Genesis Chapter 4 Part 4

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

And welcome back to the final lesson of Genesis chapter four. And I want to just take a moment before we read the text that we're going to have for today because I think we need to feel the full weight of where we've been. If you remember, we started chapter four with an altar. Two brothers, two offerings, one accepted, one rejected. And we watched anger take root in Cain's heart. And we we watched God step toward him and offer him a time of confession and repentance. And yet we watched him walk through the door of sin. We stood in the field and watched the first murder in all of human history and the blood cry from the ground. And then we watched his descendants build a civilization and invent cities and music and metalwork and culture, which all of them were gifted and very impressive. And it all culminated with a man by the name of Lamech standing before his two wives singing a horrible song. That is where Genesis chapter 4 is taking us, and eight verses just of growing darkness. And then in the final two verses, everything changes. And in verses 25 through 26, they're very short. You can read it in just a few seconds. But these two verses are the hinge on which the rest of the Bible turns. Because after Cain's line has run its course, after the city, the music, the weapons, the song of vengeance, God's work starts again. Not with a new creation, not with a new Adam, but with a baby, a baby by the name of Seth. The text says here, starting in verse 25, Adam had relations with his wife again, and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth. For she said, God has appointed me another offspring in place of Abel, for Cain killed him. To Seth was born a son, and he named him Enosh. Then men began to call upon the name of the Lord. Notice something about how this verse begins. Adam had relations with his wife again. Now we're going to discuss genealogies and times and lifespans and all of that when we get to chapter 5. But I want you to notice a few things here, which follows the line of Cain through six generations. That's what verses 17 through 24 does. And then the narrative suddenly snaps back to Adam and Eve. And this is a deliberate literary move in Hebrew. Moses wants us to see the two competing storylines side by side. In the line of Cain, they're running forward and they're building cities and culture and Lamech songs of vengeance. And now you have another line in the line of Seth that will carry the promised seed from Genesis chapter 3, verse 15, moving forward. You have two seeds, two trajectories, and the entire rest of the Bible will be about which one of those lines wins. Eve speaks again, and once more, her words, her words reveal her heart. She says, God has appointed me another offspring in place of Abel, for Cain killed him. Look carefully at what she says, and maybe even more importantly, look carefully at what she doesn't say. She doesn't say, I've had another son. She doesn't say, Well, life goes on. She says, God has appointed. The Hebrew word here means to set in place, to establish. It's the language of divine purpose. She's not describing a biological event. She is recognizing a divine act. Think about everything that Eve has been through. She was deceived by a serpent. She ate the forbidden fruit. She heard the curse pronounced over her. She was exiled from Eden. She watched one son murder another son. She watched her firstborn walk away from the presence of God. And after all of that, her response to the birth of Seth is that God has appointed. And this is absolutely remarkable. She's showing that she still has faith after all that she's been through. And the name Seth in itself is a Hebrew word that comes from a root meaning to appoint, to set in place, to grant, or to substitute. So the name Seth means appointed one. And so Eve names her son after the very theology she expressed. God has appointed Seth. And the idea of appointment, of substitution, of one taking another's place is one of the greatest threads that runs throughout the Bible. Seth takes the place of Abel. Isaac, in a sense, takes the place of the son Abraham, almost sacrificed. The ram takes the place of Isaac on Mount Moriah. The Passover lamb takes the place of the firstborn in Egypt. The scapegoat takes the place of Israel's sin on the Day of Atonement. And ultimately, Jesus takes the place of sinners on the cross. And so the theology of substitution is one life standing in for another. And it all begins right here with Seth, a grieving mother naming her son appointed one. The early church father Ambrose Milan wrote about Seth's name, that it was the first human expression of what would become the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, not in its fullness, but in its seed, that God appoints one to stand in the place of another, and this is what he's done from the very beginning. Now we have to ask the question: why not Cain? And it's something for us to pause on. Cain was the firstborn. And in the ancient world, the firstborn carried the inheritance, the leadership, the covenant promise. And by every human expectation, Cain should have been the one through whom the family line, the promise would follow, the future would flow through. But Cain disqualified himself, not because God rejected him, but because Cain rejected the way God offered him. He came to God on his own terms at the altar. He responded to correction with rage instead of repentance. He murdered his brother. He walked away from God's presence. And now the line of promise does not run through the firstborn. It runs through the appointed one, the substitute. And this is the pattern that again repeats throughout Genesis and beyond Genesis. Ishmael was the firstborn, but the promise ran through Isaac. Esau was the firstborn, but the blessing went through Jacob. Reuben was the firstborn among Jacob's sons, but the kingly line ran through Judah, and the priestly line through Levi. Saul was Israel's first king, but David, the youngest of his family, became the line of the Messiah. Again and again, God's purposes do not run through human expectation. They run through God's divine appointment. Paul writes about this principle in Romans chapter 9, using the language of God's sovereign choice, not according to human merit or birth order, but according to his purpose and call. And so Seth is the first appointed in a long line of appointed ones, all of them pointing forward to the ultimate appointed one in Jesus. Now, verse 26 introduces us to the next generation. To Seth was born his son, his name was Enosh. The name Enosh in Hebrew means man or mortal or frail human being. And this is a different word than the name Adam, which also means man. Enosh carries a specific connotation of weakness, mortality, and frailty. It's the word used in passages like Psalm 8, verse 4. What is man that you take thought of him? The Hebrew word there is Enosh. In Psalm 103, verse 15, as for a man, his days are like grass. Again, the word Enosh. So why would Seth name his son Frail or mortal? Some scholars believe this name reflects the growing awareness by this third generation of just how fragile and limited human life has become since the fall. Adam was formed from the dust of the ground by the hand of God. By the time of Enosh, three generations later, humanity is keenly aware, they're only dust, that they're frail, that they're mortal, and they will die. And it's precisely at that moment when human frailty is most acutely felt. That's something we see, and it's remarkable here. Here it is. The verse that everything in this lesson, and in many ways the entire chapter, has been building toward. It says, Then men began to call upon the name of the Lord. Seven words, and they may be the most quietly important seven words written in the entire book of Genesis. So let's slow down. I want to unpack every little piece of this because this is where it all lands. The Hebrew word translated began is significant. It signals the start of something new, a new practice, a new pattern, a new reality. Now, this raises an interesting question. Did Adam and Eve not call on God's name before this? Of course they called on God's name. God walked with them in the garden. Adam named the animals in God's presence. Eve acknowledged God at Cain's birth, and again it's Seth's birth. So what's new here? Most scholars believe this marks something very specific, and that is the beginning of corporate and public worship. Up to this point, the relationship with God had been individual, personal encounters, private acknowledgments. Now, for the first time, people plural are calling on the Lord together. This is the birthplace of corporate worship in the Bible, the first gathered community calling out to God. Now think about the contrast. In the line of Cain, people gathered, they built a city, they made music and weapons and songs of vengeance. But in the line of Seth, people gathered to call on the name of the Lord. Two communities, two gatherings, two very different reasons to come together, the city of man and the assembly of those who call on God, both born in Genesis chapter 4. And the phrase, the name of the Lord, is loaded with meaning. In Hebrew thought, a name wasn't just a label. A name represented character and reputation and presence and authority. To call on someone's name was to invoke their character and their authority. It was an act of trust, an admission of need. It was a recognition that you cannot do this on your own. You need that person to come and help you. And the specific name used here is Lord in Hebrew, Yahweh. This is God's covenant name, the personal, relational name of God. And this is significant because this is the same name that God would later reveal to Moses of the burning bush, I am who I am. But here in Genesis chapter 4, long before Moses, long before Sinai, long before the covenant with Abraham, people are already calling on this name, the personal covenant name of God was known and was called upon from the very earliest generations of human history. Now, this matters for a reason that most people miss. Some skeptics argue that the personal name of God, Yahweh, was a later invention. That early Israelite religion was more generic and the personal covenant name developed over time. But in Genesis chapter 4, verse 26, places this places the calling on this specific name at the very dawn of human history, generations before Adam, before Moses, before any of the covenants that we typically typically associate with his name. The text presents this not as an evolution, but as a recovery of his name, a return to him, a renewal of something that existed that had once been lost, but it's been found. And in the ancient world, the calling of the names of gods was extremely common. Every culture had their pantheon of gods, and every God had their function, their domain, and the names were invoked for specific purposes. You see this across Mesopotamia and Egypt. And it was against this backdrop that we read in Genesis chapter 4, verse 26, it's doing something remarkable. It does not say the priest of Enosh began to call upon the name of the Lord. It doesn't say the kings and intermediaries began to call on the proper rituals. It says men began to call upon the name of the Lord. That means ordinary people had direct access. No priestly class, no temples, no elaborate ritual system, just people calling on God's name. And this is staggering when you consider the ancient world's religious system. Access to the divine was almost always mediated and restricted and controlled. From the very beginning, the God of the Bible was accessible, not through ritual machinery, but through calling, through relationship. This is the same accessibility that we saw in Genesis chapter 3, God walking in the garden seeking Adam. The same accessibility we saw in Genesis 4 when God came to Cain before the murder. And now at the end of chapter 4, ordinary people are calling on God's name. That's amazing. Joel chapter 2, verse 32, quoted by Peter at Pentecost in Acts chapter 2, verse 21, says, And it will come about that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be delivered. Whoever, that word whoever, has its roots in this one sentence going all the way back to Genesis chapter 4, verse 26. Men began to call. Not priests, not kings, men, ordinary people, people like you and me. Now, let's step back and see the whole chapter. Genesis chapter 4, it traces lines descending from Adam and Eve, the line of Cain, and then the line of Seth. The same starting point, the same fallen world, the same curse, the same exile, then the same mortality, but two completely different trajectories. One line builds, the other line calls. One line makes a name for themselves, the other calls on the name above every other name. One line ends singing songs of vengeance, the other begins a tradition of worship that will never end. And here's the question that Genesis chapter 4 leaves us with, and the question that every generation since has had to answer. And this is it. Which line do you belong to? Not by birth. Cain and Seth had the same parents, the same fallen natures, the same access to God's presence and warning. The difference was not their bloodline, the difference was their response. Cain responded with correction and rage. Seth's line responded with frailty and calling and worship. And so every person listening to this or watching this on Facebook or YouTube has the same choice. The same fallen nature, the same mortality, but the same need. You can build your own city or you can call on the name of the Lord. One of the most well-documented facts in the field of anthropology is that religious beliefs and practices is universal across human cultures. Every known civilization, without exception, has developed some form of religious practice, prayer or ritual or worship. And anthropologists have called this phenomenon a fancy word, but it translates to religious man, suggesting that the impulse to seek the divine is not learned from culture, but is built into human nature itself. Why would that be? Now, from a purely materialistic perspective, this would be strange. If humans were simply the product of natural selection, why would virtually every culture in history develop an impulse towards something that cannot be seen, touched, or verified? And Genesis chapter 4, verse 26 offers an explanation that predates anthropology by thousands of years. And that is that calling on God is not a cultural invention, it's a human inheritance built into the earliest generations of humanity, passed down, sometimes suppressed, sometimes corrupted, and often forgotten, but never fully erased. One of my favorite verses is Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verse 11, says he has made everything appropriate in time. And he has also said eternity in the hearts of men, yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Beautiful poetry. Eternity is in the heart of every man. And that's why every culture across history has an altar of some kind of worship. And Genesis chapter 4, verse 26, tells us when that calling began. And there's something significant about this. It happens in the generation of Enosh, frail and mortal man. It is precisely when human limitation becomes most acute, that the calling on God begins. And this pattern repeats throughout the scripture and throughout human experience. Israel cried out to God while they were in slavery. The Psalms of Lament, the most numerous categories of the psalm, arise from a time of distress. Jesus said it's the sick who need a physician and not the healthy. And Paul wrote that God's power is perfected in weakness. So our culture often treats weakness and limitation and mortality as problems to be engineered away. Medicine, technology, self-improvement, self-help, all promising to minimize our frailty. And there's nothing wrong with medicine or technology, but Genesis chapter 4, verse 26 suggests something our culture doesn't really want to hear. Our frailty is not just a problem to be solved, it's also a doorway. It was in the generation named frail and mortal, Enosh, that people began to call upon the name of the Lord. Paul said it this way in 2 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 9 through 10, said, My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness, for when I am weak, then I am strong. Enosh's generation discovered this 6,000 years before Paul ever wrote it down. Genesis chapter 4, verse 26 plants the seed, a simple phrase, calling on the name of the Lord. And we see that seed grow throughout the entire Old Testament. And then in the New Testament, the seed planted in Genesis chapter 46, chapter 4, verse 26, reaches its fullest expression in Jesus. In Romans chapter 10, verses 9 through 13, whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord, the exact wording from Genesis chapter 4, verse 26. And here's what makes that so beautiful. In Genesis chapter 4, verse 26, the name being called upon is the name Chahweh, the covenant name of God. In Romans chapter 10, Paul applies the same Old Testament language about calling Chahweh directly to Jesus. Paul is making an enormous theological statement that the name that has been called upon since Enosh is the covenant name of our Lord, is the name of Jesus. We pick up on this in Philippians chapter 2, verses 9 through 11, where Paul says, God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. From Enosh to Jesus, from the dawn of human history to the name above every name. Now, we've walked through an entire chapter four here, and I want to bring this, bring this uh two lines of Seth and Enosh to their final destination. Again, the line of Cain, the city of man. Uh it reappears in Babylon and Babel and it's the great enemies of God's people throughout the entire Old Testament. Revelation chapter 18, verse 2 declares its fall. Fallen, fallen is the Babylon of great. And then you have the line of Seth, those who call upon the name of the Lord. Revelation verse 22, verses 3 and 4 says, There will no longer be any curse, and they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. His name will be on their forehead. The name that Enosh's generation began to call on becomes the name written on the foreheads of those in the kingdom, from the calling of a name to the bearing of that name forever. And this is the arc of the entire Bible, and it begins with one quiet final verse at the end of Genesis chapter 4. Now, let me bring this entire lesson to a conclusion. Genes 4 began at an altar with the two brothers, and it moved through murder and exile, a city, a civilization, a song of vengeance, and it ends at an altar with people calling on the name of the Lord. Worship opens the chapter, and worship closes the chapter. And in between, everything that can go wrong with worship goes wrong. And yet the chapter does not end the despair. It ends with Lamech's song. It doesn't end with Lamech's song as the final word. The final word of Genesis 4 is that people began to call upon the name of the Lord. And that's the pattern of the entire Bible. Darkness does not get the last word. Cain does not get the last word. Lamech does not get the last word. Calling on the name of the Lord is the last word. And it still is. And so whatever line you feel like you have come from, whatever family history you have, whatever personal history that you've gone through, and sometimes it may feel more like Cain's story than Seth's story. I want to let you know the invitation is the same one Enosh's generation discovered. That wherever you are, if you call upon the name of the Lord, you will be saved. You don't have to be worthy or gifted, the firstborn. That's what Genesis chapter 4 leaves us with. And it's a story of the entire Bible. It's a story of redemption. And it's gathering speed now. Now I want to thank you for walking through Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis all the way through Genesis chapter 4 with me. And we've covered an enormous amount of ground over these last lessons: creation, the image of God, marriage, the fall, the first gospel promise, the exile, and the first calling upon the name of the Lord. Next week, as we get into Genesis chapter 5, I'm going to show you a genealogy that on the surface looks like just a list of names, but I believe it contains one of the most extraordinary hidden messages found in the entire Old Testament. I hope you'll join us for those lessons. I hope you enjoy these lessons, and also next time, I hope that you have a blessed day.