9. Genesis 5:1-32 The Roots of the Kingdom: The Covenant Community
Prosecutors in Indonesia say they have charged the militant Islamic cleric, Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, with involvement in the 2002 Bali bombings in which 202 people lost their lives. Police say Ba'asyir is the spiritual leader of the radical Islamic group Jemaah Islamiyah, suspected of being behind the bombings. On Friday, Ba'asyir was charged with ordering the bombing last year of the Marriott hotel in Jakarta. His trial is expected to start in about two weeks
A 20-year-old man has appeared in court charged with the murder of Nottingham schoolgirl Danielle Beccan who was shot in the early hours of last Saturday morning as she returned from a fair.. Mark Ontonio Kelly from the Meadows in Nottingham spoke only to confirm his name, age and address at Nottingham Magistrates Court on Saturday.
Fresh shooting has strained nerves in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, where supporters of the ousted president were demanding his return. Violence since the end of September has claimed at least 40 lives.
The investigation into the Lord Lucan murder case has reopened - almost 30 years after his disappearance. Detectives are examining existing police evidence and will use DNA profiling to try to solve the case. The 7th Earl of Lucan vanished in November 1974, a day after the murdered body of his children's nanny Sandra Rivett was found at his London home.
Three men have appeared in court charged with the murder of a prison officer They appeared before magistrates in Sutton on Saturday and will appear next at the Old Bailey on 22 October
Police investigating the discovery of a severed leg and thigh in Leeds have revealed the victim was a prostitute who worked in the city. A murder inquiry was started after a walker in Woodhouse Ridge, Meanwood, found part of her leg on 8 October.
That was just a fraction of the news from around the world yesterday, and it makes grim reading doesn’t it? All of these stories so different in most hings have one simple reality in common. Death reigns in each.
And this evening as we turn to Genesis chapter 5 that is the most obvious thing that holds the various lives listed in this genealogy of Seth together. We are meant as we read this chapter first of all to see one simple and grim fact. Death reigns over all humanity. Vs 5 adam lived 930 years and then he died….vs. 8 Seth lived 912 years and then he died…vs. 11 Enosh lived 905 years and then he died…vs. 14 and then he died….vs. 17 and then he died…vs. 20 and then he died…..vs. 27 he died…vs. 31 he died.
The great unifying factor on first reading that we cannot help but notice in Genesis chapter 5 is this: there is no escaping death. The words of the curse of God spoken to Adam for eating the forbidden fruit echo throughout this chapter “ In the day that you eat of it you will surely die”. And it takes only the most cursory glance at the news to see that these words still echo across history and touch every one of our lives today. Our Newspapers are still reporting…and then they died… and then they died…. and then they died.
Genesis 5 speaks to us about the universal reign of death. That is the lesson the Apostle Paul draws from thes opening chapters of Genesis in Romans 5, “Sin entered by one man, and death trhough sin and in this way death came to all men because all sinned”, and then he adds, “death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses”. Death reigned is the message of this chapter.
We will all appear before the judgement seat of Christ. It is appointed for a man once to die and then the judgement. We must all be ready to stand before the Lord and give an account, and only those with faith in Christ can hope for heaven.
Death reigned is the message of this chapter.But we would be gravely mistaken if we were to conclude from that, that this was its main message. In fact, the ultimate reason Genesis 5 is so keen to point out the universal presence of death is because it’s even more keen to contrast the fallen reality with God’s plan of redemption and rescue that is being put into action here. This chapter is about the grace of God working in the lives of fallen humanity to build the Kingdom of God.
And that is why this is an exciting chapter full of instruction and challenge, and I love that, because so often when we read chapters like this we are left scratching our heads and thinking ‘what is this doing in the Bible? What am I meant to do with this as a Christain?” Well this evening I hope we will begin to see something of the reason for this list of names, and thrill at its lessons.
And I want us to look at two primary things that we are being taught here.
I Genesis 5 speaks to us about the nature of the covenant community
II Genesis 5 speaks to us about the promise of the coming Christ
The nature of the Covenant Community
One of the more obvious things that we spot when we begin to study this chapter is that it deliberately contrasts with the previous chapter. Whereas the line of Cain is a line marked by sin and moral degradation, the genealogy of Seth is full of hope. They are by and large the godly line. This is the line of Covenant promise.
And notice that the covenant people of God here are a family. They are all related. The blessings of covenant membership descend from father to son, from generation to generation. God is not just concerned with names and people in this list, he is concerned with families, with whole generations; with a thousand generations of those that love him and keep his commandments.
The fundamental building block of the covenant people of God in every age, not just the antediluvian patriarchs, not just the first generations after Adam; the fundamental building block of the covenant people of God in every age, is the believing household.
But that does not mean that God’s grace is limited to those who belong to the visible church. Because God deals with us in terms of our covenant unity and solidarity as families, we cannot therefore conclude that being a covenant member, that being listed as a descendant of Seth, being descended from godly parents, somehow guarantees either the automatic salvation of our children, or that God will not bring those who have no covenant pedigree into his kingdom.
Just as God is committed to building his Kingdom by raising up godly covenant families in every age of redemptive history, so too in every age of redemptive history he has been committed to reaching sinners far from the covenant community and drawing them in through faith.
Last week we concluded by looking briefly at 4:26, “At that time men began to call on the name of the Lord”. And we said that the way of salvation is to call, in repentance and faith on the God of covenant love now revealed in Jesus Christ. And vs. 26 certainly teaches that. But it has more to say.
IN Isaiah 44:5 the Hebrew idiom that is used in Genesis 4:26 is used again, only here it is translated quite differently. “ One will say, ‘I belong to the Lord’ another will call himself by the name of Jacob”
Now the phrase used in the second half of Isaiah 44:5 “another will call himself by the name of Jacob” is the same idiom used in Genesis 4:26, “Men called on the name of the Lord” It can either mean that someone calls themselves by the name of someone else, or that they call on the name of someone else.
And OT scholar Meredith Kline suggests that in Genesis 4:26 what we are being told is not simply that fallen sons of Adam were calling on God in prayer, but that they were naming themselves with God’s name, which was a way of indicating that they had bound themselves to God as their King in a covenant relationship.
Now there is no doubt that the vast majority of those who called on the name of the Covenant Lord and who bound themselves to Him by taking the Name of the covenant Lord as their own name were sons of Seth, but there were others. In chapter 4 verse 18 we read the names of Mehuja’el and Methusha’el his son. Their names are compound names made suing the word for God. Muhja’el probably means either “God gives life” or “priest of God” and his son’s name means, “man of God”.
Perhaps at some point some of Seth’s descendants had an impact on some Cainite families. But whatever the means, clearly some at least among the Cainites came to call on the name of the Lord and came to be called by the name of the Lord.
Believers 4:26 says, in effect took ‘Jehovah’ as their surname. They called themselves Jehovah-folk, Jesus-people! And there were some in the ranks of the ‘Jehovah folk’ who were Cainites by birth, but sons of promise through faith.
And what is interesting to note is that Mehuja’el passed on his covenant relationship with the God of Adam and Seth to his son, Methusha’el, the man of God.
And yet, immersed as they were in the City of Man that Cain had built, it seems that the grandchildren of Mehuja’el preferred the bright lights and deadly lies of Cain’s city, to the simple faith of Seth’s sons.
There is a warning hidden in the names of these two Cainite converts, and it is this: covenant blessings are not guaranteed to the children of believers. It does not take long for us to begin to take for granted that our children will grow up somehow to believe. That somehow it will be automatic. They will profess their faith, they will join the church, they will inherit the blessing. Not so! First there was Mehuajael then came his son Methushael, but then it all stops. And this one brief flame of hope for the sons of Cain is quickly smothered by the worldly enticements of Cain’s city playground.
So some were raised in the faith of the Lord, while others came into the faith by conversion, but all called on the Name and all were called by the Name.
And that means that here, recorded at the very beginning, are two great imperatives for the people of God in every age.
First there is the imperative to build the Kingdom by raising covenant households who believe in the promises of God. People of God, you are called to produce generations who have the name of the Lord placed upon them, as their covenant king and redeemer, and who are raised to call on the name of God as their only saviour.
We don’t know how the Name of the Lord was placed on his people in the antediluvian age of Seth, but we do know that in the age of Abraham this was done by means of circumcision, and in the New Covenant by baptism.
We have the Triune name of God placed on our children, they are called by his name, they are named ‘Jehovah folk’ and ‘Jesus people’ when they are baptised into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And it falls to us to ensure that everyone of them who are called by the name of God in baptism go on to call on the name of God in faith.
That’s a challenge, it seems, that Enoch woke up to when his first son was born in verse 22. It seems that when he was 65 Methuselah was born and that marked something of a turning point in his life. It was then we read that he ‘began to walk with God’, if not for the first time, then with a new depth and passion. Isn’t it interesting how children can bring what is really important into focus? Enoch woke up to his covenant obligations towards his son and he began to walk with God. Enoch it seems had realised what we have been saying, covenant blessings are not guaranteed to sons of the covenant by biology, they must also be sons of the covenant by faith. And those of us who are responsible for them must be able to say to our children as the Apostle Paul says to us all, “follow my example as I follow the example of Christ”(1Cor.11:1).
And then there is the second great imperative of the chapter. We are called to build the Kingdom not only by raising children of the covenant to faith in Jesus Christ. We are called to go find sons of Cain, to seek out modern Mehuja’els and their households and win them to the Lord. We are called to make of wayward Cainites, priests of God and men of God.
Genesis not only moves us to greater care and diligence as members of our respective households, it moves us to renewed vigour in holding out the word of life in a crooked and perverse generation among whom we are to shine as stars.
So we are taught about the nature of the Covenant Community. But secondly Genesis five points us to the Coming Christ.
And it does that by interrupting the genealogy twice to give us additional details about two individuals that together serve as types of the Seed of the woman who is to come, Jesus Christ.
The first of those is of course Enoch, in verse 21-24. We’ve already seen that Enoch walked with God. The passage is quite emphatic about that. Twice we are told Enoch walked with God.
In Genesis 3:8 we’re told that God walked with us before the fall, but since then only two people in all of scripture are said to have walked with God: Enoch and Noah in Genesis 6:9. And in a very real sense the story of Enoch deliberately points to what God would do through Noah, which in turn points to what God will do through Christ. We might even say that Enoch was to Noah what John the Baptist was to Jesus. He was the preparer of the way.
Look at the text with me. Vs. 24, “Enoch walked with God, then he was no more, because God took him away.” Enoch was translated immediately to heaven. Now we are not to think that God took him away because he somehow earned immediate access to heaven, so holy was he. We are not to think that God took him away as a personal kindness because poor godly Enoch could not stand to have all these pagan Cainites around any more. What we are to see in Enoch is the plan of God. God plans to remove the Godly from the earth. He plans to take them away, to take them out of the world of sinful corrupted sons of Adam. In amongst that relentless chorus….’and he died’ ‘and he died’ ‘and he died’ ‘and he died’ of chapter 5…there is one glorious break…’Enoch walked with God and he was not, God took him’.
Alive, Enoch entered Glory. Here is a promise of things to come! Death shall not have final mastery. One Day, from among this line of Seth, the seed f the woman shall come who will destroy death and triumph over the grave. He too will die, but rising again to glory, he will secure an Enoch like destiny for all who believe in Him. The dead in Christ shall rise and those who are alive at his coming shall go to meet him in the air. Like Enoch they will enter heaven’s glory never having tasted death.
Now we have already said that in the context of Genesis, Enoch is deliberately pointing forward to Noah. And in fact that is one of the functions of the genealogy of Seth here; to connect Noah back to Seth, and then back further to Adam. And so Enoch serving as a forerunner of Noah is not at all out of place. Both Enoch and Noah walked with God, and the lives of both Enoch and Noah indicate a new beginning for Gods people to come, through the covenant line of godly Seth. Enoch was taken so that he would not die, so that we might see that God is working to end death’s tyranny, and in the fullness of time bring life and immortality to light in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And then there is Noah. We hear about Noah mostly from the oracle that his father speaks over him in verses 29. And what a contrast with the Cainite Lamech of 4:23-24. Here is the Sethite version, a true covenant father, taking his obligations to the next generation seriously. “Noah”, we are told, “will comfort us in the labour and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the LORD has cursed.”
Now the expected Hebrew root for Noah’s name is the word for ‘rest’, and Lamech is burdened with a longing for deliverance from the curse of 3:17. He is aching for the Seed of the Woman of 3:15 to come and bring them rest from their painful toil and the cursed gournd. And then Noah is born, and Lamech prophesies his destiny. But he does not say ‘Noah will give us the rest we seek’, no he uses a word that sounds like Noah in Hebrew, the word for ‘comfort’. ‘Noah won’t bring us the rest we seek, that one is still to come, but he will bring us comfort in a fallen world.’
Just how Noah would do that remained unclear to the ancients, before the flood came. And we will come to that episode in good time. But suffice it to say, that Lamech saw in Noah, a shadow of the one to come, who would bring final and ultimate rest to the people of God, who would undo the curse and set us free.
So Enoch points us to the death of death, and Noah to the end of the curse, and the appearing of a new heavens and a new earth, the home of Righteousness, all of which awaited the day of Christ’s coming.
But now, dear friends, he has come. Death has been undone. The curse has been borne away at the cross. And Jesus sings out now with all of us who believe, ‘Where, oh death,, is you victory? Where, oh death, is you sting?’ And he now invites all who are ‘weary and heavy’ laden to come to him and he will give them rest, the rest of sin forgiven, the rest of peace with God, the rest for which we were made.
By grace we are saved through faith and that not of ourselves it is the gift of God. Look to Jesus Christ the reality which cast the shadows that were Enoch and Noah. Look to him and join the ranks of the covenant people, building his kingdom, until he comes.
Amen.