March 1 Sermon: And He Died

Consider these questions as we look at Genesis 5:1-32:

1. How does the repetition of "and he died" in the genealogy section serve as a reminder of human mortality? How can this awareness of our mortality shape our perspective on life and faith?

2. What significance does Enoch's unique fate hold within the context of the genealogy? How does his story contrast with the pattern of mortality presented in the passage? What does this reveal about God's power over death?

3. In what ways does this passage highlight the theme of God's faithfulness in keeping His promise of salvation? How does the genealogy demonstrate the continuity of this promise throughout generations? How does this understanding impact our trust in God's sovereignty?

Transcript:

When I was a kid my cousins from Chicago would come to visit for two weeks or so every summer. I looked forward to it because Prentice was only a few months younger than I was and Judy was a year behind us. For two weeks a summer I knew that we would be together nearly every waking hour. A few years ago when I was in the Chicago area for a conference I had supper with Judy at a small restaurant near the University of Chicago and we reminisced about these days of summer. Days filled with driving our golf cart around the acre of land that surrounded our house. Going to the swimming pool. Riding bike around town and exploring. These were things she appreciated because she normally didn’t get to do those things. She shared with me that even though she is a Chicago girl through and through she felt so blessed to be able to have two weeks of a small town experience every year. One of the things we recalled was in the mornings before the pool would open we would sometimes get bored of being limited to the confines of our grandparents house and their black and white TV. Even the mean streets of Lennox didn’t offer enough adventure for us so I would jump on my bike and my cousins would get on my grandparents bikes and we would make the roughly 1 mile trek outside of town to the cemetery. A strange destination but we would go from gravestone to gravestone to find the headstones of our family members. We had great grandparents that we could track down. Neither of us could remember our great grandfather Rops but they had vague memories of our great grandmother and I remembered her well because we would regularly visit her house when I was little and I remembered her being sick and dying in my grandmother’s sewing room when I was younger. We continued to roam the graveyard and I will always remember the shock that they had when I took them to headstone of our still living grandparents. They were shocked to see the names of Arnold and Margaretta Bossman carved into the stone. I didn’t blame them. It was unsettling for me when my grandfather showed it to me. It was one thing to see the names of our ancestors or family we barely knew etched into rock. It was an entirely different thing to see the names of our living and loving grandparents there and knowing that one day that would be their final resting place.

‌And that truth came to pass. It well over a decade later but in early 2001 we gathered around that headstone and laid to rest two of the most wonderful and influential people in my life a mere nine days apart.

‌There is something about meandering through a cemetery and seeing your relatives date of birth and date of death that truly gives you a sense of your mortality. As you age you also know more and more of the names that you walk past. It is a chilling reminder of the curse and the words spoken to Adam that you are dust and to dust you will return.

‌This morning we have taken a walk through our family graveyard.

Genesis 5 is not the most entertaining part of scripture. In fact, I regularly joke about the genealogies being the part of the Bible you should read when you are suffering from insomnia. In all seriousness though they are a very important part of scripture. They are not a separate part of the story, they are an essential part of the story. They teach us about the history of scripture and the story of God saving his people in much the same way that our walking around a cemetery tells us about our family history.

‌This is an interesting week in our journey through Genesis. We have seen the story of creation from the big, overarching view in chapter one. We have zoomed in and gotten on the ground in chapter 2 where we saw the creation of humanity in a more in depth way and we saw God’s creation of the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman. In chapter three we found out why the work is the way it is. We were plunged into sin by the rebellion of our first parents but God didn’t leave Adam and Eve to cover the shame of their sin and nakedness on their own. Instead, he promised that through the woman would come one who would crush the head of the serpent and then he pictured that salvation we have in Christ by killing an animal to make clothes of skin to cover the shame and nakedness of Adam and Eve. Then, last week we saw this fallen world being plunged deeper and deeper into sin with Cain murdering his own brother and we got a small journey through the graveyard of Cain’s family with a short genealogy that showed us that one of the descendents of Cain was far more murderous than Cain had been. The initial hope when Cain was born was that he was either the one who would crush the head of the serpent or he would be in the line to this promised messiah but Cain is unworthy. He doesn’t follow God but instead he and his family have followed the serpent and they are his descendents instead of being the one who would bring salvation and redemption. But at the end of chapter four we see hope. Cain isn’t worthy of being the child of the promise and Abel is dead but God provides another and he is named Seth which means appointed and now we will follow the line of Seth as the book of Genesis unfolds.

‌Now, maybe some of you are getting restless in your seats. We are probably 7 minutes in yet and I haven’t unfolded the main points and so you are wondering just how long we will be here today. Fret not. While we are going to dig into the passage this will not be a typical expository sermon verse by verse through the passage. We are thinking big picture here today and thinking about how this type of passage works in scripture.

‌Real quick let me map out for you where we are headed with two main points.

‌First, God keeps his promise, there is a godly line in this fallen world. We saw last week with the birth of Seth and people calling on the name of the Lord that there was hope that the promise to crush the head of the serpent would be fulfilled and this week we get the details of this godly line.

‌Second, we see a picture of the salvation that we have in Jesus Christ. There is a repetition of death in this passage that repeats over and over. And he died and he died and he died but there in the middle of this family tree we see one that God rescues from death and this gives us a picture of God’s saving work and our hope in the gospel.

‌So let’s jump into this passage and see how we can draw these big ideas out of the text.

‌‌Like I said we won’t spend much time going through this passage verse by verse but if we are going to see that God keeps his promise of the Messiah coming through the seed of the woman then we need to see that Adam has a child that this promise goes through. It is important that there is a connection between Adam and all of humanity. If there isn’t a genetic connection then we don’t have a connection to him as the one through whom we fell into sin and then why would we even need a savior at all.

‌A while back a late night talk show, had a panel of three university students who were asked questions to test their intelligence. The questions ranged from naming famous politicians to pieces of art. Then the question was raised, "What were the names of Adam and Eve's children?" All of the students were silent. One girl finally responded, "Um, well, I didn't even know they had children."

‌Well, that is what we want to establish here. Adam is made in the image of God and then Adam has children in his own likeness. We actually have quite a few details as we look at this chapter. We know that Seth is the child of the promise. Not only because we were given that hint in chapter 4 but because Seth is named and none of the other children are. This is the story of the seed of the woman here. We can imply from what we read here that Adam and Eve took the mandate of God to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth seriously. They had other sons and daughters. We don’t hear anything about them but they are multiplying and having children. I mentioned last week that this would have been where Cain got his wife. There were two people and they would have needed to multiply and Cain’s wife and Seth’s wife would have had to have been from his sisters. This is strange to us in modern times but as I mentioned last week marriage between close relation was not forbidden by God until Leviticus 18 and by then there would have been plenty of people from outside your own family to marry and continue that command to be fruitful and multiply.

‌The fact that there are other sons and daughters is repeated here over and over here. Then we also see an interesting fact with the people that line this family tree. They lived a significant amount of time. Really, this only makes sense for a couple of reasons. The first is that humanity was created perfect. There would not have been genetic defects or mutations. There would not have been the onslaught of diseases that we have in our modern world. I am obviously speculating here but I don’t think Adam, who was created in perfection, probably rolled out of bed when he was forty two and heard his bones crack and think about how nimble he was when he was in his teens. It just makes sense that the bodies of early humans would be more resilient.

‌Secondly, why would it be advantageous for God to allow humans to live a long life in this early world? that command that we see here. They are to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Even if fertility was only possible for half their lives they could produce a substantial quantity of children. Imagine one of those reality TV shows about large families in a family that would have had scores and scores of children.

‌And we see this repeated over and over through the passage.

‌We see it with Seth.

‌‌That same repetition. Not as many details as we saw with Adam but we were given that to establish the fact that this was Adam’s line and that it was the line of the promise. It stands in contrast to the family tree that we saw in chapter 4. Cain’s family is tainted by it’s decent into sin. The line of Seth is going to show us that they are calling on the name of the Lord and trusting in the promise of God.

‌We have to understand that this is the point here. This isn’t just boring detail to get the book of Genesis up to a certain length to please a publisher. It is showing us that we are following a story here. God keeps his promise and that is the promise the people of God are to look to. Because we know the basic outline of the story in the book of Genesis where this godly line ends up makes a lot of sense to us.

‌‌We see that the godly line ends us up at Noah but where did the line of Cain end up. In a murderous tyrant who had no regard for God. One family rejected God but another trusted in the promise.

‌This is the point of all this genealogy in this chapter and we also see that it shows us something else. It shows us that salvation will one day come.

‌Let’s go back to the middle of this passage again and look at this repetitive structure again.

‌Here are two lives of two families in this godly line.

‌​Look at this and even without me reading it out loud again you get a sense of that droning way in which I read it during the scripture reading. Even in our brains there is a rhythm to it.

‌The way that it ends with the words “and he died” reminds me of a droning funeral bell. You probably know what I’m talking about. That “for whom the bell tolls” sound that isn’t the ringing of a bell calling people to church on the Lord’s Day but a single, stark ring over and over as the funeral coach leaves the church and goes to the cemetery. The church I worked at in Ohio didn’t have an actual bell but we had a system that would play recorded bell sounds and it was loud and would ring through the neighborhood. Even if I didn’t know the person the funeral was for and I didn’t go to the funeral I couldn’t wait for it to be shut off because it was just so ominous. A morbid reminder of death and of my own mortality. The rhythm of the text here does the same thing. It is reminding us of the lie of the serpent. He told Eve that if she ate the fruit and rebelled against God she would not surely die. While they had long lives they did surely die and we are reminded of this in rhythm. It’s a droning bell reminding us that one day the bell will toll for us.

‌But there is a spot here in this passage that is out of the ordinary. There is a place where the rhythm is broken. There is sentence where death doesn’t have the final word.

‌‌Right in the middle of all this. Seven generations from Adam we get to Enoch and we read that he did not die. He walked with God and he was not for God took him. We don’t know much of the details here in these verses but we see that he was a righteous man and he did not experience death. He was taken by God.

‌We see from this that God has power over death and we find out in the book of Hebrews that this was possible because Enoch trusted God by faith.

‌We read here in Hebrews that it is by faith that this happened. When Hebrews talks about faith it doesn’t mean that he had a lot of belief in himself. It doesn’t mean that he was willing to do things others wouldn’t. Faith defined in Hebrews 11 is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen. Specifically Hebrews 11 is talking about trusting in the promise of God that despite what it looks like in the world God is saving his people through his messiah. In other words, Enoch didn’t have random faith that there was a God out there someplace and he believed in him really hard. His faith was that that God had made a promise and he was trusting that God would keep it. This shows us the gospel very clearly. Even though there is a clear reminder, a tolling bell that we will die there is the promise that God in Christ has saved a people for himself through the person and work of Jesus Christ. It is by faith in him that we are rescued by this God who has power of death and hell. He is able to do something new and save his people. He does this very thing for you and I through our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

‌I mentioned how there is a rhythm in the passage that tolls the bell but that rhythm also reminds me of something else. Reading it out loud in front of people I am reminded of reading Genesis 1 out loud. There is a rhythm in that passage too, right? These and that were created. It was good. Evening and morning and it was a certain number of day.

‌Maybe you felt that too and it is fitting because what we see in this passage as we look at the big picture is that God is doing something new. Despite the evil that we saw in the world in chapter 4 we now see that God is creating something new. A new line through Seth that will bring us to the Messiah. This is a new creation that brings life and hope and salvation.

‌So what do we do with this different passage of scripture? How from what is essentially a walk through a cemetery can we have something that we can leave from here with and take into the world this week. Two things come to mind.

‌First, remember that you are dust. Remember your mortality. We may not hear a bell toll this week but chances are you are going to get perpetual reminders of this during the coming week. It may be that creak and pain in your knee or back. It may be an illness that someone you love is on the last leg with. It may be news of a tragedy. You will be reminded of it but what do we do with that. Do we push it out of our minds? Do we avoid that reality? No, it is an important thing to remember because it causes us to remember that God is on his throne. He is the one who holds your destiny. When we remember our mortality may we be humbled at the power of God and the fact that he is eternal and it drives us to trust in him. In our distracted age we have everything from Netflix series to silly games on our phones to keep us from avoiding thinking about this truth. I believe that our distraction from our mortality is one of the reasons we have little regard for God. If I don’t have to think about this then why do I need an answer to the questions that my mortality raises.

‌And this brings me to the answer of the question that our mortality raises. Remember the promise. The Bible is about the answer to this problem. Even the boring genealogies of scripture are about the God who keeps his promise to redeem a people for himself. Put your faith in him. When you are reminded of your mortality take hold of the truth that you serve a God who has power over death and what did he do? He shaped history to bring about the salvation that you have in the Lord Jesus Christ. God the Son left heaven, lived a perfect life for you, died to bear the wrath of God for your sin and unbelief, rose again to defeat death and hell, and right now is at the Father’s right hand for you. He gave you the gift of faith and through that faith, just like Enoch, you are saved from death and hell. And best of all that faith was a gift through the Holy Spirit who now indwells you and as you have heard the word and the gospel proclaimed today He is at work in you to build your faith and conform you to the image of Christ.

‌This is God’s good gift to you and all of scripture points to this truth. So walk this week in freedom knowing that God has kept his promise of salvation.