From the Pastor's Study
Image by Elias
The story of Noah’s ark is one of the most misrepresented stories in the Bible. We see this story depicted in children’s bibles and nursery room walls in cute, colorful illustrations of animals floating in a boat, with a long giraffe neck sticking outside the boat because it is too long as they float peacefully on the waters. You would never see a children’s book drawn that way about hurricane Katrina. There would be no happy looking people floating in boats in New Orleans. Why? Because people would rightly complain that we wouldn’t be capturing the devastation that the hurricane brought. What we are looking at here makes Katrina look like a sunshower. This story is of the judgment of God against sinners who finally exhaust His patience. But those children’s bibles and nursery walls captured something right about this story. Because it is also the story of surprising grace given to Noah and the future humanity that will come from him. God is going to do something amazing through Noah, and the amount of work that Noah is going to do to make that happen is going to provide a great encouragement for us. Our two points today are God really did flood the whole earth for human sin, and God really did save His people from it. God really did flood the whole earth for human sin We can’t forget that this is a story of God handing out punishment for the entirety of mankind at the time, save one remarkable person, Noah. We find out that he is “righteous” “blameless” and “walked with God.” The last time we saw someone walk with God he walked straight into heaven, so here is another figure who has this same level of faithfulness to God. He is also called blameless and righteous. Righteous means that he is in covenant with God and is living up to the standards of that covenant (Ross, 193). “Blameless” means “'complete, sound' and indicates moral uprightness and integrity in a person's behavior” (Matthews, 358). Lest we think this means Noah is perfect, One scholar comments “This description of Noah does not suggest that he is sinless; rather it indicates that his life reflects a wholeness of character in which what he professes to believe is actually how he lives his life." (94) Indeed, we will see later on that Noah is not morally perfect, but he is certainly better than the people around him (Matthews, 358). Still, he is in need of God’s Grace. Noah’s uprightness is in deep contrast to everyone else around him. Notice that the word “corrupt” is used three times here to really drive home the point of what is going on. The place is absolutely filled with violence, so God needs to respond. Interestingly, when God says that He is going to destroy them, it is a play on words in Hebrew. The same root is used in both “corrupt” and “destroy.” In essence, God is saying, “They have destroyed themselves, so I am going to destroy them” (Ross, 193). This reminds me of Romans 1 where God simply gives people over to their sins, and this seems like a radical example of that. It would be like God saying, “Oh, you like violence and destruction? Well, here, have a flood.” This contrast between Noah and the world should cause us to sit up a bit. All of the Bible is relevant, but this is pretty easy to apply to us today. All around us is a culture of violence and disobedience to God, yet we are called to be different. We are called to live a life honoring to God in spite of our surrounding culture. We are called to a different standard. We are called to righteousness. John Calvin put it this way, “We know how great is the force of custom, so that nothing is more difficult than to live holily among the wicked, and to avoid being led away by their evil examples. Scarcely is there one in a hundred who has not in his mouth that diabolical proverb, 'We must howl when we are among the wolves...'" (252). In other words, we can tend to think that we must live the way our culture does at least somewhat. How would we get along if we didn’t celebrate what the world celebrates, laugh at what the world laughs at, hate what the world hates. Pastor Reeder once said in contrast to this that “the world is not your measuring stick, it’s your mission field.” So often we don’t even know we are howling with the wolves because we’ve never taken the time to seriously examine our lives against the Bible. If you think something is ok for a Christian to do that looks like the world, how did you come to that conclusion? “Well,” you might say, “I’m not living any differently than other Christians around me.” Who says they are the standards? God’s Word is our standard no matter what other people say. The consequences on this are severe. Folks, this isn’t about getting an A+ in life. Living in a way opposed to God brings real judgment. That’s why I’ve called this point that God really did flood the entire earth because of sin. When you were in school, did you have someone whom everyone called “the hard teacher”? I remember hearing of one student getting the following comment on his research paper, “You should have titled this paper ‘A Survey of a Bunch of Opinions’” with an accompanying bad grade. Alone, this might be written off as a student problem, but this particular professor was known for this across the board. His was the only class that as soon as he walked in the door the entire conversation of the class came to a dead stop. Why? Because he had a reputation. We’ve lost that perspective on God. Yes, it is 100% true that in Christ we are completely safe from ultimate judgment, but we treat God like He didn’t one day flood the whole planet over sin, and has already warned us that a judgment of that scale is coming again in Matthew 24, which we read this morning. It could happen today. Will we be found when Christ comes back looking and acting just like the world for whom the judgment is coming? Noah stands as a good example for how to live properly and really condemns us if we don’t (Matthews, 358). The world isn’t as bad today as it was then. “But Pastor,” you might say, “you get to stay in your ivory study safe from all the pressures of the world. You don’t have people threatening to fire you for standing on Biblical principles, you don’t have people in your family living against God’s Word, it’s easy for you to say to be obedient.” You are right, but the command to live for God doesn’t come from me. It comes from the One who rules the world, the One who destroys those who destroy themselves with sin. But it isn’t all judgment. Let’s take a look at our second point: God really did save His people from it. It is quite clear later on that this flood was planet-wide, and the Earth has the scarring to prove it. So the fact that we are all here tells us that God really did save his people from it. God has accomplished this through a command to Noah to build the ark. We don’t tend to mark things in cubits, which would be from the tip of your tallest finger to your elbow, or roughly 18 inches. With that estimate, this boat that God is telling Moses to build would be about 450 feet long (or a little longer than your regulation football field), 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high (Matthews 364). Noah only has to accommodate kinds of animals, not every individual species, and he probably took on juveniles of the animals as they would be smaller (see more here.) I won’t spend the time here to show that this could have actually happened because that has been done in many other places. There are a variety of ways in which you can explain how Noah could have achieved all of this, but the point isn’t really how Noah mathematically accomplished it but rather that he was obedient to God. Certainly, I believe every word that is written here literally happened; God doesn’t lie, and He is very powerful. And most surprisingly of all, He makes promises to His people. Here we see in our passage the very first mention of the word “covenant.” This is an especially gracious promise, as one scholar draws out: "Divine charter is a proclamation made by the Lord and is not in agreement. We find this in the Noahic covenant where the Lord obligates himself…to save the Noahic family and preserve the new world, also forever, without specific demands placed upon the patriarch…” (Matthews, 368). This would be something that Noah would have had to cling to in earnest for the rest of this project. Even Noah, while better than the people around him, still could not have earned this covenant. God made the covenant with Noah before the first tree came down. But this doesn’t make the work that Noah did meaningless. It was a great demonstration of the faith that Noah had. We oftentimes forget what a massive undertaking this would be for Noah. When I was studying for this John Calvin was the only one to take the time to walk us through what Noah was asked to do. In order to build this 400+ foot boat, Noah would begin not by going to Home Depot, but by felling all the trees, by yourself (after all, it's not like the rest of humanity is going to help you). Yes, you have three sons, but that doesn’t lighten the load by much. Then you have to carry all of those trees, again by yourself, to the place to put it all together. This is going to be done over the course of 100 years of very hard manual labor. This has been looked at, and it is indeed possible, but boy is that a lot of work. Beyond that, everyone around him is given to violence, and Noah is out there hogging up all the trees to build his yacht! Plus, it wouldn't be surprising if the people around him messed up his work to set him back (everyone is given to evil in all of this). And if all that wasn't enough, once you've got the boat put together, now you gotta gather up enough food to last you the year's voyage for yourself, family, and oh yeah all the animals! And let's be real real here: you're on a boat with animals; it's not like they don't create a stink while they're on the boat. (259-261). This is all being done when it had never even rained before, much less flooded in this sort of way. This is an unprecedented amount of work for something that no one had ever seen before. In short, we are looking at nothing less than an absolute, total commitment to serve the Lord no matter what He asks. Another scholar put it convincingly, "'Noah did according to all that God commanded him – so did he'" is most important. Here the reader may catch a glimpse of what it means to walk with God, or to be righteous." (194). In other words, walking with God isn’t something that makes sense to the world. Noah has faith, acting on what cannot be seen or materialistically proven (Matthews, 369). Calvin ties off this section by saying this, “Moses, indeed, says in a single word that he did it; but we must consider how far beyond all human power was the doing of it: and that it would have been better to die a hundred deaths, then to undertake a work so laborious, unless he had looked to something higher than the present life" (261). God has a habit of having His people do things that don’t make sense to the world. Moses, who wrote down this story, while out leading sheep around was asked to go back to the country where he was a wanted man for murder to lead millions of people, representing the most powerful country’s economic engine, out of the country, across the desert, into the promised land (Exodus 3). I can imagine Moses thinking, “Me, too, Noah.” Later on, those same people would march around Jericho and take down the city with a shout (Joshua 6). These same people would later form a nation attacked by so many powerful armies yet defending themselves with jars and trumpets (Judges 7), and sometimes by doing absolutely nothing at all (2 Kings 19:35). What all of these things have in common is the fact that God is the one making them possible. Yet, Israel had to trust that God would defend them, Gideon had to take 300 people against a countless army, Joshua still had to march his army around the city for a week, Moses still had to travel into Egypt, and Noah still had to build the ark. But here’s the key: they all did so under the covenant of God. All of these people had their eyes on God to do what they did, and the same call goes to you. It is going to make less and less sense (from a worldly logic) to follow Christ. Sure, a hundred years ago, going to church made you a respectable member of society, but increasingly, that is going to make you a bigot. How do you hold on? You hold on by keeping your eyes on the ultimate act that doesn’t make any sense: Jesus dying on the cross for you. Why on Earth should God the Father give His Son to us and indwell us with His Holy Spirit? We’ve not done anything to deserve that, but Jesus did. Judgment is coming again, but rather than running to a ship, we run to a Savior. Noah built the ship with lots of work. Jesus built our salvation by breaking His body, and pouring out His blood. By keeping our eyes on what He has done, we will have the strength to do what He calls us to, not to earn our salvation, but to display the salvation already received. We’ve been called to a committed life, but we do so under the covenant of God, which we have a picture of here in bread and grape juice before us.
0 Comments
Image by Nile
Doesn’t it seem like the world is falling apart? There are many times in history in which one could say this. Just in the last century we have seen two world wars, the development of the atom bomb, worldwide terrorism, and most subtly, the terrifying falling population rates that will cause some countries to disappear nearly entirely in the next century (China is looking like its population will be halved in the next thirty years). If you are watching the news nightly, or heaven help you if you are getting your news constantly on your phone, you will find many reasons to think that this is a hopeless situation. If you were alive at the time of Genesis 6, though, these days would seem tame! In Genesis 6 we are seeing the beginning of the first end. We are going to find out why a world-wide flood was the proper response to this world. But there are a number of confusing things in this text! Is this text talking about fallen angels having super-babies with humanity? Is God giving the world 120 years to repent, or is he setting the new human age limit? What is this saying that God regrets making humanity? Did God not see this coming and thus doesn’t hold our future? AHHHH! Indeed, these are important questions, and it is right here, in some of the scariest parts of Scripture and our lives where God’s promises shine the brightest. Some of the above questions are matters of debate and mystery, and some are going to be left unsolved, but what we are going to walk away from our time together with is a new confidence in God’s ability to both know and control the future. Our two points today are Evil has dominated in the world before yet God knows how to save His people Evil has dominated in the world before After a look at the faithful line of Seth, we turn our eyes to the story of his great-great-(x many) Grandson, Noah. Things are not getting better in the world. In fact, we are going to see that humanity had descended to the point that “every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (v.5). That’s a pretty bleak view of humanity at this point. Later on, we will find out that there is literally one family on the entire globe who bucks this trend next week. For now, the world is in a terrible place. Of course, verse 5 is the summary of the verses that came before it, so let’s take a look at some details into why this situation was just so bad. It is here where we come to our first controversy and question, “Who are the ‘sons of God’?” There are a number of viewpoints on this question, but typically, people will prefer one of two possible answers. Either “the sons of God” refer to angels, or it refers to the people of Seth’s line. In the second instance, the daughters of men would be of the line of Cain, the line of the serpent. The first possibility would have angels copulating with human beings, something that would be beyond their place to do, and the second possibility has the faithful line intermarrying with the unfaithful line of Cain, also beyond their place to do. The hard part about deciding between these views is that there are good, Scriptural reasons for either conclusion, and this has been a debate going back to the Jewish Rabbi’s! Many Jews took the angel position, but there was a time in which Rabbi’s invoked a curse on those who held that view (Ross, 178)! On the “sons of God are angels” side of things, there are a few New Testament passages, specifically in 1 Peter 3:19-20, 2 Peter 2:4ff (which we read) as well as Jude 6-7, that seem to read quite clearly in favor of them being angels. It would appear in each of these passages that the NT writer is marching through Genesis which would seem to place fallen angels right there in Genesis 6. However, as R.C. Sproul points out in his commentary on 2 Peter, it could just as easily refer to the original fall of the angels where the angels overstepped their bounds, and that is actually the sin the NT writers are pointing to (248-9). Indeed, a careful reading does show that these passages don’t have to be referring to Genesis 6 sin. Really the decision that you make about the New Testament passages has to do with what you do here in Genesis 6. If you decide that they are angels, then the NT passages make perfect sense. If you decide that the sons of God are of the line of Seth, you can harmonize the New Testament passages with that approach. One commentator makes a strong argument for it being the line of Seth. Basically, he sees this passage as telling Seth’s family story, as the genealogy doesn’t end until Noah’s death in chapter 9 (Matthews, 330). Further, looking back at Genesis 3, when the snake and humanity sin both are punished for it, whereas here it would appear that the fallen angels suffer no consequences (334). Verses 3, 5-7 make clear that the flood is God’s judgment on man, and it would seem that the angels aren’t held liable for their obvious part in all of that (327). However, if the sons of God and daughters of man are both human, then the flood against humanity makes perfect sense, as now the human race which once was two separate lineages is now forming into one that has become very corrupt. The passages in the New Testament, then, would simply be referring to the original rebellion of the angels in heaven without their needing to sexually sin. As an aside, whatever direction you take here will have some impact on who you think the Nephilim are, but not too much. There is some evidence in our passage that they existed at that time and after, which makes it look like that these guys existed prior to humanity’s sin, whether with demons or each other. Whoever they were, it appears that they were drowned with the rest of the world (the reference to them in Numbers 13 was probably an exaggeration [Mattehews, 337]). While I lean towards the sons of God being of the line of Seth, there is a strong case to make for angels, but I think the true point of the passage isn’t how humanity sinned per se but rather the fact that humanity is just so sinful as to be completely “beyond self-help” (Kinder). Whether heaven itself is turning out sinners or humanity has become so sinful that there is just one righteous family left in the whole place, we are left with a very scary picture of evil’s rule on the earth. The point for us to take away from this whole thing is that man is extremely sinful to the point that there is no way they figure this out on their own. They are nothing but evil here. One commentator put it like this, "So monstrous becomes the sin of Noah's generation that the gravest of measures is the only proper response from heaven" (Matthews, 340). So why is this important for us to know? It is important for us to know that God has lines that He draws that we cross at our peril. We cannot treat sin lightly. God knows how to save His people The response is going to be a world-wide flood, and the limitation of the years of man’s life to 120 years. While there will be one hundred years before the flood waters come, it is not 120 (Calvin, 243), and this would nicely explain why everyone suddenly doesn’t live for a super long time anymore. The few exceptions that are yet to come, like Abraham who lived 175 years (Genesis 25:7) can be explained with the same mercy that was given to Adam and Eve: The punishment wasn’t set out immediately (Matthews, 335). All these issues that we’ve looked at so far one can come to different conclusions on and not much is really going to change about how you look at the Bible. However, I think what we have to look at closely is this idea of God regretting something. Usually, when we say that we regret something, it means that they didn’t know how something was going to turn out and now that they see it, they would do it differently. This can be something as frivolous as a haircut that we thought looked great in high school and now want to bury all evidence of it, or something as serious as a life-altering accident. Now that we are on the other side of the decision, we wish we could go back and change it. Is this how God works? To answer that question, we turn to the only place for information about God, the Bible. Specifically, we are going to turn to 1 Samuel 15:11 and 29. God is talking about Saul’s kingship, that while it started well, Saul began to go down the path of disobedience. In verse 11, we get the same word that we have in Genesis 6. It would seem that we have a theme here of God’s regretting making Saul king in the same way that he regrets making mankind. However! The key to understanding all of this is in verse 29, where we find that God does not regret like a human being does. John Piper explains it this way: "The difference would most naturally be that God's regret happens in spite of perfect foreknowledge, while most human repentance because we lack foreknowledge...Even in our own experience, there are times when we look back on difficult decisions we made and feel both sorrow at making them and yet approve making them" (Providence, 361-2 n5). He explained what this might look like. Let’s say that you had to discipline a child for something that they clearly did wrong and needed correction for it. Yet, because of that discipline, they ran away from home or became otherwise estranged. While you would look back on that discipline with sorrow, you wouldn’t change what you had to do, as it was the right thing to do. Piper concludes by reasoning that if he can have complex emotions like that, then surely God is capable of such things as well (you can read the whole article here). The difference, as we’ve already stated is that God is doing this with total foreknowledge that they are happening, yet can be grieved that they happened. This is something that is important for us to understand. God doesn’t second-guess Himself. Because if He did, no one and nothing would be safe. If He could second guess creation, then why couldn’t He second guess your salvation? But we find that God doesn’t need a second plan. Numbers 23:19 tells us "God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?". Or look at Psalm 33:8-11, “Let all the earth fear the LORD; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him! For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm. The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the LORD stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations.” God isn’t thrown off by what people do because he didn’t see it coming. If that were true, then we would have every reason to fear. If God doesn’t know the end from the beginning (which he does, according to Isaiah 46:10), then we could never be sure that God’s promises would stand (Piper article). But God doesn’t repent like a man does. So why use this language? I think Matthews is on to something when he says, "God's response of grief over the making of humanity, however, is not remorse in the sense of sorrow over a mistaken creation; our verse shows that God's pain has its source in the perversion of human sin. The making of man is no error; it is what man has made of himself.… But his regret is not over destroying humanity; paradoxically, so foul has become mankind that it is the necessary step to salvage him." (343) In other words, God knows that humankind is going to go in this direction, and knows that the wisest way to deal with it is with the flood. But this doesn’t mean that God is unfeeling. Matthews continues: “In Christ we see God is so moved by grief and love that he chooses to take upon himself the very suffering of our sins. Do we not appeal to the incarnational role of Christ is our vision of the nature of his Father (cf. Matt 23:37)? God is not a dispassionate accountant overseeing the books of human endeavor; rather he makes a personal decision out of a sorrowful loss to judge Noah's wicked generation" (344). In other words, we see in Jesus that God is capable of emotion, even emotion over things directly in his control. Jesus wept over Lazarus even though he was going to raise him from the dead five minutes later. Lazarus’ death was totally in Jesus’ control (God said in Deu. 32:39 “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.”), Jesus still wept. While it looks like the world is spinning out of control, God is still in charge, still going to judge that sin, and yet still feels it. In fact, God feels it enough to do something permanent about it, which is why He sent His Son to Earth to take the penalty for sin. You don’t serve a robot God, but neither do you serve a sniveling, emotional wreck. You serve the God who introduces Himself in Ex. 34:6-7 by saying, “The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.” That’s complex, but that’s our God. God genuinely loves you. And He is really working to bring you right along in his plan. It won’t always be easy or pleasant, but in the end and along the way it will be good. So what is our takeaway? God can work through some seemingly impossible circumstances and deliver his people. That won’t always happen in pleasant ways, but evil will be defeated. No matter what happens on the nightly news, judgment will come on those who sin, and forgiveness will be given to those who are united to Jesus. God is very patient, and for that, I am personally very grateful, but God’s patience doesn’t last forever. At some point, God will come in judgment, and the only way to be safe in that is to put your trust in Christ, turning from your sin and to Him. Psalm 2:10-12 “Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. . 
Genealogies don’t get much love. These are often the place where our eyes glaze over in our Bible readings, wondering why these things are even here. There are all these strange names, often strange places they lived that are just so unfamiliar with. But just because we don’t immediately understand something doesn’t mean that we can’t learn from it. We covered at the beginning of our time through Genesis that these genealogies serve as introduction to new sections of the Genesis story. You can tell the family that is going to be focused on by whatever name shows up near the end. They also tend to start with the name that the previous section told us about. But they do more than just provide us with a Star Wars-like title crawl to a new episode. As we will see today, there is much that we can learn from the details of this particular genealogy, as well as some of the other ones that we will study in the future.
Today, from this chapter, we are going to be looking at our two points today. First, we will see that God is faithful in His blessings and judgments. Second, Walking with God brings a life of blessing. God is faithful in His blessings… One of the first things that we notice in a genealogy like this is that God has fulfilled His promise. In fact, one pastor and commentator Dale Ralph Davis said something to the effect of every name that you ever see in a genealogy is another promise that God fulfilled. God promised Eve that she would have children, and so she has! God promised that the tribes of Israel would have a portion in the promised land, and centuries later in the book of Numbers, all those names represent a real person who got what was promised to them by God. As you will notice, this particular list of names doesn’t record every person born by name. All through this list, you will see that so and so had sons and daughters, but there is only one particular line that is being focused on here. This doesn’t mean that the other people aren’t valuable to God, but rather that there is a particular family tree that we are watching here that for the purposes of this chapter ends with Noah. Ultimately, as we see in Matthew and Luke, the family tree is leading us all the way to Jesus. In that sense, even if we don’t know anything else about these people other than their name, they were still important because they advanced redemptive history. They brought humanity one step closer to Jesus, and for that, they are remembered. Most of these people didn’t build an ark, rule a kingdom, or perform a miracle, but their day-in-day-out faithfulness of seeing to it that the next generation called on the name of the Lord as much as they could, they did something. Even if you never have children, you can do this to. You might not be able to bring the whole world closer to Jesus, but you can bring Jesus to someone’s whole world. That’s significant. That’s something to be remembered by. All glory, of course, goes to God in this, just like it does in this list. God is also faithful to bless humanity, as we are reminded that He has done so in the opening verses of this chapter. We are reminded that mankind is made in God’s image, that image is being passed down to each successive generation, along with the attendant blessings. One of those blessings that we see is the extraordinarily long lives that these individuals had. While obviously people don’t live that long now, there was a special blessing at that time that allowed for this sort of span, something that expired after the flood. …And His Judgments But as long as those lives are, there is one, mostly consistent line that comes at the end of each of these entries, “and he died.” In other words, these important events like the continuation of Adam’s line, the ascension of David to the throne, all the way to the birth of Jesus, these are not fairy tales that begin with “once upon a time.” They begin with a historical account of how we got here. Nothing is more historical, more life-like, ironically, than an obituary. The obituary, the paragraph summary of one’s entire life containing two dates, names of children, and maybe a line or two about something that they were known for. It’s how they are written today, and as we can see in Genesis 5, it looks remarkably similar. This list doesn’t begin with “once upon a time,” and ending with “lived happily ever after.” No, this is a grounded, real, life and death account that is as real as the obituary pages in our newspapers today. The reality of this list should drive home the point of the final line of each of these entries, “and he died.” Just as God was true to His word about blessing, He is true to His word about judgment. Adam, along with (almost) all of his descendants experience death, the biological cessation of life. Their deaths are as real as our own. The penalty for sin is still very much in effect. What is interesting is that Adam doesn't die until Lamech is basically sixty years old. These lists run concurrently, so Adam lives almost long enough to see Noah! The first natural cause of death that we have recorded doesn't take place until nearly a thousand years in. The curse is real, the physical results permanent. Many of us remember what it was like when we encountered death for the first time. For me, it was my grandpa. He used to live next door to our house, so I would see him nearly every day for most of my early childhood. Losing him was disorienting at 12 years old, but I at least had a context for this. I had been to many funerals by that point and knew what this was, but it certainly brings it home when it is a founding member of the family. One can certainly imagine what it would have been like for the human family to see Adam pass away. I'm sure losing Abel was a shock, but I can certainly imagine people thinking that maybe that one was a fluke. As long as you stay away from murderers, you will be fine. Adam dying from simply living must have been devastating and tremendously focusing. We don't think about death and dying as a culture very much, especially when the young often dictate was captures the popular imagination. I speak with many of you whom the Lord has granted a long life, and one thing that I hear often is the fact that you all think about death often. This is actually a product of your wisdom. The Psalmist (90:12) asks God to teach us to number our days, which is something we who are younger do well to listen to. We functionally live like we are going to live on this earth forever, and it is often not until the obituary pages are filled with our own friends do we begin to think about it more seriously. Thousands of days, millions of hours summed up in a paragraph, only to be skipped over by future generations. Walking with God brings a life of blessing. But that is not all that this chapter has to say. There are a couple of exceptions here. We have Enoch who walked with God who suddenly was not. Considering how every other name ends the same way, I think we are supposed to see the break in the pattern. This is purposeful. Hebrews 11:5 tells us for sure that Enoch didn't die, but was rather taken to heaven immediately. Wouldn't you have liked to know what *he* was like? He walked so closely with God, he was spared even death, joining the ranks of only two other people in all of human history (Elijah and Jesus)! Why God did it that way is up to Him, but I think this shows us the beginnings of a hope for after death. Enoch went somewhere and that somewhere must be close to God. But we only have the very slightest hints here. Of course, wouldn’t you know what it would look like to live that faithfully? One commentator has an answer. For one, Enoch didn’t just live with God, he walked with Him (Ross, 175). There is a verb, a way of life, purposeful, intentional. What might that look like? Another scholar puts it like this: “This is the general nature of walking with God; it is a persistent endeavor to hold all our life open to God's inspection and in conformity to his will; a readiness to give up what we find does cause any misunderstanding between us and God; a feeling of loneliness if we have not some satisfaction in our efforts at holding fellowship with God, a cold and desolate feeling when we are conscious of doing something that displeases Him. This walking with God necessarily tells on the whole life and character." (Ross, 175, quoting Dods). In a word, walking with God is a relationship, a living relationship that defines the rest of one’s life. Everything that you do in your life, what you think, you say, you feel is run through the lens of a relationship with God. We see this in marriage, or we should anyway. I remember one of my friends from seminary had the opportunity to do some ministry in Africa, and as the time neared for him to make the journey over there, they called and asked if he could stay a week longer than planned. Without missing a beat, he said, “Sure!” The person on the other end of the phone was shocked that he could give an answer so quickly! He replied that he wasn’t married and thus didn’t have anyone that he needed to check with! These days he’s married with children, so that sort of thing isn’t possible anymore! Why? Because he lives his life (as he should) in relationship with his family. He doesn’t just live for himself. He takes his family into account. In the same way, we need to take God into account with whatever we do. What does God think about that new job, that new sport, that new schedule, that different opportunity? That is walking with God. When you separate from him, that should be apparent very quickly, and there should be a desire to quickly get back to Him. I remember once being in line with my family for a ride at Disney as a little kid. We were waiting a very long time, and I wasn’t paying too close attention to what was in front of me. I decided to give my dad a hug and wrapped my arms around the gray shirt my dad was wearing that day. The trouble was, it wasn’t my dad! It was someone else of similar height, build, and fashion sense! I realized I might have been mistaken when the man suddenly pulled away, which is what you do when some strange kid attacks you, causing me to look up and see the different face! I realized my mistake and ran back to dad (who was BEHIND me, as it turned out), and hid behind him. That’s the Christian life. We hug things that we think are right only to find that it isn’t our Father. The answer for that isn’t to run from our Father, but rather to run to Him, hide behind Him, because only there is the place of safety and hope. That’s what Enoch found, and while we aren’t guaranteed a death-free life because of it, we are going to find blessing in His presence. One scholar put it this way, “Certainly the length of a person’s life is of negligible value compared to the quality of his relationship with God” (Matthews, 315). No matter how long or short your life is, if it is close with God, it is a blessed life (Ross, 176). But there is one last break of pattern in this list. The other exception is Noah. Now, Noah eventually dies, but what makes him exceptional is his name, and the meaning of it. The word “Noah” sounds like the Hebrew word for "comfort" and implies the meaning of “rest” (Matthews, 317). Lamech knows what death is now. He's seen it first hand. By the time Noah is born, Seth has also died. Yet this is the generation that calls on the name of the Lord. And it is here that Lamech proclaims hope in the midst of death. That's the Christian response! That's not whistling in the dark, but living in the light of God's promise! There is hope! And Noah is going to proclaim that hope, literally build in that hope, when every single person on earth except his family tells him otherwise. Do you have that hope? I’m not talking about wishing that you will probably get into heaven but certain of it. Are you able to look at the world with all of its problems, disease, and death, and proclaim that your God is faithful? Some of you know the answer to that question because you’ve been taken deep in the catalog of human grief and been brought out the other side. Some of you have yet to experience that, and there is no reason to be in a hurry. If God has spared you such trial thus far, then use this time to grow closer in your walk with God. Examine yourselves to see if you are in the faith. Put your trust in Christ, repent of your sin, and find the blessing of a life walking with God. So what is our takeaway? These genealogies proclaim a faithful God that works through real people in real time.You can trust this God who rules over life and death, judgment and blessing. What difference is that going to make in your life tomorrow? Young people: spend time with our older saints who have walked with God a long time. You have a lot to learn from them. I know I do whenever I visit them. These are living testimonies of God’s faithfulness. We’ve just read about those who have already died; now study those who are still alive. Older people: They’re watching. They’re listening. Tell us what you are learning and have learned in years of walking with God. Let us hear the defeats as well as the victories. Remind us that we need to think about death; we need the reminder, but don’t you dare do that without pointing us to Jesus. Show us what it means not only to made in God’s image, but what it means to be remade in Christ’s image (Ross, 174). 
Sin is incredibly productive in its destructiveness. Sin works harder than we can imagine to make life worse. It is always looking, always on the hunt to see if it can get you into something new, something deeper, or just bring more people along with you. Today, we are going to see an example of exactly this. What we may view as an extreme example of becoming a murderer because a church service didn’t go well, is really an example of the compelling power of sin and how we ought to take it seriously. It is worth our looking at what sin is capable of so that we take appropriate action when it shows up in our own lives. If we never stare at the possibilities, we might not even know what kind of danger we are in.
It is only by knowing the seriousness of a thing do we take appropriate action to deal with it. We are going to see the awesome possibilities of sin and yet the overwhelming power we have access to in order to deal with it. Today we are going to be looking at two points: Sin desires to rule you and Sin will not rule God’s plans. Sin desires to rule you Let’s see what chapter 4 of Genesis has for us. In brief, as one commentator put it, “The subject matter of Genesis 4 is the spread of sin from the family to the society" (Ross, 152). We are going to watch sin start in one person and then make its way on down the family line getting worse and worse as it goes. But things didn’t start that way. Our chapter opens with a birth announcement: Eve has had the first baby in the world and with it the note of hope that a God is faithful to His promise. Indeed, Eve is going to have children, and she recognizes God has been good to her. The word “Cain” actually sounds like “gotten” in Hebrew, giving us the idea that Eve sees Cain as a gift. This is the way to look at children, as the Psalms will later declare that children are a heritage from the Lord (Ps 127:3). Another child is also born to her, Abel. Not much is written about him other than that he is the brother of Cain, a word that is going to show up again and again. We are really highlighting the relationship that exists between the brothers which will make the story’s conclusion all the more horrifying. No time is spent on their boyhood, as we jump straight into what they do for a living and their approach to God. One commentator notices perhaps some early hints about where the story is going by the mentioning of jobs they do, "… Cain lines up with an occupation that resulted from the fall (3:23), but Abel with men's and women's original purpose of having dominion over animals (1:28)" (Ross, 156). But where their occupations only give you a hint about their character, what really reveals their hearts is the way they worship. There are varying opinions on why Cain’s sacrifice was rejected while Abel’s was accepted. I think though that one scholar really got it right when he says, "The person is highlighted more than the offering itself. Hebrews 11:4 puts the emphasis on faith as the reason for the difference between the two offerings: 'by faith Abel offered a better sacrifice than Cain'' (Belcher, 80). Another adds, "In each case the person is mentioned before the offering, which suggests that the kind of offering is not as important to the story as the attitude of the person making the offering" (Ross, 157). Something is not right with Cain, and apparently he knows what it is. God tells him that if he does well he will be accepted (v 7), but if not, sin is crouching at the door. The word “crouching” here, actually has the idea of a wild animal lying back and resting. This doesn’t mean that it is safe, it just means that the animal can stir at any moment if opportunity presents itself (Matthews, 270). Do you all have the orb weaver spiders hanging out all over your houses yet? These spiders are so ferocious looking, just big enough to look extra dangerous (don’t worry, they aren’t—I looked it up), and build these large webs over windows and doors. When you see one out there, even though you know that it isn’t hunting you, you step into the house a little faster when the web is right there, don’t you? Heaven help you if you didn’t see a section of the web and it gets caught in your face! Ugh! Now, if you are less of a wimp than I am, imagine a black widow spider in the same position. That thing can really mess you up! That’s the image that we should think about when it comes to our sin. Sin is like that spider hanging out over the door, that snake warming itself under your porch. If you go lingering near that spot, you just might have it pounce. It might not immediately, but the longer you stay there, the more likely that attack comes. Now, many say, “What is the worst that can happen? People sin every day.” It’s true, but here is at least one example of this going very bad very quickly. The Bible jumps to when Cain goes out and kills his brother. There isn’t a lot of setup. Cain just gets Abel out into the field, presumably away from the rest of the family and kills him. One scholar put it this way: "Whereas Eve had to be talked into her sin by the serpent, it appears that Cain would not be talked out of his intended sin, even by the Lord himself" (Ross, 158, quoting Kinder, 74). Knowledge of what was right and wrong didn’t stop Cain. Direct warning from the Lord didn’t stop Cain. Cain was ready to sin, and it grew to murder. One minute Cain was going through the motions of worship (though obviously, his heart wasn’t in it), the next, he’s hiding a body. When Cain got up that day and lived his life, he looked no different than Abel on the outside. Cain was at church. So was Abel. But inside, that sin was already crouching. This problem doesn’t stop in the Old Testament, by the way. I know enough pastors and seminary professors with stories that make this one seem tame. If you’ve paid even the slightest attention to the news, you’ve got stories, too. In almost all of them, someone is saying, “How did that happen?” I’ll tell you how it happened, because it is right here in this text. Cain’s sin, and in some way or another all sin, starts as a worship problem. Cain was going through the motions, but the heart wasn’t there. When you are no longer awed by God and His Word, you are vulnerable. When you are no longer seeking God first, making Him your priority, you are in danger. When your heart is focused on something else, sin is always waiting by the door. It doesn’t give up. It’s happy to wait, to repose, to just hang out until you are ready—or rather, not ready. Not ready to resist. Not ready to kill it. God warned him! And today He warns you. Don’t play around with this stuff. People die. The text goes on, as God, the Master of the Leading Question, confronts Cain. Just like last time, God is fully aware of the situation, but listen to Cain’s response. Cain straight up lies to God and then acts like God is stupid for even asking. But Cain was his brother’s keeper. Later on in the Old Testament, rules are established for the community to band together, not tear each other apart (Matthews, 274). So far gone was Cain that he didn’t even care about the human being in front of him, much less God. Cain didn’t act as his brother’s keeper. But God will. One commentator put it this way: "It is no empty sentence that the blood of the victim cries out; there is someone there to whom it cries out" (159, Quoting Westerman, 305). Justice will not be denied for God is just. So Cain’s punishment begins. Notice that, like the snake of Genesis 3, Cain himself is actually cursed (Ross, 154). The ground was already cursed due to Adam, now Cain himself is going to be cursed so that the ground no longer works for him at all. Cain will be sent away from God’s presence, not meaning that he will go somewhere God can’t, it just means that God’s blessing presence will no longer be around Cain. Cain is obviously distressed, but he isn’t saying things like, “I’m sorry, I’ve sinned!” It is more of, “I’m afraid for myself.” It is worth noting that the Bible doesn’t record every single one of Adam’s sons and daughters (Calvin, 215), as Genesis 5:4 tells us. There will be those who will want revenge on Cain. But God is going to stop the cycle of bloodshed. Instead of allowing someone else to murder Cain, God places a mark on Cain to protect him. We don’t know what that is, but it obviously worked because Cain goes on to have descendants. Cain leaves here and goes to the land of Nod, literally “wandering.” Unfortunately, sin just doesn’t stay put. It actually continues down in through Cain’s family. At this point, we simply pause to answer an extremely common question: Where did Cain get his wife? The quick and simple answer is Cain married one of his sisters. At that time, they were the only humans around, so this was what needed to be done. Later on, God would condemn that practice for reasons beyond the scope of our time here. Anyway, we see Cain has quite a cultured family. The descendants of Cain include people who invented things like mobile ranching, metal forging, and, like, music! Things you’ve probably heard of! As one commentator put it: "These developments come from the ungodly line, which shows that unbelievers are able to understand the way the world works as established by God even while not necessarily acknowledging God as the ultimate source of these blessings. Thus, believers can learn things from unbelievers while recognizing that their faulty presuppositions will keep them from understanding many basic things about the world because they do not acknowledge God. The appropriate response is not rejection of these developments but instead we should seek to use them within the framework of believing God and giving Him the glory... The line of Cain shows technical ability but moral failure" (Belcher, 82). But by far, the most famous descendant was Lamech. The original gangsta rapper. Here, we see Cain’s evil come to be exaggerated as things go on. Here this man is perverting marriage, disregarding life, with little hope that this family is going to get any better. Sin will not rule God’s plans. We might think that the snake has dealt a brutal one-two punch. He got the first child of promise to kill the second child of promise, thus taking both out. But God is faithful. So faithful. Here God provides Eve with another son, Seth. Here, she explicitly says that God has provided me with a seed, echoing the very promise of verse 15. And to him another son was born, and this was the family who began to call on the name of the Lord, or proclaim his character and nature. In short, here comes the little line of worshippers. Seems insignificant next to the murdering founders of modern culture as we know and depend on it today, but it is with the line of Seth that hope is reborn. Cain’s line is rich, but in God’s economy, bankrupt (Ross, 166). This is our calling. In a culture that is like the line of Cain, we proclaim the name of the Lord, the true hope against our sin. One commentator put it this way: "Abel's blood, even the best and dearest, never brings salvation in the presence of God; instead it increases the burden of the curse. But Christ blood 'speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel' (Heb. 12:24). Thus the Bible speaks of two kinds of blood and their voices before God: one of these is millionfold, and its message is accusation, while the other is the blood of the One, and it brings healing." (162, Quoting Gerhard von Rad, 22.). Has that blood spoken for you? If we are honest, we are Cain in this story. Our sin killed the Innocent One, and rather than taking vengeance on us, He offers us forgiveness on the basis of that very murder. God will not be ruled by sin! So what is our takeaway? Watch for sin. It never stays small and it never stays with you. It will always travel, always magnify, unless you bring it to Jesus to kill it. Unless you are worshiping the Lord, sin will take His place. But keep worshiping God, don’t let the discouragements, pains, yes, even your own sins, keep you from lovingly treasuring Christ. Shout, if you have to, the character and nature of God to yourself, proclaim the name of the Lord to yourself, remember the gospel, and you will see sin’s grip weaken on your heart. Image by Michal Kryński |
AuthorThis is where our Pastor posts weekly sermon manuscripts and other writings. Archives
July 2024
Categories |
RSS Feed