explanation: faith.

Listen to

The author of Hebrews indicates that Enoch believed in God’s existence and that God would reward those who seek Him.

Enoch didn’t please God and fellowship with God because he was such a good guy.

In fact both chapters 4 & 5 establish that every human is sinful and that we all deserve to die, but God can change all that because He provides righteousness to those who will trust Him for it.

That seems like what Abraham did a few generations later:

God only accepts and fellowships with the righteous, but since no one is righteous, we need God to make us righteous, and that is what He promises to do if we will depend on Him.

He can do this because of death of His righteous Son Jesus.

You can walk with God just as Enoch did if you will come to God in faith acknowledging that you are a sinner and can do nothing to make yourself acceptable to Him.

But Enoch’s story brings another question to mind: Why is Enoch the only one who doesn’t die?

Even Noah, who also walked with God, died.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer to that question.

The Bible says that God took Enoch, but it doesn’t say why he took Enoch and not Noah.