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[0:00] If you would, open up your Bibles to Genesis chapter 5. We have now been for several weeks walking through these first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis. And we're now sort of right in the middle of these first 11 chapters.

[0:13] We will take a break after we cover chapter 11 and move to the New Testament for a few months. And then we'll return again to Genesis and cover another major section of Genesis. But right now we're in the middle of covering Genesis 1 through 11.

[0:24] And we've come to what you will see as an exciting passage this morning. The genealogy in Genesis chapter 5. And so if you've turned there, I want you all to stand with me. And we're going to read through all 32 verses of this genealogy this morning.

[0:39] Moses writes in Genesis chapter 5, 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.

[0:54] When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness after his image and named him Seth. The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years, and he had other sons and daughters.

[1:07] Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died. When Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered Enosh. Seth lived after he fathered Enosh 807 years, and he had other sons and daughters.

[1:20] Thus all the days of Seth were 912 years, and he died. When Enosh had lived 90 years, he fathered Kenan. Enosh lived after he had fathered Kenan 815 years, and had other sons and daughters.

[1:32] Thus all the days of Enosh were 905 years, and he died. When Kenan had lived 70 years, he fathered Maholol. Kenan lived after he fathered Maholol 840 years, and had other sons and daughters.

[1:45] Thus all the days of Kenan were 910 years, and he died. When Mahalalel had lived 65 years, he fathered Jared. Mahalalel lived after he fathered Jared 830 years and had other sons and daughters.

[1:57] Thus all the days of Mahalalel were 895 years, and he died. When Jared had lived 162 years, he fathered Enoch. Jared lived after he fathered Enoch 800 years and had other sons and daughters.

[2:11] Thus all the days of Jared were 962 years, and he died. When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters.

[2:26] Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he fathered Lamech.

[2:40] Methuselah lived after he had fathered Lamech 782 years, and he had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Methuselah were 969 years, and he died. When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son and called his name Noah, saying, Out of the ground that the Lord God has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.

[3:02] Lamech lived after he had fathered Noah 595 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Lamech were 777 years, and he died. After Noah was 500 years old, Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

[3:21] Father, we do ask right now that you would take your word and make it come alive to us. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.

[3:32] I know that it's a bit challenging sometimes when we come to passages like this, and we are tempted to think that what we ought to do is rush through this passage, perhaps even skip over something like a genealogy, so that we can get on with the action, get on with the rest of the story of the book of Genesis, because the book of Genesis is a pretty exciting book.

[3:54] I mean, we just spent last week looking at the first murder, the first city builders, the first metal workers, the first musicians, all these great firsts in this story that moves on rapidly after the fall in the garden.

[4:09] And it will pick up next week, and we'll see the beginnings of the story of the flood, and then the Tower of Babel, and later on we'll get to Abraham and all of his descendants, and we'll see all of these things happening.

[4:21] But periodically throughout the book of Genesis, the progression of the story just stops, and you get a genealogy that moves you from one point in time to much later on in the story.

[4:35] And we are tempted to think, well, since the genealogy is there perhaps to just move us on, maybe we should just move on past it and not bother with it. But I think that that would be wrong. It would be wrong, first of all, because the Apostle Paul tells us that all Scriptures God breathed, and useful or profitable for teaching us, for correcting us, for building us up, for equipping us, for giving us everything that we need to live godly lives.

[5:01] So that this passage is a part of what Paul considers all Scripture, and therefore Genesis chapter 5 is useful for you and I in trying to live our lives for Christ.

[5:12] We need to hear what the Spirit has inspired here so that we can hear His message for us. In fact, what Genesis chapter 5 does is it continues to do what Genesis chapter 4 did last week.

[5:26] It continues to paint for us a picture of humanity, particularly after the fall. It continues to show us what are Adam's descendants like?

[5:37] What is mankind like? After the events of Genesis chapter 3, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, ate the forbidden fruit, and fell into a state of sin and sinfulness. What's life like for their descendants?

[5:50] What's life like in this world? And we need to know that. We need to hear that. In fact, I came across this great quote this week as I was reading from John Calvin.

[6:02] You may be familiar with John Calvin, great theologian and pastor of the 16th century, and his most well-known book is called The Institutes of the Christian Religion, which is kind of long. At times it can be boring, but at times it can be really, really good.

[6:14] And I came across this quote. He says that we cannot have a clear and complete knowledge of God unless it is accompanied by a corresponding knowledge of ourselves. We need to know about ourselves in order to know about the God who made us.

[6:29] But then he goes on and he says this, and this is what I want us to hear this morning. He says that this knowledge of ourselves is twofold. Namely, to know what we were like when we were first created and what our condition became after the fall of Adam.

[6:47] So if we want to understand God, we need to understand ourselves. And if we want to understand ourselves, we need to know what was humanity like before Genesis chapter 3 and what is humanity like after Genesis chapter 3 and this chapter alone by itself helps us to see both aspects of humanity.

[7:05] Take a look at verse 1 in chapter 5. We are told that this is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. So that's a reference back to Genesis chapter 1 verses 27 and 28 where we're told that God said, Let us make man in our image.

[7:22] So immediately, Moses is reminding us at the beginning of this genealogy that human beings were originally created in the image of God. Not only are we created in the image of God, but that image is passed on from Adam to his descendants.

[7:39] So that we are told in verse 3 that Adam fathered a son in his own likeness and after his image. What's the point of that? The point of that is to say that the image of God in Adam was passed on to Seth, his son.

[7:52] In fact, when you move through the book of Genesis and you arrive at chapter 9 after the flood, you find that God giving a warning to Noah and Noah's sons.

[8:05] He says that whoever sheds man's blood, that is, whoever kills another human being, He says, by man shall his blood be shed. Why? Well, because man is created in the image of God.

[8:16] So the assumption is that even after the fall and even after the flood, human beings still possess the image of God. And I think that's what Moses is communicating here in these opening verses.

[8:28] He's saying, listen, before we move on with the story, and before I continue to paint this picture of man's fallenness, of man's sinfulness, of his depravity, I need you to remember that originally we were created in the image of God, and that image, though fractured and broken, is still possessed by everyone born as a descendant.

[8:48] of Adam and Eve. Created Adam in his likeness, Adam had a son in that same likeness. Not only that, but he reminds us that God created us male and female, which is really important because one of the things that we saw at the end of chapter 4 was the first evidence after the fall of a breakdown in God's design for the sexes.

[9:12] God designed in Genesis chapter 2 man and woman. They're corresponding. They fill what the other lacks. The reality is that Adam by himself would have been unable to fulfill God's primary command to him.

[9:27] Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Adam's ability to subdue the earth or have dominion over the earth was limited by the fact that by himself he was incapable of filling the earth, of being fruitful and multiplying.

[9:41] So God brings Eve along who supplies what Adam lacks, and we're told that she corresponded to him, that she was suitable for him. That is that man and woman complement one another in such a way that we are different, but both necessary, that we supply what the other lacks.

[10:00] And God joins men and women together into this thing called marriage, a man and a woman. And yet, at the end of chapter 4, we saw a man named Lamech, not the same one in chapter 5, but a man named Lamech, who took two wives.

[10:15] And so for the first time, at least that we're aware of, the man plus woman equals marriage was distorted into a man plus a woman plus a woman. It was the first distortion of God's original creation intent for marriage.

[10:32] So chapter 5 opens up with a reminder of how God originally created us. In His image, male and female. But not only that, we're told that He blessed us.

[10:43] That human beings originally had God's blessing, which is significant because what's going to change is not that we're created in the image of God, not that we are male and female. What's going to change is God's blessing.

[10:55] that with the fall comes a curse rather than a blessing. And we're going to see the curse played out here in this chapter. But then lastly, He says that He blessed them and He named them man or Adam, Adam.

[11:09] He named them man when they were created. Which is a way of saying that God established His authority over humankind after He created them. Because to name something in biblical terminology is to express your authority over it.

[11:24] We saw that when we were in Genesis chapter 2 and Adam named all of the animals. That was a way in which Adam expressed his authority over all of the animals that God had put under His authority.

[11:36] And now we're reminded that man originally created male and female in God's image with God's blessing was to live under God's authority.

[11:47] And though we are still required to live under His authority, we rebelled against that authority in the garden. And because of that rebellion, we end up with Genesis chapters 4 and 5.

[11:59] Because what happened to Adam and Eve was not simply that they sinned and they incurred for themselves the penalty due for their sin. There's a lot more happening in Genesis chapter 3 than that.

[12:12] Adam and Eve not only incurred for themselves the penalty for their sin, but for all of their descendants. because we are now born with a sinful nature that we inherit from Adam.

[12:25] It's passed down generation after generation after generation. I mean, it's always easy, it's always fun to look at your kids and see what sorts of things that you've passed on to them.

[12:36] If they're your biological children, you can see some of the physical things that you pass on to them. You can, you know, I can look at all three of my boys and see different things that they've gotten from me. So Calvin, Calvin has got my ears a little further from the head than I'd like them to be.

[12:51] All right? But he makes them look better than I do. All right? Because they've got his great face so he makes them look better than I do. And he kind of walks like I do. I've noticed that. He kind of walks, I don't know.

[13:02] I have a weird walk and he's pattering it. All right? He's doing well though with it. He's doing it better than I do. And then Eli, well Eli's got most of me. All right? Most of my genes are all targeted at Eli.

[13:14] And it's fun to kind of look at your kids and see some of those physical things. But you can see more than that in your kids. You can see more than that even in children that are not biologically yours but that are your children that you're raising.

[13:25] You begin to pass on some of your tendencies. You begin to pass on some of your mannerisms. Some of your ways of speaking and just your habits. You see those passed on to your children.

[13:39] We can see that happening between Adam and his descendants. And yet, what we see passed on are not nice, flattering things, not surface level things.

[13:52] What we see being passed on primarily from Adam to his descendants is his own fallen, sinful nature. Adam and Eve, it wasn't just that they became guilty.

[14:03] It's that they were no longer righteous. They were no longer innocent. They now possess a heart that knows good and evil by experience. They are now at the core of who they are.

[14:15] They are now sinful. They see their own nakedness. They grow ashamed. They no longer enjoy God's presence in whom the psalmist tells us are pleasures forevermore.

[14:26] They run from His presence when He comes to them after sin. They are a fallen, sinful people and all of their children, all of their descendants after them come into this world inheriting that sinful nature.

[14:38] We are fallen, sinful people. That's at the core of who we are. And as we saw last week, chapter 4 demonstrates for us the depth of human depravity.

[14:52] Already with the first generation of Adam's descendants, we see murder, false religion, false worship, lying, jealousy. Already with the first generation.

[15:03] And by the time you get down a few generations removed from Cain, you have Lamech who's not only involved in polygamy, but he has escalated the level of violence of his forefather Cain because he says that I have killed a man for wounding me.

[15:17] A young man I've slain. And then he says if Cain's vengeance is sevenfold, mine's 77-fold. In other words, Lamech arrives at a point to where he says I'm going to be this kind of, this is how I express myself.

[15:31] I am violent. If you bother me, if you come against me, I will kill you. It doesn't bother me at all. That's the depths of human depravity that we see there in chapter 4.

[15:44] Of course, we also saw that God's grace is prevalent throughout that chapter as well. Preventing us from becoming as sinful as we possibly could be. So the theologians will often describe human beings as being totally depraved.

[15:58] That means that we are sinful to the very core of who we are. Everything through and through sinful. And yet, we are not, in our external expressions of that, we are not as sinful.

[16:09] We are not utterly depraved. We are not as sinful as we could be. We could all do something worse. We could all be worse than we are. But Genesis chapter 4 lays this emphasis upon we're sinful to our depths.

[16:22] And now, Genesis chapter 5 is going to help us understand our sinfulness from another angle. And it's going to emphasize that aspect of not only is sin deeply rooted in who we are, but sin has its effects universally among us.

[16:41] Universally among us. Before we take a look at that though, I want to mention one thing about these genealogies that we kind of need to just say, set aside, and move on to the text.

[16:52] And that is the question of how do we relate these people and the ages and all the information that's given about them, how do we relate that to the supposed age of the earth?

[17:08] It's always being debated. It's always being talked about whether the earth is an old earth or a young earth, whether man came about through evolution or whether it's a direct, immediate creation of God in the garden and all those sorts of issues.

[17:19] And we've taken a stand as we've walked through this book and said, we cannot accept the notion that man gradually came about through evolutionary processes because it's a direct contradiction of what the Bible says in Genesis chapters 1 and chapters 2.

[17:37] It's a clear historical narrative. It's not poetic. It's not allegory. It's just presented straightforwardly as this is what happened. Here's the history of the origin of man. And so we can't accept that.

[17:47] But what many have tried to do in order to sort of bridge a gap, you might say, between the supposed age of the earth or the age of humanity, the age of human beings and what we find here in this text is to say that there are perhaps gaps in this genealogy.

[18:08] That perhaps what we have here is not a straightforward father-son listing, but what you might be getting is something like, well, Enoch fathered the line leading up to Methuselah.

[18:21] Methuselah followed the line leading up to Lamech. And then you can posit as many skipped generations as you want in there. And there is some precedence for that in the Bible itself. Because sometimes in biblical genealogies, multiple generations are skipped.

[18:36] Because the word for fathered or the word for give birth to can mean simply to produce a line. son. It doesn't necessarily have to be father-son.

[18:46] A person can be called a father in the Bible and yet be a grandfather or great-grandfather or great-great-great-grandfather. So the language is capable of that. And there are definitely genealogies in the Bible in which generations are skipped.

[19:01] So for instance, when you compare Ezra's genealogy in the book of Ezra to his genealogy that's contained in 1 Chronicles, there's six or seven generations just suddenly skipped in the middle of that genealogy.

[19:13] It doesn't mean there's an error among the genealogies. It just means that when the Hebrews recorded their genealogies they weren't concerned always to record every single generation that the language was a little more elastic than our language.

[19:26] You even find it in the genealogy of Jesus in the New Testament. A handful of generations skipped in the midst of that genealogy. So it's possible that some generations were skipped here and you could push back the creation of man by a few thousand years.

[19:42] That's a possibility. But I'm not sure that with this particular genealogy that we should take that approach. I'll just briefly tell you why. The main reasons often offered up besides supposed scientific evidence for the age of humankind, besides that, the main evidence offered up usually from the Bible besides the existence of gaps in other genealogies is just the simple fact that it said that, well, Genesis chapter 5 contains ten generations.

[20:11] And then when you move to the next major genealogy in the book of Genesis found in chapter 11, the genealogy of Noah's son Shem, you find again that there are ten generations. And ten, often being a symbolic number in the Bible, must be symbolic since both of these generations on either side of the flood account have exactly ten generations.

[20:30] So they must have left out some generations to come up with this symbolic number of ten, which wouldn't have been unprecedented. The reason generations are left out of Jesus' genealogy is because Matthew is using the number seven with fourteen as its multiple to emphasize things about Christ, and that's the number of generations he records.

[20:48] It's not crazy that generations would be left out in order to arrive at a certain number to emphasize things in a sort of symbolic manner. And so they say that, well, you've got ten in each.

[20:58] Ten sometimes is a symbolic number, so there's a good chance that some generations were skipped to arrive at the number ten. Here's the first issue with that, is that in reality if you count both of those genealogies in exactly the same way, they don't both have ten generations.

[21:16] The one that we're reading now, if you count Shem, Ham, and Japheth at the end, has eleven generations. And then if you just turn over in your Bible, you don't have to, but if you do turn over to chapter eleven, starting in verse ten down through verse twenty-six is where you find this other genealogy, which does in fact have ten generations, if you count it the same way I've just counted the other, with verse twenty-six and you count Terah's sons at the end, Abraham, Nahor, and Haran.

[21:46] If you count those as generation ten, then yes, chapter eleven has ten generations. But if you count chapter five in the same way and you count that last little generation that we're just given names for, you end up with eleven in chapter five.

[21:58] So the only way to say that they both have ten is to count them in two different ways. But if we're going to try to find some sort of symmetry between them and argue some point on that, then we should count them in the same way and have a real symmetry and they should really be the same.

[22:13] Are you guys following me or have I lost you completely? Alright, nod if you're with me. Good, don't want to lose anybody. I might lose one or two, that's okay, but not everybody. Alright, so they're not symmetrical in the number of generations if you count them in the same way.

[22:28] And so one of the primary arguments for taking this as a symbolic number ten sort of falls to the wayside when you look at it more closely. Another reason why I'm not sure that that's the right route to go is because we know for a fact that some of those mentioned in this genealogy are literal fathers and sons.

[22:44] Obviously, Adam and Seth. We have the account at the end of chapter four of Adam knowing his wife, again having a son and naming him Seth. So you can't put any gaps between Adam and Seth. You also can't put any gaps between Seth and Enosh, his son, because again at the end of chapter four verse 26, to Seth also was born a son and he called his name Enosh.

[23:05] Seth names him. So obviously Enosh is Seth's direct son, not a distant descent. You can't put any gaps there between Seth and Enosh. You also have trouble putting any gaps towards the end of it because Japheth names Noah.

[23:20] Okay, Noah, if you read the rest of the story in chapter six, Shem, Ham, and Japheth are the literal sons of Noah. So you can't put any gaps between Lamech and Noah. You can't put any gaps between Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

[23:34] But then you can also potentially back it up to Methuselah, who if you take it straightforward literally would have been Noah's grandfather. Now the reason that I say that is that you can do the math on scratch paper later, okay, but if you do the math, Methuselah died in the same year as the flood, which makes sense.

[23:54] It's Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth were the only ones to survive. Lamech, Noah's father, died five or six years before the flood. But Methuselah, the longest living person in the biblical record, Noah's grandfather, dies the exact same year as the flood, which would be really, a really huge coincidence if those numbers happen to add up and yet there's a gap of some hundreds or thousands of years between Methuselah and Lamech.

[24:23] So I don't think you should posit a gap between Methuselah and Lamech because it looks like Methuselah died either just before the flood or in the flood. So at the beginning of this genealogy and at the end of this genealogy you don't see any room for any gaps.

[24:37] And then here's my last and third reason for not taking that approach to this particular genealogy because of the way that it's worded. In fact, Genesis chapter 11 is the only other genealogy that's worded precisely like this in which you have so and so lived so many years and had a son and then he lived so many years after having that son and then he died.

[24:59] It's very precise in the numbers. It's very precise in the way that it lists. They lived this long. They had a son. They lived this long. They died. Which doesn't lend to a more symbolic interpretation.

[25:12] It doesn't lend itself to the insertion of gaps in there. Otherwise, why bother with all of these numbers? What would be the point of including all of these numbers if they don't actually indicate any relationship between when each of these men lived and how their lives overlapped?

[25:29] So I don't think that a strong case can be made for inserting a lot of gaps here into this genealogy. Although you will find a lot of conservative evangelical scholars who would argue for gaps here, I can't see it in myself.

[25:45] I don't see it. Now why would I go to the trouble of pointing that out to you? Why would I bother spending some time upon that? Well, there's one primary reason why I want to talk to you about that.

[25:56] And that's because if you take this just literally, if you take this straightforwardly, then you end up with something interesting. You end up with Adam dying during the lifetime of Methuselah.

[26:08] and Methuselah dying during the lifetime of Noah. Which means that Noah was only separated from Adam by one generation, by one family member.

[26:22] He had an almost direct link back to Adam. Which is significant because this chapter begins with an interesting wording. It says, this is the book of the generations of Adam.

[26:35] Now the word book does not necessarily mean literally a book that's bound like our Bibles are normally bound. The word book just means a written document. Could have been a tablet. Could have been a scroll. Could have been any kind of written form of communication.

[26:49] But the point here is that Moses, as he writes this book, has probably at his disposal a written record of Adam's descendants. Well, how difficult would that be to come by?

[27:02] Not very. Not if you only have one guy between Noah and Adam. And when you do the same thing with the genealogy in chapter 11, you only end up with one or two people between Noah and Abraham.

[27:15] It's not difficult to pass down a written document when you can hand it down through that few of people. It's not like you have to hand it down through every generation for this to happen.

[27:26] Which means that while it is possible that God simply, just out of nowhere, revealed to Moses the creation account in Genesis chapters 1-3 and even chapters 4-5, it is entirely possible that out of nowhere God just spoke to Noah and said, write this down and here's the account of how I created the heavens and the earth.

[27:47] That's entirely possible. But it's also possible that from Adam to Methuselah to Noah on down to Abraham, there was a written record of the things that happened.

[28:02] Not that far removed from Adam himself. Which means that our confidence in these opening chapters of the book of Genesis can be greatly bolstered and increased by understanding this.

[28:17] By knowing that it's not a far stretch to believe that Adam could have passed this information down to his descendants all the way down to Moses.

[28:27] It's not a far stretch to believe that at all. And we ought to have great confidence in God's Word that all of this is God's Word.

[28:38] That we're not dealing here with sort of made up stories that were just made up and passed down and they got changed and altered all over the place and those sorts of things. We're not dealing with something like that.

[28:50] We're dealing with a very clear passing down of real historical events that really took place. You should have confidence in God's Word because of that.

[29:01] And you shouldn't listen to the naysayers, the voices out there that say, well, we don't have any evidence that this document is ancient at all but it was written much later and people just made these things up. That's not the case at all.

[29:14] The evidence points in the other direction when you take the Bible at face value. So I don't think that there's room for gaps here. I think that we have a straightforward genealogy.

[29:25] Now, back to the point of the genealogy. The point of the genealogy really I think is threefold. Number one is to simply continue to demonstrate this universality of sin.

[29:38] But in order to do that it also has to demonstrate the interrelatedness, interconnectedness of all people, of all the descendants of Adam. And that's one thing that's happening here. Remember, this genealogy takes us from Adam all the way up to Noah.

[29:52] And of course, with Noah, everyone other than Noah and his sons is wiped out by the flood. And so after the flood you once again have a line being established. But that means that all of us, everyone alive on the planet today can trace their lineage directly back to Noah and then from Noah through this genealogy all the way back to Adam.

[30:15] In fact, in the book of Acts we read that God created from one man and all the nations upon the face of the earth and determined the boundaries for them. In other words, we're all related.

[30:26] We all go back to Adam and understanding this, believing in the universal relatedness and connectedness of every human being on the planet severs the root of racism in our day.

[30:39] We don't defeat racism by increasing education. We don't defeat racism simply by telling people that they ought not to be racist. You defeat racism by showing people that there's essentially no difference between this person and this person though they may look differently.

[30:54] There's no difference. Biblically, there aren't any races. There are ethnicities, there are nationalities, there are various cultures and there are people who tend to look more like each other in this area and people tend to look more like each other in this area but there is only one race all descended from Adam and we're seeing problems in our world and we see racism persist even to this day among various races going all sorts of different directions.

[31:25] Yes, because we're fallen sinful people and it's just our tendency to hate other human beings but also in this particular form because we are often fooled into thinking that we because of our lineage, because of our descent or because of our physical characteristics, we are somehow better than somebody else or you might reverse it and think that they are somehow better than you and you're inferior to this other group of people but whatever the case may be, the reality is that we're all the same.

[31:54] We are the same. We come from Adam. We trace our lineage back to Noah and from Noah back to Adam. We are all the same. There's one human race expressed in diversity and we'll see why that diversity comes at the Tower of Babel.

[32:09] Diverse, yes, but we are fundamentally, essentially the same and racism, racism can be eradicated only to the degree that you really, really believe that and embrace that.

[32:27] But of course, the primary point of this passage is not aimed at defeating racism. It's not even aimed primarily at showing us that we're all interconnected and related. It aims at showing us that since we're all interconnected and since we're all descended from Adam, therefore, we all inherit from Adam the same kind of sinful nature.

[32:51] We saw the depths of depravity in chapter 4. We see the universal effects of sin here in chapter 5. Because eight times as we go through this passage, eight times we come across the phrase, and he died, and he died, and he died, and he died, and he died.

[33:09] Over and over the refrain, and he died. It is universal. Nobody escapes death. You can, if you're crafty enough, you can't escape paying your taxes.

[33:22] It's possible. Not likely, but possible. You cannot escape death. In fact, I don't know how many of you have ever heard of a guy named Ray Kurzweil.

[33:34] I'm not sure that I'm saying his name correctly, but he is one of the executives at Google. So he's rich, but he's also very smart. He's the head of engineering at Google. And one of his sort of pet projects that he devotes a lot of his time and energy to is trying to avoid death.

[33:52] Literally. I mean, he'll tell you. He's trying in all that he can do to cheat death. And his plan is to, he says, to build a bridge to a bridge to a bridge. Here's what he means.

[34:02] He's going to do everything he can now to maximize the length of his life, believing that some technology will come along in 10 years or 20 years or 30 years that will then allow him, if he can make it to that point, the technology will then allow him to lengthen his life further until greater technology comes out and he's able to lengthen it further.

[34:23] And so he says, I've never said that I'm going to live forever, but he believes that through technology he can continue to postpone death very, very, very far, perhaps indefinitely.

[34:33] And in fact, his plan right now, he takes about 150 supplements a day. 150 supplements a day on average is what he takes. He's just trying to prolong his life until he believes that something will come about called the nanobot revolution.

[34:50] Nano is just really, really tiny in Latin, okay? Not precise, but it means really small. Really small, tiny, tiny machines, that he believes will be able to go into your body and constantly be in your body repairing things, fixing the aging process, fixing illnesses, all these sorts of things so that someday, hopefully, he believes we can eat all the junk food we want and the nanobots will take care of it and give us all the vitamins that we need.

[35:14] This is a very, very intelligent man hoping somehow through human ingenuity to cheat death. He's 65.

[35:25] He's 65. chances are I'll outlive him. Pretty good chance. But he's trying really, really hard.

[35:36] But it can't be done because death is universal. I want you to hold your place in Genesis chapter 5 and turn all the way over to the New Testament where we read about the universality of death in Romans chapter 5.

[35:51] In Romans chapter 5, after being told that death spread to all men because all sinned in verse 12. In Romans chapter 5, verse 14, we read this.

[36:03] That death reigned, ruled, absolute dominion. Death reigned from Adam to Moses. So that covers all of Genesis.

[36:16] Genesis is the story that gets us from Adam to Moses in the first chapter of Exodus. Death reigned. And then he says, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam who was a type of the one who was to come.

[36:33] Death reigned universally between Adam and Moses even though the people who lived between the time of Adam and Moses didn't sin in exactly the same way that Adam did and later Moses and the Israelites would.

[36:48] What distinguishes the sin for the people that lived between Adam and Moses from Adam and then from Moses and people after that. The difference is that Adam broke a specific command of God.

[37:01] A very specific command. Do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The day that you eat it you'll surely die. Do not eat from that tree. It's a very straightforward command that Adam broke. You don't receive the law, that is the Ten Commandments and everything else surrounding it, until you get to Moses.

[37:16] And so it's really not until Moses that people once again began to break laws established by God himself. There's a few people who receive commands from God.

[37:27] Abraham's told to leave your family and your kindred and go to the nation that I'll show you. There are a few scattered commands in the book of Genesis, but very direct commands. Do not do this.

[37:38] We don't really see between the garden and the giving of the law on Mount Sinai to Moses. And yet everybody in between died. But if they didn't break a law, sure they sinned, that is, they didn't live their lives fully for the glory of God.

[37:55] Sure they sinned, but if they didn't break a specific command, why did they all die? That's the question that needs answering. Why? The Apostle Paul readily admits death reigned universally over all of them even though they didn't break one of God's commands.

[38:11] It happened. Why did they die? Because of the sin of Adam.

[38:22] Verse 15, which is not on the screen, but if you read on through your Bible, it says, But if the free gift is not like the trespass, for if many died through one man's trespass, verse 16, the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation.

[38:39] Why is death so universal in Genesis chapter 5? Why is death so universal throughout human history? It is because we inherit from Adam not only a sinful nature, but we inherit from him the guilt due for his violation of God's command.

[39:02] And you cannot run from that. You cannot hide from that. There is no avoiding the inevitability of death for any of us.

[39:14] So, now that I've depressed you, let me see if we can find some hope here in the text. We can. We find hope in the very middle of this, and we find hope at the end of this genealogy.

[39:25] So back to Genesis chapter 5, I want to give you two reasons to hope. Because this text emphasizes the interrelatedness of all humanity, the universality of sin, but it also emphasizes the hope that we can have that death will be overcome.

[39:40] Take a look at verse 21, where we read about a man named Enoch. We're told that when Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. So this is the great-grandfather of Noah, Enoch.

[39:54] And then there's a break. There's been a pattern all the way through. So these six generations that we've seen, there's been a definite pattern. Adam was 130, he fathered Seth, lived 800 more years, he died.

[40:07] Same pattern followed. You get to Enoch, all of a sudden the pattern is broken. Because what you expect to find is that Enoch had lived 165 years, he followed Father Methuselah, then he lived another, whatever, 500 years, thus all the years of Enoch were so-and-so and he died.

[40:24] That's not what you get with Enoch. What you get is that he lived 65 years and followed Father Methuselah, and then all of a sudden this strange phrase, Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years, had other sons and daughters.

[40:39] He walked with God. Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch, there again, walked with God and he was not, for God took him. He didn't die.

[40:50] He was just not. He just wasn't there anymore because God took him. So there's one interruption in, and he died, and he died, and he died, and it's this.

[41:02] He walked with God and then he was not because God took him. Which means that there is hope for escape from death. There is hope. It can happen.

[41:13] It doesn't happen for us the way that it did for Enoch. We don't suddenly disappear, but there can be hope beyond death. God has the power to overturn the verdict of guilty.

[41:25] He has the power to remove the guilt of Adam's sin. He has the power to take away the curse. How does that happen? We're told at the end with Noah, verse 28, that when Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son and called his name Noah, saying, Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from the work and the painful toil of our hands.

[41:54] He names his son Noah, which means literally, rest. Lamech had a son and he named him rest. Why? Because he believed or he at least hoped that Noah would be the one to reverse the curse.

[42:10] God is capable of reversing the curse. He does it with Enoch. Lamech is hopeful that his son will be the one who will reverse the curse for all of God's people.

[42:21] Not just this one man, but for everyone who belongs to him. He has this hope. And that hope is rooted in Genesis 1-3.

[42:32] In fact, in chapter 2, when God originally created Adam, we're told that he took and he, most English translations say he placed him or he put him in the garden. But literally, what the text says is he caused him to rest in the garden.

[42:48] Adam was originally created to enjoy the very rest of God that God expressed on day 7. He's put in the garden in order to rest there. It doesn't mean no work because Adam had work to do, but it means that he enters into a special, unique communion with God.

[43:04] He puts him there. He causes him to rest in the garden. And that's stripped away when he sins. That's gone. There's no closeness with God. There's no intimacy. There is only fear of judgment after the fall.

[43:17] And yet, there's a promise in chapter 3 that there will be a seed of the woman who will defeat the serpent who brought about the curse. Things will be reversed. Things will be changed.

[43:29] Things will be flipped. Things will be set right through a descendant of Eve. And so Lamech comes along ten generations later and says, perhaps now, perhaps my son Noah is the one.

[43:42] Maybe he's the promised seed. I'm going to name him Noah because he's going to get rid of the curse and he's going to bring rest back to us. He's hoping in it. He's believing in it. All of the Old Testament saints had a forward-looking hope to a promised seed who would come and redeem them from their sins and Adam's sin and would set them free from the curse of death and painful toil in this life.

[44:07] And yet, Noah was not the promised seed. the New Testament opens by almost quoting the words of Genesis 5-1.

[44:18] This is the book of the generations but not of Adam, of a new Adam. This is a record of the genealogy.

[44:29] It's the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of Abraham, son of David. It's a new Adam.

[44:40] Come to reverse the curse. In fact, you can see that very clearly in Luke's genealogy of Jesus. Hold your place in Genesis and turn all the way over to the Gospel of Luke.

[44:53] It's the last place I'll make you... No, it's not. It's the second to last place I'll make you turn. Luke chapter 3 gives us the genealogy of Jesus and takes us all the way back to Adam.

[45:05] But what's significant is to read the verse that comes right before the genealogy. The genealogy begins in Luke chapter 3 verse 23 but the verse before it is Jesus' baptism.

[45:20] We're told in verse 22 that the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus in bodily form like a dove and a voice came from heaven. You are my beloved son with you I am well pleased which is a combination of quotations from the Psalms.

[45:33] But Jesus is proclaimed by God you are my son. I'm pleased with you. You're my son. And then immediately the genealogy which traces all the way down to verse 38.

[45:47] It goes backwards to Adam. Verse 38 son of Enos or Enosh son of Seth son of Adam son of God.

[46:00] another son of God in the same way that Adam was a son of God. The seed of the woman has now come. He's arrived.

[46:10] He's here. All the hope invested in Noah that came to no fruition other than surviving the flood all that hope that Lamech had is now rightly placed upon Jesus.

[46:22] And the deliverance that Enoch experienced from ultimate final death can be ours as well. We will experience physical death but the New Testament holds out the promise of resurrection that as Christ was raised so all those who are in Christ will be raised as well.

[46:40] Paul says in 1 Corinthians he chants at death where is your victory? Where is it? Where is your sting? Death has now lost with the coming of Jesus and the death and resurrection of Jesus because he has taken upon himself the curse.

[46:56] He has taken upon himself not only Adam's sin but your sin my sin all the sin of his people he has taken upon himself he has borne the curse he became a curse for us he became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

[47:19] In Hebrews chapter 11 in commenting on the life of Enoch Hebrews 11 verse 4 tells us the secret to obtaining this life that defeats death by faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death and he was not found because God had taken him now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God without faith it's impossible to please him Enoch pleased God because he believed Enoch pleased God because he trusted in him to walk with God as we're told that Enoch did is to live in an intimate relationship with him it is to trust him fully with all that you are and with all that you have and Enoch trusted and he walked and he knew God in that way he believed in him and the curse was lifted for Enoch and for all of those of us who believe in the promised seed all of us who trust in Jesus the curse is lifted and eternal life is promised let's pray

[48:42]  Father let us not think that there is any part of scripture that does not hold out for us hope encouragement correction rebuke and training for righteousness but let us look into the mirror of your word and see ourselves first in all our sinfulness and then by faith covered in the righteousness of Jesus if there is anybody here Father who has not trusted fully in Jesus for life and release from the curse I pray that they would not leave without confessing their sins to him trusting fully in what he's done on the cross for them I pray this in Jesus name amen you guys holy