26-1025a - Detailed Summary

Good morning. It’s good to see everybody. We are continuing our adventure through the first 11 chapters of Genesis, and we will begin looking at chapter 5 today. We began by looking at what the Bible says about time before time began and God’s eternal self-existence—the necessary precondition for something to exist now. An eternal force capable of creating matter, bringing it and us into existence. For something to exist now, something must have always existed. The answer still eludes the naturalist, and we will explore more of this this evening. They still have no natural-only, non-supernatural solution, which they emphatically state must be where they get their answer, and they haven’t found one yet.

As a result, we have been taking a plain reading of Genesis and have refused to reshape the narrative so that it fits modern cosmology. Instead, we have asked what the text itself is saying. In the opening chapters, we watched the six days of creation and the seventh day of rest. We looked more closely at the sixth day in chapter 2 of Genesis. Then we saw the temptation, the fall, and the pronouncement of the curses as a result of sin in chapter 3. In chapter 4, we met the first family, Adam and Eve and their sons Cain and Abel, and watched the battle of the seeds begin between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. Cain’s line is expounded in chapter 4. John calls him in 1 John 3:12 “of the evil one,” and his line moved in a moral downward spiral to oblivion. Now the text pauses and gives us a different kind of account.

Genesis 5 opens with the generations of Adam. Genesis is organized by this repeating phrase. There are 10 of them, usually stated “these are the generations of” and fill in the blank, starting with the heavens and the earth, Adam, Noah, Noah’s sons, and so on. Scholars call the heading the toledot, after the Hebrew word toledot, meaning “the generations of.” They function as section titles. They look forward; they introduce what came from the main person or thing, the heavens and the earth, not like a biography looking backward.

Of the 10, there is one that’s not like the others, and it’s right here in chapter 5, verse 1, where it says, “This is the book of the generations of Adam.” The Hebrew is sefer toledot, the book of the generations of. Sefer is a written record, a book. It is not an oral fragment or a collection of names. The text presents itself as a deliberate account of the line that continues from Adam. After the destruction of the fall and the split of Cain from the family, recorded in chapter 4, the book of the generations re-centers the reader on the line through which the promised seed will be carried forward.

The language is not unique to this place. There is one other place in the Bible where a record of genealogy is phrased this way, and it was read in your presence this morning by Kevin. It occurs when Matthew opens his gospel where he writes, “the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ.” The same phrasing that begins the line of Adam begins the line that ends in the Messiah. The parallel is intentional. What we are reading in Genesis 5 is the beginning of the written continuity of the seed of the woman.

The pattern that runs through the chapter: once the book is introduced, a clear pattern appears. The pattern is a man lives a certain number of years, fathers the named son and lives additional years, and then the refrain comes: “and he died.”

Beginning in chapter 5, verse 3, we read:

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 of Adam 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 (some versions say Cainan). 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 Mahalaleel. Kenan lived after he fathered Mahalaleel 840 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Kenan were 910 years, and he died.

When Mahalaleel had lived 65 years, he fathered Jared. Mahalaleel lived after he fathered Jared 830 years and he had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Mahalaleel 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, and thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years, a short lifespan. 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, and thus all the days of Methuselah were 969 years, and he died.

- Everybody remembers Methuselah, 969—that’s the oldest person recorded in the Bible.
- Number two? Nobody remembers number two. It’s Jared, 962 years. Methuselah 969.
- Also note that Jared is Enoch’s father, and Methuselah is Enoch’s son. The two oldest people recorded in the Scripture are father and son of Enoch.

When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son and called him 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 had other sons and daughters, the next shortest lifespan in this period. Thus all the days of Lamech were 777 years, and he died.

After Noah was 500 years old, Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And that’s the genealogy recorded in chapter five.

The refrain is not filler. It is the actual echo of the curse spoken of in Genesis 3. Death has entered the line of Adam, and the book records it without apology. The intervals are long, and many years passed between the birth of the named son and the father’s death. Those years are not wasted space. They are the data that let a reader construct a continuous timeline. The text practically invites you to do it. At the father’s age, at the birth of the named son, across the list, and you have an unbroken chain that appears from Adam forward. When this chapter is read together with the genealogy of Genesis 11, the same method carries across the line through the flood and up to Abraham. Abraham finishes the list in Genesis chapter 11. He is the one at the bottom of that list. And the numbers are the text’s own chronological markers. A plain reading treats them as such.

Look at the visual comparison of the lifespan before and after the flood. Something happens around the time of the flood, which we’ll explore next time—not tonight, but the next Sunday I preach. Remember when Joseph presented his father to Pharaoh, and Pharaoh asked him how old he was, and Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The days of the years of my sojourning are 130. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their sojourning.” He’s the shortest one on the list. Everybody preceding him has a longer lifespan. That’s an interesting chart, as we’ll see when we get to after the flood and probably in Genesis 11. But just let me show you: Noah’s in the middle. Two people cross the line that is the flood—Noah and his son Shem. Shem, look at Shem. He outlives his son. He outlives his grandson. His great-grandson outlives him. Everybody after, up until around Terah (actually Abram/Abraham) or something, Shem outlives most of his descendants. Can you imagine, Shem? It’s tough when you outlive your children, let alone your children’s children and theirs.

There is one interruption in the pattern of Enoch. The text says Enoch walked with God and was not, for God took him. He does not die in the ordinary way. The refrain is broken by directed divine action. Enoch is the exception that shows death is not the final word. The book records both the universality of death and the possibility that God can interrupt it. Hebrews affirms this in Hebrews 11, verses 5 and 6: “By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death. He did not die. And he was not found because God had taken him. Now before he was taken, he was commended as having pleased God.” And next we read Steve’s favorite verse: “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” Even here in chapter 5, this early, it is demonstrated. God demonstrates that he has power over death when death is the rule. It is a consequence of the curse.

Continuity of the image, the image of God, and the line of promise. The book of the generations of Adam begins by recalling the original creation and then recording the first birth in the line that it will trace. So beginning in Genesis 5, verses 1–3: “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 contrast is deliberate. Verse 1 reminds us that God made man in his likeness. Verse 3 says Adam fathered Seth in his own likeness after his image. The Hebrew vocabulary that described God’s making of Adam is now used for Adam’s fathering of Seth. The image of God is not erased. It continues to be transmitted through ordinary generation, and that is why after the flood, when God institutes the first law against murder in Genesis 9:6, he can forbid it on the ground that man is made in God’s image. And why James 3, verse 9, can still speak of people who curse their brethren who are made in the likeness of God and warns them about the untamed tongue. Seth is still an image bearer. The capacities that constitute humanity—speech, reason, moral discernment, relationality, and the rest—remain.

At the same time, the wording is not identical. The narrator does not say that Seth was fathered in the likeness of God a second time. He says Adam fathered a son in his own likeness after his image. And the image continues, but it continues through a man who has already sinned and who already stands under the sentence of death, the most immediate and explicit consequence of the chapter itself records his mortality. You may have noticed the refrain, “and he died,” begins at once and runs through the genealogy as we have seen. Death is the fruit of the curse spoken of in Genesis 3:19, not a declaration that Seth entered the world already guilty of Adam’s sin.

Some have read the contrast more strongly. Matthew Henry, commenting on chapter 5, verse 3, wrote that Adam begat a son in his own image, sinful and defiled, frail, wretched, and mortal like himself, a sinner like himself. John Calvin, likewise, spoke of the image as so spoiled and impaired by the fall that some obscure distinctive features or characteristics are so vitiated, spoiled or impaired, and maimed that they may truly be said to be destroyed, with only a frightful deformity remaining. Both treat the transmission of the image as including a corrupted moral nature that predisposes the child to sin.

Eric Lyons, writing for Apologetics Press, has argued the other side of the evidence. Scripture never says the image was lost or annihilated. The continued use of the language after the fall shows that every human being still bears the image of God in a real sense. Sin mars the exercise of the image. It does not eradicate the image itself. The text registers a real post-fall change. The image is now passed on by a mortal man living under the consequences of his own sin. Those consequences, the curse, are inherited. Pain, toil, a creation subjected to futility, and above all, death, are the portion of Adam’s line. What is not asserted is an inherited inclination that makes sinning necessary or a guilt that attaches at birth.

James chapter 1, verses 13 through 15, keeps the responsibility clear. Each person is drawn away by his own desire and enticed. Desire conceives and gives birth to sin, and sin, when full grown, brings forth death. Sin is an act of the will. The curse is the consequence of Adam’s sin. Sin is not the consequence of the curse. The book of the generations of Adam, therefore, begins by affirming both realities at once. The image continues, and with it, the dignity that still belongs to every human being. The image is transmitted under the conditions of the fall, and with it, the mortality which the rest of the chapter will document without interruption. Seth is named, not Cain, because this is the appointed line through which the promise will be kept. The same dual reality, the dignity that remains and the brokenness introduced by sin, will later be developed when Paul contrasts the image of the earthly man with the image of the heavenly man. For now, the text simply records the facts. The likeness continues, the line continues, and death continues. It does not teach that anyone is born a sinner.

So a word for us. The book of the generations of Adam does not leave us only with ancient names and numbers. It leaves us with two facts that still shape every life in this room.

First, the image continues. Seth was fathered in Adam’s likeness, yet he remained as an image-bearer. So do we. The capacities that mark us as human—reason, speech, moral awareness, the ability to know and be known—are still present. This is why Scripture can still forbid murder on the ground of the image, and still warn us that the tongue can curse those made in the likeness of God. The dignity is real. It is not erased by the fall, and it is not reserved for a few. Every person we meet still bears it.

Second, death continues. The refrain is not an ancient curiosity. It is the standing condition of Adam’s line. We live under the same curse. Pain, toil, and the certainty of death are not theoretical. Yet the chapter also records one interruption. Enoch walked with God, and God took him. Death is universal, but it is not ultimate. The same God who kept the line through which the promise would run is able to interrupt the reign of death.

So the application is straightforward. We do not treat people as though the image has been lost, nor do we pretend the curse is not real. We live as those who still bear God’s likeness in a world where “and he died” remains the ordinary end of the story. And we do so in the confidence that the line documented here was preserved for a reason. The book of the generations of Adam tells us both what we are and what we are waiting for. The evening will press the question of whether later voices have been willing to hear what this record actually says. For now, it is enough to receive the record as it stands. The image continues, the line continues, and death continues until God himself brings the interruption that Enoch only foreshadowed.

So the invitation of the text. The chapter does not rush. It gives ages, intervals, and repeated notice of death. It also gives the means to trace a continuous line from the first man to the generation that will enter the ark. That’s Noah. Later, Scripture will carry that line still farther. The plain reading does not require us to compress generations or reinterpret the numbers so that they match a different set of assumptions about the age of the earth. The text supplies its own framework. It assumes creation by the word of God, the entrance of death, the preservation of a promised line, and the reality of a coming judgment that will end the world that then existed, which is coming up shortly in our series.

When we finish the chapter, we have a written record, a clear pattern of mortality, one remarkable exception, and a timeline that can be extended. We also have a contrast. The line of Cain moved downward. The line documented here continues under the promise. Both lines live in the same world. Only one is presented as the book of the generations of Adam. The same record that documents death also documents unbroken continuity. That continuity will matter when later voices claim that all things have continued as they were from the beginning. The book of the generations stands as a witness against that claim. It remembers a beginning that was not uniform, a death that entered by transgression, and a line that was preserved by the God who spoke the world into being.

So, the invitation is being extended to anyone who is subject to it. Come, as we stand and sing.