Genesis Chapter 5 Part 2

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

And welcome back. In our last lesson, we set with the drumbeat in the opening of Genesis chapter 5 and verses 1 through 20. And today we're going to talk about verses 21 through 32, about Enoch and a few other details and dealing with him and Methuselah. In our last lesson, not only did we look at the drumbeat, we looked at the 10 names, hundreds of years each, and after every single one of them, the exact same three words. We saw proof of generation after generation. And we also discovered something remarkable hidden with inside of the names themselves, a sentence forming across the genealogy that reads like the gospel in miniature. Now, today, as we finish the chapter, and right in the middle of the drum beat, what we see is that the rhythm breaks. One name in this list does not end with those words, and he died. And that's Enoch, the seventh from Adam, a man about whom Scripture says almost nothing, and somehow everything at the same time. A man who walked with God. And then he was not because God took him. We're also going to meet his son Methuselah, the oldest man who ever lived, and then we'll close the chapter with the birth of a baby named Noah, whose name means rest and comfort, and whose birth comes with the first recorded prophecy in Genesis since chapter 3. So let's read the text here in Genesis chapter 5, starting in verse 21. It says that Enoch lived 65 years and became the father of Methuselah. Then Enoch walked with God 300 years after he became the father of Methuselah, and he had other sons and other daughters. So the days of Enoch were 365 years. This is where all the other um genealogy said, and he died. But this is what Enoch says. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. Methuselah lived 187 years and became the father of Lamech. Then Methuselah lived 782 years after he became the father of Lamech, and he had other sons and other daughters. So all the days of Methuselah were 969 years and he died. Lamech lived 182 years and became the father of the son. Now he called his son, uh called him called his name Noah, saying, This is the one, this one will give us rest from our work and from the toil of our hands arising from the ground in which the Lord is cursed. Then Lamech lived five hundred and ninety-five years after he became the father of Noah, and he had other sons and daughters. So all the days of Lamech were 777 years and he died. Noah was 500 years old, and Noah became the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. These are the in these twelve verses, this is what we see. We see one man who did not die, one man who lived longer than anyone in human history, and one birth that points straight at the flood. So let's dig into this as we get a little bit deeper to the text. The pattern here begins like every other. Again, at first, Enoch's story looks like the entry looks like every other entry with every other name in the chapter. Enoch lived six uh 65 years and became the father of Methuselah, the same formula, the same rhythm. And what we expect, what we've been trained to see in the six previous entries, was that he died. But then something changes. It says then Enoch walked with God 300 years after he became the father of Methuselah. I don't know if you caught that. Every other entry in this chapter says he lived this many more years. Enoch's entry says he walked with God this number of years. That's important. The formula breaks, and the break is the point. He walked with God, a phrase that is only used twice in the entire book of Genesis. It's a Hebrew phrase here, walked with God, that suggests a continuous, repeated, habitual action. This is not a single stroll. This is not just one day of his life. For Enoch, this is a 300-year rhythm. It is a way of life. This exact phrase appears only other in Genesis chapter 6, verse 9, describing Noah, that Noah walked with God. And so there are two men in the entire span of Genesis chapter 1 through Genesis chapter 11. Only two people are described with this very specific, intimate phrase that they walked with God. And this is significant because of what surrounds them. Enoch lives in the line of Seth, while the line of Cain is building cities and singing songs of vengeance just one chapter earlier. What we see in Noah, Noah will live in a world that is so corrupt that God determines to wipe it out with a flood in the next chapter. Both men walked with God in the middle of a world that was not of God. That is the theological weight of this verse. Walking with God is not something you do when the world cooperates. Walking with God is something you do in spite of the world around you. And so the image of walking is one of the most important relational pictures in all of Scripture. Walking implies a movement in the same direction, a companionship. It's not just being beside, it's being with. It's a shared pace. Neither one is rushing ahead or lagging behind. It's an ongoing relationship, not a single encounter, but a continuous journey together. It's intimacy. Walking with God implies a conversation, a closeness, and a trust. And this is the same word used in Genesis chapter 3, verse 8, when God walked in the garden in the cool of the day. In Eden, walking with God was the native condition of humanity. It wasn't unusual. It was the original design. After the fall, the walking relationship was broken. Adam and Eve hid from the sound of God walking. And then generations later, east of Eden, in a world increasingly given over to violence and self-glorification, one man, one person recovers it, and that's Enoch. He walked with God. And this is staggering. What was lost in the garden, Enoch found, not perfectly, and not in an unbroken world, but genuinely, and he did it for 300 years. Now, next comes that sentence that breaks every expectation that Genesis chapter 5 is built on. Because Enoch walked with God and he was not, for God took him. Not the words we're used to when he died. Instead, and he was not. Not he died and was buried, not he passed away. He was not. He was simply no longer there. And the text gives the reason immediately. Why is he not there? Because God took him. The Hebrew word for took here is the same word used elsewhere for taking a wife in marriage, an intimate, purposeful claiming, uh, taking an offering to present it to God, taking someone by the hand to lead them somewhere. This is not a euphemism for death. This is a divine act of removal. God reached down to earth and took Enoch, body and all, out of this world. The text implies that Enoch did not die. He was taken, removed directly into God's presence. Remember what we established in our last lesson in Genesis chapter 5 that it's built around a deliberate, repetitive drumbeat, and he died, and he died and he died. Eight times before Enoch and then two times after. But right in the middle, we see Enoch, the seventh from Adam. That's important. Keep in mind, the seventh from Adam, because numbers in the Bible are important. Seven represents completeness, fullness, divine perfection. Enoch, the seventh in this generation, becomes living proof that death is not the final word God intends for humanity. Genesis chapter 3 introduced death as the consequence of sin. Genesis chapter 5 documents death as a universal reality. And Enoch, right in the middle of that documentation, becomes just a little crack of light, a preview of a promise that death does not have to be the end of the story for us. This is one of the most important theological functions of Enoch's account. He is proof, embedded right in the middle of the most relentless mortality passage in the Old Testament, that God has the power and the will to take his people beyond death's reach. And here is something that will maybe deepen this even further. We mentioned in our last lesson the Sumerian King's List. That's what we discussed in the opening of chapter 5, the pre-flood Mesopotamian record of kings with extraordinary lifespans and extraordinary reigns. In some versions of the Mesopotamian tradition outside of the king's list, there was a figure who was the seventh king in certain traditions, who was said to have been taken into the divine council, granted secret wisdom by the gods. Now, scholars have long noted the parallel position of the seventh figure in the pre-flood list. But the contrast is just as important as the parallel. In the Mesopotamian tradition, the seventh figure gained secret uh wisdom through his writ through rituals. And it was his so-called knowledge that that was hoarded by the priestly elite. In Genesis, what we see is the seventh figure defining trait is not a secret knowledge. His defining trait is a relationship with the Creator, that he walked with God. It's not initiated into mysteries. It's not, he's not granted forbidden wisdom. It's simply that he's walking day after day, year after year with the living God. And that's what separates him. And so Genesis, again, reframes what the ancient world value, not a secret knowledge, but a relationship with the Creator, not ritual access to the divine, but ordinary, sustained faithfulness. And this is consistent with everything that we've seen throughout Genesis. The God of the Bible is not manipulated through rituals or religion. He is known through a relationship. Now, we have to ask a question. We have to look at what the rest of Scripture says about Enoch. This is really important. Because in Hebrews chapter 11, we read a little bit about Enoch and his testimony of faith. The New Testament doesn't leave Enoch's story as a mystery for us. It's really important. So in Hebrews chapter 11, what is commonly referred to as the hall of faith, it gives a crucial commentary on Enoch. And this is what it says in verses 5 and 6 of Hebrews chapter 11. It says, by faith, Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death, and he was not found because God took him up. For he obtained the witness that before his being taken up, he was pleasing to God. And without faith, it is impossible to please him. For he who comes to God must believe that he exists and that he is the rewarder of those who seek him. Notice the key phrase, by faith. What that means is that Enoch's walk with God was not passive, it wasn't automatic. It was a walk of faith, sustained, active, deliberate, trust in God. And the writer of Hebrews adds something crucial when it says this: he obtained the witness that before is being taken up that he was pleasing to God. So Enoch's transitioning was not random. It's not arbitrary. It was the fruit of a life that pleased God. And this raises the question that every honest reader should ask: what does it mean to please God? And Hebrews answers that question immediately by saying, without faith, it is impossible to please him. It doesn't say without perfection it's impossible. If you don't have a flawless performance, you're never going to please God. It says without faith it's impossible. Faith, trust, belief that he exists, and he rewards those who seek him. And so Enoch is held up alongside of Abel and Noah and Abraham and Moses as the greatest heroes of the faith, as a proof that faith has always been the operating principle of the relationship with God, even before the law, even before the covenant with Abraham, even in the earliest pages of human history. It is faith in God, trust in God. Now here's something that surprises many readers when they first encounter it. The book of Jude, one of the shortest books in the New Testament, directly quotes a prophecy attributed to Enoch in the book of Enoch. And we can discuss that at a later time. There's several reasons why the book of Enoch is not included in our scriptures. But Jude does quote it. And in Jude verses 14 and 15, it says, It was also about these that Enoch in the seventh generation from Adam prophesied, saying, Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment upon all and convict the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds, which they have done in an ungodly way, and all of the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. And so what Jew does is identify Enoch explicitly as the seventh generation from Adam. This is kind of the points that I want us to grab here. And so what that does is confirm the genealogical position that we've been discussing, the Sabbath and the line of Adam. And it also attributes to him a prophecy of final judgment. Now, I want to handle this carefully. Let's go ahead and discuss it just a little bit. This raises an important question. This quotation appears to come from a text known as First Enoch or the Book of Enoch. That was an ancient Jewish writing that was not included in the canon of scripture, either by the Hebrew tradition or by mainstream Christian councils. Nowhere do we find that. So how do we understand Jude quoting from a non-canical book? This is important. Several important points for understanding this are this. Number one, Paul also quotes Greek poets in Acts chapter 17 and Titus chapter 1. But just quoting them doesn't mean he is endorsing the entirety of those works as inspired scripture. That's important. Quoting a source does not necessarily canonize the entire source, it affirms the truthfulness of a specific statement. So Jude, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, affirms that this particular saying accurately reflects something true Enoch actually said, and that it was preserved in a tradition about him. The book of Enoch itself was widely read and respected in Second Temple Judaism, even though it was never considered canical scripture by Jews or by the wider Christian church. The early church had a real debate about this. It was Tertullian writing in the late second century who argued that since Jude quotes it, that the book of Enoch should be considered as one that has authority. But the majority of the early church, including people like Augustine and Jerome, concluded that Jude's use of the material affirmed the truth of that one very specific quotation. And it did not elevate the entire book to the status of inspired scripture. So we can say this with confidence. Enoch, a man who walked with God for 300 years, was also a man who spoke for God, a prophet of judgment, centuries before the flood and when he lived, a flood that he never lived to see. And so this is important for us to understand this because what we see is Enoch as a type of the coming back of Christ and the resurrection. Throughout church history, Enoch's translation has been understood as one of the greatest pictures or types of a bodily transformation or removal from death's group. Two men in the entire Old Testament were taken bodily into God's presence without dying. You have Enoch here in Genesis chapter 5, and then you have Elijah taken up in a whirlwind in 2 Kings, chapter 2, verse 11. Many early church fathers saw these two men as significant foreshadowings of what were to come. You have Irenaeus of Lion in the second century who wrote that Enoch's translation demonstrated that the human body itself, flesh and bone, was capable of being preserved and glorified by God. And this was a direct defense against Gnostic heresies of the day, which taught that physical matter was inherently evil and that salvation meant escaping the body. And so Irenaeus pointed to Enoch, saying, God took him, body and all. The physical creation is not something to escape, it's something that God redeems. Sertullian in the late second century, who connected Enoch's translation directly to the future resurrection and to eventually a rapture of believers, which Paul describes in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. He argued that Enoch's removal proved that God's plan from the beginning included the possibilities of believers passing from this life into glory without tasting death. And that's where most of them land with Paul's connection in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, verses 16 through 17, where a lot of people really focus in on those words caught up. The same concept is Enoch being taken. So Enoch is the first Old Testament preview, according to many scholars, of what Paul described for believers who are alive at Christ's return. Not everyone has to pass through death to reach God's presence. And Enoch proved that 6,000 years ago. Now, let's move on to Methuselah. Methuselah is the oldest man to ever live. Verses 25 through 27. Enoch's son, this is Enoch's son, it says so all the day of Methuselah were 969 years, and then he died. 969 years. The oldest recorded human lifespan in the entire Bible. The longest recorded human lifespan in human history, as far as any record, actually shows. And there's something profoundly moving about who his father was. Methuselah is the son of the one man in this entire genealogy who did not experience an ordinary death. And Methuselah experiences the longest ordinary death of anyone in Scripture. And so, as we discussed last week, Methuselah's name derives from the roots, meaning his death shall bring, or when he dies, it shall be sent. Many conservative Hebrew scholars and Jewish commentators throughout history have connected this name to the timing of the flood. And so let me share this with you. This is called, uh I heard somebody call this the mathematics of mercy. Here's something remarkable that becomes visible when you do the math from the genealogical data in Genesis chapter 5 and Genesis chapter 7. Using the ages given in the text, Methuselah was born when Enoch was 65. Methuselah lived 969 years. So counting forward using the ages given for Lamech and Noah, the year of Methuselah's death lines up according to the most common chronological calculations with the very year of the flood. That means Methuselah's death and the flood's arrival appear to coincide, that they were at the same time. If his name does carry the meaning his death shall bring, then Methuselah's name was a walking prophecy. Methuselah's life is a clock counting down generation after generation toward judgment. Now here's a staggering grace hidden inside of that math. Methuselah lived longer than any human being in history, which means God withheld judgment longer because of him. Every year that he lived was another year of patience and of mercy, a year in which judgment was delayed. Second Peter chapter 3, verse 9, this is what it says. It said, The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some count slowness, but patience towards you, not wishing for any to perish, but they should all should come to repentance. And so Methuselah's 969 years were not just a record of human longevity, they were an extended invitation for repentance. To the entire pre-flood world. The man whose name meant judgment is coming became through the length of his life the very picture of God's patience and grace before judgment fell. Now the next part, we want to see this about Lamech, this is a different Lamech. And I want to pause here because there's a detail that many readers that trips up many readers. Let's say it that way. This is not the same Lamech we met in Genesis chapter 4. That Lamech, the descendant of Cain, sang a chilling song of 77-fold vengeance. This Lamech is an entirely different man. This is a descendant of Seth, the father of Noah. This is important. Two men with the same name but radically different lives. One wrote a song, a chilling song about unrestrained vengeance. The other speaks words of hope and prophecy. And this is a reminder that a name does not determine destiny. It's the heart behind the name, the heart behind the person. And this Lamech will offer us rest, the first prophecy of rest since Genesis chapter 3. And so we're arriving here at one of the most important moments in this chapter. That's what it says. Now he called his name Noah, saying, This one will give us rest from our work and from the toil of our hands arising from the ground which the Lord has cursed. Lamech names his son and speaks in that naming words of genuine prophetic significance. Think about what he is referencing here. He is reaching all the way back to Genesis chapter 3, verse 17. Cursed is the ground because of you. Lamech, naming his newborn son, looks at that ongoing weight and says, This one, this child will give us rest. Think about the Hebrew name Noah. It's really important. It's from that word that means me, it means rest or meaning uh giving rest. And interestingly, the explanation Lamech gives uses a related but distinct word meaning comfort or relief or to console. Both ideas are present in the naming: rest, comfort, and relief from the curse. And so we have to ask the question: was Lamech right? Is that what Noah brought? In one sense, yes. And dramatically, Noah will be the man through whom God resets creation after the flood. In Genesis chapter 8, verse 21, after the flood, God says he will never again curse the ground because of man in the same way. Noah's life marks a genuine turning point in God's relationship with cursed earth. But in another sense, the rest Lamech longed for would not be fully realized in his lifetime, or even in the lifetime of Noah, because the curse was not eliminated. Toil did not disappear. Genesis chapter 9 will show us that sin survives the flood, carried in the hearts of those who were saved. And so Lamech's prophecy was true, but it wasn't yet complete. It pointed to something beyond Noah, and it pointed to something that Noah would need too. Now, in the ancient Near Eastern background, there were a lot of stories about floods and heroes and things like that. It's worth noting in things like the epic of Gilgamesh, that also features a flood hero who survives. In the epic of Gilgamesh, there's a hero there whose name means found life or he found breath. In the Achahasa's epic, uh the hero's name means exceedingly wise. And so both names in both of those stories emphasize wisdom or survival skill. But the hero's own merit are cunning abilities is the surviving, that they survived the catastrophe through their own doing. Noah's name emphasizes something completely different. It's not in his own wisdom, it's not because he is cunning. Instead, rest and comfort and relief, they're given. They're not achieved by a man. The Mesopotamian flood hero survives because he's clever and listens to a God's secret warning, almost like winning a contest of intelligence. Noah survives because God graciously gives him rest from a curse that he never actually created. And so once again, Genesis tells the same basic kind of story that the ancient world knew, but it reframes its meaning entirely around grace rather than human cleverness. Now, this pattern will become even more pronounced when we look at the flood narrative itself in the next couple of weeks. Now, let's let's take just a moment and let's consider, kind of dive into modern apologetics and what this passage actually speaks to today. Enoch's story speaks directly to one of the most common objections to faith in our time. And this is what it says. How can I have a genuine relationship with God when the world around me is so broken, so chaotic, so far from him? And Enoch's answer is simple and yet profound. Enoch did not walk with God in a perfect world. He walked with God in the same fallen, dangerous, chaotic world that we read about in Genesis chapter 4, in a world that we live in today, a world that included then that time, Cain's City, Lamech's song of vengeance, and all the corruption. Walking with God was never meant to depend on the world cooperating with you. This matters enormously for believers today. It means you don't need to have a perfect culture to have a genuine relationship with God. You don't need a perfect church, a perfect family, or a perfect set of circumstances. Enoch walked with God in the land of Nod's shadow. You can walk with God in whatever shadow you're standing in right now. Our culture increasingly treats the physical body as something to be broken from. But there's a hope that's giving here. The world says that we're purely material, a biological machine with little or no significance. But in the scriptures, we see something completely different. That as we walk with God, it's because we have faith in him. Enoch's bodily transition taken up in his body into God's presence stands as one of the earliest declarations of scripture that every part of you matters to God. It was Irenaeus again who wrote against the Gnostics that the body is not a prison to escape. It is part of God's good creation. And this is the same thing that Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 15 and Philippians chapter 3, verse 21, where Christ will transform our lowly bodies into conformity with his glorious body. And so what we see is that we have faith in God and God rescues us from the dangers in the end. Enoch is proof there in all of this. And in the New Testament, we find this fulfillment. When we talk about Noah's name, meaning comfort or rest, we see all that fulfilled in Christ. Lamech named his son Rest, believing he would relieve the curse from us. And in a real but incomplete way, he did. But the full rest that humanity has longed for since Genesis chapter 3, verse 17, and the final relief from toil and the curse and the sweat of the brow doesn't come through Lamech or Noah. It actually comes from the greater Son. That's why Matthew chapter 11, verse 28 through 29 says, Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. I will give you rest. The very word Lamech used in naming Noah. Noah gave the pre-flood world a measure of relief, a fresh start, a reset of creation. But Jesus gives eternal rest. In Hebrews chapter 4, verses 9 through 10, it says, So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for the one who has entered his rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from his. This one will give us rest, Lamech says of Noah. This is my beloved son, God says of Jesus. The longing in Lamech's prophecy finds its true answer not in a flood survivor, but in a risen Savior. And I want you to catch this. That's the ascension of Jesus. But there's a crucial difference between Enoch's transitioning and Christ's ascension. Enoch was taken because of his faith. Jesus ascends because his work is finished. Enoch's removal was a gift given to a single faithful man. Christ's ascension was the triumphant return of the victor, having defeated sin and death at the cross and the empty tomb. And because Christ ascended, Enoch's experience becomes the pattern, not the exception for every believer who will be alive at his return. What happened to the one man in Genesis chapter 5, quietly and mysteriously, will happen to an entire generation of believers when Christ returns, caught up, taken, translated into glory without ever tasting death. Now, what Genesis chapter 5, verses 21 through 32 teaches us, and I think what Genesis chapter 5 teaches us as a whole chapter is really important. In these final 12 verses, we saw that we talked about Enoch breaking the pattern of death and walking with God, and how Hebrews chapter 11 confirms that. And Jude quotes a prophecy from the book of Enoch. Talked about Irenaeus and Tetullian and how they saw Enoch's bodily trans translation as proof that the physical body matters to God. He talked about Methuselah being the person who longed the longest life in human history, and how the name and life spit together appear as a function to function kind of as a countdown of mercy before the flood. And how the second laymanic, utterly different from the first, named his son Noah, prophesying rest from the curse. And that rest is partially fulfilled in Noah, but finds its completeness in the fulfillment of Jesus. So now let's step back and look at all of Genesis chapter five. Because the whole thing together defines what Genesis chapter six means and what the rest of the Bible is really talking about. Ten names, hundreds of years of each, a relentless drumbeat of mortality, and he died and he died and he died. But threaded throughout that drum meat drumbeat, what we see is the image of God restated, a dignity that mortality cannot erase, a hidden gospel encoded in the names themselves, the one man who did not die, the oldest life in human history functioning as an extension of mercy, and a final birth, Noah carrying the hope of rest. So Genesis 5 is not a list of names just to skim past. It is a chapter that holds death and hope in the same hand. And here's the word that I want to leave you with. Every life in this chapter mattered to God. And the ones who lived ordinary lives and died, the ones who walked so close with God that death could not hold them, the one whose life brought mercy for an entire dying world, and the one whose birth carried the hope of rest for generations to come. Every name, every life made in the image of God, known, named, and mattering. Whatever kind of life you're living right now, wherever you are, ordinary or extraordinary, quiet or eventful, long or uncertain, you can walk with God right in the middle of it, just like Enoch did. In a world that was not. Next, in our next lessons, we're gonna leave the genealogy and we're gonna step into Genesis chapter 6. Uh the world Noah was born into and why he had why it had become so corrupt that God determined to send a flood. We're gonna look at the sons of God and the daughters of men. We're gonna discuss the Nephilim and the man who found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And right now we are standing at the edge of the flood. I hope you enjoyed this lesson. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out. Until next time, I hope that you have a blessed day.