Author: Charlie Garrett

Genesis 6:14-22
To Build an Ark

The Bible is full of great and wonderful stories which excite our imagination, but very few of them are as memorable as that of Noah and the ark. There is almost no one who can’t repeat at least a portion of the story. At the same time as being exciting and memorable, it’s one of the first stories people discount as myth.

Mark Isaak, on his website talkorigins.org has compiled individual flood stories from Europe, the Near East, Africa, Asia, Australia, the PacificIslands, North America, Central America, and South America. In all and to date, he has 264 individual stories right there for you to read about a great flood from our past

The million dollar question is “Did all of these stories originate from a real account and devolve into various myths,” or “Did one myth evolve into many?” Which is more likely and why? Obviously, even the answer to that will be based on personal biases, but the chances of 264 individual cultures possessing a similar historical account must be more than mere chance.

In addition to direct stories, there are lots of other hints that a flood really occurred in history. The Chinese alphabet includes references to the flood as well as other accounts from Genesis even though they weren’t discovered until modern times.

In the end, we are left with hope and faith. Hope in the promises of our great and awesome Creator, and faith that His word and that these promises are true. As the psalmist said so long ago –

“My soul faints for Your salvation, But I hope in Your word. ⁸² My eyes fail from searching Your word, Saying, “When will You comfort me?” ⁸³ For I have become like a wineskin in smoke,
Yet I do not forget Your statutes”

Introduction: Whether we believe that the story of Noah and the flood is true or not is irrelevant if the story is true. One thing is sure, both Jesus and the apostles believed it was true and they spoke of Noah as a real person and the flood as a real occurrence.

Our faith in what they say is only as strong as our faith in the story they attest to. If we don’t believe in the flood, then we have no reason to believe anything else that Jesus says, nor should we believe anything else the apostles say. Peter wrote this to us –

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, ¹⁹ by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, ²⁰ who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water.” 1 Peter 3:18-20

Not only does Peter speak of Noah as real, but he speaks of the flood as real. And not just any flood, but a global flood which left only eight survivors. In the same passage, he says that Christ died for our sins and that He was resurrected by the power of God. If the flood of Noah isn’t true, then everything else Peter says is equally unreliable, including the resurrection, and we are left in a world… without hope.

The Bible is a unified whole and to disregard any part of it is to relegate the entire book to both a waste of time and an unnecessary dust collection device. So when you sit in a church with a female pastor, you alone have to justify why you’re there. When you decide to have an intimate relationship with someone you’re not married to, it’s up to you to face the Lord and explain why.

Text Verse: “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only. ³⁷ But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. ³⁸ For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, ³⁹ and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. Matthew 24:36-40

May God speak to us through His word today and may His glorious name ever be praised.

I. Building the Ark

It’s not known how Noah was told to build his ark, only that he was told to do so. But two things we know, and which are clarified in the New Testament, is that he built the ark by faith and that his instructions were because of a divine warning. Let’s read what the author of Hebrews says about it –

By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. Hebrews 11:7

A guy closing in on 500 years of age is told that the entire world would be destroyed by flood and that he needed to get ready for it. The author of Hebrews said that he was “moved with godly fear.” In other words, God had spoken and he’d best not dither in getting ready for what he was told was coming.

And today, there are jillions of people in the world today who have been told exactly the same thing – that judgment is coming. We have the same divine warning, the Word of God, and we have exactly the same choice – godly fear or dithering and denial. Either the Bible is true or it’s not… who will become the heir of righteousness in this generation?

Noah’s divine warning had arrived, alerting him to what was coming and the divine instructions are as follows –

¹⁴ Make yourself an ark of gopherwood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and outside with pitch. ¹⁵ And this is how you shall make it: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. ¹⁶ You shall make a window for the ark, and you shall finish it to a cubit from above; and set the door of the ark in its side. You shall make it with lower, second, and third decks.

So how big was the ark according to modern measurements? We have a historically reliable estimate that a cubit was from about 18 to 21 inches in length. This means that the ark was from 450 to 540 feet long, 75 to 90 feet wide, and from 45 to 55 feet high. This then would be a ship of 1.5 to 2.7 million cubit feet of space.

Anything this large would have required immense carpentry skills, even if it wasn’t lavishly fashioned. If it was only used to protect the life in it and not for any other reason, it could have been constructed as just a big box and it wouldn’t have needed sails, a rudder, or anything else. But no matter what, it would have needed to be seaworthy in construction.

The word for ark here is used 28 times in 25 verses of the Bible. It’s used in only two accounts and for two reasons – Noah’s Ark and the ark which held Moses when he was placed in the NileRiver. The word is tebah and implies a vessel of indeterminate shape, unlike the Ark of the Covenant which resembled a coffin.

In other words, it was a hollow ship made and used for people, animals, goods, etc. Beyond that, we can’t assign any particular shape to it. The shape itself is left up to the imagination of whoever is reading the story… a nice mental present from our God.

No matter what it looked like, the sizes given mean that it would have been perfectly capable of holding all of the people and animals that it was asked to hold and it would have had enough room for a year’s worth of food as well. In all, it would have been approximately 81062 tons in displacement.

This ship then would have been the largest ship built for the next 4100 years. Not until the giant metal ships of the late 19^th century would there again have been ships this large on the ocean’s waters.

Along with getting the size instructions, Noah was told to build it of gopher wood. Unfortunately, this word predates the Hebrew language and nobody is really sure what gopher wood is. A good guess though is cypress.

The word for cypress in Greek is kuparissos, or in its shortened form kupar which sounds a whole heap like gopher. This would be reasonable because cypress is a non-corruptible wood which is impervious to bugs and worms. Lots of other suggestions have been made though and just like the shape of the ark, we don’t have anything more to go on.

Noah was told to build a window for the ark. Again, there are several possibilities as to what this looked like. He was told “to finish it from a cubit from above.” Some drawings show a long raised window going down the middle of the ark, some show a raised window going along on top of the deck of the ark, and some show it being an open window along the sides of the ark.

No matter which is correct, it allowed in light, kept out the rain, and vented the entire ark of the lovely smells of life which surely wafted from its individual compartments. Also, we’ll see later that he opens the window, so we know that at least some of it was a fixed material that could open and close like we would open or close a window today.

Noah was told to cover the ark with pitch. This word in Hebrew is kaphar and gets its meaning from being a covering. Another use of this same word is when it’s used as the price of redemption. I don’t mean to stretch the meaning of the word too far, but isn’t this exactly what Noah is doing.

He was using a covering to save his life from destruction. This then might be a veiled reference to the work of Jesus, who covers us with His blood and grants us His garments of righteousness.

Finally, in the construction, Noah was told to make it with lower, second, and third decks. Some believe this is a picture of the Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but this is stretching things.

Each of the members of the Trinity are fully God, but each of the decks on the ship are only fully parts of the ship, not fully the ship. In other words, just as an egg is a bad example of the trinity, so is the concept of a ship with three decks.

A triangle isn’t a triangle if you take away one of its sides, but the ship would still be a ship if you took away one of its decks. The three decks then aren’t a picture of the trinity, but they show a wise use of the immense size of the ship. They would also have added to the structural integrity of it, and they would also allow for a logical division of the cargo she was carrying.

Looking at the construction of the ark, we can make some pertinent connections to our own lives. Noah was given some very explicit instructions about the size of the ark, the number of levels in it, the type of wood to be used, and so on. In the same way, God has given us very specific instructions for our own lives in the Bible.

We’ll see a bit later that Noah followed the instructions he was given exactly as they were received. However, there were lots of things that weren’t included in the instructions. They don’t tell what he couldn’t do, only the things he was to do. It doesn’t say that Noah couldn’t bring any personal items onto the ark, and this therefore allowed him to do it.

If Noah wanted to bring along a board game, he could have done so. If he wanted to bring his favorite orchids, then he could have brought them along too. And if Noah wanted to bring along his favorite horse drawn buggy, there was nothing to stop him.

In the same way, the Bible gives us explicit instructions for our life. There are some things we can do and some things we can’t do. Christians are supposed to marry Christians, but it doesn’t say we have to stick to any certain race, color, or hair style.

The Bible tells us that all foods are acceptable for us, but it doesn’t mandate that we eat any particular foods. In other words, I’m not forced to eat tomatoes if I don’t like them and I’m not restricted from eating alligator tail if I like that.

What we need to do then is to be obedient to do what God mandates, stay away from what God forbids, and enjoy the freedom of what is left unstated. If we can do these things, then we’re walking by faith in a world lovingly given to us to enjoy and participate in as long as it is in line with His will.

While we’re looking at the verses which detail how the ark was built, we can see that it resembles a type or picture of how God has ordained worship throughout the ages.

The ark was made of a non-corruptible wood. In the same way, the tabernacle furniture, such as the Ark of the Covenant, was made of incorruptible wood. Both of these represent the incorruptible body of Jesus Christ and they also anticipate the incorruptible nature of the church who will bear the image of Christ when He comes.

There was only one door into the ark just as there was only one door leading into the tabernacle. And in the church, which is the dwelling of the living God, there is only one way of access – Jesus Christ. He calls Himself “the door” in the Gospel of John. Our worship then is directed to Jesus Christ as the Lord of the church and the One who brings us close to our Creator.

On the ark were many types of animals and in the church there are people of every race and color and culture. There are Jews and there are gentiles – all of which are sanctified by the same Lord. In the book of Acts, Peter had a vision where he was shown a sheet coming down from heaven with all kinds of four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, creeping things, and birds of the air.

He was told to eat what he saw and being a Jew he said “no,” but God told him that he shouldn’t call anything unclean which God has cleansed. This symbolism was given as a reference to the gentile people of the world – all cleansed by the same perfect Savior. All prepared to worship the Lord in Spirit and in truth.

On the ark there were three decks with a single window on the top deck. In the tabernacle there were three divisions. The first was outer court where the sacrifices of sin were offered. The second is where the bread, menorah, and incense were offered, and the third was where God met with man.

In the same way, in our worship we start at the first deck and come to the final sacrifice – which is the cross of Jesus. It is also where we wash and are sanctified as we progress in our lives.

On the second deck we commune with God through the Bread of His Body, live in the Power of His Holy Spirit, and offering prayers to and through Him as our Mediator.

And on the third deck, we enter the most Holy Place where we commune directly with God in His presence – there the window is opened and our new lives begin in earnest. We unite directly with God through the Person of Jesus Christ in the perfect worship of purity and holiness. That day is coming for all believers who will simply, by faith, allow Jesus Christ to come in to them.

II. The Lord Has Spoken

¹⁷ And behold, I Myself am bringing floodwaters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall die. ¹⁸ But I will establish My covenant with you; and you shall go into the ark—you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you.

The floodwaters were coming because of the wickedness of man. There’s no other way to interpret this and it implies that God is behind it as a judgment. As disturbing as it may sound, nothing else can be interpreted from the disasters which happen today too – each of them is a result of and a judgment upon sin.

This doesn’t mean that good people are immune from them either, but that what happens is a result of man’s overall disobedience – whether you’re talking about hurricanes, earthquakes, or any other calamity. Let me give you one example which may help us look at disasters a little differently in the future.

The Lord has spoken in history in very specific ways and in one of them is that He has given the land of Israel to the people of Israel. America has long been Israel’s ally and defender. Many times, when we have worked to harm Israel’s rights to the land, disasters have resulted because of those policies. Here a just a few –

October 30, 1991: President Bush opened the Madrid Conference with an initiative for a Middle East peace plan involving Israel’s land. That same day, the Perfect storm hit America’s coast.

August 23, 1992: The Madrid Conference moved to WashingtonD.C. and the peace talks resumed. On that same day, Hurricane Andrew produced $30 billion in damages and left 180,000 homeless in Florida.

January 16, 1994: President Clinton met with Syria’s President in Geneva. They talked about a peace agreement with Israel that included giving up the Golan Heights. Less than 24 hours later the Northridge earthquake hit California and became America’s second most destructive natural disaster behind Hurricane Andrew.

March to April 1997: The combination of PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat touring America, and Clinton rebuking Israel for not giving away her land for peace, coincided with some of the worst tornadoes and flooding in US history. The day Arafat landed in America, powerful tornadoes devastated huge sections of the nation, ripping across Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Kentucky and Tennessee. Arafat’s American tour also coincided with storms in the Dakotas resulting in the worst flooding of the century. When Arafat finished his tour and left the US, the storms stopped.

September 27-28, 1998: Secretary of State Madeleine Albright worked on the final details of an agreement in which Israel would give up 13 percent of Yesha and the same day Hurricane Georges hit the GulfCoast with 110 mph winds and gusts up to 175; it stalled over the coast adding to the disaster.

On September 28, Clinton met with Arafat and Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House to finalize that land deal. Later, Arafat addressed the United Nations about declaring an independent Palestinian state by May 1999, while Hurricane Georges pounded the GulfCoast causing $1 billion in damage. The exact time Arafat departed the US, the storm begins to dissipate.

October 15-22, 1998: Arafat and PM Netanyahu met at the Wye River Plantation in Maryland to continue talks. On October 17, rains and tornadoes hit southern Texas. The San Antonio area was deluged with 20 inches of rain in one day. The rains and floods in Texas continued until October 22 and then subsided. 25 percent of Texas was ravaged and it had over one billion dollars in damage.

May 3, 1999:  Clinton wrote to Arafat and encouraged him about “aspirations for his own land” and that the Palestinians had a right to “determine their own future on their own land,” and that they deserved to “live free, today, tomorrow and forever.” That same day, the most powerful tornado storm system ever to hit the United States swept across Oklahoma and Kansas.

August 29, 2005: Exactly one week after Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon completed the forcible eviction of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip, done at America’s behest, hurricane Katrina struck the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama causing immense destruction. 80% of the entire city of New Orleans was left under water. This may have been the worst natural disaster ever to hit the country.

Each of these disasters cost America an immense amount of money and many lives were lost because individual foreign policy decisions that were directed against Israel’s best intentions. However, in the past three years, we have seen it become the overall policy of America to work against Israel.

Instead of individual disasters costing billions of dollars, our nation has gone into economic decline and has cost us trillions of dollars. The only way to reverse what is happening is to restore leadership to America which will support and defend Israel’s right to exist without applying pressure on them to establish a Palestinian state.

Such is the case with every disaster and calamity. They are, in the end, a result of man working against God and relentlessly rejecting Him and His offer of peace which comes by the marvelously simple demonstration of faith in Him and His work.

Going back to the Noah account, God clearly indicated that He was bringing the destruction upon the world because of man’s wickedness. It is His world and every form of life on it belongs to Him. But despite the calamity to come, God promised to establish His covenant with Noah.
This is the first time the term covenant is used in the Bible. God was going to destroy the world, but He would save Noah through the flood. Noah then was expected to obey the command and build the ark. When it was finished, he was to enter the ark with his wife, his sons, and their wives. These are the terms set out for Noah.

In other words, this covenant was binding and it was a covenant of life. But it was also a covenant of death. Noah wasn’t allowed to bring anyone else – brothers, friends, his doctor, or his lawyer. God’s covenant was established and obedience was expected.

And how does this apply to us today? Jesus established the New Covenant in His blood and it is just as binding as what God did for Noah. He has set down the conditions and all who obey it will be saved. The obvious question is, “Saved from what?” When someone comes up to you and asks, “Are you saved?” They usually don’t even know what their asking.

The impression is that “being saved” means you’re going to heaven. But that isn’t at all what being “saved” means. The term “saved” is used 106 times in the Bible and it is always used to indicate being rescued “out of something” or “from something.” Not for something.

What then does it mean to be saved? Exactly what it meant for Noah – that we won’t perish when God judges. Paul explains salvation in Chapter 5 of the book of Romans –

For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷ For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. ⁸ But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. ⁹ Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. ¹⁰ For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.

Salvation is a work of God, it is a work accomplished by God, and it is done for God’s people and no one else. The salvation is, as Paul says, from His wrath. The Bible says we are enemies of God and yet He accomplishes the work necessary to restore us to Him and then asks us to believe that what He has done will work out.

Getting saved isn’t going to heaven. Going to heaven is only a result of getting saved.

III. Two by Two

It never ceases to amaze me what hang ups people have with the Bible. One strong Christian, who is very close to me, struggles with – or at least struggled with, the notion that Samson killed 1000 men by himself with the jawbone of a donkey. Another family member says he simply can’t believe in the virgin birth.

I’ve heard people doubt that the Nile really turned to blood and others can’t believe in a literal 6-day creation. There are all kinds of things that people find too hard to stomach in the Bible.

Believers may accept the overall premise, but struggle with the details. Non-believers may reject the Bible because of the details or because of the overall premise. Jesus being the “only way” to God is a big stumbling block to many.

Recently, I had lunch with someone who was asked to talk with me about Jesus. The first thing he asked was about evolution. The next thing he brought up was that he simply couldn’t believe that Noah could bring two of every type of animal into the ark. This was the starting of his doubts… Doubts begin in all kinds of places.

¹⁹ And of every living thing of all flesh you shall bring two of every sort into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. ²⁰ Of the birds after their kind, of animals after their kind, and of every creeping thing of the earth after its kind, two of every kind will come to you to keep them alive. ²¹ And you shall take for yourself of all food that is eaten, and you shall gather it to yourself; and it shall be food for you and for them.”

While destroying the world, God was going to save the world. And Noah’s Ark was how he was going to do it. If you find it a clumsy way of doing the job, then think about it from God’s perspective. What would be the best way of accomplishing the task while maintaining faith as the overall premise of being right with Him?

If you think about it from that perspective, the ark is the perfect tool of employing His saving grace while at the same time demonstrating His righteous judgment. Just imagine the sight of Noah, working day after day in the sight of the people of the world – building a ship where there was no ocean.

And as nutty as it seemed to those around him, he was gathering animals into one location like a zoo. God directed them to him and Noah made things ready for them. Because it says the animals “will come to you” we can assume that any animals that didn’t come weren’t meant to be a part of the new order.

In other words, if there are species which became extinct at the flood, it was because they weren’t meant to continue on – possibly because they would be incompatible with the new ecosystem.

And what would prompt a person to store up food when everything went along in its normal fashion? According to Jesus’ own words, in the days before the flood people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark. But Noah, by faith, built an ark and prepared for what was yet unseen and unimaginable.

One of my close friends has all kinds of food stored up in case things go south. I know another person who has spare fish nets, guns and ammunition, tools, and other things set aside just in case the ball drops. Why are they doing this? Are they nutty survivalists anticipating the overthrow of the country? No.

They are faithful believers in God’s word who have looked around at the world today, read the prophecies from thousands of years ago, and see clearly that the time is short. Israel is back in the land and the nations are lining up against her. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what’s happening… it takes a believer in God’s word – one who lives by faith. As the Bible says –

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.

And so we too will be commended for hearing and believing God’s word; taking to heart by faith the very things that seem incredible.

When the ball does drop, they will cry for relief, but relief won’t come. Such are the workings of our righteous, just, and holy God.

IV. Noah’s Obedience

²² Thus Noah did; according to all that God commanded him, so he did.

This is our final verse today and the final verse of chapter 6. It is a verse of obedience to the Master’s word and in fact it repeats the word “did” twice in order to emphasize Noah’s obedience. God gave the instructions and Noah obeyed.

And not only did he build the ark, gather the animals, and store up the food, but he was also a preacher of righteousness during this time. We find this out in the book of 2 Peter –

“For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment; ⁵ and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly;”

During the entire time that Noah built the ark, he preached to the people of the world about righteousness and the judgment to come. And he did it by the Spirit of Christ.

However long it took to build the ark, Noah continued with his preaching. Some of the people on the earth may have responded and died before the flood just like Methuselah and Lamech, but out of everyone else, not one person was found worthy to join Noah.

And the call has been ringing out ever since – yes, there is a God, yes, He is there and has offered you forgiveness. But the call has been rejected far more than accepted. Instead of understanding the purpose of the nation of Israel and calling on Jehovah like Ruth did, most people waged war against her. And finally, even the people of Israel left behind the truth.

When Jesus came and walked among them, fewer believed and more rejected. Thirty eight years after His cross, they were overthrown and dispersed. Since that time, the church has faltered and failed to properly proclaim the word, but each generation has renewed the battle and time has progressed onward. But the world is moving further away from the gospel, not closer to it.

Enoch was taken before the flood and the church will be taken before the Day of the Lord. Noah was carried through the flood and Israel will be carried through the tribulation until Jesus reigns in her midst, leading the nations in the Kingdom Age.

Next week, we’ll look over Genesis 7:1-24, The Flood of Noah. Take time to read those verses and ponder what they have to say in anticipation of another Church on the Beach.

Noah Builds an Ark

Noah was a prophet speaking the word of the Lord
In righteousness he plead with the world’s people
But they were having fun and his message made them bored
They were all going astray, wayward little sheeple

Noah was a carpenter building an ark to keep him secure
He fashioned it from gopher wood where no ocean was found
The people thought he was nuts, oh but he was so sure
And unlike all the people, Noah wasn’t drowned

He built the ark bigger than a football field
300 by 50 by 30 was the ark’s size
Against the strongest waves this ship wouldn’t yield
And safety from the flood was his obedient prize

The ark had three decks, a window, and a door
All that hammering and cutting, must have made him sore

Noah was a farmer gathering lots of food
He stored it up for years getting ready for the flood

And while he built the ark the animals came his way
He had twos of every kind getting ready for that day

Birds and animals and creeping things to be kept alive
Each came two by two after their own kind
What about the bees? Two don’t make a hive
Maybe he brought more because he had honey on his mind

Noah did everything, just as he was supposed to do
He prepared every detail getting ready for the big day
But as he did, people mocked him and said “You’re kookoo”
But Noah kept on preaching and gathering in the hay

Noah was a man of faith living not by sight
His life is recorded as a righteous soul
Everything he was asked to do, he did just right
And so his deeds are recorded in God’s eternal scroll

It’s faith that God loves in the people of the earth
But the faith must be directed to Him and His word
It is Jesus who alone will grant you the new birth
So just like Noah, please believe the message you have heard

Hallelujah and Amen…

 

Genesis 6:5-13
Grace in the Eyes of the Lord

Grace. What is grace? It’s getting what you don’t deserve. Today we’ll see that in a world full of evil, one man was given grace. Just like Adam, every person on earth descends from this man – Noah. His story is an amazing one on many levels and hidden within the text itself is a pattern which centers on the fact that we are not forgotten by God. Even when the world is collapsing around us, He is there.

God’s eyes are always on His people and He has a plan for each of us. The hard part is to trust Him when everything else seems to be falling apart around us. The story of Noah is something we can cling to in today’s world. As the forces of the wicked seem to be winning, God has secured His faithful in an Ark which will protect them through every trial.

Introduction: Today’s verses, Genesis 6:5-13, show us God’s great displeasure at the wickedness of man and His judgment on their sins. Unfortunately, in order to see and understand God’s grace, there has to be a context in which that grace can be viewed.

This account about the pre-flood world, and many others in the Bible after the flood, are given not to depress us, but to show us that even in the midst of a world full of desperately confusing tragedies, like earthquakes or a war, God is in control and is working out a wonderful plan.

If you are just willing to stick with it, there is a ton of happy and uplifting stuff in the Bible and the beautiful grace of God is continuously evident. But the Bible is a book of truth and truth often includes painful downers.

Among Christian scholars, there’s a term known as Total Depravity which attempts to describe our state as it’s revealed in the Bible. Depravity is described and viewed differently by different scholars. And bringing this up isn’t meant to be a killjoy, but it will help you understand what the Bible teaches.

In the book of Acts, Paul explains why these things are so important – “For I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God.” In other words, we need to look at the Bible from every perspective and not only on what makes us feel happy.

If you present just a little bit of error to an uninformed person, you have them in your grasp. Do you think even one of the people who started out with Jim Jones thought that in a few years they’d be drinking cyanide in a foreign county? Of course not. No one goes out looking for destruction. Instead, it creeps in and finds its place in the uneducated.

So here we go… let’s review four different views on Depravity –

The first is known as Pelagianism, named after the 4^th century heretic Pelagius. It looks at human beings as innocent at birth and that they can obey God. This is unbiblical and it’s a heresy.

The second is Arminianism and is named after Jacob Arminius. It says humans are somewhat depraved but they can cooperate with God. Arminianism is also called semi-Pelagianism.

The third is Moderate Calvinism – a term I don’t like, so I’ll call it “biblical depravity.” This view says humans are totally depraved and that the image of God in humans is or marred. This view teaches that humans can cooperate with God.

The fourth is known as Strong Calvinism. This says humans are totally depraved and that the image of God in humans is significantly marred or even destroyed in man. It says that humans cannot cooperate with God.

Only one is right and I believe it’s the third – “biblical depravity.” There’s no use arguing with people who believe differently. People love to be wrong for a host of reasons and that’s their prerogative, but let me give you some points on the right view so we can understand what it means to be totally depraved.

Total Depravity in fallen man is extensive but not intensive. Sin is extends to every dimension of our being, including the body (we age, wrinkle up, and die because of it), the soul (our nature is sinful – we don’t need to teach children to do wrong, they already know), and also the will (we often do things we don’t really want to do because sin pulls us to the wrong option – even when we know it’s wrong.) These things are self-evident and very few would deny that this is the way things are.

Having said this, depravity doesn’t mean we are as sinful as we could be. In other words, people all around the world do good things, like helping old ladies across the road and petting puppies. We can strive for excellence and we possess dignity.

But apart from Jesus Christ we are not as good as we should be and we are not in any way able to please God with our works – the works we do are good, but because sin infects us, they are unacceptable to God – the sin must be dealt with first.

Another thing about this fallen state is that although sin does infect us and permeate us, we aren’t completely destroyed by it. In other words, we still bear God’s image. If you take Total Depravity too far, it actually eliminates the ability to be depraved at all – the very definition no longer has any relevance.

Why am I’m telling you this? Because it’s important. If you misunderstand what God is like, your interpretation about the things of God will be wrong. If you misunderstand what man is like, then your interpretation about the things of man will be wrong. And this includes our relationship with God.

The more wrong you are, the less right you are
This is just the way things are
Will your walk with God be one that’s close?
Or will your only view Him from afar?

The Italian actress Asia Argento said this about depravity – “What you might see as depravity is, to me, just another aspect of the human condition.” I had to laugh when I read that because she’s confirming what she’s trying to deny. Helloooo –

Depravity is so obvious that we can’t get away from it even when we try to get away from it.

What you might see as an apple is, to me,
Just a type of fruit that grows on a tree.

Text Verse: The righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance; He shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked, ¹¹ So that men will say, “Surely there is a reward for the righteous;
Surely He is God who judges in the earth.” Psalm 58:10, 11

May God speak to us through His word today and may His glorious name ever be praised.

I. When Judgment Falls

Last week we talked about the Nephilim – those who came from the union between the sons of God and the daughters of men. The last thought we looked at said, “Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.” The world went after hero worship rather than God worship.

The men of renown were probably little different than our movie stars of today. Although I’m not as political as some here, it’s no secret which political party most of the Hollywood elite belong to. Politics isn’t religion, but there’s a progression of both which follows inevitably when power, fame, or money is introduced into the equation. It is away from God and to that which is against God.

The more we idolize these people, the more our views about the things of God become skewed. For example, the value of human life is reduced. And also, it becomes more important to protect nature than humanity. And the concept of personal responsibility is subordinated to the collective whole.

True religion is shunned and belittled and tolerance is elevated above truth. This is just the way it is. And this is the way it has been throughout history. What is wicked is called good and what is good is called intolerant and wicked.

⁵ Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

וַיַּרְא יְהוָה, כִּי רַבָּה רָעַת הָאָדָם בָּאָרֶץ וְכָל־יֵצֶר מַחְשְׁבֹת לִבּוֹ, רַק רַע כָּל־הַיּוֹם׃

Va’yiar adonai ki raba ra’at ha’adam ba’aretz, vekhol yetser makhshebot libo raq ra’a khol hayiom (in 48 seconds)

When the church tries too hard to identify itself with the secular world, eventually only the secular world is left. When the sons of God had intermarried with those outside the chosen line, they incorporated their ungodly practices in with their own.

Today, instead of Sunday worship, we have Sunday football gatherings. Instead of mission work, we go jogging. There’s nothing wrong with football and there’s nothing wrong with jogging, but when they replace our devotion to God, then God is left out of the picture. When we leave God out, the vacuum needs to be filled with something. Jesus tells us this in a parable –

“When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ ²⁵ And when he comes, he finds it swept and put in order. ²⁶ Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first.”

After only 1550 years of man on earth, things had degraded to such an extent that “the wickedness of man was great in the earth.” But even more terrible than the actual state of things was that “every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

In other words, not only the imagination of the people was wicked, but the purposes and desires of them were too. In the Hebrew word which is used to describe this state, the object of the thought is being distinguished from the thought itself.

This might not be too easy to grasp, but a thought might have a real output or it might not but it is really evil either way. This leads to complete condemnation of the state of man and the actions of man as well. And it’s painfully evident why.

When noble and right things are set aside, like truth, dedication to God, and so on, it doesn’t matter how great are the achievements or how praiseworthy are the deeds, they are void of moral good.

If you remember, the line of Cain in Chapter 4 developed into an entire culture. It had food production, arts, and industry, and yet it was devoid of God and therefore it was only evil continually. Let’s compare it to America.

We have arts, like movies and music – in fact we export those to the world. We produce enough food to feed the world. We have industry – again, we export it to the world. All the things that the world had at this period in Genesis we have in America today and we even have enough to export beyond our borders. But just because we have a praiseworthy culture, doesn’t mean that it’s properly directed toward a relationship with God.

When the intent of our actors is to promote a secular agenda, it is evil – even though their acting may be extraordinary. When the intent of our musicians is to increase perversion, it is evil – even though their music may be complex, stimulating, relaxing, or notable in some other way.

When the intent of our government in food distribution is to promote an evil political agenda, then the fact that people are fed becomes irrelevant to the greater moral issue.

This is the state of the pre-flood world where every intent of the thoughts of the heart was only evil continually, and this is the state that America is rushing headlong into – even as we boast of the great culture we live in.

The reasons behind our actions are as important as the result of them. And God knows both intimately. As Matthew Henry wisely said it, “Wickedness is then great when great men are wicked.” Or as the ancient Proverb David quoted “Wickedness proceeds from the wicked.”

This was the state of the world before the flood, but even after the flood, in Chapter 8, we’ll read this – “I will never again curse the ground for man’s sake, although the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done.”

There was no expected improvement in man. However, a new interaction between God and man would exist after the flood. There are seven different ways that God is shown to interact with man in the Bible. Each is given in a logical progression to lead us to Jesus Christ.

In the end, what we have is a dichotomy between God’s longsuffering patience – a cup which is very deep – and man’s ability and perseverance in filling up that cup until it eventually needs to be poured out in wrath.

In Ecclesiastes 8, Solomon explains this, “Because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.”

Because God is patient and merciful and man is bent on evil, sin heaps up in a land until there is no remedy. Let stop and look at a few times this happened since the flood –

When God spoke to Abraham, He said, “Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years. ¹⁴ And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions. ¹⁵ Now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age. ¹⁶ But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” Explain

And here is the recorded fall of Jerusalem from 2 Chronicles –

¹⁴ Moreover all the leaders of the priests and the people transgressed more and more, according to all the abominations of the nations, and defiled the house of the LORD which He had consecrated in Jerusalem. ¹⁵ And the LORD God of their fathers sent warnings to them by His messengers, rising up early and sending them, because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place. ¹⁶ But they mocked the messengers of God, despised His words, and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the LORD arose against His people, till there was no remedy.

Yes, God judges sin. When the cup of His indignation is full, the only option left is for man to drink the fruit of the vine he has cultivated. Anyone who thinks God loves us more than He hates our sin, probably doesn’t realize that the road we’re heading down is one which intersects with the avenues of Judgment and Destruction. And both of these lead directly to the Hall of Justice, which is His great throne.

⁶ And the LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.

This is the first time the Bible records that God was sorry about something, or that He regretted something and the terminology leads most people immediately to think that God somehow changes either mentally or relationally toward us.

In fact, very few people can see it any other way. But the force of the statement “the Lord was sorry” needs to be drawn together from the explanation “He was grieved in His heart.”

In other words, God being sorry doesn’t presume any change in Him or in His intent. The Bible uses a human term and applies it to God so that we can understand His feeling toward sin. It’s not a changing feeling. It is His very nature being expressed in a way we can comprehend.

⁷ So the LORD said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.”

When God says, “I will destroy man” the Bible uses a term which is comparable to wiping a dish clean or erasing a chalk board. It’s a complete removal of what was so that nothing is left. God created man and He gave man dominion over the earth and its creatures and they would share in its destruction.

If you love puppies, this might sound cruel, but animals are not moral creatures. The animals were given to man and when man changed relationally to God, they fell under that relational change.

Think of it this way. Man and all of what he was given is on the positive side of God. When man’s sins heaped up, he moved to the negative side, or the judgment side, and the life over which he exercised dominion (meaning the animals) moved with him.

It might help to explain what happened with the nation of Israel in AD 70. The Jewish people were a part of the Roman Empire. When they rebelled against the Romans, the Romans came in and destroyed not only the people, but everything in the land as well.

It wasn’t Rome which changed in relation to Israel, it was Israel which changed in relation to Rome and every part of the land was affected. The emperor wasn’t affected by what happened even though he might say that he was sorry Israel was allowed to become a part of the Roman state. The change was in Israel, not Rome and likewise in the Bible, the change is in man, not God.

Man was no longer worthy of the beautiful house that was built for him and so both man and house were removed simultaneously.

II. Grace is to be Found 

⁸ But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.

Throughout the Bible, there are simple sentences inserted into long narratives which are the pivots for the narrative. This verse is one such pivot – “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.”

Destruction is promised and destruction is coming, but in the midst of it, God remembers His faithful children. And this isn’t just a story about the past. It’s relevant to us, right now, today.

The world is sliding into moral degradation and destruction is coming. We don’t need the Bible to tell us its coming, all we need to do is think it through. And we personally may not be spared the troubles and trials of all of it. But Jesus is that Ark in which we are secure, even in the most violent storms.

The Bible never promises us freedom from disaster, but we are promised that the Lord never forgets us and He is abundantly faithful in His promises. This veil of tears in which we walk is only that, a veil which must be passed through. On the other side, streets of gold and the light of glory is waiting.

Albert Barnes says “Whither grace comes there merit cannot be.” Noah didn’t earn God’s grace and neither can we. But we can receive it in advance of the time it is needed. When the whirlpool starts pulling, when the wind begins to blow, or when the tide starts to rise, those who have received God’s grace will be safely delivered beyond what is an impassible calamity for those who wouldn’t heed the word of the Master.

⁹ This is the genealogy of Noah. Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations. Noah walked with God. ¹⁰ And Noah begot three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

This marks the third genealogy mentioned in the Bible. The first was “the heavens” in Genesis 2:4 when God created man. The second was the line of Adam in Genesis 5. And now we come to the genealogy of Noah. God is working, right in human history, developing an amazing plan that began 6000 years ago and which He has carefully sculpted to show us his heart.

Noah’s genealogy is given here because he is now the central figure in the biblical story. And why? It’s because Noah “was a just man.” Of all the people on the earth, he alone was found righteous. So what made him righteous? Was it something he did?

In this case, the answer would be “No and Yes.” There’s nothing we can do outwardly to earn God’s favor. At the same time, the Bible says that righteousness comes from faith – something that springs up in the inward man.

Noah was a man of faith. He was waiting for the Messiah who would come and he believed this despite the wicked state of the world around him.

And this faith led to the second description of him, “He was perfect in his generations.” Of all the people on the earth at that time, he was the only man of faith. His perfection was granted to him by God because of his faith.

Just as we saw in Adam’s naming of Eve; just as we saw in Abel’s offering; and just as we’ll see throughout the Bible, it is faith which brings us into a close walk with God. And faith is an act of free will. Noah possessed this faith and the very next recorded thought is that Noah walked with God.

Like his great-grandfather Enoch, Noah walked with God. And you might remember that Enoch’s walk of faith is what resulted in his being translated directly to heaven without ever seeing death.

III. Yes, Even in Judgment

I know, I already said that speaking about judgment and wickedness might be a downer, but the Bible tells us to consider the whole counsel of God. Today’s verses simply include the fact that God hates sin, he hates wickedness, and he hates violence, and that these things don’t escape His notice.

There’s no way to sugar coat this without getting a coating of sugar all over it – so why bother. We’ll leave the sugar off.

¹¹ The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. ¹² So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.

In contrast to Noah of the previous three verses, the corrupt state of the rest of the world was evident. It says “the earth was corrupt before God.” This isn’t the state of the literal ground, but man who represents it. The earth, or all men, was corrupt before God, and his corruption is acted on outwardly in violence.

And this certainly included the worshiping God. They no longer “called on the name of the LORD.” Instead, they worshiped the creation or false gods, rather than the Creator. And their actions spilled out into contempt of Him. They were actively and openly defying Him to His face.

As a challenge over the next seven days, go to any news site which simply links articles from other news services, like the Drudge Report, and just read the headlines. See if what you read there isn’t represented completely and perfectly in these two verses.

Paying lip service to God in general has nothing to do with true faith. Women laying on abortion tables will go home and say how much they love God moments after murdering a child. Any politician will be glad to stand up and say “God bless America” or “I am a Christian” on the same day he votes in a bill condoning open homosexuality in the military.

And any leader can tickle the ears of the people with charming remarks about God while enacting legislation which deprives Christians of the very rights they proclaim to defend. None of this is pleasing to God.

What is stated here in Genesis 6 simply reflects the world in which we live. And the result…

¹³ And God said to Noah, “The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

Destruction – that is the inevitable result. This verse records, “the end of all flesh has come before me.” This end isn’t speaking of the destruction to come. Instead, it’s speaking of God’s tolerance of man’s actions which will lead to the destruction. A good way to understand it is to think of a rebellious teen.

When they come home late, you take away their car keys. When they do it again, you take away their car keys. The third time, you say, “This is the end.” And you take sell the car. God’s buttons had been pushed far enough and He would now act.

The entire world was to be destroyed. If Noah didn’t find grace in the eyes of the Lord, there would have been no you or me. And when the world rushes into the coming tribulation period the Bible speaks of, very few will come out at the other end.

Isaiah writes about what’s coming – “I will punish the world for its evil, the wicked for their sins. I will put an end to the arrogance of the haughty and will humble the pride of the ruthless. I will make man scarcer than pure gold…”

The Jewish historian Josephus tells us something not recorded in the Bible about God’s judgment. He says that Adam predicted that the world would be destroyed twice – once by water and once by fire. The water is coming in the next chapters of Genesis. The fire may very well be coming soon to a cataclysm near you.

IV. The Grace of our Lord is to be Found

Noah’s great-grandfather Enoch walked by faith and was translated directly to heaven. In 1 Thessalonians, Paul tells us that we should also “walk worthy of God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory.”

Two chapters later, Paul gives us immensely exciting news for those who will be alive at some unknown point in the future –

“For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. ¹⁵ For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. ¹⁶ For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. ¹⁷ Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.”

Noah was carried through the flood in an ark. Enoch was taken directly to heaven. And the other eight people from Adam to Noah died before the flood. All of them were saved from God’s judgment of the flood.

The parallel for us is this – Some Christians, the majority, will die naturally before the Lord comes. But there will be some alive before the tribulation who will be translated at the rapture just as Enoch was. After that moment, the time of tribulation will come. But Israel, like Noah, will be carried through that time just as Noah was carried through the flood.

You see, even in today’s wicked world, grace is to be found. Some people say we shouldn’t hope for the rapture because there are so many unsaved people on earth. But this is incorrect thinking. There will always be “so many unsaved people on earth.”

Until the Lord comes, we need to be about His business telling people about God’s offer of pardon. But when that trumpet sounds – and may it be soon – I will be jumping to have a head start on the rest of you. Even so, come Lord Jesus.

Grace is to be found, but better you find it now, before the time of trouble comes. Looking for grace while you’re looking for enough food to feed yourself inevitably leads to hard choices that most people will fail at.

Well, I’m done with today’s notes, but I’d like to ask you to think over one of the points I gave you earlier. I said that God’s longsuffering patience is a cup which is deep, but that man’s ability and perseverance in filling up that cup necessitates that it eventually needs to be poured out in wrath.

In the Bible, there was a garden called Gethsemane. In that garden, which mean “oil press,” the sins of the world were pressed into a cup and a Man was asked to drink it. Not just a sip, but down to the dregs. He cried out “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.”

The cup of God’s wrath which is filled to overflowing with the sins of our lives, was drained by an innocent Lamb so that we could have eternal life. Now we have only one of two choices. The first is to accept the payment He accomplished on our behalf, or the second is to meet God face to face on our own merits. The choice is ours and the choice is an eternal one.

The cup is an angry mixture of judgment and condemnation. Choose wisely.

Grace In the Eyes of the Lord

Ten generations is all it took
Until evil encompassed the entire earth
The Lord came down and He gave a look
And saw only one man of worth

The intent of the rest was evil always
And their wickedness was immensely great
So the Lord determined to end their days
Destruction would come; it would no longer wait

He was sorry that He had made man on the earth
And He was grieved in His heart that it was so
Man’s own actions are what diminished his worth
He acted out in evil as if God didn’t know

But the Lord spoke the word “I will destroy it all”
“I will utterly annihilate my beautiful blue ball”

But – But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD
Only this one man had cherished His word

Noah found grace and he would be secure
Because he had faith and he was just
The destruction was coming, this was for sure
The rest of men would return to the dust

Noah walked with God while evil did abound
The world was corrupt and violence filled the earth
It’s happening again, just take a look around
We’re rejecting the God of infinite worth

Stand fast like Noah, and have faith through it all
Your faith will deliver you when the Lord makes His call

Will you be ready to go at the rapture
Or left behind when the Lord makes that call
Jesus is coming that much is sure
Then on the world, destruction will fall

For those of us who will be gone away
In the presence of the Lord we will eternally be
I for one can’t wait for that day
All I want is Jesus to see

Just as Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, the last words of the Bible offer us the same blessing – “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.”

Hallelujah and Amen…

Genesis 6:1-4
The Nephilim

Today’s sermon is on four highly debated verses that have led to lots of anger and bitterness between opposing views. Unless you’re aware of what different people think, you might wonder what the hubbub is all about because the verses probably seem intriguing but may be a little difficult to follow. Let’s read them first and then we’ll break them down into major areas of review –

¹ Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, ² that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose. ³ And the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” ⁴ There were giants (NEPHILIM) on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.

Today we’ll look at the two most prevalent views on these verses and which one is right and why. I don’t want to sound condescending, nor do I want to malign another Christian, Chuck Missler, who puts out articles I read from time to time, but he is the one who’s chosen his side of this argument and so I’m going to stick to what he’s written because it pretty much sums up the view.

Please don’t just believe what I believe without thinking the issue through, but like all things in the Bible, there is only one truth about any relevant issue. In the end, opinions don’t matter – only what God is telling us does.

Introduction: What is the Bible about? Well, there’s no single answer to that question. It tells us the mind of God. It reveals to us the Person and work of Jesus Christ. It’s about the state of man. It shows us the way of salvation and the path to destruction. It details all kinds of things, one of them being the redemption of man.

The Bible isn’t about angels. Angels are mentioned in the Bible, but they are a secondary subject area. Rather they are participants in the overall drama. The Bible isn’t about Babylon. Again, Babylon is mentioned and is an important concept, but it’s not about Babylon. In other words, we need to keep our major and minor subject areas from getting out of sync.

One major subject area – the redemption of man – is often and unfortunately inappropriately mixed with another minor subject area which comes from the first four verses of Genesis 6. Because of this, really strange concepts are derived from here. Let’s be careful today about how we evaluate these verses and let’s keep everything in the context intended by God.

Text Verse: Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? ¹⁵ And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? 2 Corinthians 6:14, 15

May God speak to us through His word today and may His glorious name ever be praised.

I. The Sons of God, the Daughters of Men, verses 1 & 2

Before we start looking through today’s verses, we would be showing immense wisdom by going back and reviewing the previous 5 chapters to look for the progression of things. If we don’t, we’ll immediately violate the third, fourth, and fifth of our top five Bible interpretation rules – context, context, and context.

Chapter 1 gives an overall view of the six days of creation. On the sixth day, man is created, at which time God proclaimed everything “very good” or tov meod. Let’s note right here that angels are not mentioned at all in this creation account – the focus is on God, the visible creation, and man.

After noting God’s rest as being established on the seventh day, Chapter 2 becomes a detailed insert into the sixth day of creation – the creation of man, the Garden of Eden, the creation of woman and other details. As with Chapter 1, God and man are the focus.

Chapter 3 details the temptation and fall of man, the curse of the serpent, the sentencing of man and woman, and man’s exile from Eden – a ghastly business, but one which mainly focuses on man.

Chapter 4 provides insights into the birth of Cain and Abel and the murder of Abel. It then jumps directly into the account of Cain and his lineage reaching to the eighth generation from Adam. During this account, one particular name seems to appear for almost no reason at all. In verse 22, it abruptly and without explanation, says this – “And the sister of Tubal-Cain was Naamah.”

At the end of the Cain account, it suddenly shifts again – “And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and named him Seth, ‘For God has appointed another seed for me instead of Abel, whom Cain killed.’ ²⁶ And as for Seth, to him also a son was born; and he named him Enosh. Then men began to call on the name of the LORD.”

All of this details the history of man on earth and it is the focus of what we’ve read. All of it included types of the coming Christ.

Chapter 5 gives the record of the first 10 people in Jesus’ lineage, from Adam, through Seth, to Noah. This is about the history of man on earth and it is being set in direct contrast to the preceding chapter which detailed the line of Adam through Cain.

These records, genealogies, and generations have been carefully recorded for us and then strategically placed in the Bible. We’ve evaluated them in the past months and we have been shown a direct contrast between the two groups who have been highlighted.

Any attempt to insert something beyond this into Chapter 6 then would be to completely misuse the Bible. The Bible progressively reveals God’s workings in and through His creation for the good of man and towards the redemption of man.

As we saw, the gospel is recorded in the names of the first 10 people from Adam to Noah. We’ve also seen the doctrine of Divine Election begin in the Bible where God chooses the second of something over the first of something. This pattern will continue throughout the Bible and will become as clear as crystal even before we leave Genesis.

We’ve been introduced to the concept of acceptance by God being based on faith and not works. We’ve also seen God’s mode of salvation – it is initiated by Him and it is completed by Him and everything in between is a gift from Him. All of these concepts and many more have been pulled out of just the first five chapters.

Ch 6 Verse 1 –¹ Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, ² that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose. 

As I said, the only way to properly analyze these two verses is to look to the preceding chapters. If we attempt to insert anything except what has been presented by God, and very detailing at that, then the rest of the Bible will be completely up to our own whims and desires. We have departed the presence of the Lord and have gone into the Land of Nod with Cain – wandering aimlessly in a book without a solid and sound foundation to support us.

As time progressed, and as we’ve seen in Chapters 4 & 5, men began to multiply on the earth. The only names recorded so far are the only ones relevant to the big picture, but there were many more born. Remember what each account in Genesis 5 said, “…and this person had sons and daughters.”

Based on the number of years recorded and the age to which people lived, there could have been hundreds of millions or even billions of people on earth and yet only 27 are mentioned.

In what is also obvious and in repetition of other verses, it says, “…and daughters were born to them.” Yes! Men and women, being born, living, marrying, and dying. All the things that continue even to this day.

None of verse 1 has provided any difficulty to scholars of the Bible, but all of a sudden, we enter verse 2 and the over-excited mind and the unclear thinking of sensationalism steps in to divide the sea of reason.

On the right are the waters of drawing out from context to interpret the Bible and on the left is the sea of insertion usually in the deep waters of the extra-ordinary. We’ve come to the dividing chasm and we have to decide which sea we will dive into.

…that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose.

We’ve arrived and we need to decide. Now is the time! How we perceive the rest of the Bible concerning the redemption of man, prophecy, the classes of species God has made, whether the Bible stands alone or not, and a host of other issues revolves around the four words – “the sons of God.” Who are the sons of God?

Remember what I already said – “Inserting anything beyond what is given in the first 5 chapters would be to completely misuse the Bible. The Bible is a progressive revelation of God’s workings in and through His creation for the good of man and towards the redemption of man.”

“The sons of God” must, by default, have been mentioned in the preceding 5 chapters, or explained in detail right here, or we are inserting presuppositions and not drawing out conclusions. Who are the “sons of God?”

We’ll stop pursuing the correct answer for now and go to a completely different view than the right one and then refute what is presented. I personally don’t believe this is necessary based on the concept of full and progressive revelation, but if you knew how many people believe the wrong thing based on the term “the sons of God,” you would agree that we need to pursue this.

As I said, probably the most noted and vocal proponent of the wrong view is Chuck Missler whose ministry is known as Koinonia House. Here is what he says about the term –

The term translated “the Sons of God” is, in the Hebrew, B’nai HaElohim, “Sons of Elohim,” which is a term consistently used in the Old Testament for angels, and it is never used of believers in the Old Testament. It was so understood by the ancient rabbinical sources, by the Septuagint translators in the 3rd century before Christ, and by the early church fathers. Attempts to apply this term to “godly leadership” is without Scriptural foundation.

His footnote cites – Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7 Then speaking of angels he says “where they are in existence before the creation of the earth.” And… “Jesus also implies the same term in Luke 20:36.”

If you went to this particular article and read this, you might be convinced that Genesis 6 must be talking about angels. I mean, the term (as he says) is used “consistently” in the Old Testament for angels… it must be that then. This is, unfortunately rather dishonest, particularly when one refers to the footnote. There he cites the New Testament Greek, but only when it fits his purpose.

What he fails to note is that the New Testament uses the same term “sons of God” four more times and it is always referring faithful believers. Even in Jesus’ own words –

Blessed are the peacemakers,
For they shall be called sons of God.

Throw in the term “children of God” and you have 10 more times. Throw in variations of “children of God” and you have even more.

Even the very verse which Missler cites from the New Testament doesn’t at all agree with his own presentation. He cited Luke 20:36. Let’s read it, “But those who are counted worthy to attain that age, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage; ³⁶ nor can they die anymore, for they are equal to the angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.”

His inclusion of this verse has two errors. First, it never says we will be angels. It says we will be “equal to the angels.” But the text explains what that means – they won’t marry, nor can they die anymore. Being like the angels simply means that we won’t marry and we will be aeveternal – having a beginning, but no end.

Secondly, being a son of God from a human perspective means that we are “sons of the resurrection.” This
means that any human – ever – who is saved is, by default, a son of God – just as Paul and John speak of in their letters. Missler has made a category mistake by equating sons of God with angels in this passage from Luke.

Going back to Genesis 6, I said earlier that we should analyze this based on what has already been presented, unless something new is fully explained when presented.

The term “sons of God” is given only three other times in the Old Testament– as Missler noted, all in the book of Job. When you read this, you can easily infer that is speaking of angels.

Missler says that “sons of God” is “a term consistently used in the Old Testament for angels,” but it is really mentioned in only one other context – Job. This is sly because he is elevating one context – that of Job – above another, that of Genesis. And Job comes after Genesis – it is not progressive revelation if one cites Job first.

One word can have a zillion meanings and its meaning and translation must always be based on the context. There is no way we could get “angels” out of the context of Genesis 1 through 5.

And finally, let’s go to Deuteronomy 32:8 which Misseler speaks of when he cites the Greek translation, the Septuagint – “When the Most High divided their inheritance to the nations, When He separated the sons of Adam, He set the boundaries of the peoples According to the number of the children of Israel.”

When I teach a Bible class, I bring up the same points time and again. One of them is to either skip over commentaries completely or to take them with a complete grain of salt. We don’t establish doctrine on what other people say. Another thing I tell them is to always read the footnotes. Footnotes aren’t commentaries, but they provide important insights into a variety of things.

In the case of Deuteronomy 32:8, other versions say “angels of God” instead of “children of Israel” and some others say “sons of God.” In all, there are differences across the board from ancient Hebrew and Greek versions and even to the oldest Latin versions.

That’s a big mess…what does that mean? Well, one thing is for certain, the term “sons of Israel” was believed by someone to mean the same thing as “sons of God.” And it’s most likely that others took the term “sons of God” to mean “angels of God.” Which is it?

When you’re looking at a poem like the one in Deuteronomy 32, you can’t take just a single verse and come to a conclusion, but when you look at the whole thing, it’s apparent that it is speaking about men, not angels. And in fact, in verse 3, when speaking to Israel, it says “Is He not your Father, who bought you? Has He not made you and established you?”

As you can see, even in Deuteronomy, the concept of the Father/son relationship is based on God’s people whom He has sovereignly chosen and redeemed. These are the sons of God, just as they are throughout the entire New Testament, without exception, as well.

Missler has done a lot of typing to convince people of his position, but none of what he says makes sense based on the overall premise of the Bible. In one of his papers he says this – “It should also be pointed out that most conservative Bible scholars accept the “angel” view. Among those supporting the “angel” view are…”

He then cites a bunch of names who agree with him.  Does anyone know what’s wrong with that? This is known as the Fallacy of Ad Populum. In other words, just because someone notable or a large group of people believe something, it doesn’t make it right. It just means that there are a lot of people, including some of famous people, who are wrong. We don’t base truth on polls.

In fact, Missler makes so many fallacies, that if you know how to detect them, you can pare down his article to a few incoherent sentences. We could go on for hours with the breakdown in his argument, but we’d be here all night.

There are only two options for who the sons of God are based the preceding chapters – either the line of Cain or the line of Seth, not angels. And the Bible has already shown us which, the line of Seth.

The main focus of Chapter 4 is the line of Cain, but then at the very end, it moves to the line of Seth. And immediately it says, “Then men began to call on the name of the LORD.” It should be painfully clear, that calling on the name of the Lord is being equated with the line of Seth in contrast to that of Cain.

So let’s finish the verse before we move on – “…the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose.” 

The sons of God, meaning the line of Seth, “saw the daughters of men…” We are one species with two genders. Genesis has already taught that. The problem isn’t that angels are intermarrying with humans. The problem is that “the sons of God” are marrying women based on their beauty, regardless of who they marry.

Let’s go back to Genesis 4 and that most peculiar verse – “And the sister of Tubal-Cain was Naamah.” If you can reach back into your memory, I told you that Naamah means “loveliness.” The meaning of her name explains the seemingly purposeless addition of her into the account. Out of the countless people who lived on earth, only 27 were mentioned in 1656 years before the flood.

The “sons of God” saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful and they intermarried.

In Chapter 4 we saw in the line of Cain, Naamah’s father was named Lamech and in Chapter 5 from the line of Seth, Methuselah’s son was named Lamech. Both Naamah and Methuselah are the 8^th generation from Adam and, although the Bible doesn’t say this, the implication is that Methuselah could have named his son Lamech after the name of his father in-law.

Throughout the Bible, the subject of inappropriate intermarrying is brought time and time again. Abraham sends for a wife for Isaac from his kin. Esau displeases his parents by marrying Canaanite women. Later the Israelites are forbidden from intermarrying with the Canaanites and several other surrounding nations.

Solomon intermarried with women from many nations and it says “that his wives turned his heart after other gods; and his heart was not loyal to the LORD his God.” The great prayer of humiliation given by Nehemiah is based on intermarrying with pagans. And as if we needed any more proof that this is what the Bible is trying to teach us, all we need to do is go to Malachi and read the reason given as explicitly as it can be –

Because the LORD has been witness Between you and the wife of your youth, With whom you have dealt treacherously; Yet she is your companion And your wife by covenant. ¹⁵ But did He not make them one, Having a remnant of the Spirit? And why one? He seeks godly offspring. Therefore take heed to your spirit, And let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth.

This is the lesson of the Bible for faithful believers. Like bookends on the Old Testament, from Genesis to Malachi, God expects his people to remain within the godly line he has ordained. And this applies to the New Testament too. Twice Paul tells us so –

A wife is bound by law as long as her husband lives; but if her husband dies, she is at liberty to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord. 1 Corinthians 7:39

And we read this from Paul’s hand as well –

Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? ¹⁵ And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever?

In fact, this was our text verse and it perfectly resembles what was going on in Genesis 6. Paul even uses the same thought process here. The sons of Christ and the sons of Belial, or the devil – which is the line of Cain as is born out even to the last books of the Bible.

II. A Shorter Existence, verse 3

³ And the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.”

In verse 3, we see a sad commentary (like we need anymore…) on the existence of man. Before the flood, men really did live to great ages. If you don’t believe this, then you have no reason to believe the promises about the future from Isaiah’s own pen –

²⁰“ No more shall an infant from there live but a few days, Nor an old man who has not fulfilled his days; For the child shall die one hundred years old, But the sinner being one hundred years old shall be accursed. ²¹ They shall build houses and inhabit them;They shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. ²² They shall not build and another inhabit; They shall not plant and another eat; For as the days of a tree, so shall be the days of My people, And My elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands.

Because man shunned God’s will, He promised to cut their years approximately 8-fold, to only 120 years. Eventually, this was cut by about another 3^rd, so that the psalms record our years are 70 and if we’re strong enough, even to 80. Nothing has changed since Moses wrote that Psalm 3500 years ago.

The reason our years were cut is because even in 70 or 80 years we can accomplish immense wickedness. Imagine people in their hundreds, closing in on their thousands.

III. The Nephilim, verse 4

⁴ There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. 

The term translated “giants” is actually Nephilim and is often simply transliterated that way, such as in the NIV. Nephilim is almost exclusively used by people who believe in angels sleeping with men because it sounds so much cooler.

The term Nephilim isn’t some extra special word, it’s just a word. It means “fallen ones” and they were giants. This is explained in the only other occurrence used in the Bible, which is Numbers 13:33 – “The land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. ³³ There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”

We need not search for any other explanation than “giants” as so many people try to do. The description is given right here. There are other accounts of giants in the Bible as well and descend from other groups. Each is titled by the group it descended from – Anakim, Emim, Zamzummim, Rephaim, and even the Phlishtim, or Philistines, who Goliath belonged to.

So who were these giants and where did they come from. I hate to tell the sensationalists, but this isn’t a hard nut to crack. Even in modern times, we’ve had exceptionally large people around us. Many are genetic defects, but many are the result of purposeful breeding. The verse back in 6:2 gives us the answer –

…that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose.

Things are absolutely no different now than they were then. How many times do two good looking people get married and those around them say, “they will have beautiful children” or “their son will be a basketball player.” I’ve heard it a million times. Why? People know what the results of two good sets of genes will be.

We can do the same with plants, trees, and animals. Through advances in DNA, we have identified 14 original known breeds of dogs in past history. Go back a little earlier and there is one set of dogs, created by God. Now, there are over 400 breeds and we pop out new ones every year. We breed them into the massive Mastiffs that can reach almost 300 pounds and we breed them into tea cup Chihuahuas that weigh only ounces.

When people lived to 900 and more years of age, they could – within only a couple generations – produce immensely large humans. Even now, when we live to only 70 or so, world records in athletics are broken all the time because people are being engineered for physical greatness.

The Nephilim are large because they were bred large, at the expense of faith. Even to this day, families choose the road of success and exceptional gene development over godly husbands and wives. This then, is the explanation of these giants.

It is the only avenue which rightly handles the Bible based on the first five chapters of progressively revealed thought from God and it simply takes proper handling of what has been presented.

When it says, “these were the mighty men of old, men of renown” it is a statement that could be said of any of our finest military personnel, our greatest basketball players, or any other person the world idolizes for their high breeding and superior abilities. The commentary then matches the commentary of today – a godless world which looks to the flesh rather than to God.

Here is Missler’s misguided thoughts on this matter – “The most fatal flaw in the specious “Sethite” view is the emergence of the Nephilim as a result of the unions. (Bending the translation to “giants” does not resolve the difficulties.) *of course it does, Chuck, because Nephilim are explained as “giants” helloooo* It is the offspring of these peculiar unions in Genesis 6:4 which seems to be cited as a primary cause for the Flood. *This is absolutely false. The Bible says exactly why the flood came, “the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”* Procreation by parents of differing religious views do not produce unnatural offspring. *No, but selective breeding does.* Believers marrying unbelievers may produce “monsters,” but hardly superhuman, or unnatural, children! *Nothing – not a word in the Bible says they were either superhuman, or unnatural.* It was this unnatural procreation and the resulting abnormal creatures that were designated as a principal reason for the judgment of the Flood. *Another complete falsity and one which fails to take into account Nephilim after the flood.*

In other words, if the Nephilim appeared after the flood and destroying them was the purpose of the flood, then the purpose wasn’t met by God at all.

Seeing as how we’re looking over this issue, I’d like to cite a few other references from the Bible which Missler uses. We can’t go over them all, but each one of them has two possibilities. The first option would be to take the Bible as the account of fallen man and God’s plan of redemption for him.

The second is to get into the mystical, irrational, and sensational in an attempt to seem authoritative on matters which require higher thought and deeper understanding than others can somehow attain.

Daniel 2:43 speaks about the intermingling of certain groups and is used as a source text for inter-class breeding – either with angels or aliens. However, you will never see the NIV translation used here because it completely destroys their case –

As you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay. Daniel 2:43 (NKJV)

And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay. (NIV)

The book of Jude has these verses, which must be misapplied in order to come to meet their conclusions, “But I want to remind you, though you once knew this, that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. ⁶ And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day; ⁷ as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.”

Missler will take verse 6 which is speaking about angels leaving their proper domain, and ties it with verse 7 which speaks of the sexual sins of Sodom and Gomorrah. But, these are two examples in a litany of examples and comingling them would be no different than comingling the angels with verse 5 which concerns the disobedient Israelites in the desert. It is bad handling of the Bible – plain and simple.

The entire premise of what Jude is saying is that disobedience by mingling believers with non-believers is what brings God’s wrath.

I could go on all day with Missler’s misguided missives, but let me give one more quote from him and then end –

If one takes an integrated view of the Scripture, then everything in it should “tie together.” *As if his view ties anything together. It is convoluted and unreasonable, especially when we consider the natural progression of the first five chapters, which is all that is thus far given by God.* It is the author’s view that the “Angel View,” however disturbing, *I would say “however goofy”* is the clear, direct presentation of the Biblical text, corroborated by multiple New Testament references *it is completely, 100%, unsubstantiated from the NT references and only taking things completely out of context and leaving out what is relevant can this view hold any water at all* and was so understood by both early Jewish and Christian scholarship; *never mind discussing the fact that other early Jewish and Christian scholars have said your view is wrong* the “Sethite View” is a contrivance of convenience from a network of unjustified assumptions antagonistic to the remainder of the Biblical record.

*In fact, there is nothing contrived about following the natural progression of the revelation given up to chapter 6 and then seeing that it is completely supported by the rest of the Bible. We don’t introduce presuppositions into the Bible and then look for ways to justify them. Instead, we allow the Bible to progressively reveal itself and then we look to the rest of the Bible to support what has naturally and obviously been revealed.

Ok, so I’ve been flapping my gums for the past 35 or 40 minutes about something that most people could give diddly about. The question is then, “How do these verses point to Jesus?”

Well, let’s remember that Jesus is the God/Man. He was born of a virgin and the Holy Spirit. God is the Creator and He designated that things reproduce after their own kind. We don’t have dats, because dogs don’t breed with cats. We don’t have Melephants, because mice don’t breed with elephants. We don’t have Zales because zebras don’t breed with whales. This is how God created things – to produce after their own kinds.

There is one exception to this – the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. He is the God/Man.

There is nothing mentioned concerning the reproduction of angels, and in fact the Bible supports the notion that they don’t reproduce. The account today is given to us to show that God expects us to keep ourselves pure and free from defiling ourselves by marrying outside of the community of believers.

When men began to reproduce for the sake of breeding larger, stronger, or more beautiful people, it led to wickedness, idolatry of the flesh, and a rejection of God. God wants us to remain dependent on Him, not on man. He wants our devotion and obedience and not the worship of sports heroes.

The incarnation of Jesus was to show us the immense love God has for us and that we can trust in His Son. While our sports stars die and return to the dust, Jesus remains on His throne, having been resurrected after His cross to an everlasting and indestructible life.

This is the message of Jesus Christ and the love of God which is found in Him. Let us be faithful to our spouses, marry within the community of believers, and trust that Jesus alone has something better for us at the end of our trail.

The Nephilim

Man has multiplied on the earth
And daughters were born to them too
We look to their size and strength to evaluate their worth
And to the ladies curvy shapes,,, whoo hoo

We give our sons, raised in the godly home
To women who will give us baseball heroes
Never do their eyes to the Bible roam
Instead in Bible quizzes, we have to hand out zeroes

The boys choose any girl they like
It doesn’t matter if she worships beelzebub
As long as she can run, jump, and ride a bike
He is happy to buy her dinner, maybe an Italian sub

But the Lord isn’t pleased with this type of mingling
And He won’t always strive with the rebellious man
Chasing after what gives physical tingling
Is as worthless as an empty tin can

Our days are limited to less than before
Because with many years comes the multiplication of sin
But even now in years ten and threescore
We can still really do ourselves in

We produce giants for the courts and the field
And we look for super-models, our children to yield

They will be mighty men and super women you see
In another generation, we’ll have super bowl heroes
Never mind their soul that lasts for eternity
Never mind their Bible scores, which are all zeros

I would suggest, before you decide
To give your children an unholy bride

That you would consider what displeases God
And keep away from banishment to Nod

Instead, be faithful as His Son was to You
He gave His life – Yes, He is faithful and True
Cling to the cross and your average wife
Or your bushy bearded husband, for all of your life

Handsome or beautiful, or not, they reflect God’s Son
And are worth more than a million super bowl heroes
Eternity waits for you to have fun
So keep yourself from the Bible test zeroes

Hallelujah and Amen.

Next week we’ll look over Genesis 6:5-13 – To Build an Ark

Genesis 5:1-32
The Generations of Adam

Introduction: I suppose most of you have heard of the rapture. Has anyone here not heard of it? I would guess that some of you know without even looking that the rapture is described in 1 Corinthians 15, 1 Thessalonians 4, and Revelation 4:1. I bet fewer of you know that the rapture is actually prefigured several times in the Old Testament. One of those times is in Chapter 5 of the book of Genesis, right in a line of names and ages of some of Adam’s descendants.

After the fall and the record of Abel and Cain, the first nine generations of Adam are recorded in Genesis 5 and end with the 10^th generation – that of Noah. The flood of Noah came in the year 1656 Anno Mundi and other than Genesis 1-5, nothing is recorded for that entire period of time.

Believe it or not though, there could have been a billion or more people alive by the time of the flood. That’s actually a pretty sad commentary on how things went. Out of maybe 1 billion or more people we have a record of only 27 people given by name. All the rest were lost in the ever consuming flame of time.

We looked at the line of Cain in Genesis 4, and in Genesis 5 we have the line of Seth, the godly line which will eventually lead to the Messiah. These people were selected by God and for His reasons alone and very little is said about them, but today we’ll look for some hints as to who they were and what they mean in the overall picture of the Bible concerning the coming Christ.

Text Verse: And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said:

“I will dwell in them And walk among them. I will be their God, And they shall be My people.”2 Corinthians 6:16

May God speak to us through His word today and may His glorious name ever be praised.

I. In the Image of God

¹ This is the book of the genealogy of Adam. In the day that God created man, He made him in the likeness of God.

The genealogy, or toledot, of Adam. One of the most interesting studies I’ve ever done is on this word toledot or “generations.” The first time the word is used is in Genesis 2:4 where it says “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,…”

The word toledot in Genesis 2:4 is speaking of man while in the Garden of Eden. Its spelling is tav, vav dalet, lamed, vav, tav. In other words, there are 2 vavs in the spelling. The next time the word is used is here in Genesis 5:1, after the fall of man, and its spelled with only one vav. The second vav fell out of the word just as man fell in the garden.

Vav is the sixth letter of the Hebrew aleph-bet and it is pictured by a tent peg and the number 6 in the Bible represents “man” such as man being created on the 6^th day. So you see “fallen man” is what’s being relayed here.

The word toledot is used 39 times throughout the Old Testament at various times when referring to different groups of people, but it is never spelled with two vavs again until the end of the book of Ruth. In every occurrence between Genesis and Ruth one or both of the vavs is missing. So why is it that not until the end of Ruth that it’s spelled with two vavs again?

The reason is that in Ruth, the lineage of King David is given. Up until that time, God was working through various people and had made various covenants with them. These were to Noah, Abraham, and Moses. The final covenant was to David.

At this time, the second vav was reintroduced to the word toledot to indicate that the restoration of fallen man would come through the line of David and this was the final peg in the tent of God’s covenants before the coming Christ.

As I mentioned, there are 39 toledots in the Bible which correlates to the 39 books of the Old Testament.

God never forgets the work of His hands and He will never forget you. If you are born again through Christ, you are no longer fallen, but complete and alive forevermore. The likeness of God that was given at the creation was lost, but that likeness is restored in us when we call on Jesus as our Savior.

That’s what these little hidden things in the Bible are telling us. Paul explains this mystery in 1 Corinthians 15 –

“As was the earthly man (that’s the fallen man, the man without the vav), so are those who are of the earth (there is something missing); and as is the man from heaven (full and complete), so also are those who are of heaven. ⁴⁹ And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man (fallen and earthly), so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven (restored and complete).”

I don’t know if that excites you, but to me it is sweeter than honey to my taste.

² He created them male and female, and blessed them and called them Mankind in the day they were created.

This verse and the one before are echoes, if you remember, from the creation account and have been repeated here to remind us of our fallen state. We were created in original perfection, but the death and trials which came about at the fall were caused by our own violation of God’s command and didn’t happen accidentally.

Man wasn’t – and then he was. Adam had no earthly parents, but He was created by God on the sixth day and with his woman they were blessed by God. Because they were created in God’s image they had no natural or moral evil. These came about at the fall.

The next verses will give a record of the names, years, and deaths of the sons of Adam, and so before those are given, we’re reminded of the way things originally were in order to show us the justice and sovereignty of God in His dealings with man.

³ And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. ⁴ After he begot Seth, the days of Adam were eight hundred years; and he had sons and daughters. ⁵ So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died.

Seth born 130              Appointed

These three verses tell us lots of things. It begins the record of the age of the earth. Adam was created on the 6^th day which is a literal day. In other words, the world was 6 days old when Adam was created. His son Seth is born at his 130^th year and as we follow the years in the Bible we can determine the age of the world.

During those 130 years, Adam had Cain, Abel, and at least one daughter. We know this because Cain had a wife. It’s likely that they had lots more children by the time Seth came around, but Seth is the focus of the story – no one else bears on the coming Christ.

These verses also tell us that Adam had a son in his own image. In other words, the son born to Adam is a fallen man. We didn’t revert back to a sinless state, but instead we bear the fallen image of Adam. There is no such thing as the inner divine spark which other religions speak of. We are earthly, we are mortal, and we are sold under sin – which means we are obliged to die.

This fallen state then is in each human since Adam. We know this from these three verses. We can also tell that all Adam’s sons are destined to die just as Adam died. He died in the 930^th year of his life and in the 930^th year from creation.

⁶ Seth lived one hundred and five years, and begot Enosh. ⁷ After he begot Enosh, Seth lived eight hundred and seven years, and had sons and daughters. ⁸ So all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years; and he died.
⁹ Enosh lived ninety years, and begot Cainan. ¹⁰ After he begot Cainan, Enosh lived eight hundred and fifteen years, and had sons and daughters. ¹¹ So all the days of Enosh were nine hundred and five years; and he died.
¹² Cainan lived seventy years, and begot Mahalalel. ¹³ After he begot Mahalalel, Cainan lived eight hundred and forty years, and had sons and daughters. ¹⁴ So all the days of Cainan were nine hundred and ten years; and he died.
¹⁵ Mahalalel lived sixty-five years, and begot Jared. ¹⁶ After he begot Jared, Mahalalel lived eight hundred and thirty years, and had sons and daughters. ¹⁷ So all the days of Mahalalel were eight hundred and ninety-five years; and he died.

We just read through 12 verses. This is more combined verses at one time than at any point since we started our tour of Genesis. If we keep up this pace, we can be done with Revelation Chapter 22 verse 21 by the year 2097. Be here each week until then.

Here are a few facts about these four men –

Seth died 1042
Enosh 235/1140                                       Mortal
Cainan 325/1235                                      Possession
Mahalalel 395/1290                                 Praise of God
Jared born 460                                         Going Down

The age old skepticism about the accuracy of the Bible finds no greater place to begin than right in these verses. Who lives to 900 years of age? It’s simply incredible for us to imagine. And yet we can’t insert our current situation into what it might have been like at some other time.

The heaviest reptiles on earth, Komodo Dragons, only get to be about 300 pounds now. The longest – the Australian Saltwater Crocodiles – get to be about 23 feet long. If we used Bible skeptic’s logic about the age of man in the same way as we do about dinosaurs then we’d never believe they existed.

But we have all the assurance of the archaeological record to support dinosaurs that were a little bit bigger than reptiles now. The Bruhathkayosaurus which lived in the area of Tamil Nadu, India grew to 145 feet in length and weighed 220 tons. Yes, that is 440,000 pounds – the weight of a 747. If we had no bones to prove this, it would be far more incomprehensible than a man living to 900 years of age.

The only difference is that age doesn’t leave any archaeological footprint, like dinosaur bones. But man does leave his stories in writing. This chapter of Genesis mentions the book of the genealogy of Adam. The Hebrew term sepher indicates that this written document served as a basis for the writings of Moses.

There really is no problem with the long lives recorded here. If reptiles grew as big as they did, then the world was obviously a completely different ecosystem before the flood. The world was probably smaller in size which led to higher atmospheric pressure.

Plus there was a canopy known as a raquia above the earth which was probably crystalline in nature. This would have kept out any harmful radiation. All things considered and taken in context, there is no reason at all to dismiss the accounts and every reason to believe them. Yes men lived 900 years.

It’s even more certain that the account is true because the ages of men after the flood continued to get progressively shorter as the generations came and went. This occurred right up until the average lifespan of people today which has remained basically the same ever since.

The Jewish historian Josephus says this about the sons of Adam from Seth to Noah at the time of the flood –

“But let no one, upon comparing the lives of the ancients with our lives, and with the few years which we now live, think that what we have said of them is false; or make the shortness of our lives at present an argument, …”

Josephus claims that the astronomical calculations and discoveries used at his time came from men who lived long enough to accurately understand the greater cycles of the universe. If this is true, then the highly advanced star charts, such as the Mayans used can be attributed to the careful work of these pre-flood people.

Whether any of this is true or not is hard to say, but the Bible does bear out right in Genesis 1 that the stars and other heavenly lights are meant for our knowledge in “signs and seasons.”

II. Walking with God

¹⁸ Jared lived one hundred and sixty-two years, and begot Enoch. ¹⁹ After he begot Enoch, Jared lived eight hundred years, and had sons and daughters. ²⁰ So all the days of Jared were nine hundred and sixty-two years; and he died.

²¹ Enoch lived sixty-five years, and begot Methuselah. ²² After he begot Methuselah, Enoch walked with God three hundred years, and had sons and daughters. ²³ So all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. ²⁴ And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.

Jared died 1422
Enoch 622/translated 987    Teaching
Methuselah born 687            His death shall bring (Man of the dart)

Of the ten men mentioned from Adam to Noah, only four have any particular information beyond their birth, years of life, and age at death. These four are Adam, Enoch, Lamech, and Noah. In the case of Enoch, this almost strange verse is all we have, “And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.”

If this is all we had about the life of Enoch, we’d certainly be left scratching our heads and wondering what this meant. But fortunately, this particular person named Enoch is mentioned 10 times in the Bible.

He’s mentioned 6 times here in Genesis 5 and he’s mentioned in 1 Chronicles in the historical records of man from Adam all the way through to the Jewish society of the day. He’s also mentioned in Luke 3 in the genealogy of Jesus. And there are two more times he’s mentioned – once in Hebrews and once in Jude.

By faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death, “and was not found, because God had taken him”; for before he was taken he had this testimony, that he pleased God. ⁶ But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Hebrews 11:5, 6

Here in Hebrews we learn details about Enoch that were withheld from the Old Testament. Enoch was “taken away.” He was translated from the earthly realm directly to the heavenly realm without seeing death. This makes Enoch one of only two people who never died, the other being Elijah the prophet.

Both of these men are even now serving the Lord and I believe it is they who have appeared many times in Bible history, such as in Daniel chapter 12, Acts chapter 1, and elsewhere. I personally believe they will return again during the tribulation period as the two witnesses mentioned in Revelation 11.

The Bible asks this rhetorical question in the book of Amos – “Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?” The answer is, “Of course not.” In order to walk with God as Enoch did, God must agree to the walk. In Malachi when speaking of Levi it says –

“My covenant was with him, one of life and peace, And I gave them to him that he might fear Me; So he feared Me And was reverent before My name. ⁶ The law of truth was in his mouth, And injustice was not found on his lips. He walked with Me in peace and equity, And turned many away from iniquity.”

Enoch walked with God because he was truthful, just, and he walked in peace and equity, and above all, he was a man of faith.

Like bookends on the Hebrew Scriptures, the person who walks properly with God is mentioned in the first and last books of the Old Testament. It is such a person that God loves.

If you ever want to do a wonderful study about being right with God, simply do an internet Bible search on the word “walk” and read all 384 times it is mentioned. There you will find vast treasure concerning how to live and move in the presence of God – walking in His way and in His statues.

Something interesting about Enoch walking with God – in the Hebrew it doesn’t just say he “walked with God” but that he “walked with the God” or ha-elohim. This is the first of about 400 times the Bible uses this term.

This statement separates Enoch as a man who walked rightly with the One true God. It implies that others had forsaken the God that they couldn’t see and didn’t want to believe in, but Enoch held fast by faith to the teachings of his ancestors and to his personal convictions about this unseen God.

He was translated because of this. The Bible promises a similar event for faithful believers now when we put our hope in Jesus. Do I really believe there will be a rapture – people just disappearing? Of course I do. Whether one person or millions, God is fully capable of keeping every promise just as His word declares.

The last time Enoch is mentioned is in the book of Jude – “Now Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men also, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints, to execute judgment on all, to convict all who are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.” Jude 14

Jude added in another important detail about Enoch – he was a prophet. Within a few hundred years after the creation, men of God spoke the word of God to a people who were very quickly going astray in a world run by the devil.

²⁵ Methuselah lived one hundred and eighty-seven years, and begot Lamech. ²⁶ After he begot Lamech, Methuselah lived seven hundred and eighty-two years, and had sons and daughters. ²⁷ So all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred and sixty-nine years; and he died.

Methuselah died 1656 (the year of the flood)
Lamech born 874                            Captive

You’ve probably heard the saying about some old codger, “He’s as old as Methuselah.” Well, here’s where the saying comes from. Methuselah lived to be 969 years old – the oldest person ever recorded in the annals of the world.

His name was a prophecy of the coming destruction on the world. “His death shall bring” or another translation of it is “When he is dead, it shall be sent.” However his parents knew, they knew something was coming at the time of his death. The year he died, the waters came and destroyed the world by flood.

There is another saying about an old person, “He’s as old as dirt.” In Methuselah’s case, this would be true as well. Unlike his father Enoch who was translated so that he never saw death, Methuselah died. When he did, he returned to the dust he came from.

Death for Methuselah came slowly, but it still came. Jewish writers say that he died 7 days before the flood of Noah. By just one week he was spared from the wrath which came on the whole world.

Methuselah though is looking forward to the same bright future as the faithful of all the ages – that great day of hope when Jesus Christ translates us to eternal glory.

After Methuselah, the last person to have been born before the death of Adam in this godly line was Lamech. He was born in the year 874 Anno Mundi and was the ninth man from Adam. Imagine sitting on your great-great-great-great-great-great grandpa’s lap (that’s 6 greats, a grandpa, and a dad all sitting in the same room adoring the baby!)

“Grandggggggpa, can you tell me again about the day you were put together? Did God really take out one of your ribs to make “Grandgggggg-ma Eve? Is that scar really the spot where the rib came from? Did you ask for chrome bumpers or fishing pole attachments?”

Questions like this surely brought back to Adam the painful memories of paradise lost. Life under the sun wasn’t like life under the heavens. He was the one who broke the rules. All he could do was live on, waiting to receive the final execution of his sentence given so long ago.

He was promised the dust and he knew it was where he would end. By the time he got there, death was probably a welcome guest.

²⁸ Lamech lived one hundred and eighty-two years, and had a son. ²⁹ 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.” ³⁰ After he begot Noah, Lamech lived five hundred and ninety-five years, and had sons and daughters. ³¹ So all the days of Lamech were seven hundred and seventy-seven years; and he died.

Lamech died 1651
Noah 1056                              Comfort or Rest

Eight times in this chapter the words “and he died” are recorded. Other than Enoch who went straight to glory and Noah who would continue on in the next chapter, all of these men of the godly line of Seth met their end and returned to the soil.

Lamech lived to be 777 years old and he died in the year 1651, or in the 5^th year before the flood came. Other than his grandpa Enoch who was translated, he had the shortest life span in this account. The 777 years of his life though are a testament to the divine grace of being taken home before the coming destruction.

Isaiah has this to say about the death of those who live for God –

The righteous perishes,
And no man takes it to heart;
Merciful men are taken away,
While no one considers
That the righteous is taken away from evil.
² He shall enter into peace;
They shall rest in their beds,
Each one walking in his uprightness.

Sometimes we don’t understand why a child dies, or we lose a close friend at the prime of life, but God does. It’s possible that God looked into the future and saw some evil that otherwise would have happened to them and so He called them home.

As with all things, if we can truly trust in God and accept that He is sovereign, then we can rest easy that His plan is being perfectly executed for the people He has created and called.

In the case of the rapture, many sons will come to glory in the twinkling of an eye. Whether they have gone before us waiting to be wakened from their grave, or whether they will still be walking the highway of life at that moment, when the trumpet sounds, we will be forever in His glorious presence, perfectly content and forever praising the God who rescued us from ourselves.

In this account it tells us why Lamech named his son Noah, “This one will comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD has cursed.”

The name Noah means specifically “rest” or “comfort.” Lamech was only 182 years old when he had Noah, but he was already worn out from the toilsome existence of life. The curse which came at the beginning continued on year after long year and generation after generation.

More especially though, it’s likely that the name Noah is an anticipation of what he would be, just like the name of Methuselah was a prophecy. As we saw, Methuselah means “His death will bring.” Because of the timing of Noah’s life in conjunction with Methuselah’s, his parents may have thought he would be the promised Messiah who would give the rest they had waited for.

Man was promised a Deliverer who would destroy the devil and return him to God’s rest and the naming of Noah may have anticipated that hope.

III. God with Man

³² And Noah was five hundred years old, and Noah begot Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

Shem – Name / Fame
Ham – Passion / Hot
Japheth – Enlargement / Widely Extending

This is the final verse of chapter 5 and it sets the tone for the coming account. Noah had three sons starting in his 500^th year. Shem is listed first, but he wasn’t the firstborn. It says in Genesis 11 that he was 102 years old after the flood and if Noah had his first son at 500, then the firstborn was Japheth because Ham is called the youngest of the brothers in Genesis 9.

Already we’ve seen one favored second son – Abel who was killed by his brother. He was replaced by Seth who became the head of the line of God’s chosen people. This is the second favored son – Shem, who is put ahead of Japheth his older brother. It is Shem who was an ancestor of Jesus Christ.

This pattern will continue on through the Bible right to the very end and pictures both the work of Jesus and sets the tone for the doctrine known as Divine Election. God sovereignly chooses all things for His purposes and these purposes are often met in the most curious of ways. When you’re reading your Bible …

WHEN YOU’RE READING YOUR BIBLE

… pay attention to these type of patterns and you’ll be able to more clearly see the workings of God in human life.

How certain are we of the doctrine of Divine Election? Let’s read what Paul says in Acts 17 – “From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.”

God chooses the exact time and the exact place where each human being will live in order to give them the most perfect opportunity to seek Him out and bring Him glory. And why does he do this, the verse continues, “²⁷ God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.”

This is how God works with His wayward children. He is ever-present and working in the most effective way to reach out to us and bring us to the glorious rest that these ancients so patiently waited for. Let us not fail to respond to His call in our own lives.

The Generations of Adam

When Adam was 130 he had a son named Seth
A son in his own likeness and in his image too
It was another 800 years until he reached his death
But before he died his great-great-great-great-great-great grandson Lamech had come along too

Seth continued on for a spell and then he had Enosh
This was when he was a babe of just one-O-five
At 912 years of age he kicked the can, by gosh
But by then there were seven more generations alive

Enosh whose name means “Mortal” had a son named Cainan
This happened when Enosh was only 90, oh my!
Enosh finally bit the dust in the year 1140
After 905 long years of life passed by

Cainan was just seventy when along came Mahalalel
This special name means Praise of God
In the year 1235 they were ringing Cainan’s funeral bell
While Mahalalel continued on the earth to trod

Mahalalel was younger still when he had Jared his son
He was only 65… some might say “a scandal”
His ticker kept on a ticking till 895 years were done
And then the pall bearer grabbed Mahalalel’s casket handle

His son Jared was a much more patient guy
He didn’t have a son until 162 years passed by

But then Enoch came along, “Teaching” means his name
And Jared taught him well because Enoch walked with God
Even before Jared died, Enoch received great fame
When he was translated to glory, heavenly streets to trod

Before he got raptured up, Enoch had Methuselah
This guy lasted right up to the flooding year
He got to watch Noah build his ark – Hallelujah!
And know that the future of man was still secure

Methuselah waited until the age of one-eighty-seven
Then he had a son, Lamech was his name
At years of 969, Methuselah was bound for heaven
And his record age has brought him eons of fame

Lamech’s name means the “Captive”
Something that resembles us all
It’s a trait that everyone carries
Ever since the fall

And a son came to Lamech, a son to ease the toil
He was 182 when Noah finally came around
A son to help work the stubborn angry soil
A son to help till the clods of the ground

Lamech breathed his last at the age of 777
Five years before the flood would destroy the earth
Someday we’ll meet him on the streets of heaven
If we first receive the promised new birth

God has plan, and it’s written in these names
A plan that tells of the coming of His Son
Even the wildest heart Jesus readily tames
The gospel story tells us that the victory is won

I want to see how many of you have paid attention to this sermon. I’ve given you the 10 names from Adam down to Noah and what their meaning is? I want to see if any of you can give me those ten names, in order? I’ll throw in 10 dollars if you can give me the translation into English that I gave you. I’ll throw in 100 dollars if you will give me the year they were born, and I’ll throw in a thousand if you can tell me the year they died. Anyone?

*Adam                                    Man
Seth                                        Appointed
*Enosh                                   Mortal
Cainan                                    Possession
Mahalalel                               Praise of God
Jared                                       Descent (Going Down)
Enoch                                     Teaching
Methuselah                            His death shall bring
Lamech                                   Captive
Noah                                       Rest

Jesus Christ, the Son of Man was Appointed by God to become a Mortal, a Man who could die so that we would become the recipients of the promised Possession of eternal life to the Praise of God. He Descended from heaven for the purpose of Teaching. His death is what released the Captives and has given them the Rest promised since the fall of Man.

Hallelujah and Amen…

 

 

 

The Line of Cain
Genesis 4:17-26

Introduction: Today, we’ll look over the line of Cain which encompasses almost the entire second half of Chapter 4 of Genesis. While we’re here, we should probably answer the age old question “Where did Cain get his wife?” If you ever saw the movie Inherit the Wind with Spencer Tracey, you know this question was brought up there. The movie is a take on the Scopes Monkey Trial. If you’ve never seen it, don’t bother.

It’s a pathetic attempt to make Christians looked stupid, bigoted, and close-minded. From the very first frames of the movie where the people are signing “Give me that old time religion – it’s good enough for me…” all the way through to the end, it’s an all out attack on Christianity.

During the trial, the defense attorney, played by Spencer Tracey, gets the prosecutor – a guy named Brady – on the stand. One commentary on the movie says, “Brady’s confidence in his biblical knowledge is so great that he welcomes this challenge, but he becomes flustered under Drummond’s cross-examination, unable to explain certain apparent contradictions, until Drummond hammers home his point — that Cates, like any other man, demands the right to think for himself.”

The questions that “fluster” Brady include the question, “Where did Cain get his wife.” When he’s asked this, he incompetently gasps and sweats at the immense difficulty of what he’s been presented – as if it’s too deep for the human mind to comprehend. The guy is portrayed as a completely bumbling, arrogant, close-minded, and self-deluded person.

And people ever since then have tried to appear smart by asking a this same question of Bible teachers – as if the movie set a precedent and that no one has been able to answer to since then.

In fact, whether you believe in evolution or creation, you come up with exactly the same problem. The only difference is that evolution can’t properly identify the solution. Any evolutionary answer would lead to devolution, not further evolution.

The biblical answer is found in chapter 5 of Genesis – “And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. ⁴ After he begot Seth, the days of Adam were eight hundred years; and he had sons and daughters. ⁵ So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died.”

We have no idea if Cain was the firstborn child of Adam or not and in fact some scholars believe the terminology at Cain’s birth indicates girls were born first.

Here’s what Albert Barnes says about it –

“If she had daughters before, and saw them growing up to maturity, this would explain her expectation, and at the same time give a new significance and emphasis to her exclamation, “I have gained a man (heretofore only women) from Yahweh.”

So girls could have been born first. No problem there…

And we have no idea if there were girls between Cain and Abel too. One thing we are sure of though is that Adam “had sons and daughters” besides them. In 930 years, he could have had a bunch. If there were twins, triplets, or quadruplets, there could have been a heap of them. Poor Eve!

And each of these children could have lots of children during those 930 years. By the time Adam died, there potentially could have been an immense population on the earth. There is no restriction levied on marrying brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, or anything else until the time of the Law of Moses.

In fact, Abraham, who was only 430 years before the law and about 1950 years after creation, married his own half sister. No negative comment is made on that and it was accepted as normal. The gene pool back then would have been whoppingly strong and intermarrying like this wouldn’t be any problem at all.

The great unanswerable question of “Where did Cain get his wife?” isn’t unanswerable at all. He got her from the daughters of Adam his father. Take that Spencer Tracey.

Text Verse: Blessed be the name of the LORD
From this time forth and forevermore!
From the rising of the sun to its going down
The LORD’s name is to be praised. Psalm 113:2, 3

May God speak to us through His word today and may His glorious name ever be praised.

I. A Descent into Wickedness

¹⁷And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. And he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son—Enoch. ¹⁸To Enoch was born Irad; and Irad begot Mehujael, and Mehujael begot Methushael, and Methushael begot Lamech.

Although we don’t see it yet, the genealogy we just read will lead to a division between the godly line of Seth and the wicked line of Cain. The godly line remains in the presence of the Lord and his plans and purposes are centered on the Creator, but eventually even this godly line corrupts to the point where only one man and his family would be saved in order to repopulate the world.

The line of wickedness, even from the beginning, is removed from the presence of the Lord – just as Cain was, and it is centered on worldly things and the love of those things. These things aren’t explicitly stated, but they are to be inferred by the structure of the verses and their placement in the overall Genesis account, along with comments made later in the Bible.

In the last sermon we read – “Then Cain went out from the presence of the LORD and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden.” Believe it or not, this same area of the world, even 6000 years later is where the main opposition to God is and where the forces of evil are lined up against what is right and godly.

After Cain found his supposedly unfindable wife, she “conceived and bore Enoch. And he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son – Enoch.”

The word used for “city” here is the word Ir. This is specifically a city with walls constructed as a defense or a barricade. The walls themselves are the city. Everything inside the walls was secondary to the protection they provided.

Cain had separated himself from anyone who could harm him and he had likewise separated himself from anything that could help him as well. In effect, he had shut himself off from the very presence of the Lord in his effort to secure himself. We can see a parallel in what occurred when the Chinese built their great wall.

The name of Cain’s son Enoch means “dedicated,” but it also can have the meaning of “teaching.” In the context though, it’s probable that Cain was thinking of dedication. His son was born sometime around when he built his fortress city and he named or “dedicated” the city with the same name as his son.

He did this instead of naming it after himself. The cursed name of Cain wouldn’t have been an ideal name for starting out on a new life and so he deferred to the dedication of his son and his home. After Cain and Enoch the Bible records 4 more in this line –

To Enoch was born Irad; and Irad begot Mehujael, and Mehujael begot Methushael, and Methushael begot Lamech.

We should note that 2 of the names of Cain’s descendants are the same names as the descendants of Seth, the son who replaced Abel. These are Enoch and Lamech. But just as there are good people and bad people with the same names now, it was also the case then.

Just as there is a good Judas (or Jude) who wrote the 65^th book of the Bible, there is also a corrupt and wicked Judas who was, as the Bible describes him the “son of perdition” – a term applied only one other time – to the anti-Christ.

When we get to chapter five, we’ll read the genealogy of Adam through Seth and down to Noah. But unlike that genealogy, this one is strikingly short. It lacks any commentary and it lacks any other ancestral information. Yes, these people existed, but their lives are unimportant to the greater plan of redemption. Instead, they are souls remembered without delight.

One thing we should ask about our own selves is, “How will we be remembered?” The Bible is written and there isn’t any room for details concerning us there, but even the Old Testament tells us that our lives won’t go unrecorded. In the last book of the Old Testament, Malachi relates to us what it is to be remembered by God for a faithful life –

“Then those who feared the LORD spoke to one another, And the LORD listened and heard them; So a book of remembrance was written before Him For those who fear the LORD And who meditate on His name. ¹⁷“They shall be Mine,” says the LORD of hosts, “On the day that I make them My jewels. And I will spare them As a man spares his own son who serves him.” ¹⁸ Then you shall again discern Between the righteous and the wicked, Between one who serves God And one who does not serve Him.”

While we’re pondering the life of Cain and his generations that were swept away in the flood, we should take to heart that God remembers those who meditate on His name.

The only thing else that I can give you of any substance from the names of Cain’s descendants is that two of them include the suffix “El” – Mehujael and Methushael. There was, even in the line of Cain, a remembrance or knowledge of God and it was denoted in these two names. Mehujael means “smitten by God” and Methushael means “who is of God.”

For whatever its worth, man – even man who lives apart from God – has a sense and a knowledge of Him. Eventually though, even this disappears from thought as we move toward a humanistic or idol-centered approach to life.

In modern society, we’re moving in that same direction as they did, paying lip service to the name of God but denying His character and His sovereign authority.

II. The Worldly Man

The Bible contrasts groups of people in various ways. Often what is commented on as notable, such as Abraham and the patriarchs living in tents is notable for the ideals they held in that context. There is nothing inherently wrong with living in cities.

In other words, here’s what it says about them from Hebrews 11 –

“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. ⁹ By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; ¹⁰ for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”

These men were told that they would live as strangers in the land and that only later their descendants would inherit that land. In obedience to this, they continued living in tents. If they were never to possess the land and yet they hoped for a city with foundations, then it’s obvious that what they hoped for was something eternal, not to be grasped in this life.

These verses are descriptive in nature. In other words they only describe what a situation was and why it was notable. They don’t prescribe anything for us, such as living in tents.

Instead, they provide a moral lesson that what’s important is not where we live, but how we conduct our lives. So please don’t go selling your houses to buy a tent. Paul himself was a tentmaker, but that doesn’t mean anything beyond the fact that he made tents.

It’s important to know this and so I’m going to divert for just a minute and give a few rules for you to follow when you study your Bible. In fact, I’ll give you five things to remember.

First, “does this merely describe something – is it descriptive.” Second, “does this actually prescribe something – is it prescriptive.” And lastly, “what is the context?”

If you can remember those five things, your understanding of whatever you’re reading will be greatly enhanced. “But Charlie, you only gave us three things to think about. Have you been drinking too much mango juice again?”

The answer is that I gave you five things to think about and you didn’t pay attention.

Is it descriptive, is it prescriptive, and what is the context? See, five things. I just didn’t elaborate on the five points – descriptive, prescriptive and context, context, context. Never take a verse or a passage out of context.

Under these five main points are some great things to ask yourself as you’re reading –

***How does this point to Jesus?
***How does this relate to the overall picture of redemption? And,
***If the passage isn’t prescriptive or descriptive, then what is it telling me? For example, how do I view the following passage –

⁹ Two are better than one, Because they have a good reward for their labor. ¹⁰ For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls, For he has no one to help him up. ¹¹ Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm;
But how can one be warm alone? ¹² Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him. And a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

This isn’t especially descriptive and this isn’t especially prescriptive. How do I term what I just read? In this passage from Ecclesiastes, it is giving me wisdom. It’s a general guide for living and it has a point for me to think on, and it includes a metaphor.

There are thousands of other things to know, and studying the Bible is a lifelong adventure. In addition to wisdom, some other types of formats used in the Bible are narratives, poetry, legal renderings, historical records, genealogies, prophetic utterances, apocalyptic writings, biographical entries, personal letters, drama, and so on. We have to understand all of these and properly apply them in context or we are going to get off on useless tangents. So pay attention as you read your Bible.

One more thing though – you can’t apply these interpretation methods for reading your Bible unless you… unless you… unless you actually read your Bible.

So let’s go on with the line of Cain and from what read in the next verse, you’ll probably understand why I just gave you the previous lesson in Bible interpretation –

¹⁹ Then Lamech took for himself two wives: the name of one was Adah, and the name of the second was Zillah. ²⁰

This is the first recorded case of polygamy in the Bible and every Bible commentary that I’ve read denounces it as unnatural and wicked. But the Bible doesn’t make any such commentary, ever, and therefore every thing beyond the account is the personal opinion of the scholar and is left without biblical support.

The only thing we have thus far in the Bible to set the pattern for physical relationships is what it says in chapter 2 verse 24 – “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard people say, the Bible says marriage is between a man and a woman… “one man and one woman.” Do you know it never says that? Never.

In 1 Corinthians, Paul quotes the same verse, “the two shall become one flesh” to say that a man who lies with a prostitute is one with her. If he sleeps with fifty, they would still be “one flesh.”

Again, if we were to take that he shall “be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” as prescriptive, then we would have to say that the Bible mandates marriage for every person. But it doesn’t. In the same way, just because it says “joined to his wife” in no way negates more than one wife.

In the Law of Moses allowances are made for men with multiple wives and how they are to be handled. Throughout the Old Testament men had numerous wives. King Solomon had 700 and 300 concubines. David, the beloved of the Lord had lots of wives and, the Lord gave him many of them. In 2 Samuel 12, it says –

“I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your keeping, and gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if that had been too little, I also would have given you much more!”

And in the New Testament, Paul restricts only elders and deacons of a church to a single-wife relationship. In other words, he makes no other commentary on the matter for others which, by default, implicitly allows it.

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m only making a point about how to interpret the Bible, I’m not condoning polygamy, but remember our short lesson on Bible study. Is it prescriptive, is it descriptive, and context, context, context. When taken as a whole, in the context of the Bible, what Lamech has done by taking two wives is not biblically unacceptable.

One more thing we need to do when evaluating the Bible may be the most important rule after evaluating the context, and it very well may be as important – We need to set aside our biases, likes, and dislikes, and our presuppositions. We need to come to the text as a blank slate and determine what the Lord is trying to tell us.

In the case of Lamech, it isn’t telling us at all about the unsoundness of polygamy. In fact, we have no idea who else had more than one wife at that time. The Bible is completely silent on the matter. What it does tell is that his eyes were set on pleasure and worldly things.

Anyone looking to have two wives is looking at physical pleasure more than reasonable living. I have one and that is far, far more than reasonable.

The importance of mentioning the wives is based on their names, not specifically on them both being his wives. How do we know this? Because their names are mentioned – Adah and Zillah.

Throughout the Bible, when a name is mentioned, it’s because it’s relevant to the story. Only one daughter of Israel is mentioned by name and yet Genesis 45 twice mentions his “daughters,” meaning he had more than one. His daughter Dinah is mentioned by name because she is relevant to the story.

The importance of these two women surrounds the meaning of their names as well as who their sons are and what they did. Their sons brought about the beginnings of a stable civilization that became a complete culture, even as we know one today.

And Adah bore Jabal. He was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. ²¹ His brother’s name was Jubal. He was the father of all those who play the harp and flute. ²² And as for Zillah, she also bore Tubal-Cain, an instructor of every craftsman in bronze and iron. And the sister of Tubal-Cain was Naamah.

In the birth of sons to these two women, both wives of Lamech, we have every aspect of a material civilization. We have both the pastoral life for feeding people, we have music and culture, and we have industrialization.

Our modern thinking says the Iron Age occurred after the Bronze Age. The Early Iron Age began, according to archeologists, about 1200BC, but the Bible says that man was working with iron even before the flood. I’d never even considered this until a Bible study when Janice Alley pointed it out to me.

Early man wasn’t the Neolithic Neanderthal that modern science makes them out to be. Instead, they were a highly civilized society which had formed a noteworthy culture.

Adah had a son named Jabal who is the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. His brother was Jubal who was the first of those who play the harp and the flute. The other wife of Lamech was named Zillah and she had a son named Tubal-Cain who was an instructor in bronze and iron. Finally in these verses it says that Tubal-Cain had a sister named Naamah.

Out of the many people who surely came from Cain, these are the only ones given by name – and of them all, the one that may seem most puzzling is Naamah who is mentioned by name, but who isn’t recorded as having done anything else; her name means loveliness.

What we can determine is that the people mentioned in the line of Cain after Enoch –Irad, Mehujael, and Methushael – each of these is intended to lead us to these names in these few verses – Lamech, Adah, Zillah, Jabal, Jubal, Tubal-Cain, and Naamah.

As I said, Mehujael and Methushael maintain the name of God even if it is only the unknown God, El, and not the specific LORD. After them the names go down a different path. Here are the translations: Adah means “pleasure;” Zillah means to “shadow” or “hide;” Lamech means “captive;” Jabal means “stream of water;” Jubal means “river;” Tubal-Cain means “you will be brought of Cain;” and Naamah means “loveliness.”

These names are innocuous by themselves, but taken together, they show a worldly outlook. The name Naamah in particular will only come to full meaning when we get to Genesis 6 and God’s intent to destroy the world by flood.

The Scofield reference notes say: This “…civilization may have been as splendid as that of Greece or Rome, but the divine judgment is according to the moral state, not the material.”

The line of Cain and their names reflect people in love with the world rather than God. This is the lesson that we need to take away from these verses and I can’t think of anything more appropriate for us to consider in the world today.

We have music at our fingertips, every convenience we could ever desire, and our eyes can gaze on the physical attractiveness of the opposite sex in ways that weren’t even imagined just a few short years ago. All of these things follow the pattern of the line of Cain.

The Jewish historian Josephus wrote about the line of Cain and tells us that they were exceedingly wicked, intolerable in war, and vehement in robberies. He says that they acted unjustly and were quick to murder.

We’ll see in Chapter 6 how these things brought the world to judgment and unless things turn around soon, which doesn’t seem likely, we’re going to be heading into the time of tribulation prophesied throughout the Bible. The Day of the Lord is at hand.

III. The Sins of the Father

²³ Then Lamech said to his wives: “Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; Wives of Lamech, listen to my speech! For I have killed a man for wounding me, Even a young man for hurting me ²⁴ If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, Then Lamech seventy-sevenfold.”

Cain was a murderer and it’s easy to see that children normally follow the pattern of life they see in their parents. There are always exceptions, but the line of Cain isn’t one of them.

These two verses which make up Lamech’s ode form what is considered perfect Hebrew styled poetry. It is broken up into pairs of lines and each contains parallelism, or the repetition of a thought. Nothing else is recorded like it earlier in the Bible and therefore it is certainly the oldest poem ever recorded.

Now we can add poetry to the magnificent list of achievements of Cain’s descendents. However, unlike much of the poetry recorded elsewhere in the Bible which talk about a relationship with God, internal struggles of sin, and other higher thoughts, this poem shows us the worldly outlook of Lamech.

He addresses his two wives. He demands their attention. He took the life of someone who had only wounded him. He implicitly boasts of his strength because he was older than the person he killed. And he justifies himself by claiming he would be avenged.

True to the Bible’s symmetry, there’s a pattern between this murder and the destruction of Babylon in Revelation 19 – “For true and righteous are His judgments, because He has judged the great harlot who corrupted the earth with her fornication; and He has avenged on her the blood of His servants shed by her.”

Vengeance is marked out for Cain and Lamech claims the right to it for shedding blood in the 4^th chapter of the Bible. This was in the land east of Eden. And in the 4^th chapter from the end of the Bible, God avenges the blood of the saints shed by Babylon, the land east of God’s land, Israel. What the devil and his seed work in iniquity, God judges and triumphs over in righteousness.

IV. The Name of the LORD

In our text verse today, I read from the psalms –

Blessed be the name of the LORD From this time forth and forevermore! From the rising of the sun to its going down The LORD’s name is to be praised.

Quoting this seems to have little to do with the line of Cain. However, the last verses of Chapter 4 return to the godly line of Adam through Seth and the notion that there is still hope in the world and that the Lord is still in control of the ages –

²⁵ And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and named him Seth, “For God has appointed another seed for me instead of Abel, whom Cain killed.”

After the diversion into the line of Cain, the Bible returns in this verse to the hope of the woman and for all godly people since her. Some time after the death of Abel, Eve has another son. Instead of boastfully claiming that she had acquired a man with the help of the LORD (or Jehovah), she calmly acknowledges that God (or Elohim) has appointed another son for her.

His name Seth means “appointed” and his selection was necessitated because of the death of Abel. As the Bible notes though, Seth was appointed not by Eve, but by God. God is the one who did the selection and chose the person.

She said, he is “instead of Abel, whom Cain killed.” If you see what’s going on, Eve is saying that God – the Creator, has replaced what human wickedness took away. It is a veiled reference to the work of Christ who would overrule the wickedness of the devil.

And she uses the term zera or “seed” for the child. Unlike Cain, she knew that the promised seed of the woman that would crush the serpent’s head would come through Seth.

Even in this early chapter of Genesis, we can see the concept of divine election being hinted at. The work is from God, the work is of God, and the work is at God’s prerogative. Man’s choices and works are left out of the equation. Seth is God’s son by election.

Seth’s selection by God and that fact that he is God’s son by election needs to be remembered because it will clear up some very difficult and misunderstood issues in Chapter 6.

²⁶ And as for Seth, to him also a son was born; and he named him Enosh. Then men began to call on the name of the LORD.

Here we are at the last verse of chapter 4. A son of the godly line of the Messiah has been born and the line continues on through one of his own sons, Enosh, which means “man” in the mortal sense; someone who can die, or a miserable man. I’m telling you this in hopes that you’ll pay attention to these names as they have an amazing significance in the sermon ahead…You may be surprised.

At the time of Enosh’s birth it says that men “began to call on the name of the LORD.” This then is given in direct contrast to the preceding verses of Cain’s line which was following worldly pursuit – The name of the LORD is never mentioned in that account.

Everything about them is centered on what they did and shows their worldly outlook, but the line of Seth is contrasted. To call on the name of the LORD is to invoke His name in worship, praise, thanksgiving, and prayer.

And who is this veiled Lord, or Jehovah, of the Old Testament? Paul tells us in the book of Philippians –

Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, ¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, ¹¹ and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

The Line of Cain

Cain wandered off and built a fortified town
He named it Enoch after his own son
After Enoch, came more men of worldly renown
They knew how to work and also how to have fun

Lamech, the seventh man down that wicked line
Had two wives to keep him happy all the time

For Mr. Lamech they bore three sons and a girl
Who became a settled culture in the eastern land
Jabal had livestock and Jubal gave music a whirl
Tubal-Cain worked in metals and his sister’s looks were grand

Lamech wrote a poem to comfort his two wives
After he killed a young man for merely wounding him
This is the first poem ever written in human’s lives
And it shows the wicked effects of the ungodly’s sin

“If Cain is avenged sevenfold then me even more”
But what about the poor guy lying dead at your door

If this were the way things would always be
Then let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die
But God had something else going on, you see
He had another line of godly men, so don’t you cry

God replaced Abel, whom Cain slew in the field
With another son, by the name of Seth
Through this son the Holy Seed would yield
The One to conquer evil and triumph over death

Again this godly line brought a son named Enosh
And more would follow until would come the King
By His precious blood all men could wash
And be cleansed from sin and every wicked thing

When men called on the name Jehovah the eternal Lord
They were only looking forward to that great King
And now we call on Jesus the bearer of the sword
The fullness of time has come and to His name we do sing

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus – the great and awesome Rock
The One who reveals to us the Father we cannot see
And now we wait as the moments tick and tock
Until He returns for His church and blissful eternity

Until that time of renewal we earnestly wait
Yes until the time we pass through heaven’s pearly gate

When we behold the glory of the King
And to the praise of Jesus we shall ever sing

Hallelujah and Amen…

For next week please read Genesis 5:1-32 (The Generations of Adam)