In this sermon, we continue our journey through Genesis, moving from the creation and fall into the tragic consequences of sin. Genesis 4-5 shows us what life looks like outside the Garden, where sin quickly takes hold-culminating in Cain’s murder of his brother, Abel. Yet, even as human sinfulness spirals, God’s grace remains steadfast.We explore two central themes:1. The Sinfulness of Sin (Genesis 4:1-16) – Sin is described as a plague that corrupts hearts and relationships. Cain’s half-hearted worship, envy, and unchecked anger lead to destruction, but God, in His mercy, warns and even protects him.2. The Goodness of God (Genesis 4:17-5:32) – Amidst human rebellion, God remains faithful, preserving a lineage of hope through Seth and eventually Noah. Even in the genealogies, we see glimpses of redemption, pointing us to Christ, whose blood speaks a better word than Abel’s.This passage reminds us that sin must be dealt with honestly-it cannot be ignored or allowed to grow. But it also points us to our need for God’s redeeming work, ultimately fulfilled in Jesus.
Transcript
It’s wonderful to be with you, Saints. It’s kind of ironic for a guy like Josh to commend me for sacrifice and loving people well. Brother, I learn a lot from you. Thank you for the encouragement and for the prayer. It’s wonderful to be with you. I apologize in advance for my voice. I have this habit of just something being in my throat and something being wrong with my speech as I preach. I started to hit a panic right around Thursday when I started to feel a scratchy throat. So man, I drank gallons of tea and ate bags of cough drops. I’m trying, but I need your prayers. So I apologize in advance for sounding a little bit off. But yeah, it’s very sweet to be with you all. It’s very sweet to hear you sing, to interact with you. Several of you were very encouraging this morning and prayed for me and said you would
continue to pray for me. It’s just this regular reminder as we gather together and as I get to be around you all, what a gift the body is. I was reminded of that in a very practical way this week. So last week I sold my car and I wanted to buy something else, something a little bit kind of easier to take care of, a little bit easier to maintain. I’m not a car guy. There’s things I like, but I don’t know how to work on cars and very limited, and it was just very sweet. One church member helped me sell my car in a way that wouldn’t take up a bunch of my time and was pretty effortless. Another church member answered a bunch of questions and kind of helped me navigate and figure out what to buy and kind of, yeah, it was just super, super helpful.
Another church member loaned me a car to use while I was trying to figure out what I was buying and we only have one car and so to get around all week. And then another church member, after long days of work, would show up and inspect cars that I was looking at to help me make a good decision because he knows cars much, much, much, much better than I do and he knows what to look for so that I don’t buy something that will ultimately break down on me. And I was just reflecting on that this morning and now as we were singing together how much we need each other and how much I need you all. So, yeah, thank you for singing loudly, for praying for me, for loving our family and for being our family. It’s a joy to be a part of Trinity Church of Portland.
Back to Genesis
Well, friends, we find ourselves back in Genesis. This morning we’re going to be looking at Genesis chapters 4 and 5. So if you have a Bible, I’d like to invite you to open your Bibles to Genesis chapter 4. If you don’t have a Bible, there should be one in the seat in front of you. And Genesis is right in the beginning, pretty easy to find. And we’ll be looking at two whole chapters this morning, so covering a lot of ground. Genesis chapters 4 and 5 is our study. As we’ve continued our journey through the book of Genesis, we’ve read about the creation of everything in the universe. We’ve read about life in the Garden of Eden. And last week we read about and heard about the fall of sin, the fall of man, the sin of Adam and Eve. And so we’ve covered the fact that God spoke everything into existence with just His Word.
God sustains all life. He put on full display His creative power, His majesty, and even in creating man in His own image, He’s shown a kind of love and a kind of grace to make Himself an image bearer that would be in fellowship with Him and that would have a chance to know Him and be known by Him. There’s a beauty there and there’s a grace there in the way that God created everything. And now after looking at those three chapters, we dig into God’s Word once again as we look at what happened to the first family as they both experienced the effects of sin and as sin took hold of their hearts. Spoiler alert, things get ugly quickly. Another spoiler alert, God wasn’t surprised and He remained faithful. Now at first glance, these two chapters detail kind of just an intense sibling rivalry that
ends horrifically. And it’s something that happens that’s really ugly and really vicious, but really if you’re just reading kind of, you know, passing through these chapters, you would read chapter four, the first half of chapter four, and you’d say, man, that Cain, he’s crazy. And this lack of love and this lack of understanding of his own brother and this hatred and this envy, it’s just so gross to see that. But as we often do with the Word of God, there’s a lot more going on here than first meets the eye. It’s not just a sibling rivalry. It’s not just a couple of genealogies. And as is always the case with the Word of God, there’s much more here for us to glean, much more here for us to learn from and grow in our walk than just don’t be like Cain and take a look at this flow of people.
What we see here in a way is Moses showing us what normal now looks like after sin enters the picture. We’re shown here the connection between chapters three and four of Genesis. Chapter four is what the world looks like because of chapter three. When sin entered the picture, this is what it began to produce right away. Things went from bad to worse and worse and worse and worse. Although the human proclivity for sin is strong, what we see really clearly in Genesis four and five is that God’s kindness and His grace are far beyond what we can truly wrap our minds around. Consider the lyrics of that wonderful modern hymn, our sins they are many, His mercy is more. So let’s look at these two realities. As we dig into these chapters, we’ll look at them in two parts. First, we’ll look at the sinfulness of sin as seen in chapter four, verses one through
The Sinfulness of Sin
16, and then we’ll look at the goodness of God in response to man’s sinfulness as seen in chapter four, verse 17 through to the end of chapter five. Alternatively, we can see these sections as faithlessness and faithfulness. So let’s take a look at the sinfulness of sin. Let’s read verses one through 16 of chapter four. Now Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord. And again, she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. In the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering, he had no regard.
So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. The Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? And why is your face falling? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it. Cain spoke to Abel, his brother, and when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, where is Abel, your brother? He said, I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper? And the Lord said, what have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground. And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength.
You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth. Cain said to the Lord, my punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, you have driven me today from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me. Then the Lord said to him, not so. If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken of him sevenfold. And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him. Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. The term the sinfulness of sin is the title of a book by a Puritan writer and preacher named Ralph Venning. An alternate title to his book was called Sin, the Plague of Plagues. Sin is corruption, destruction, chaos, evil, death, despair.
It truly is the plague of plagues. The story of the devastation of sin begins with the birth of a baby boy. Something joyful, something beautiful. Eve gives birth to her first child and she probably asks whether or not this would be the one to save them. Whether or not the curse is over, whether or not this whole horrible nightmare is finally coming to an end with God giving her a child. And when Eve speaks of the birth of her first son, she speaks in a way almost as if she created Cain, I have gotten a man. God’s provision with giving them a child almost seems like an afterthought. She says I have gotten a man and then she mentions the Lord. You can’t really blame her though, after all she wanted so badly to get back to the garden and to be done with what was happening.
So she points to this reality of a child being born and she’s like okay, finally, I did it. I fixed it. The Lord said that we would have children. The Lord said that this would come to an end. It’s finally here. Contrast that however with how she speaks about the birth of Seth in verse 25. God has appointed for me an offspring, another offspring. The way she thinks about having children and what she can or cannot accomplish on her own seems to have shifted after she saw what her first son is capable of, what man is capable of, what sin actually looks like, and just how serious the effects of what her and Adam did in their rebellion is. After giving birth to Cain, Eve also gives birth to Abel, her second son. One was a shepherd, one was a farmer, and both would bring their offerings to God.
One offering was pleasing to God, the other wasn’t. What is it that made God have favor upon Abel but not Cain? It says Cain brought merely the fruit of the ground whereas Abel brought the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. The best of the best for the Lord from Abel, the bare minimum from Cain. Maybe Cain was just going through the motions. Maybe Cain was just saying, well, this is something that we do. This is who our people are. This is what my parents have told me. This is how I think I need to relate to God. And so as we kind of contemplate what it is about Cain’s sacrifice that was not acceptable in the eyes of the Lord and what it was about Abel’s sacrifice that was pleasing to the Lord, friends, I want to invite you as you consider, what is my worship like?
How is it that I approach the Lord? How do we think about the way that we live out our lives? How do we think about the way that we use our gifts? I think it’s really easy for us as New Covenant believers, as those who know Jesus, as those who’ve been saved by Jesus to just kind of move past it and think that God is just like kind of a buddy, just kind of a friend in the sky. And that couldn’t be further from the truth. Friends, we stand before the creator of the universe. As we’ve studied in the first three chapters, this is the one who spoke life into existence, who created everything with just his word. This is the one who sustains us. This is the one whose grace and whose love and whose mercy and whose kindness and patience know no bounds.
This is the one who deserves all of who we are, all that we have to offer. And so going through the motions with this God just won’t do. Abel was different from his brother. Abel is mentioned in the hall of faith in Hebrews 11 verse 4, by faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous. God commending him by accepting his gifts. God isn’t impressed by us doing just enough to come across as Christian, religious. He doesn’t need our worship. He doesn’t need our service. He doesn’t need our sacrifices. He doesn’t need anything from us. Anything that we could offer him comes from his hand. The worship that comes out of my mouth is made possible by the one who holds all that I am together and who makes my brain work and who makes my tongue speak.
He doesn’t need me. And so when I offer worship, when I offer sacrifice, when I come to him giving the best of the best, I do so not because I attain something but because I understand who he is to the best of my ability and I understand that he is worthy of everything that I have to offer. But then this begs the question as we consider Cain and Abel, what does it really matter? What kind of sacrifice these two brothers brought to God? Isn’t it the thought that counts? Isn’t it the fact that Cain even tried and just brought something? You see, sacrifice reveals what’s going on in your heart. Offering reveals what’s precious to you. We don’t sacrifice for something that isn’t valuable to us. Gladly giving that thing, whatever it is, to the Lord shows that we value him. We prize him. We want to be with him.
We love him. We see him as worthy. So what does sacrifice mean? It means that we love God and we show practically that we live for him. It’s not just lip service. Once it costs you something and you can do so worshipfully and gladly, that’s where you can see where my heart is. And so what was Cain’s reaction to God not accepting his half-hearted sacrifice? The text says he was very angry. The thing is, God is still extending mercy to Cain. Even at this point, he sees his evil heart. He sees his sinful rebellion. He sees what’s going on and the anger that’s brewing, the envy that’s brewing, the murderous trajectory that Cain is on. He sees that and he extends mercy. He asks him to slow down. He warns him. God says, Cain, don’t do this. Stop. Sin is crouching at your door. Think about that imagery.
I listened to a sermon years back from Tim Keller, not years back, months back, a friend sent it to me, and Tim Keller in preaching on this passage, he explains this in such like a beautiful, vivid way where he says when you consider sin crouching at the door, you imagine a cat that’s getting ready to strike. And a house cat is one thing. Some house cats are hunters, not all of them are, but you imagine like a lion or a tiger that just crouches down real low, and as it gets lower and lower and lower and just kind of collecting the power and the energy to pounce, and the sin crouching at the door is not just that it’s hiding, it’s that it’s getting ready to attack. It’s getting ready to leap with force, with ferocity, with anger. And so God says, sin is crouching at your door.
It’s getting lower and lower and lower, and it’s building momentum, Cain, stop. We must be cautious. Saints, this is, I fear that we move past this reality of what it means to stand before a holy God, to deal seriously with our sin, to think seriously about the fact that our actions, our thoughts, our motives, they have repercussions. There’s this flow. It’s not just envy. It’s not just anger. It’s not just desire. Sin crouching at the door is getting ready to ruin you. Sin kills, and God in his mercy looks at Cain, and he’s not just telling him not to be bad just for the sake of not being bad. He’s saying, Cain, this will ruin you. This will kill you. First Peter 5.8 says, be sober-minded, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. He wants to kill you.
Your adversary is not trying to just hurt you a little bit. He’s not just trying to make you a little bit uncomfortable. He’s not just trying to shake you up a little bit. He wants to kill you. He hates you. Saints, the sins of envy and anger will just continue to build and build and build and grow and develop until it consumes you. The whole of who you are will be redefined. These sins don’t simmer down. And envy and anger go unchecked. They don’t just mellow out because what happens is in the silence of our hearts, in the quiet of our rooms, we stew and we blow it up, and it becomes bigger and bigger until it just consumes the whole of who you are, and you’re blind. You don’t see reality anymore. The thing that you’re angry about becomes the Mount Everest of wrongs done against you,
and you don’t see that your anger is literally murderous rage. Your envy is what leads you to desire the taking of a life from the person that you feel has taken something from you. It’s not a joke. What that resulted in here was Cain murdering his own brother. This is wild. He murdered his own brother. This is the first family outside the garden. This is so soon. I mean, surely their parents told them how beautiful the Garden of Eden was, how good God was, how badly they want to go back, how much they wish that they could undo the rebellion that they committed. Surely they’re constantly talking to their kids, and Cain, in seeing something that doesn’t go his way, just feels so angry that he brutally murders his brother. This is so soon after the fall, and we’re already at murder. Right away. Beloved, don’t toy with sin.
Don’t see how far it may or may not go. Don’t keep looking where you shouldn’t look. Don’t keep thinking about the thing that you don’t need to think about. You think that you’re just entertaining a thought. You think that you’re just kind of engaging in a certain dialogue, an intellectual exercise. You think that she’s okay to think about, or he’s okay to look at a little bit longer than you should. You think that envy of the person who has more than you is not that big of a deal because they don’t really deserve to have what they have. Sin is crouching at your door. Beloved, take heed. It will kill you. Flee from sin. Flee from temptation. Flee from evil. Anger is wicked. It’s dark. It’s dangerous. Unrighteous and sinful anger is equal to murder. It’s liable to the judgment according to Jesus in Matthew 5.
He says if you call your brother a fool, if you’re angry with him in your heart, Jesus goes even deeper. He says you’ve already gone to murder in your heart. We may think we’re just wired a certain way and I just get angrier. We may think it’s just a natural reaction, but beloved, we have to weed it out. We have to live in a way that we cry out to the Lord for help when we see this in our hearts. We don’t give into it. We don’t run in that direction. After Cain does this wicked deed, God gives him an opportunity to come clean. God gives him an opportunity to repent, to be honest, to deal with the evil that he’s done. What does Cain do? He deflects. He lies. He twists God’s words. What am I? My brother’s keeper? What? I’m supposed to know every single thing this guy ever does?
There’s only two of them. Of course, you probably know everything he ever does, but he’s twisting God’s words. He’s deflecting. He’s lying. He’s covering up. The sin that started in the heart that led to the sin that he committed with his hands is now seen in the sin that he’s committing with his words to cover up the other sins. It’s consumed him. It’s taken over the whole of who he is. You see the ugly, insidious nature here? And it all started with, I don’t like how God accepted his sacrifice and not mine. That’s not fair. And look where he is now. Part of the hatred that Cain felt for his brother had to do with the fact that Abel was a reminder of his own shortcomings. Abel was a reminder of his own sin, his own half-hearted worship. And what happens here with Cain is sort of a replay of what happened to his parents in
the garden. God starts with a conversation like he started with Adam and Eve. Where are you? And he asks Cain, where’s your brother? God expelled Adam and Eve from the garden and then God would eventually expel Cain from his family, from safety, from civilization, from love, from relationship. And says Cain is cursed by God for his sin. Adam and Eve weren’t cursed for their sin. The serpent was, the ground was, but Adam and Eve merely experienced the effects of the curse. The first person to be cursed by God is Cain. In verses 11 and 12 we see a great picture of how sin robs us of joy and fulfillment and purpose. Everything is taken away from him. You’re off on your own, Cain. No more safety. No more family. No more protection. You will be a wanderer. You will be lost. You will lose everything.
You will give up everything. And we see this picture here of what sin does is it robs us of everything. And it doesn’t satisfy. To give up your life, to give up your well-being, to give up a relationship with God and the people around you for what? A moment of pleasure? It never, ever, ever satisfies. So Cain is out in the world. He’s all alone. Because sin seemed more appealing. It seemed to make more sense in that moment. Notice the flow here. Adam and Eve banished from the garden that they were supposed to keep and care for. And now their son Cain banished even further from this pure, this beautiful place to the land of Nod and on and on it goes throughout Scripture as we get further from Eden and further from Eden and further from Eden. Why? Because we continue to sin. We continue to rebel.
The Goodness of God
We continue to run from God. The question that the early readers of Genesis would ask as they were reading this, as they were listening to this being read is how can a sinful person, how can an unfaithful, unholy people be in the presence of God, be in communion with a holy and a righteous and a perfect God? And what we’ll continue to see as we continue to read Genesis and on through the rest of Scripture is that God himself would need to make this happen. And he does. See saints, even after a sin, after Cain sins so egregiously, even then God continues to show him grace. First he started by warning him. He showed him grace by warning him, don’t do it Cain. Don’t move in that direction. And then he showed him mercy by not killing him then and there when he sinned. And then he shows him even more grace as he protects him and continues to provide for
him. The Lord is so kind. And this is who God is. He’s holy and he’s just and he’s righteous, yes, but he also abounds in love and grace and patience towards sinners, calling them, come back, repent, I will forgive you. You are my people. I will take care of you. I will provide for you. He doesn’t just cast us out when we sin, he offers a way out of the sin. As the story continues, we see more of that goodness of God being shown. And here we come to our second point, the goodness of God. Look with me at chapter four, beginning from verse 17. 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, Enoch. To Enoch was born Irad, and Arad fathered Mehujael, and Mehujael fathered Methushael,
and Methushael fathered Lamech, and Lamech took two wives. The name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. Adah bore Jabal. He was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. His brother’s name was Jubal, and he was the father of all those who played lyre and pipe. Zillah also bore Tubal Cain. He was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron. The sister of Tubal-Cain was Naamah. Lamech said to his wives, Adah and Zillah, hear my voice, you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say. I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. 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 Seth. For she said, God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed
him. 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 Lord. This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them man when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness after his image and named him Seth. The days of Adam, after he fathered Seth, were 800 years, and he had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died. When Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered Enosh. Seth lived, after he fathered Enosh, 807 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Seth were 912 years, and he died.
When Enosh had lived 90 years, he fathered Kenan. Enosh lived, after he fathered Kenan, 815 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Enosh were 905 years, and he died. When Kenan had lived 70 years, he fathered Mehalelel. Kenan lived, after he fathered Mehalelel, 840 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Kenan were 910 years, and he died. When Mehalelel had lived 65 years, he fathered Jared. Mehalelel lived, after he fathered Jared, 830 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Mehalelel were 895 years, and he died. When Jared had lived 162 years, he fathered Enoch. Jared lived, after he fathered Enoch, 800 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Jared were 962 years, and he died. When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God, after he fathered Methuselah, 300 years, and had other sons and daughters.
Thus, all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he fathered Lamech. Methuselah lived, after he fathered Lamech, 782 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Methuselah were 969 years, and he died. When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son, and he called his name Noah, saying, Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands. Lamech lived, after he fathered Noah, 595 years, and he had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Lamech were 777 years, and he died. After Noah was 500 years old, Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth. When we look at genealogies in the Bible, our tendency often is just to skim right over
them. And I think some of you are probably surprised that I read all of that. Initially I wasn’t going to, but I think it’s important for us to see all of Scripture as inspired by God, profitable, necessary. And as we read things like this, and as we read sections of Scripture where we see God’s faithfulness through multiple generations of people, what we get to see is not just facts for us to learn, like, I know who the oldest person that ever lived was. But we get to see God in action, God fulfilling His promises, God being faithful. So when we look at these genealogies, we need to fight that impulse to just kind of skim past that to the meaty stuff. What we get to see here and in other portions of Scripture like this is how God fulfills His plans and how He works things out according to His purposes.
And here we see two genealogies. We see canes and we see atoms, two lines moving in very different directions. There’s a lot that can be said here about the different generations of people named here, the times that would have passed between each one, how they all intersect, how they don’t intersect. All of those questions are important. And there’s really great work that’s been done by a variety of Old Testament and Hebrew scholars addressing all of this. But the important thing to see here, saints, is that this is the period in which the earth is being populated. What we’re seeing here is that there is this filling of the earth that’s happening. This different civilizations are being formed. The earth is being filled. Notice also that it isn’t just people being born, but in Cain’s lineage, we see that with the arrival of these different people, the mandate for humans to rule and to exercise
dominion continues. There are towns developing. There are different trades and skill sets. There are things being made with people’s hands. Do you see God’s grace here shown to all people? All of this development and all of this growth and this process that will be a blessing and provision and it starts with Cain of all people. We see that God was blessing even the descendants of this really wicked man that just rebelled against him in a horrendous way. But God is still continuing to show grace to people. God has not pulled the rug out from under these people. God is giving them provision. God is giving them society. God is allowing for them to live in such a way as to actually experience God’s blessings and his grace. We often complain about broader society, about broader civilization. We often look around at Portland and Vancouver and kind of the greater area around here and
it’s really easy to complain, be like, oh man, the city officials don’t care about the city and things are so bad and things are so ugly and you know, everything is just completely spiraling out of control and in many ways, yeah, that’s sin. That’s what happens in a sinful world. But I want to encourage you saints as we kind of navigate the world around us, learn to see God’s grace. Learn to see beauty. Learn to see the fact that even in a culture where sin abounds and where people are rebelling against God, he’s still allowing for people to make beautiful things. He’s still allowing for, you know, wonderful food to be made in our city and beautiful art and there’s creation all around us and there’s, you know, an interesting city where there’s cool stuff to see. Don’t just gloss over that. Don’t just skip over that to right to like, it’s all bad.
It’s all, it’s all evil. It’s all wicked. Yes and no. God’s common grace is still very much present and we need to learn to note that. We need to learn to be grateful for that. Don’t just skip over that. Even through evildoers, God can still bless. God can still do beautiful things and we see that here. And despite the grace that God extends, we see that the continuation of sin in Cain’s line is gross. It’s awful. Shortly after Cain murders his brother, there’s more disobedience in his life. There’s more disobedience in the lives of his children. We see really quickly that, you know, the model of marriage is skewed and made, you know, into something that it was never designed to be. There’s polygamy. There’s more murder. There’s even the celebration of murder. There’s like reveling in your sin. Sin doesn’t slow down. It doesn’t stop on its own.
It doesn’t course correct. Once the rebellion in the garden occurred, this is where it led and this is where it continues to lead. And yet evil, even through this group of evil people, God is still gracious and allows for creativity and industry to take place and we see his goodness in that. God provides and shows common grace to good and evil people. Matthew 5.45 says, he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, sends rain on the just and on the unjust. As we flow from Cain’s lineage to Adam’s, it’s almost like the tone of the text changes. It’s almost like things become brighter right away, like the sun breaks through the clouds. You hear the birds start to sing. That’s how I read it. As I’m reading it, it’s like that, you know, the theme. Like that starts to play in my head because it’s just, you see that there’s, it takes
a different tone. It heads in a different direction. There’s faithfulness and there’s promise and there’s excitement and there’s worship. Note the contrast between Cain’s line and Adam’s. The descendants of the evildoer and the murderer and the descendants of the one whom God blessed. And notice both of them rebelled. It’s not like one was without sin, but there is a difference in the way that we live our lives and the way that we navigate what happens after we sin. One is destruction and darkness. One is hope and life. Notice the hope that comes from the birth of Seth and then the birth of Seth’s son. When his son is born, the text says that people began to call upon the name of the Lord. This is a glimpse of the one for whom they’re all waiting. What would happen when he would finally come? As we look through chapter five, how do we, how do we, you know, in looking at all of
Walking with God
these things and in seeing the faithfulness of God, but not like skimming over the details, how do we make sense of these extraordinarily long lives? These are very long lives, 900 years, 969 years. What do we do with that? Some scholars would argue that, well, oh, these, these are just kind of stretches of time. It’s not like generations. It’s not like one guy. It’s just, it’s everybody that kind of, you know, was born after him. Others would have even a far less charitable explanation that essentially calls into question inerrancy and the trustworthiness of Bible, of the Bible. And it seems that what makes most sense here is that early on in human history, after humans being expelled from Eden, people lived for a very, very long time. The effects of sin hadn’t yet taken hold in their entirety. People lived for a lot longer, and this would be the case until after the flood, but more
on that next time. Despite these very long lives, however, what happens to each of these people eventually? Where does it all end? They die. Even 969 years, even he died just like God told Adam and Eve would happen. Well, almost all of them. We won’t go through all the different names on the list, but it’s important to point out a few of them. While everyone else is living to around 900 years or more, we read about Enoch, who lived to a mere 365. Everyone died. After they’d lived their years, after they’d lived their lives, after they’d had their children, all of them died, but not Enoch. He was taken up to heaven as a relatively young man. And if you consider 365 is like, wow, that’s a long time. But if you consider that others were living in 930 and 969, this is basically like a 30-year-old.
This is a young man, younger than me, who was so righteous and who lived so intentionally and so meaningfully that the description of him is he walked with God. That’s what we know about this young man. He walked with God. Everyone died, not Enoch. Everyone around him is dying, and even after a very long life, Enoch’s life signals that maybe, just maybe, we don’t have to die. Enoch’s life sends a message to the people around him that maybe there’s hope. Maybe something different can happen. Maybe there’s a solution to this horrible problem after all. Can you imagine how strange and how horrible those first deaths must have been? Can you imagine? You don’t know. You don’t have a category for it. You love somebody. You’re around them all the time. You don’t know what to expect, and then they live a very long time, and you just kind of
expect that this is going to keep going, and then you just see the life leave them. You just watch somebody age and die. This must have been horrible. It must have been terrifying. Not Enoch. He walked with God, and then God took him, and I bet people started asking questions. What does this mean? What do we do? How can we have that? In Genesis, we see another man who’s said to have walked with God, Noah, and he pops up at the end of the chapter. Now, Noah did eventually die, but what we read about him is that Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God, Genesis 6, 9, and what does God tell Abram to do when he institutes the covenant of the circumcision to set his people apart? What does he tell Abram to do? Walk before me, be blameless, Genesis 17, and so what does it mean that Enoch walked
with God? It means that he was aligned with God. It means that he wanted to be with God. It means that he drew near to God. It means that he lived a righteous life, like Abel. A righteous life is not one that shows how great we are, saints. A righteous life is not one that puts us up on a pedestal. A righteous life is not one that shows, I got this, I’ll take care of it. A righteous life is one that points to the greatness of God, the beauty of God, the beauty of grace and love, and that even though I am a sinner, I am loved by the Most High. He knows me, and he cares for me, and so a righteous life is one that’s regularly pointing others to him. And then we see another interesting picture of the other Lamech. Cain’s descendant was a murdering polygamist, but Adam’s descendant longed for relief.
It says that he longed for relief. He longed for salvation. It’s an entirely different picture from Cain’s descendant. He wanted salvation. He wanted relief. He wanted so badly to be freed from this burden of sin and death as he’s watching people die, as he’s watching people suffer, as he feels pain, and as he experiences the curse of sin upon the land and upon everything and everyone. And he knew, he knew that his son Noah would somehow offer relief from the curse. He knew that Noah would somehow lead the way to God. He knew that somehow Noah would live in such a way that God wanted for people to live. A direct line is seen here from Adam, the founder of humanity, to the one who could be called humanity’s refounder, Noah, whom God would use to save a remnant and continue to fulfill his promise to send a Messiah.
The Better Word
Through Noah, God would continue to be faithful, even though, if you continue to read Genesis, it gets way worse. God’s faithfulness and goodness are seen not only in the way that he blesses Adam’s lineage and starts and maintains the line that would ultimately lead to the Messiah, but also in how he cares and provides for Cain’s lineage and still extends grace to him and his children, despite the rebellion and the wickedness seen in their lives. Genesis 4 and 5 show us that, sometimes, genealogies offer light and hope. They show that death doesn’t necessarily get the final word. When God is in control, he works things out in the right way at the right time. Saints, as we contemplate sin and its horrific effects, I want you to consider what we do here every Sunday morning. Friends, when we go through the confession and pardon, we seek to deal honestly with
the sin that is very present in each of our hearts. We don’t want to let this sin spiral. We don’t want to let this sin grow and evolve and become more than what it already is. We don’t want to become desensitized to it and learn to be okay with it. We don’t want to learn to live with it. We want to get rid of it. We need to learn to honestly look at our hearts, beloved. We need to learn to honestly analyze our lives and plead with God to tear it out before it ruins us. We see a picture of what that looks like, and it’s horrifying, but it doesn’t end with just identifying and reacting to our sin. That’s the first step. That sin must still be dealt with. And considering the latter portion of our text, do you see how much we need God?
Do you see how in and of ourselves this isn’t possible? We can’t just do it. We can’t just fix it. We can’t just live a righteous enough life to kind of climb our way out of it. How utterly incapable we are of saving ourselves, of seeing the process through that would bring about actual change, we’re powerless. God needs to act. God needs to carry out what he ordained. It had to be him. God wisely, patiently, carefully, methodically bringing about his plan, his way, and it has to be his work from start to finish. Where does this plan ultimately lead? Where do these genealogies point? To whom do they point? To Jesus. The better Adam, the one who would crush the serpent’s head, the one whose blood doesn’t cry out like Abel’s does from the ground for vengeance and for justice, but as we read
in Hebrews 12, 24, the blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. And so when we partake in the Lord’s Supper, which we’re going to do here shortly, we eat the bread and drink the wine, and we’re reminded of the body broken for us, we’re reminded of the blood shed for us, why? As payment for our sins. To cover our sins. A better word indeed. With Jesus, the wait is finished. The seed of the woman has crushed the head of the serpent, and he’s provided a way for us to go home. Would you pray with me?