Two Broken Paths

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service.

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This is a message from the series, Beginning with God, Walking Through the Book of Genesis, by Pastor of Teaching and Vision, Don Filcik.

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If you'd like to learn more about Recast or access our sermon archive, please visit us at recastchurch .com.

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Here's Pastor Don. You can find your seats.

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Thank you for coming out brave in the weather this week, and hopefully your trip in wasn't too bad. The roads are pretty clear, so.

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Remember to fill out your connection cards when you get a chance. Put those in the black box back there, and then also you received an offering envelope.

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If you choose to give this morning, you can turn that in in the black box as well. If you're not going to use that offering envelope this morning, then please just recycle that in the white basket right next to it.

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That would be a huge help for us this morning, but thank you for again. Thank you for coming and joining us in worship this morning.

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Just going to introduce the message this morning, and kind of get us thinking in the terms of God's Word. Here at Recast, we believe in the truth of God's Word, and I don't say that just tongue -in -cheek.

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I hope that you have realized that as you've attended here, and many of you have been here week after week, and some of you for quite a while.

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But we believe in the truth of all of God's Word, and I think this text this morning is an example of the way that we approach the entire

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Word of God. It would be easy for us to brush aside what we're going to see as two genealogies, the line of Cain and the line of Seth, his brother.

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It would be easy to skip those and kind of move on to the good stuff, right? The meaty stuff, the things that really just impact our lives.

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I doubt that many of you have ever memorized or heard anybody who has memorized a portion of Genesis 4, 17 through the end of chapter 5.

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You know, memorize those verses about Methuselah or Mahujel, or did you even know that name?

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Mahujel or Methuselah or some of these guys. I don't think you probably memorized those. But there's truth for our lives found even what appears at face value to be an obscure list of ancient names.

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We're going to find that there's something in this for us here where we live today, even in what appears to be an obscure text.

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You see, the T in recast stands for truth. And some of you are aware of this and some of you are not, that our name is an acronym for our core values, so that every time

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I say the name recast, I'm thinking in my mind something about the core values of our church. The R and the

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E stand for reproducing, that our church desires to be a church that starts other churches. And just to clarify that,

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I would love it if we had already planted another church. What we are waiting for is somebody who

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God is raising up to lead another church plant. We're not going to go plant another church without God giving leadership to that to begin with.

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And so I would encourage you to be praying for that and that notion of reproducing. Some of you might even think, you know, regarding our space issues, well, couldn't we just plant another church?

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Not without the person to lead that. And so I just want to clarify that up front, that that's got to be something that happens.

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But reproducing, community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth. And the

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T is there for us in that the Word of God is the truth.

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That this is where we come to know God and know what He has to say. And if there's anything that you get out of coming to recast on a

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Sunday morning, I hope it is a connection with God through His Word in a way that demonstrates to you how important scripture really is to us.

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So I want you to open your Bibles, please, to Genesis chapter 4. We're going to start in verse 17 and go all the way through the end of chapter 5.

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You'll find that a little bit on page 3 in the Bible in the seat back in front of you. The rest of it is after that.

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So just a little bit there. If you don't own a Bible, please take that one with you. Again, just even thinking about T for truth, we desire for everybody to have a copy of God's Word in their hands that they can take home with them and read.

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So you can take that one with you if you'd want. But follow along as I read Genesis 4, 17, through chapter 5, verse 32.

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Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. When he built a city, he called the name of the city after the name of his son

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Enoch. To Enoch was born Erad, and Erad fathered Muhugiel, and Muhugiel fathered

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Methusiel. By the way, I might butcher a couple of these if any of you are Hebrew scholars out there. And Methusiel fathered

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Lamech, and Lamech took two wives. The name of one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah.

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Adah bore Jabal. He was the father of all those who dwell in tents and have children. He was the father of all those who don't have livestock. His brother's name was

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Jubal. He was the father of all those who play the lyre and the pipe. Zillah also bore Tubal -Cain.

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He was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron. The sister of Tubal -Cain was Nama. Lamech said to his wives,

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Adah and Zillah, hear my voice. You wives of Lamech, listen to what I say. I've killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me.

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If Cain's revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech's is seventy -sevenfold. And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son, and called his name

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Seth. For she said, God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.

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To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time people began to call upon the name of the

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Lord. This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man,

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He made him in the likeness of God. When God created man, He made him in the likeness of God.

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When Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, He fathered a son in His own likeness, after His image, and named him

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Seth. The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were eight hundred years, and he had other sons and daughters.

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Thus all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died. When Seth had lived one hundred and five years, he fathered

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Enosh. Seth lived after he fathered Enosh eight hundred and seven years, and had other sons and daughters.

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Thus, all the days of Seth were 912 years, and he died. When Enosh had lived 90 years, he fathered

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Kenan. Enosh lived after he fathered Kenan 815 years, and had other sons and daughters.

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Thus, all the days of Enosh were 905 years, and he died. When Kenan had lived 70 years, he fathered

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Mahalalel. Kenan lived after he fathered

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Mahalalel 840 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Kenan were 910 years, and he died.

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When Mahalalel had lived 65 years, he fathered Jared. Mahalalel lived after he fathered

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Jared 830 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Mahalalel were 895 years, and he died.

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When Jared had lived 162 years, he fathered Enoch. Jared lived after he fathered Enoch 800 years, and had other sons and daughters.

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Thus, all the days of Jared were 962 years, and he died. When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered

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Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters.

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Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God and he was not, for God took him.

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When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he fathered Lamech. Methuselah lived after he fathered

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Lamech 782 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Methuselah were 969 years and he died.

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When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son and called his name Noah, saying, Out of the ground that the

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Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.

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Lamech lived after he fathered Noah 595 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Lamech were 777 years and he died.

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After Noah was 500 years old, Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

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Let's pray. Father, we have just read what could in our minds potentially be one of the driest sections of the entire book of your

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Word, and yet I pray that you would make it come alive to us in a way. We see an obscure list of ancient names, a bunch of really high, what appear to be inflated numbers of ages.

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Father, just some things that could be confusing in our minds, and some things that are distant from our cultural context, but one thing remains true, and that is that we are seeing in our text this morning two fallen lines, two groups of broken people, but one group expressing faith, and the other following their ancestor who did not express faith.

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Father, I pray that you would open our eyes to what faith does in our lives. Father, that you would help us to worship you by faith this morning, and to recognize that you are the

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God who loves us. You are the God who created gardens, and colors, and flavors, and all of the good things that we experience in life.

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You love us. We've messed it up, and we've broken it, but you are still pursuing us.

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You love us, and you care, and I pray that you would let our hearts be filled with your love, and with focus on you this morning.

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In Jesus' name. Amen. Well, if you can go ahead and make yourself comfortable, remember you can get more coffee, more donuts, or juice, and then have your

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Bibles open to Genesis chapter 4, the second half, and then Genesis 5 there.

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I'm guessing... How many of you are reading through the Bible in a year? Are any of you out there? Have you started that kind of process?

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A handful of you? Let me back up then and just ask a further question. How many of you have ever read the book of Genesis?

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Okay, there are a lot more hands that are up for that. I'm guessing that if you're reading through the

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Bible in a year, or you've read the book of Genesis, that you really came to this section, and then just really spent a lot of time in reflection on this.

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This is where you camped, and you drew a lot of application from this, and you were like, this is like home court right here.

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Probably not so much. But I just want to set the stage here for a little bit, and remind you where we're coming from.

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Last week we encountered Cain and Abel. Abel offered a sacrifice by faith, and was accepted by God.

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Cain offered a sacrifice without faith, and therefore was not accepted by God.

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Both came, both brought a sacrifice. We pretty much all agreed that that was a good thing, to bring a sacrifice to God.

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Both doing good external things, but the heart was different in the two.

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Remember that? So one exhibited faith according to the New Testament. We can go straight to that in Hebrews, and see that it outright declares that Abel had faith, and that's why his sacrifice was accepted.

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So that's the primary difference between Cain and Abel, was their faith. Now that we come to our passage, there's another primary difference.

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Abel is dead, and Cain is not. That's another fundamental difference that we get to by the time we come here. But we saw that God in his radical mercy last week, showed patience to the murderer

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Cain, and sent him out into exile as a wanderer, rather than just snuffing out his life right then and there.

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So there was mercy and there was grace, even for this murderer, ultimately giving him time, and I think there's probably some time for him to process some things, and think things through.

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And so in verses 17 through 24, we find a genealogy of Cain. His line goes on.

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The exiled murderer has offspring, and begins to populate the earth.

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Cain married one of his sisters. I really can't get past that. You know, it's just straightforward. People will ask, you know, just do a

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Google search sometime for Cain's wife, and you'll just get, you know, it'd take you months to just read the different things that are stated about this.

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Because all it says in verse 17, I mean, look at it, Cain knew his wife. I mean, it doesn't talk about the marriage, it doesn't talk about how he met her, anything like that.

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Anybody just get a little bit creeped out by that? I mean, just being honest, like he married his sister. I mean, there's no way around that.

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And you can explain it really any way you want. Some have suggested that the genetic data, the gene pool was more pure, and therefore less prone to birth defects, or whatever.

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But no matter which way you slice the pie, I'm not enthusiastic about this necessity of early life on the earth.

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Anybody with me on that? Okay. Do I believe that Cain married a sister? Yes. Was God okay with it?

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Apparently. Is God later in Scripture going to forbid that? Yes.

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Okay, and I don't know, I can't stand up here and preach the ins and outs of that. I just know that that's the way that it had to be on the early earth.

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I mean, in one way, I think maybe God could have, you know, get all into hypotheticals. He could have created, you know, other women or something.

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Whatever, that's not the way that it worked. But Cain, moving forward, Cain and Mrs. Cain, we don't even get her name.

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They have a baby, and they name him Enoch. Which means, interestingly, by the way, we're going to see some similar names in two different genealogies, two different branches of the family.

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They're going to share the same line, so we're going to see Enoch in both. We're going to see the names Lamech in both.

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So there's two different Enochs, there's two different Lamechs. This is the first son of Cain and Mrs. Cain. Enoch means dedicated.

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Now, in one sense, I can understand from the line of Seth that we're going to see, I can understand that Enoch being named dedicated.

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But this one's a little bit curious to me. It's interesting because it makes me wonder if Cain didn't want better for his son than what he had experienced himself.

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Have any of you experienced that? Where you want something different for your children than your own experiences, and so you kind of move them on in a different direction?

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Again, I've got to be careful preaching because sometimes you've got to understand that I'm doing a little bit of guesswork as I go, and I'm not preaching this as firm or rock solid, but I'm curious.

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He names his son dedicated. Did he dedicate his son to the God that he himself had distrusted?

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It's hard to tell, but he wouldn't be the first parent who despised God, but wanted religion for their son.

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Do you agree with me on that? How many people when they come to that stage in life where they begin to have children kind of come back to a religious, well, or maybe it's not at the time that the child is born, but as the child begins to rebel or starts to go through moral decision making, all of a sudden it's like, whoa, how am

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I going to train this child to make some good decisions? I better get them some religion. You see that in our culture and in our day and age?

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I think that a lot of that happens here as well. I wonder if Cain didn't have a little bit of that.

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But the wanderer, Cain was exiled to wander and to move from place to place, and so he builds a city, okay?

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And names it after his son Enoch. Now an ancient city is a permanent establishment with defined protection.

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So this is not, don't picture in your mind a tent city like nomads live in or something, but also it's not

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Chicago, right? I mean, this is maybe even smaller than downtown Matawan with just a rough brick or even wood wall around it of protection, but it's a permanent establishment.

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So what we see here is from the line of Cain, we find the very first city, and it's named after Enoch, his son.

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Throughout these genealogies, we are going to find some honorable mentions as we kind of just move through the text. I say honorable mentions because we just really don't know that much about them.

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There's not much I can say. Irad, Mahujael, Methushael. They move the history along, reminding us that time is passing, and what we're seeing here is the firstborn sons that are mentioned, but we don't know anything about Irad.

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We don't know anything about Methushael. They serve as placeholders as far as our knowledge of who they are or what they did, but they're demonstrating to us that time is flowing, time is moving.

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And I think it's reasonable for us to assume as we don't see dates or times or ages.

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Did you notice that's absent from Cain's account? But when we get to Seth, we're going to see these ages given.

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I think it's fair for us to assume that Cain's line is living extended periods of time along the same lines as Seth's.

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But now we come to verse 19, and we encounter, now we're the seventh generation down from Adam, and we've moved pretty quickly, but we've moved over some of those because, again, they're like placeholders, and we meet a dude named

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Lamech. This dude was a piece of work, okay? He was just a crazy guy, arrogant, full of himself.

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And there's some reasons I say that, and the text, I think, bears this out. This guy was too much man for one wife, okay?

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You get the kind of guy I'm talking about? He's just too much man for one woman. So he takes, what's the text tell us?

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He takes two, okay? As we're going to see from this point on, taking multiple wives is not explicitly condemned in Scripture.

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Have any of you studied Scripture enough to come to that conclusion in the Old Testament? There's no condemnation on polygamy.

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Have you noticed that? But I want to point this out. If you want to go there, and you want to ask those kinds of questions, like is that appropriate, is it not appropriate, does

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God permit it, does God not permit it? Go back and do this study for me. Go back and look at how those families, where it's explicitly detailed that they had more than one wife, how did it work out?

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How well did that go? Go study Scripture from that perspective, and then let me know whether that's a good idea or not.

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Okay, do you get what I'm saying? I mean, in one sense, you kind of look at it and you say, it's not condemned, but boy, it doesn't work out real well.

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It does not go well for anyone in Scripture that having more than one wife is a good thing.

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It is never glorified in Scripture. As a matter of fact, I think it's pretty abundantly clear from what we've encountered in Genesis chapter 2 that God intended for one man and one woman.

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And I think it's significant that this dude, Lamech, is the first one who ever has two wives.

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Is this, I mean, we're gonna talk about him here in a second, but is this the guy you wanna pattern your life after? Is this the guy you go, oh, he did it, so it's good enough for me,

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I don't think so. Unfortunately, the results of the fall are seen in the simple fact that the first two women mentioned by name since Eve.

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Okay, so we've only had one woman named on the face of the planet so far, Eve. Now, we know Mrs. Cain was there, we didn't even get her name.

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So the first two women that we actually encounter their names in Scripture are mentioned in the context of polygamy.

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You're getting what I'm saying there? The healthy relationship between man and woman that was created in the garden was broken at that curse.

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And now we have Lamech kinda just taking a couple of those for himself. You see the possessiveness in that?

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I'll just take two. Ada gives birth to Jabal, who's the father of nomadic herdsmen.

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The word for livestock is expanded beyond that which Abel did, so you might kinda go, well, wait a minute,

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I thought Abel was a shepherd, and how can we now have the father of those who keep livestock and travel around in tents and stuff?

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What is that all about? Well, the word that's used for livestock in the text is for larger animals.

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As a matter of fact, sheep and goats wouldn't even fit into this word. This is like cattle, camels, donkeys, maybe even horses, some have assumed.

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So he domesticates larger animals and has some kind of a trade going on with cattle and camels and that kind of stuff, probably even to the point of putting packs on them and things like that.

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It's nice, you get some nice, funny naming in the Old Testament, have you ever noticed that? So you got Jabal, Jubal, Tubal, okay?

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You know, just kinda get those things rhyming or working together. So Jabal's brother, Jubal, was the father of musical instruments.

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He developed strings and woodwinds, if you will. The lyre, which was a handheld harp he developed, and pipes, and so those were the first two instruments, and archeology supports those as being two of the most ancient instruments uncovered, the pipes usually being made out of bone early on.

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Now, I talked to somebody this week and they kinda struggled with this. They were like, well, what is, they brought up something about the way that archeology and the way that a secular humanist perspective would be on the origins of music or something like that.

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And I was kinda curious, because I didn't know anything about it. And as I got listening to the person talk,

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I was kinda like, well, what would be your perspective on the way that music started then? And it all boiled down to, well, I got somebody,

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I said, didn't somebody have to start it? Wasn't there somebody who finally realized that if you pluck a different length string, you get a different sound?

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And so, okay, I mean, somewhere in history, regardless, and scripture's just telling us how that happened.

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There was a guy who was like, hey, if I blow on a pipe and it makes a certain sound, and if it's a longer pipe, it makes a different sound, and he put those together.

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And does that kinda make sense to you guys? I mean, that somebody started it, right? Scripture's just telling us who. This was the first guy who got musical instruments together.

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Zillah gives birth to a guy named Tubal Cain, who was the first to forge implements.

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The text tells us instruments, so in context, we've just got that talking about music, and then now it says he forged instruments.

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So we're not talking about forming an orchestra here. It's not like he got the brass section together. Instruments being implements or tools out of bronze and iron, this guy.

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Really, Tubal Cain is like the name Smith, okay? This is the first time we encounter the name

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Smith, if you will, a forger, like a blacksmith type of person. The metals here that are mentioned in the text are not set in stone in the translation.

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Some read copper and bronze instead of iron. I don't think that that's necessarily super relevant. I mean, we're not trying to talk about Bronze Age or Iron Age or anything like that.

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Regardless of what the actual metals were, humanity did not exist for long after creation without some form of metalworking.

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I think that's interesting to contemplate, that there weren't huge spans of time before we figured out how to work metal and fashion it.

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Really, if Tubal Cain could just work well with Jubal, if the two of them got along, maybe they could have a full orchestra because he could get the brass section going, right?

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But I find it interesting that this guy, think about this from this perspective. What's his name? What's this guy's name who forges metal?

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Tubal Cain. Cain, have we ever met a Cain before? His name bears with honor the ancestor who rejected

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God and killed his own brother. You seeing something about this line?

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Something about this lineage? Tubal Cain's father, Lamech, respected Cain enough to use his name in naming his own son.

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You see something kind of a little bit strange about that? The one who rejected

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God, the one who caused exile, the one who pushed us out from the presence of God? I think

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I'll name my son after him. I think we see something about Lamech's character even in that.

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And the three boys have a sister named Nema, which means pleasant, which is good to know. I mean, it's there in the text.

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I think at least something pleasant came from the line of Cain, and we see that in this young lady.

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But here we arrive five generations removed from Cain, and Lamech still reflects the same sin -filled, faithless, and sin -cursed heart that Cain showed in the murder of his brother

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Abel. Lamech calls a conference with his wives in order to boast about his violence. Do you see that there in verse 23?

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He calls together, he said to his two wives, Ada and Zillah, hear my voice, you wives of Lamech.

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Listen to what I have to say. Listen up and hear my voice. Do you hear him saying that?

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What kind of tone do you think he's got going into this? And then he refers to himself in the third person, which lets you know that he is already a piece of work.

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Anybody who refers to themselves in the third person while they're talking, Don's gonna get something to eat, you know?

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Don killed a man. Do you see what I'm saying? You know what I'm talking about when you refer to yourself in the third person, you use your own personal name in a sentence.

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There's already something going on there. He boasts that he's killed a man for merely wounding him, a young man for punching him, striking him.

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So he got punched by a young man. Now, this is not two murders he's accounting for. There's Hebrew parallelism.

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We're seeing, in essence, the dude was a poet, okay? And he's giving some

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Hebrew poetry, and he's like, yeah, I killed a man, you know, for wounding me, a young man. So he's kind of defining who that is.

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So a young man got angry at him, punched him, and he slaughtered him, killed him. And he is now boasting about it.

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Lamech was not afraid of murdering a young man and bragging it up. But verse 24 shows that Lamech considers himself stronger than even his hero

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Cain, because Cain received the protection of God. Remember that God had placed a curse of sevenfold retribution on anyone who would kill

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Cain. But here Lamech takes his own protection into his own hands, saying, in essence, I don't need

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God to protect me. Cain was weak. He needed God to give this sevenfold protection. But I tell you what, all

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I need is myself. And I pledge 77 -fold retribution on anybody who would injure me or harm me.

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What he says is, you step on my toe, I kill you. You poke me in the eye, I kill you. You steal my blankie,

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I kill you. You get the point. Lamech is brash.

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His evil, faithless heart is so distant from God that he doesn't need God's hand of protection. I don't need you,

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I got myself. How far has this line of Cain gone? They are wicked to the extent of boasting about their evil deeds.

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But I want to point out that some good has come out of this line. They still reflect the image of God.

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They still reflect the mandate of God to subdue the earth, and they have that image in them.

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They are developing culture, musical instruments, domesticating animals, forging metals.

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Has good come out of the line of Cain? Building cities? Yes. But I want to point this out.

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Some people have misunderstood this to the degree that they've actually decried and pushed away technology because of this passage, saying, and if you think about it this way, then you're going to get it wrong, that there's this evil and wicked line of Cain and this righteous and good line of Seth.

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You see how that's wrong? Because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And so what

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I think we see here is God's grace extending even to the line of Cain, providing for the furtherance of technology and things like that.

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Some have gone so far as to say, well, cities are evil because they came from the line of Cain. Musical instruments are evil because they come from the line of Cain.

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There are churches out there who will not have musical instruments. For this reason, they will have only acapella singing because they believe that musical instruments have come from the evil side of Cain.

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You see how that's a little bit... I think that anything that humans have done since Adam and Eve has come from an evil line.

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Are we in agreement on that? So I think we're... And how many of you know that in all honesty, technology can be used for good or for evil?

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Television can be... People have come to faith in Christ by watching the television set.

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Did you know that? I mean, really, they've actually heard the gospel on TV and gone, I believe this, this is good.

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Is that a good use of technology? That's kind of cool, right? Now, has a lot of corruption come because of the television set?

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Yeah, and we know that it probably ends up leaning more that way now than the other way. But I think that it's very important for us to understand that God uses the line of Cain.

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And even as deep as evil goes, the purposes and grace of God can still be seen in this line.

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The genealogy of Cain only goes seven generations, and then we flash back to Adam and Eve. They lost two sons.

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Remember that, Adam and Eve lost two sons that day. They lost Cain to exile, and they lost

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Abel to death and murder. But God appoints for Eve another offspring instead of Abel.

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Appoints, the word appoints being a translation of the word Seth. So Seth means appointed.

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Now, people don't get appointed to being your child, right? I mean, that doesn't really happen.

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I mean, in adoption, but I mean, if you give birth to a child, do you say that they're appointed to the office of your child? People are appointed to an office, right?

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And I think that there's a significance in that word, that there is a sense in which Abel was a child of faith, and I think that what we're seeing is

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Seth filled that role nicely. That Seth ends up being that son of faith who actually exhibits in his life faith, and I'm going to point out some reasons here in just a second why

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I see Seth as a child of faith, but he's appointed to that position. Is that making sense? Is there a difference between just saying,

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I got a child that replaced the one that was lost, is appointed.

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This is the first mention, by the way, that we see of Adam and Eve in the context of their sons, Cain and Abel, and it is a sad context that Seth replaces

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Abel, and that Eve uses the term offspring, shows a renewed hope in the promise of God to provide a faithful line that will ultimately produce the male offspring that will defeat the evil one.

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She still has hope, and she uses that word offspring, where she could use other words for it, but she uses that word intentionally, saying

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God has given, has appointed for me an offspring. Although Seth can never truly replace

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Abel, you really can't replace a child that's lost, right? I mean, it's not like, okay, well, this one's gone. So, I mean,

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I've often thought that in the story, in the case of Job, right? Job loses all of his family, and then he gets it all back at the end.

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No, he doesn't. He gets a different family back, but he never can replace those kids that are lost. It's apparent that Seth possesses a trust that he passes along to his first son,

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Enosh, because at this point in history, a religious devotion to God begins when

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Seth gives birth to his son. To call upon the name of the

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Lord implies trust in God, but in a more formal way.

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So, were they trusting God along the way? There were some who were constantly trusting in God. But as I mentioned last week,

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I lean towards the idea and the notion that God was still coming down in the garden, walking out the east gate, and coming to visit with them from time to time.

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And I think in the days of Enosh, people began to pray to God, even in his absence. I think that's what we see here.

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God's not coming down. He's not coming down and meeting with them, and He's not there present, and they're still talking to Him. And we see basically the origin of prayer in the first time that people are beginning to have a devotional life, calling upon God for deliverance, calling upon God for protection, calling upon His name, giving thanks and praise to Him.

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All of these things. So Cain gives his first son. Think about this contrast.

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Cain gives birth to a firstborn son, builds a city, and names it after him. Gives the son a name, and then names the city after him.

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But Seth gives his first son a name to call upon. And it is the name

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Yahweh, the name of the Lord. And I want to ask you a question. Those of you who are parents here, what is it that you're giving to your children?

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An education? A name for themselves? Athletic prowess?

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Money? Toys? Just, I'm giving my kids opportunities to succeed in life.

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Are you giving them a name to call upon? What is it that we're doing for our kids?

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What is it that we're doing for the kids in this church? And those of you who are here that don't have kids, that have an opportunity to still interact with children here in this body, we are a family together.

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You have an opportunity to interact with my kids as well. And I look at that and I say, what is it that we're leaving for them?

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Because what is the American dream? That our kids rise up to success, and they're really good at athletics, and they're really good at education, and they get in an

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Ivy League school, and they're so up here, right? Are we leaving them a name to call upon?

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Because their life is going to go through hard times. And I tell you, no amount of athletic prowess, no amount of education, no

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GPA is going to pull them through those dark times, like a name to call on. And so what is it that we're leaving for our kids?

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Chapter 5 begins the genealogy of Seth, reminding us that Adam was created in the image of God.

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He created them male and female, and God named them, showing authority over them.

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And here in our text we see He gave them a name. And when Adam was 130 years old, he fathered a son in his own likeness.

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Now there's something significant about that phrase, in his own likeness. This is more than just saying that sons tend to look like their daddies.

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This is demonstrating that Adam was made in the image of God, then Seth was made in the image of Adam, meaning that Seth in some way also bears the image of God.

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Are you seeing the correlation there? Here we see that the fall did not remove the image of God from us.

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It's marred, it's broken, but it is not absent. And now the rest of the chapter, chapter 5, is going to follow a pretty routine formula.

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As a matter of fact, we can see what's important by what's not routine. Anything that breaks from that is significant.

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But it's going to go like this. One dude was X years old when he had sons. He lived Y number of years after he fathered his son, and had other sons and daughters, and all of his days were

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X plus Y, and he died. You didn't know you were going to get an algebra lesson today, but that's exactly the way that it's formulated in the text.

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So Adam had Seth at 130 years. He lived 80 years after, and had other sons and daughters, and all his days were 930 years.

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The math works out great, but anybody else thinking that the numbers look a little bit inflated?

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Okay. Anybody looking at that number and going, well, wait a minute, I mean the math, and you kind of do it, and it works, and okay, yep, that's right.

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Wait a minute. You're trying to tell me Adam lived 930 years?

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The age of Adam needs to be reckoned with. Would you agree with me on that? I don't know. Many of you have probably come to some kind of conclusion on your own, but some have guessed that the proximity to the

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Tree of Life caused longer life for them. Some have suggested that there was a vapor canopy over the planet that protected humans from UV light and radiation, and so they lived longer.

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Some have contemplated that there might have been purer food sources, and because of that, they lived longer. I'm not sure that science is the main point here, that trying to prove how this is possible is the goal of the theologian.

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The goal of the follower of Jesus Christ is to prove this in some kind of a lock tight, water tight, may build your case for why

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Adam could have lived 930 years. The fact of the matter is, the ages are set into a purported historical context with decreased ages as we move through the book of Genesis.

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All of Genesis ties together. If you believe, in essence, that Joseph was ever over Egypt, if you go that far, then you're already far enough along to go, well, that is tied into a historical theme that weaves all the way through this book that goes all the way back to Adam who lived 930 years.

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Are you getting what I'm saying? Where do you draw the line and say, now we're getting literal history before this point is figurative?

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I can't find that line. And who gets to be the judge of that? Who gets to say where we're no longer talking about, all of a sudden we go back far enough, and now we're not talking about history anymore?

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I think we just have to reckon with these ages and go, it says that he lived 930 years.

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I'm sticking with these ages. Now, mathematicians have tried to monkey with the ages, trying to get the numbers down to more reasonable numbers.

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So mathematicians have gone, maybe we're looking at them declaring the number of months that these people lived.

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And that's actually been the closest one that gets some of these numbers down into the range of reasonability. So sometimes if you were to do the math and divide them all by 12, then you would get some ages that you and I could relate to.

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Except for Mahalalal, our good friend, who I love saying, say that with me,

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Mahalalal. There you go. He would have had to father his son Jared at the age of 5.

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So I think all of a sudden we kind of go, wait a minute, I guess we can't do as much with the dividing by 12 business here.

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I'm sticking with the ages. I cannot find anything unreasonable about these ages other than my personal experience of life on this current planet.

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Are you getting what I'm saying? That's the only thing that I find unreasonable about it. The only reason I might question it or call it into being unsure is just by my experience.

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And I tell you what, how far back does my experience go? A long, long time, 40 years.

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That's absolutely right. Thank you for that reminder. I must have been talking about somebody else.

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But yeah, so you go back and think just past the edges of your lifespan and there's nothing verifiable for you.

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It's all been hearsay. You go back to George Washington a couple hundred years ago and not every single person in this room takes by faith that there was a man named

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George Washington. What did life look like then? And we try to reconstruct it. What about 12 ,000 years ago, 10 ,000 to 12 ,000 years, however long you believe the earth has been around, could things have been different then?

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I think so. I think so. I also want to point out that each of these successive generations will have many unnamed sons and daughters.

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The fertility range was longer and wider and broader in this day and age, apparently, and so they have many sons and daughters.

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These boys and girls don't even get their name in the program, other than just to say they had many other sons and daughters.

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But I want to point out that we are not looking at, just to be clear, we're not looking at an exhaustive list of inhabitants on the earth.

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We're looking at firstborn sons of generations that span huge durations of time.

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So Adam, we'll just walk through this real quick just to cover it. So Adam had Seth and lived 930 years.

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Seth had Enish and lived 912 years. Enish had Kenan and lived 905 years.

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Kenan had Mahalalel and lived 910 years. Mahalalel had Jared and lived 895 years.

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Jared had Enoch and lived 962 years. Enoch had Methuselah and lived, all of a sudden we see a shorter one, we'll get there here in a second, 365 years.

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Just a young buck. What happened to him? Methuselah and Lamech had

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Lamech and lived 969 years. And Lamech had

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Noah and lived 777 years. Noah had Shem, Ham and Japheth at the age of 50 and we're going to take a break and we're left hanging from the genealogy until we get the account of Noah and understand what happens with him.

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So there are two stopovers in this account that are worth noting. In verse 22, there's a break in all that numerical rhythm to mention that Enoch walked with God.

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The phrase in Hebrew is more than just obedience, but it is a relationship word. There is a way in Hebrew, a common metaphor that we find in Scripture that is different than the concept of walking with God.

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It is walking after God or following after God and we see that multiple times in Scripture where somebody is to be declared to be walking after God or following after Him.

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This is a different phrase altogether. This is to walk together with Him. This is relationship that is going on here.

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I'd just love to know more about Enoch. How many of you are curious about Enoch? What was his life like? What did it mean that he walked with God?

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Did God come down in the garden and say, Hey, Enoch, let's walk together. Let's hang. Let's go hiking. Let's talk.

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I don't know, man. I love that thought because I think one day our hope is that you and I will walk with our

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God. We'll see Him. We'll talk with Him. He will be among us. He will be our

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God and we will be His people on a new earth that's recreated for us.

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The text says he walked with God. They walked together. God is still in the process of relating to people who will trust

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Him at this stage in history. And there is no question that Enoch expressed trust in God.

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As a matter of fact, we have a quotation in the New Testament from Enoch. Enoch spoke.

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And we have it recorded for us in Jude, verses 14. Now, Jude only has one chapter, but Jude, verses 14 through 15.

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And I want to read those to you. Speaking about the wicked generation in which Jude lived, and he's going to relate some things about something that Enoch said to his own generation.

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And I want to get into a lot of the New Testament context in this, but I just want to clarify what is it that Enoch said.

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So verse 14 of Jude, it says this. It was also about these evil ungodly people that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, and here's the quote from Enoch.

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Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His holy ones to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.

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Enoch prophesied judgment. It's very clear in the text. Enoch's message to his generation was

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God is going to come and judge us if we don't get this right. Enoch, the one who walked with God, had an inside relationship with Him and declared to his generation that was ungodly, this is not going to go well for us.

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God will judge us if we don't walk with Him. The preaching of Enoch centers on the ungodliness of his age, the coming judgment, but also this, and I want to highlight this, and the words spoken against God.

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What does this mean, words spoken against God? I think that it's that whole notion that what

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God wants more than anything is for us to trust in Him, to trust Him, that He's going to fix it.

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That's the nature of faith, right? And what He desires most from His people, what He desires most from you and me, is that we actually say, you know what

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God, I trust that you are good and you are fixing this and you are going to make it well again. You are setting things straight and setting things right.

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And his generation, he's saying, Enoch's generation was one that did not declare that.

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As a matter of fact, they spoke evil against God. How dare he exile us, how dare he put us under his thumb, how dare he curse us.

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Almost kind of like I picture them trying, I wonder at some point, the text doesn't say this, total speculation, but I wonder, did they ever try to get back in the garden?

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Did they ever go back there? It seems like this kind of generation would have tried, right? It seems like they would have tried.

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But Enoch stood out as one who walked with God and his reward was that God took him.

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I heard a preacher say one time, it's like Enoch and God were out for a walk one day and it was getting close to dark, have any of you heard this?

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They're out for a walk, getting close to dark, and God says, you know what, we're closer to my house than yours, let's go home.

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He's walking with God and God's like, yep, let's go. And he did not die. He walked with God and he did not die.

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Although at this point in scripture there is not yet a well -developed theology of heaven, that God enjoyed walking with Enoch as a parent and that God took him is explicitly stated and the logic runs downhill from there, that God took

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Enoch to be together with him. Do you agree with me on that? God took him to be with him.

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We don't really have yet by the fourth chapter a well -polished theology of heaven or what that looks like or anything like that, but God took

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Enoch to be with him. And I want to point out, these guys live long lives, right?

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You've got 930 years for Adam, but what does it state at the end of it? And he died.

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And he died, but not Enoch. I don't think it's coincidence that wicked

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Lamech, the one who was boasting about murder, was the seventh generation from Adam on Cain's side, a bringer of death, a man of vengeance.

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But Enoch is seventh from Adam in the line of Seth and he walks with God and never tastes death.

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One a man that was a bringer of death and violence, the other one who never experienced death and walked with God.

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Enoch's son, the longest -lived man on the earth, was named by a man who walked with God. I want to point this out.

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So Enoch is the one who names Methuselah. I think there's something valuable to understand that the man who walked with God, the man who understood that judgment was coming, is the one who gave

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Methuselah his name. Because the name of Methuselah is significant. Methuselah means when he dies, judgment.

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When he dies, it will be sent. There's two different ways to translate it. How many of you knew that?

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Did some of you already know that? Methuselah means when he dies, it will be sent. Or when he dies, judgment.

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Once you do the math, and there's a lot of math to be done. If you're a mathematician, this is your chapter right here.

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Because you can figure out who lived how long and who died when and all that stuff. There's enough information here to figure out in detail that Noah was 500 years when the flood came.

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And so you can go backwards and figure out when his father was born and all of this stuff. And you can get back. Methuselah died the year of the flood.

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Do the math. You can do it on your own. So Methuselah dies the year of the flood. And what did his dad who walked with God name him?

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When he dies, it will come. Methuselah dies. And what comes?

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Judgment, the flood. It's a little bit eerie how locked tight the chronology is in this text.

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Do some of the math and it's crazy. I can't share it all with you because some of it gets kind of nuanced and strange.

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But it was sent when Methuselah died. His very name was prophetic about the coming flood.

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And to put these ages into perspective, one other just kind of tidbit of interest. So just to get the perspective on these things.

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Methuselah had a son and names him Lamech. Not different than the Lamech in the other line. When Lamech turns 56 years old,

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Lamech the father of Noah. When Lamech the father of Noah turns 56 years old,

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Adam died. Adam died. Adam knew, are you hearing me?

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Adam knew the father of Noah. Or at least was alive at the same time as the father of Noah.

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Does that blow anybody else's mind? That he lived that long. And when we're talking about these durations and these amount of times and these spans.

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When you're talking about a lot of them living together many, many years. But also think about this from a heartbreaking perspective.

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Adam had the chance to see firsthand over multiple centuries how his sin had impacted this world.

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Can you imagine that? Just take me. Just take me. This is what

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I've caused. This is what I've done. This is what eating that fruit has done to this world. 930 years of that.

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And what do we know about the times just before Noah? Things spiraled out of control to degradation beyond,

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I think, even things that we can imagine. And that's saying a lot. But this

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Lamech, unlike the Lamech from the line of Cain, has hope in the Lord. He names his son

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Noah, which means rest. And declares in verse 29 that he has some sense that this child,

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Noah, is going to be a deliverer. But according to numbers, the numbers in the text,

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Lamech died five years before the flood. He never knew the deliverance that his son would be for the entire human race.

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He did not see that with his own eyes. But he proclaimed and professed at the birth of his son that this one is one who is going to bring some semblance of rest or ease to the human race.

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So what we've observed this morning is two very different branches of broken humanity. We kind of focused a little bit more on the second one, but the first being

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Cain, the second one being Seth. And I want to be very clear that we are not looking at the corrupt and evil line of Cain and the very righteous and perfect line of Seth.

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That is not the case. I said that earlier. These are both family lines populated by sinners.

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Both in need of a savior, both completely and thoroughly condemned before God without something changing.

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Both Enochs were sinners, both Lamechs were sinners in the text. But what we're looking at that distinguishes these two lines is the passing on of faith.

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Cain passed on a legacy of distrust and animosity towards the creator, a hatred, a shaking his fist at God.

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Seth passed down a legacy of faith and trust that God would provide a deliverer. And we see the difference.

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Two broken lines, all broken people, all sinners, all reasonably under the judgment of God, and one passing along at least some kernel of faith from generation to generation.

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Obviously coming down to Noah, which is going to be key. One line ultimately saw

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God as a just deity worthy of worship and worthy of trust.

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The other line saw God as untrustworthy and unkind. And I would dare say this to you this morning.

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What we think about God is likely the most defining thing about the direction of our lives.

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Let me say that again. What we think about God is likely the most defining thing about the direction of our lives.

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What direction does our life take? And each one of us will reflect one of these two ways of thinking.

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Do we come to God in faith trusting that He is good? Do we come to God trusting that He is kind?

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Trusting that He is generous? Do we come to Him on His terms acknowledging that if we come in faith

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He will walk with us? Our God, the creator of gardens, the creator of sunsets and colors and flavors and all good things, wants to walk with you.

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He wants to walk with you. He knows your struggles. He knows the messes. He knows the dirty laundry, the stink and the mess that you think you've locked away in closets tight in your heart that nobody else sees.

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He knows it. And He still wants to walk with you. Do you hear me?

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Even knowing you. How many of you don't even like to walk with yourself when you really know yourself inside?

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When that snap anger raises its head up in you or whatever that sin is that you struggle or you find yourself backbiting or talking about somebody.

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You really love them. You really love that person, but here you are speaking evil of them or you're doing something bad and it's like,

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I don't even like to see myself sometimes. God sees me through and through.

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And He still loves me. Anybody find that just thoroughly unreasonable?

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God's grace is unreasonable. It's unfathomable. I just can't wrap my mind around His love for us.

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Based on what? Faith. Based on faith.

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That we trust Him. That we believe in Him. That we want to walk with Him.

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We are privileged to know the very name of the Deliverer that He has promised. In the days of Enosh, the text tells us, they begin to call on the name of the

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Lord. The name Yahweh. But now in the days of you and me, we can call on the name of Jesus Christ.

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Jesus Christ meaning Christ, the Chosen One of God, the

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Messiah, the Anointed One. Jesus translated meaning He who saves His people from their sins.

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The Appointed One to save His people from their sins. Jesus Christ.

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And that name is available to you and me. And anyone who calls on that name can be saved from their sins.

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Washed, cleansed, and forgiven. And given hope for an eternal life with Him.

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Why? Because He is the One who has appeased the wrath of God.

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How many of you believe that what we've encountered in Scripture warrants enough for Him to smudge out the human race?

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We've sinned against Him. We've rebelled against Him. We took the fruit, the one thing. He gave us abundant blessing and we've taken the one thing

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He prohibited from us. And I think that's replicated in all of our lives. And so His wrath is just.

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God is right to be angry with those who have rebelled against Him. In a couple of weeks we will see

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His just wrath poured out on the planet through a worldwide flood. And just like we're going to look then and we're going to see and there are seeds of this.

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But I want to point this out. There's going to be one way that God provides for humanity to be saved in that flood, isn't there?

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There's going to be one way. You're either on that ark or you're not. That's it. And God has provided for us a way through that judgment.

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And there's only one way. Just like in those days there was an ark. And if you were on that boat, good.

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And if you weren't, bad. There is one ark provided for us from the coming wrath of God.

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The righteous, just wrath of God. And it is Jesus Christ. He is the only way.

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And it is thoroughly appropriate that God, who sets the rules, who created this world, has the right to declare it so.

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And so there is one way. And in a couple of weeks we're going to get into that.

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But He took that wrath and He poured it out. God the Father poured it out on the perfect Lamb, His only

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Son. And we come to communion to remember that sacrifice that was needed to make us right with Him.

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If you've asked Jesus Christ to forgive you, then please join together in taking the symbols. These are just symbols.

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This is not real flesh. This is not real blood. But it is a symbol of the body of Jesus Christ that was broken for us.

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The juice represents His blood that was spent to forgive our sins. He is the way.

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And so rejoice that a way is provided, that you know His name, that you can call on Him. I'd encourage you to even call on Him while you're sitting there praying, listening to the song, meditating, waiting to receive the cracker and the juice.

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And call on His name. Pray to Him. Talk to Him. Rejoice in Him. Delight in His provision for you.

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I think sometimes communion can almost be a guilty thing. Like, oh, my sin has done. No, He loves you. He loves you.

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He has lavished this gift upon you. And the only thing left for us to do is to receive it by faith.

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I trust in You, Jesus. I trust that You are the one who will carry me there. Carry me through the storms of Your righteous wrath.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank You so much for the provision of salvation.

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I read this and I see these contrasting lines. One of faith and one not of faith.

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And yet both sinners, both broken before You, both in need of some redemption. And it's going to come through Noah and we're going to see that.

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But ultimately, even the rest of Noah's family does not repent and turn and they don't end up in there.

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Father, I pray that You would convict our hearts of the great love that You have given to us.

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That You would cause rejoicing to well up within us because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

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That we know His name and that we can call upon His name. And, Father, that we would do so regularly throughout this week that we'd bring honor and glory to You.

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And that as we take communion together that You would unite our hearts together as Your body here in Matawan.

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You so much for the cross of Jesus Christ. And it's in the name of Jesus that I pray. Amen.