In the Beginning: A Bunch of Names (Part 2)

From Genesis chapter five. If you want to locate that in your bulletin or look on the screen, we're trying a new intro. This is the signal when it's time for you to read. The people of God read the word of God, and that'll be your signal to read.

But let me give a little intro into what we're doing today. You ever heard the term "flyover states"? Flyover states refers to that swath of the country that's in between the East Coast and the West Coast. It really came about from the entertainment industry. They viewed it this way: there were only two important places in the country, right? LA and New York. Everything else? You just flew over. It's also been picked up in politics to refer to that area of the country. Politicians only visit about once every four years when they're looking for votes. Everything else is big cities and metropolitan areas.

I think that, like flyover states, there are some flyover texts in the Bible. There are parts of the Bible that when you're reading through, you just sort of think, "Let's get through this, right?" I'm going to get through this. It's better viewed from 30,000 feet maybe. I really don't know what to do with this.

And I think what we're looking at today—what I'm going to make you read in just a second out loud—is one of those passages. It's all the begats. It's all the genealogy. It starts with Adam and ends with Noah. It's one of those passages that may feel like a bridge—like, okay, we're connecting two parts of the story—but this is kind of boring or irrelevant. I don't know what to do with this. Nobody's got a verse from Genesis five on a bulletin board to memorize. Nobody's got this on your fridge or a little nice plaque in your house with verses from this chapter.

And yet, this is so important. God has rich things to give us this morning, even from this.

So, let's turn our attention to God's word, and the people of God read the word of God.

This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female, he created them. And he blessed them and named them man when they were created.

When Adam had lived a hundred thirty years, he fathered a son in his own likeness after his image and named him Seth. The days of Seth after he fathered Seth were eight hundred years. And he had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred thirty years, and he died.

When Seth had lived one hundred five years, he fathered Enosh. Seth lived after he fathered Enosh eight hundred and seven years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Seth were nine hundred twelve, and he died.

When Enosh had lived ninety years he fathered Keenan. Enosh lived after he fathered Keenan eight hundred fifteen years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enosh were nine hundred five years and he died.

When Keenan had lived seventy, he fathered Mahalowell. Keenan lived after he fathered Mahalowell eight hundred forty years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Keenan were nine hundred ten years and he died.

When Mahalowell had lived sixty five years he fathered Jared. Mahalowell lived after he fathered Jared eight hundred thirty years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Mahalowell were eight hundred ninety five years and he died.

When Jared had lived one hundred sixty two years he fathered Enoch. Jared lived after he fathered Enoch eight hundred years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Jared were nine hundred sixty two years and he died.

When Enoch had lived sixty five years he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah three hundred years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty five years. Enoch walked with God and he was not, for God had taken him away.

When Methuselah had lived one hundred eighty seven years he fathered Lamech. Methuselah lived after he fathered Lamech seven hundred eighty two years and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty nine years and he died.

When Lamech had lived one hundred eighty two years, he fathered a son and called him Noah, saying, "Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands." Lamech lived after he fathered Noah five hundred ninety five years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Lamech were seven hundred seventy seven years and he died.

After Noah was five hundred years old, Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

— Genesis 5

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for your word.

Father, we thank you that there's nothing like your word and there are some parts that are easier for us, some parts that are more difficult. We pray that you would meet us as we open up this part of your word and that you would give us help and hope and healing. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

So a couple of genealogy jokes for you this morning because you need that jumping into genealogy. What happens when you shake your family tree? Anybody know? All the nuts come falling out, right? It's dangerous. Or what about this one? Did you hear the one about the retired genealogist? Neither did I. Genealogists don't die. They just lose their roots.

The Significance of Genealogy

For modern people, this study in genealogy like many of the places in the Bible feels like flyover material. But for the Israelite people, for the first people particularly who heard this, coming out of Exodus, coming out of Egypt, this was incredibly important. This is incredibly significant information because it doesn't just communicate history, it tells a story.

A couple of things about genealogies for us to look at: First, you can tell this isn't flyover material because of the way it begins. The beginning of chapter five reads almost like a third creation story. It goes right back to Adam and says, "This is the beginning. In the beginning, this is God making Adam in his likeness and then him fathering children in his likeness." It's meant to tell us, "Oh, this is a big deal. This is telling us something that is incredibly important."

Second, ancient genealogies were not viewed in the way that we often view them as chronological. We would think you could take a genealogy like this and add up all the years of all the generations and get a numerical timeline of how old or how far back things go. But one of the challenges of that is that ancient genealogies did not necessarily imply a continuous sequence. When it says "this person begot this person" or "this person was son of," it can mean grandson, it can mean relative, it can mean ancestor. You can see this in other places in genealogy in the Bible. In particular, I want to highlight Jesus' genealogy in the book of Matthew. Jesus' genealogy is divided up—it's sort of 14 groups of 14, three groups of 14 going back to Adam. The point of that is, it's selective to tell a story. It's selective on purpose, not just to recount all of who is who is who is who, but to say, "God is up to something in this."

We don't—it's easy to come to this with sort of modern ears, modern eyes, and say, "What does this mean to me?" And yet, I want to start with what does this mean for the people who first received this? What is the story that God wants to tell from this genealogy? It's really important. God has a story to tell.

The Contrast Between Two Genealogies

Let me just remind you of where we were last week. This is now my second week in genealogy. I can't believe you showed up this Sunday. Maybe you didn't know that last week. Nobody warned you to stay home this week. But chapter four is the genealogy of what happened after Cain and Abel. Cain, Adam's and Eve's son, kills his brother Abel. And then what happens after that? The rest of what we read last week was the dumpster fire family line of Cain. All of the sin and disobedience and destruction that came in generation after generation of Cain's family line. It's meant to be read in contrast to what we just read this morning—the family line of Seth.

The end of chapter four ends with this hopeful kind of change. God is doing something new. It ends with:

And Adam knew his wife and they had another child and his name was Seth and from that time forth, people began to call on the name of the Lord.

So this line of Seth is the line of faithfulness compared to the line of Cain, which is the line of unfaithfulness. We're supposed to read these against one another.

A couple of things I want you to see about this: Many of the names in the two chapters match. You go back and read chapter four and chapter five, there's an Enoch in both of them. There's a Lamech in both of them. Both chapters have these, and they could not be more different personalities, more different in the ways that they are either turned toward God or turned away from God.

There's also all these names that sound or are spelled almost the same. Remember some of the words that you tripped up on in this genealogy? Mahalo—remember that? Your favorite one? Lots of people thinking about that for a baby name in the future, right? Mahalo fathered Methuselah.

Well, that sounds like in Hebrew and is spelled like Mahujael and Mathushael from chapter four. Again, we're supposed to read these against one another. These are two families that are turned to very different directions and so, there's a line of faithfulness, there's a line of unfaithfulness and the question of the text. Now, here's what I need you to get this morning. The question is which family, which lineage will you trust in? That's the question being asked of the text to the first people who read this and the people sitting in this room reading this. Which family line are you going to put your trust in? Which lineage?

Nothing shows off this more than the numbers. The numbers. Did you notice the numbers? Yeah, you can't help but notice the numbers, right? I mean, we read these and we're like, nine hundred plus years? Are you kidding me? Did they not know how to add back then? Did they not know what a year was back then? And there have been all kinds of speculation like, well, maybe this is months but those don't add up really. So, I want to look at the numbers because the numbers also tell a story.

Understanding Ancient Numbers

Now, I want to say this before I go on. You are welcome to read this at face value as literal information. As this person lived for eight hundred years. They fathered a child at 500 years old. You can read it that way. But there's another way in faithfully understanding this text to understand what's being said with these numbers. Here goes.

If they mean what twenty first century English speakers mean by the ages, this boggles the mind, doesn't it? I mean, tooth decay, bone density, all those cell life—it challenges us to say, Things were really different back then, or I don't understand what's going on here. But my question's not, what does this mean for us? What would this mean in the way we talk? But how would the original hearers of this have understood this?

And I want to point this out. Ancient people in the ancient Near East, not just in Israel but the surrounding nations understood and used numbers in ways that were both the same as you do and different from the way we do. So, archaeologists have found receipts from transactions where somebody sells something, a good or a service and there's a receipt that's issued. This is in Palestine. This is in Judea Judah. This is in lots of the surrounding areas. They found all these receipts that show they used math the same way you use math. So, like addition, subtraction, multiplication. We all got that and yet, there are also ways that they use numbers that were very different from the way that we do.

So, in ancient Samaria and their genealogies, there are lists of these kings and they likewise have ages which boggle the mind. The longest living king on the Samaritan king's list, twenty eight thousand eight hundred years. Which tells you, I doubt somebody lived twenty eight thousand eight hundred years. Something else is going on with this.

Well, ancient people also, ancient near Eastern people understood numerology to also imply significance. And this is non mathematical. This is just saying, this person is incredibly important and this person is also like the Sumerian kings connected to a god. So, the Sumerian kings list is a really helpful reflection on this passage of saying, there are ways of understanding this that imply these people right here really significant.

In fact, if you notice the difference between chapter four and chapter five, again, the line of unfaithfulness and the line of faithfulness, we get no numbers, no ages in chapter four at all with the dumpster fire line of Cain. But we get all these precise numbers that are gigantic for the line of Seth, the line of faithfulness. And I think the whole text is going like this. This one right here, if you weren't paying attention, this one, this one right here, Seth, this is the line. This is the line of faithfulness. This is what God is up to right now. They're intended to tell a story.

There are a couple of internal reasons to scripture why I think this is well. If you read along in Genesis and you keep going, you realize that there's probably something more going on with these ages. I mean, it said that Abraham, this is in chapter 25, died at a good old age. I mean, an old man and full of years. What, if you're reading that in the context of chapter five of this book, Abraham died tragically young at age 175, right? He's incredibly young.

If you keep reading, Abraham and Sarah's expression of incredulity about being able to have a baby in their old age at age 100. Well, that's nothing, right? That's nothing compared to his family that went before him. Noah who fathered children at 500 or Methuselah who fathered children at 187 or even Abraham's dad, Terah, who fathered children at 130. See, there's something else going on here and I think it's meant to say this.

This is the line, and it's asking the question: which lineage will you trust in? Now, that was a question that was important for them, and it's a question that's important for us. Which lineage will you trust in? Because there is a way where we can repeat the patterns of generational sin or we can repeat the patterns of generational faithfulness.

Notice here as well in chapter four, the number seven is significant. If you read the lists and go down through the family line and you start with Cain's family and go down seven names into that one, and Seth's family and go down seven names, you find two different people who exemplify two different directions.

So the seventh in Cain's line was a man named Lamech. We find out in chapter four, he's the first polygamous, the first to take two wives. He's also repeating the sins of his grandfather, great grandfather, going back to Cain in that he's a murderer. By contrast, the seventh in Seth's line is a man named Enoch. What do we read about Enoch? He's a man who walked with God. It's a description of connection, intimacy with God. And then the Bible says, and then he was no more, for God had taken him away. The only person in the Bible who is recorded as never having died. And there's the contrast: Enoch, Lamech. Line of faithfulness, line of unfaithfulness.

Now, there's also a testimony of this even in the last name listed in chapter five. Who's the last person listed in chapter five? Noah. Noah was the last person listed, and I want you to hear the testimony of Noah's name. Noah's name means rest in Hebrew. This is even spelled out for us:

Out of the ground—this is verse 29—out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief, rest. He shall bring us rest from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.

God is saying, this line, this is what God is up to in the world. Remember how important rest is in these first chapters of Genesis. On the seventh day, we read that God himself observed a Sabbath rest and forever calls people following that creational pattern to observe a Sabbath rest. God is going to bring through Noah rest for his people from their sin. God is going to bring rest. More on that for next week—we're going to spend four weeks in Noah.

But the question of this passage again is: generational faithfulness, generational unfaithfulness. Which line will you live out of?

A Question for Us

Now, who's that question for? It's definitely for the people coming out of Egypt. Remember, the first people who received a written version of Genesis would have been the people coming out of Egypt in the Exodus, coming into the desert to follow God, wandering to Mount Sinai, then spending another forty years wandering until they came into the promised land. And why was that? God found that their hearts were revealed in the desert—it was a place of testing for them because what was revealed in their hearts was that, even though their ancestry was Israelite, their hearts were Egyptian. They loved the stuff of Egypt. So this question is being posed to them: Which line will you follow? Will you follow the line of Egypt or the line of Yahweh? He's taking you to the promised land. Which one will you trust in?

But this question is also for us. It's also for you. Which generational story will your life tell? You know, family history and generational patterns of stuff that we talk about—there's even a Progressive commercial. Have you seen this one? It asks the question: can't help becoming your parents, can you? Right? That's sort of funny, not funny, isn't it?

Maybe you've watched the second season of Ted Lasso. My wife called this way before I read this anywhere else. It's an entire season based on relationships between fathers and their children. Nate's broken relationship with his dad. The relationship between Jamie Tart and his dad—that's terrible. Sam and his good relationship with his dad. Rebecca mourning her dad. Ted Lasso's relationship with his dad and the effects on him. All of those are repeated patterns.

The Bible speaks over and over again about the influence and the impact of generations upon generations. Have you heard this? In Exodus 34, God tells Israel:

He visits the iniquity of the fathers onto their children to the third and fourth generation.

I'm saying there's an impact, there's an influence. Lamentations five says:

Our fathers sinned and are no more, and we bear their iniquities.

They impact us.

They're consequences and yet also here Ezekiel 18 says:

The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father or the father for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself. — Ezekiel 18

The French reformer John Calvin wrestled with this a lot. These seem contradictory. The sins are passed down and yet every person stands individually for their own sins. How do we hold these together?

Calvin studied this and wrestled with it, and he said, actually, this makes a lot of sense. In the final judgment, yes, God will hold every person accountable for their sins only. Every person will stand and give an answer for their life. And yet—and I love this statement—he says, "The children are loaded with the sins of the fathers." There are consequences and impacts and influence from one generation to the next. And we need to be aware of that. If you're not aware of that, it's like getting hit by a truck you didn't see coming.

Generational Patterns

Many of you may know the old song by Harry Chapin, "Cats in the Cradle." The song is about a father calling up his adult son, remembering how he raised him. He was always busy, always working, always pursuing money. He wakes up older in his life and realizes he missed out and would like a relationship with his adult son that he never got to know.

He calls him up and says, "Hey, can we hang out?" His son says, "Well, I'm really busy. I've got a lot going on with my work and my family. We'll catch up sometime." The song closes this way: "As I hung up the phone, it occurred to me, he'd grown up just like me. My boy was just like me."

Family influence. Things are passed down generationally. Some of those traits are positive—nurturing skills, valuing hard work. But there are also negative and destructive behaviors passed down from one generation to the next.

The question is: which lineage are you living out of? Generational faithfulness or generational unfaithfulness?

I want you to think about this, and I'm going to push on you a little bit this morning. I didn't show up here just to be nice. I'm going to preach. But I want you to think about the generational sins in your life. I'm going to list a bunch, and I just want you to sit with these. See if you can find yourself in this list.

Lying or exaggerating the truth. Materialism. Manipulation. Destructive anger. Chemical dependence. Neglect. Problems with money. Conflict avoidance. Racism. Emotional dependency. Sexual sins. Physical abuse. Controlling behavior of other people. Given to catastrophizing. Moralistic rigidity. Abusive speech. Shaming. Narcissism. Inferiority or low self-esteem. Living in fear.

I mean, those sins are so damaging, aren't they? Doesn't that make you kind of angry? Listen to that list. Really? Didn't that make you a little bit angry? It makes me angry. I mean, how selfish and self-consumed do you have to be to blindly pass on to the next generation all this junk?

How many of you are aware of those things or have struggled with those things in your life? Aren't you upset about how much you're passing on those things to the next generation?

Wait—I can tell from some of your faces you thought I was talking about your parents. I was talking about us. I'm talking about the things we're passing on to the next generation. Whether or not you have kids, we as a church have kids. There are kids, and we're consciously or unconsciously influencing people all the time around us. We are discipling them. We're training other people about what God is like. And we're passing that on, especially in generational ways.

How do you break with generational patterns? How do you break with what has been handed down to you and what you've created on your own? We've made our own cocktail out of this. How do you do that?

You have to choose. You have to choose. What pathway is my life going to take?

And here's the good news of this passage. I really want to give you good news this morning because not only is there generational sin and generational faithfulness, but we have a generational God. And this is such hopeful news for you, for me, and for everyone here this morning from this passage.

Recently, someone at CTK gave me a copy of this—the First Nations version, an indigenous translation of the New Testament translated by a group of Native peoples in this country. It's a fascinating read. This is the New Testament only, but it translates names by their meaning. So, for example, Peter's name means rock, so they call him Rock in here. They call Jesus "Creator Sets Free." They call Abraham "Father of Many." You'll be reading a sentence like this: "Creator Sets Free entered the temple and saw that it was evening." It takes a little getting used to, but what's interesting about it is the text is not taking any liberties with the Bible in how it's translated. It's just doing it in ways that are actually more faithful than many of our English translations to tell us what the names mean. Because unlike English, where your name means whatever your mom and dad liked that week, their names were extremely important and meaningful.

I've already told you that Noah's name in this passage means rest. So let me just review the names in this passage. I'm going to walk through them and tell you what they mean because God is telling a story.

Adam means "dirtling" or "man." Seth means "appointed." Enosh means "mortal man." Kenan means "sorrow." Mehalalel means "the blessed God." Jared means "descended." Enoch means "to disciple" or "train up." Methuselah means "death will send away" or "cast out." Lamech means "the depressed" or "despairing." And Noah means "rest."

This is not backmasking. This isn't Bible code weird stuff from some Bible code book. These are the names that God gives us—a generational God telling a story. Let me put this together. This forms a sentence.

It says this: Man is appointed to mortal sorrow. But the blessed God shall come down, teaching that His death shall bring the despairing rest.

Let me read that again: Man is appointed to mortal sorrow, but the blessed God shall come down, teaching that His death shall bring the despairing rest.

Does that sound familiar to you? Even here in the fifth chapter of Genesis, we're already reading this sequence of names. It doesn't make sense in any other order. We're reading the story that will be written in blood on a Roman cross. A generational God will Himself come down and suffer to bring the despairing hope. God is a God who is able to break all patterns and to break all chains and to set us free from sin. Yeah, I'm all about that. What good news is written in Scripture over and over of God's power to break this—"this begets this begets this." God is a God of generations.

Let me drive this home with you. Do you come from a family that reads more like Cain and Abel? God is able. God is able. Does your own life reflect not faithfulness, not faith-filled passing this on to your kids, but lots of hypocrisy and conflict? God is able. God is a God of generations. God is able to work even in train wrecks. When you look at your family life, your life so far, and what you're passing on to the next generation—does it read less than hopeful? Maybe entirely destructive? God is faithful and able. I just want to encourage you to sit in this and not dismiss it. I know it's hard when I'm picking at the scab of generational wounds and sins and all that destruction. It makes some people really uncomfortable. You're sitting here thinking, "What do you think you're doing, pastor? You're blaming my parents."

My hope and my point this morning is not to blame your parents. It's to look at ourselves. We look back at our parents and generations before us. It is not to blame. It is to name. That's how one psychologist puts it, and I think it's really helpful. Blaming has a sense of labeling you and dismissing you, putting you out of my life. That's not what we're about. You name things courageously in order to deal with them, in order to name them before the Lord and ask Him to be at work in those things.

You have a choice, and I have a choice. A regular, repeated choice. Will we choose to turn toward God and the hope that He brings to break patterns in our lives for the hope of those who come after us? Or will we do the same old, same old? Will we continue?

This whole thing is just called discipleship. It's got a positive direction and a negative direction. So let me give you the negative direction.

The negative direction means repenting of your sins every day. Coming into a place like this, the reason why we have confession of sin every week—we're like, I need this all the time. My life is always turning away from the Lord and I need to be brought back facing toward the Lord. This is a regular pattern for the life of a believer. If your life reflects no regular pattern of repenting of your sins, it's broken. You're not following Jesus. That is not discipleship.

Discipleship means you're putting off. You're asking God to forgive you and to change you, and it also means positively moving toward practices that bring you more and more in line with God's patterns in your life. Regularly being part of worship, regularly fellowshipping with believers, singing worship songs in the shower. Yes, spending time alone silently with the Lord. Those things are nurturing and cultivating in your life a life that is turned toward Him. This is a daily practice for Christians. Will I turn toward Him in hope? Or will I continue the same old, same old?

Let me ask you this question: Why do you think that God wants to break generational patterns? Why do you think God would be into that?

The thief comes only to steal and destroy, but I come that you may have life and have it abundantly. — John 10:10

Not little bits—in abundance, overflowing. What is God's intention for you? It is for your flourishing and your blessing and your hope and your renewal for life. This is what God wants to do in you. God wants your freedom and your encouragement and your hope. He wants you to have life and have it abundantly.

I know that this year has been incredibly hard for us. There's probably not a person in this room who's going, "Man, the last twenty months, so awesome." Right now, this is what's happened to us. It's like a tube of toothpaste. This is an argument in our family: Do you squeeze in the middle or do you roll it slowly from the bottom? I tell you, boys, we all squeeze from the middle. But this is what the virus, the pandemic has done for all of us. It's squeezed. And what's in the tube has come out of the tube, and what's inside of us in our hearts has been on full display.

What's funny about that is people are always like, "Well, that's not really me. All the fear and anger and worry and freaking out—that's not really me. That's more you than what's on the outside, written on the outside of that tube, that you want to believe is you. The nice version." What's laying on the counter, all the stuff that gets hardened and crusty—that's the real you.

And God does this. Can you believe this? God actually allows pandemics and allows a squeeze in your life for your good. Now, I can't label all the things that have happened to you this year good. I'm not saying that. But the overall big picture is God never squeezes using a pandemic without doing so for a better purpose in your life. He wants to show you what's on the inside so you can deal with it. God is never out to harm us but only to heal us. God is a surgeon, not a butcher. When He makes cuts in our lives, He's like, "I want to cut out this gangrene. I'm not just hacking away at you." God is kind. This is who your God is.

And the question again is up to us: Which way? Are you going to just pass on a baton in your life of generational unfaithfulness? Are you going to drop the baton and pick up something better? That's from the Lord.

Here's my last appeal: Would you look at your kids? And would you look at our kids? Because when you're part of church, they're your kid—they're our kids. Would you look at our kids?

You know, this is my hope and this is our hope collectively, isn't it? That they would outpass us in the next generation in their zeal for the Lord and their love and joy in Christ and their freedom. They wouldn't be weighed down like you and I are. They would run where we've walked or crawled, and there would be a difference in the children coming out of the lives in this church and in all the lives we touch, because they read off of us. This is a God who's real. This is a God who changes people. This is a God who's making all things new.

Is that what they would read about God off your life right now? So you have an opportunity today to change the narrative. The choice is up to you. Which lineage will you live out of?

Let's go to the Lord in prayer together. Father, these are hard words, and yet they're filled with hope. And sometimes what's hard for us about Your word, Lord, is that the hard and the hope go together. That facing and naming and owning actually can bring us to the cross where there's freedom.

Father, we want to be people who look to the next generation and see, Lord, hope written all over them. And that's hard for us today. Many of us are struggling with despair and discouragement. Many of us feel very beaten up. Many of us feel like we have been squeezed harder than we could bear in this past twenty months.

But Lord, you are a God who makes all things new. We lift our eyes to you today. Lord, renew our hopes this morning. Remind us, Lord, of your power. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.