The Bible's First Obituary

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).      

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