What do Genealogies tells Us.

Reading - Genesis 5
Augustine, in The City of God, says the history of the human race is the history of two groups of people, each having a distinct origin, development, characteristic, and destiny. He wrote that these are “two societies … formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, or the heavenly by the love of God. The earthly society has as its highest expression the city cultures. The other is the church, composed of God’s elect. The former is destined to pass away. The latter is blessed by God and is to endure forever.
Cain’s line is credited with what might be called ‘secular progress’ and achievements. The faithless line is traceable in the world’s cities and cultures.
Seth’s line, makes no mention of any great contributions or achievements. All we learn is that at least two of them were men of faith. These men grasped the fact that sin was the root of their troubles and looked forward to redemption that God was to provide through their offspring.
The line of Seth reminds man of his mortality. Through Enoch, it also shows the hope of eternal life for those who walk with God.
Moses wrote these words to the Israelites who were poised to enter Canaan. This chapter reminded them that they needed to follow the line of Seth, not the line of Cain. Moses is saying to the people, “As you go into a culture that will have many temptations, be careful! Remember that you will die, and that you need to live in this fallen world by calling upon the name of the Lord, by walking with God.” We, too, live in a world that tempts us to forget the shortness of life and join its progress without God.
This is the story of man in his development in a very unique era of human history, the pre-flood or "antediluvian society." Very few artefacts of the pre-flood era have been found. Therefore, essentially, this is the only history we have of the earth in these days.
[1] GENEALOGIES DO MATTER 1 ¶ This is the written account of Adam’s line.
The genealogies have never been the best read portions of the Word of God. Ray Stedman tells the story of an old Scots minister who was reading from the first chapter of Matthew’s gospel. He started reading, ‘Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac beget Jacob, and Jacob begat Judah,’ and he looked on ahead and saw the list to follow and said, ‘and they kept on begetting one another all the way down this page and halfway into the next.’
If we are honest, that is what most of us do with the genealogies of the Bible—we skip them. Leupold, in his commentary on Genesis says to preachers: “Not every man would venture to use this chapter as a text.”
To most the genealogies are the most boring part of the Bible. The genealogies have unpronounceable names and we don’t see what they say to us today.
The genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 are not at all unique in the ancient times. The Egyptians had king lists and so did the Sumerians. These ancient Near Eastern genealogies are very instructive in confirming the biblical records.
A ] They confirm and establish historical facts. This is first of all an accurate historical account of the generations from Adam to Noah. We have a genealogy of ten men starting with Adam and ending with Noah. The ten generations cover a period of 1,656 years. In 1 Chronicles 1, we have a repeat of this genealogy. It opens with these words: "Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth." There is no variation; Luke 3 likewise. Jude 14 confirms Enoch is the seventh name after Adam.
Now this tells us that Adam overlapped Methuselah for 200 years and Methuselah actually overlapped Noah for 600 years. One man bridges between Adam to Noah. Then Noah overlapped Shem for 400 years and Abraham died before Shem! So Shem could have told Abraham firsthand about the flood. It is very likely that Shem was still alive during the lifetime of Jacob as well. Thus four people span Adam to Abraham - span creation to Abraham. It's really important because God was passing down this divine truth. For Abraham the account of the creation would be like referring to accounts by his great grandfather. Accurate truth was handed down to the world for all time.
God wants us to know that he is in control not just the highlights of biblical history, but also of everything else in between.
B] They confirm and establish identity. Genealogical research is big business today, people spend time and money tracing their family tree back as far as possible. A genealogy at can be all-important. When a will is being read, it matters a great deal whether or not your name is mentioned. A genealogy isn’t boring if you know someone on the list or if your name is on the list.
The primary purpose is to establish one’s family identity, one’s roots. This is what the great scholar, B. B. Warfield, wrote: The point established by the table is that this is the line of descent through which one traces back to or down to the other.
So genealogies shouldn’t be dismissed. It was through the line of Seth that God raised up Noah, and through him came Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and, eventually, Jesus Christ. The believing line runs from here to the us the church.
C] They confirm and establish a persons faith. This chapter is a record of ten men who lived by faith in a time of increasing unbelief and widespread secularism. When we read these names we are reading more than a dusty list of ancient names. These ten men stand before us as giants of the faith, men who refused to follow the prevailing cultural trends of their day. In a world rushing headlong toward judgment, they followed the way of the Lord.
When the writer of Hebrews 11 wanted to list the heroes of faith, he took two names from this list—Enoch and Noah.
There is also room for much encouragement from this list. In contrast to Cain these men were faithful to God. God was faithful to remember them and to record their names in his book. There are always some who serve God. No matter how many bow the knee to Baal, God never leaves himself without a witness. Even though believers may be in a minority at a given time and place, the Lord is still there watching over his people and protecting them in times of crisis. God remembers the faithful and he rewards them in his own time and in his own way.
I also find great encouragement in this list regarding the possibility of building believing families. From these men come tribes that filled the ancient Middle East, establishing towns and cities of their own, taking their faith in God with them. Though we may sometimes despair because of the sin we see around us, Genesis 5 is proof positive that with God’s help it can be done.
[2] GENEALOGIES REMIND US THAT WE ARE ALL MORTAL
A] This chapter reminds us about the long lives, most around 900 years. Incredible. Is this true? The answer is yes. There is nothing to suggest that these numbers are not literal. Josephus says 12 ancient historians say people lived a 1,000 years once. If you take this genealogy with the one in Genesis 11, you can see that before the flood, the life spans were much longer. It does seem that conditions on the earth were radically different before the flood. A cloud canopy could have protected the early human race from the aging process known to be accelerated by the ultraviolet rays of the sun.
Animals don’t keep genealogies but we do have many of their fossils. Many of these are Giant Fossils suggesting that not only did men live longer but animals also lived longer and grew bigger because of the climate. Remains of mammoths, dinosaurs, reptiles, amphibians, insects, trees were all much bigger than those existing today.
So God determined that the early human race lived to be 900 to populate the earth rapidly and to advance civilization.
Perhaps also the decaying effects of sin took a few generations to produce negative results in the human body.
B] This chapter reminds us about Adam and his descendants. 3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth.
The list begins with Adam since he is the father of the human race. Adam had a son in his own likeness and in his own image. We would expect that.
We learned a few weeks back that death entered the human race through Adam’s disobedience. “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned” Rom. 5:12. “For the wages of sin is death ...” Rom. 6:23. When he fell, we fell because he was the federal head of the human race. So now he is a sinner by choice and by nature and that nature is now passed along to us his descendants.
Genesis tells us that we are all made in God’s image and we are all born with a nature that leads us to rebel against God.
The entire race is under a death sentence because of sin. When Adam and Eve sinned, instantly they died spiritually--they were separated from God. But also they began to die physically.
With them it was a longer process than it is with us, but it was set in motion the minute they sinned. Seth, born in Adam’s likeness, inherited a sin nature which he passed on to his descendants. Adam’s sin brought death to all.
C] This chapter has the repeated phrase “And he died.” The phrase, “and he died” sounds like a funeral bell, tolling eight times throughout the chapter.. Only Enoch did not die. And we are told about Noah’s death later in Genesis. There is a “drumbeat of death” in this chapter that echoes across the generations. Each man of faith lived and then he died. Death has now become a regular fact of human existence. Even though they lived long lives, they died.
We don’t like to think about death, especially our own! It used to be more common. In the Middle Ages it was common for scholars and other men of prominence to keep a skull on their desk to remind them that they, like the victim, must die. The Latin name for such a skull was a memento mori, “a reminder of death”. Jerome - It sounds gruesome to us. But Genesis 5 is God’s memento mori, His reminder to us that all must die however long we live.
Death reigned in the earliest generations of world history. And death still reigns today. Just open any newspaper and look at the obituary section. Every day a brand-new list, names never repeated.
If there is one thing about which we may be perfectly certain it is this: Unless the Lord returns in your lifetime, you are going to die someday.
We say nothing is as certain as death and taxes, but death is far more certain. Death is so certain that there is an entire business built about the expectation of death called the life insurance industry. Life insurance is based on one great theological truth—Death reigns.
When you die, the coroner will fill out a death certificate for you. There’s a space on that certificate that says “Cause of Death.” It may say sickness, cancer, an accident, or old age. Those are just symptoms of the great cause of death: Sin.
A popular idea promoted in our day is that death is a natural part of life. We are born, go through life, and then die. People are just like animals and plants, going through the life cycle. But death is not natural, it is more normal to fear that to try and pretend it holds no fears. Death is a horrible reminder that we have wronged the holy God and that someday we all must stand before Him. We can try to block it out of our minds, we can joke about it, but it’s still going to come.
The only way to live wisely is to keep in constant focus that whether I have a few hours, or a few years, it is certain that I am going to die and stand before a holy God. I’d better be ready to meet Him!
Cain isn’t mentioned at all because Genesis 5 traces the line of faith, which is what matters to the Lord. All that secular wealth and achievement is valueless as far as eternity is concerned.
Years ago a London business named Henry Goodear, went to church one Sunday, just to please his niece. The pastor’s read Genesis 5, she wondered why the pastor had to base his message on that passage on the day her uncle with her. The next day, Goodear could not concentrate on his work. That night he searched for a family Bible and read over those words, “and he died, ... and he died.” He thought, “Now I’m living, but someday I too must die, and then where will I spend eternity?” That very night he asked the Lord Jesus to forgive him and adopt him…….and you?
[3] GENEALOGIES RECORD THE LIVES OF THOSE WHO ARE WORTH REMEMBERING V24: “Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.”
For Enoch to walk with God, it meant that every day He set his heart to live remembering the unseen God, was at his side. And so he did, day after day, week after week, year after year. Because his heart was set to follow the Lord, he walked with him as a habit of life.
A] Enoch’s walk with God Enoch stood out in his day. He lived at the same time as the boastful sensual Lamech. Jude 14-15 records what Enoch prophesied: v 14 Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men: "See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones 15 ¶ to judge everyone, and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done in the ungodly way, and of all the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken against him."
He was the first preacher who ever confronted liars and deceivers and false teachers. He warned the people of God’s coming judgment. That probably didn’t make him the most popular man of his day! People like to hear upbeat messages on how they can be happy. They don’t like to be faced with the consequences of their sinful ways. But the closer a man walks with God, the more he realizes how bad his own heart is, and how evil his own generation is. As he grows in holiness, he stands out as distinct from the crowd.
If he walked with God in such moral darkness, we can too.
B] Enoch’s walk with God had a starting point. "Enoch walked with God after the birth of Methuselah three hundred years." The starting place of a walk with God is to come to Him in faith. It means that a relationship with God is established. It means a coming together, it means to be reconciled to God through faith. Enoch did not always walk with God. Apparently the first 65 years of his life was like all those around him. What started him walking with God then? Apparently it coincided with the birth of a son, a boy whom he named Methuselah. Perhaps he was like many men who don’t get serious until they become parents. The responsibility makes them more thoughtful, more serious, more sober in the outlook on life. Perhaps that’s what happened to Enoch. He became serious and sought God.
C] Enoch’s walk with God ended triumphantly The phrase “God took him away” means that instead of dying, he was lifted off the earth while he was alive and was taken directly into God’s presence. He did not die, no one killed him, and he did not waste away from some dread disease. He took a walk with God one day and never came back. He just walked right into heaven. Why does God do this? Because the Lord is showing us that there is victory over death. He is an illustration that if you walk with God, if you please God, you'll escape death. You'll conquer death.
He simply walked with God so long that he walked all the way from earth to heaven. Consider the testimony given about him in Hebrews 11:5, “By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death; he could not be found, because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God.” One day God said, “Come home with me?”
The world takes note of those who achieve in science or business or entertainment. It makes celebrities of dubious characters. But God takes note of the person who walks with Him by faith. Enoch believed God; God rewarded him accordingly.
Enoch walked beyond space and time into eternity. God took him off the earth and allowed him to enter heaven without experiencing death. It is the picture of the second coming and a reminder that death will not have the last word. B. We gain the hope of eternal life.
It’s interesting that the best man in this genealogy has by far the shortest life--365 years. Walking with God is not a guarantee of a long life on earth; it is a guarantee of eternal life with God.
Enoch is also a type of those who will be alive at the Lord’s coming and who will be taken directly to heaven without dying. This is the blessed hope of every believer, to be caught up “in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord” 1 Thess. 4:13-17.
Those who do not walk with God do not have the hope of eternal life, but only the fear of judgment. Enoch prophesied of God’s coming judgment, and he did it through more than just his preaching: He named his son Methuselah. It means, "His death shall bring it," or "When he dies, it will come." What will come? The Flood! Sure enough Methuselah died the same year that God sent the flood.
Enoch, looked beyond the culture, the comforts, and the technical marvels of his own day, to the fact there must come an inevitable judgment on human life. He saw the certainty of destruction to a world living only to please itself.
If you will walk with God, you can come to the end of life with full assurance that the best is yet to come. Is your name is in the book of life. Death did come to the godly seed of Seth. But Enoch is a type of all those who truly walk with God. After death they will be ushered into the eternal presence of God, in whose fellowship they will dwell forever.