Green Baggins

Genesis 36

It just doesn’t seem fair, does it? No matter how hard you work, no matter how honest you are, no matter how much you come to church, the unbeliever seems to do better. He is often dishonest, lazy, impious, and a complete jerk, and yet he prospers and you don’t. What is God thinking, you say. Well, there are several things that God might be thinking. Our passage, with its long list of names, actually has something to say about this issue. Why do the wicked seem to prosper, while God’s people suffer hardship?

First of all, we need to get our bearings here. We have finished the section dealing with Jacob, and are about to embark on the Joseph story. We saw the same kind of thing happen right before the Jacob story. After we had finished with the Abraham story, Moses gave us the genealogy of Ishmael. And now, after the Jacob story, but before the Joseph story, Moses again gives us the genealogy of the rejected family line of Esau.

But why is this genealogy here? It would seem to have absolutely nothing to do with us. It is not even the genealogy of the promised son Jacob. So why is it here in Scripture? It must have some use, since all of Scripture is inspired and is useful for instruction. First of all, it shows the glory of God. It would eventually take quite a bit of power from God in order to defeat this nation of Edom. Edom was so strong that only God could overpower it. The same is true of our own spiritual battles: only God is able to overcome.

The second reason this passage is give to us is that we learn an important lesson about our spiritual enemies: know them! Moses wrote this for the Israelites who were about to go into the promised land. Not only were the Edomites close relatives (the Israelites were told at the time not to harm the Edomites, since they were kinsmen), but also they would become bitter enemies of Israel. It is important to know one’s enemies. In our case, we must know how Satan works in order to be able to stand against him by the power of the Holy Spirit. This does not mean that we should study his ways in order to become fascinated by them. That is very dangerous. But every general in combat learns about how his enemy thinks, so that he can make his move, and be sure that that move will accomplish what he wants it to do. In the same way, we must not be ignorant of how Satan tempts us, or we will have a very hard time resisting him. He will have all the trump cards. There have been two books written on the subject that extremely helpful in this regard. The first is called Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis. In that book, Lewis has a senior demon write letters to his “nephew” demon, telling him how to tempt a human being. The writing is often funny, but more importantly, it gives us a good picture of how Satan tempts. C.S. Lewis is very careful not paint Satan in good colors. There’s no doubt who the bad guy is. This idea has been updated in a more recent book by Randy Alcorn, entitled Lord Foulgrin’s Letters. This is an equally helpful book, though I do not agree with everything in the book. It has a story to go along with the letters, and the story makes the spiritual battle very real. As Alcorn says, in this spiritual warfare in which we are engaged, most of us are pacifists. We should not be.

The third reason this passage is given to us is that we can see here God’s Providence working in the lives of His people, even with regard to foreign nations. Notice what happens in verses 6-8: Esau finds that the land will not hold him, and so he moves to Edom, to the hill country of Seir. He had been in the promised land, but now he moves out. This indicates that Esau really did despise his birthright, which consisted of the land of Canaan. But now the whole country is left wide open for the people of Israel to come in and take possession of it. God’s providence is further evident in verse 43, where the text says that it was the land they occupied. That word there means that God had commissioned them to occupy the land of Seir, and not the land of Canaan. God clears out a place for His people, in order that they might truly inherit the land. That happens with us as well. Jesus said that He is preparing a place for us. As it were, He clears away the ground, rids it of pests and worms and enemies, and makes the place livable for us. Such will be the new heavens and the new earth. We will not inherit it until Christ comes back. However, He is even now preparing that place for us. But it is not because of our own power and numbers that God prepares that place for us. As Deuteronomy 7:7 says: “It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and choseyou, for you were the fewest of all peoples.” God does not love us because we are so lovable. God loves us while we were still enemies of Him. While we were still enemies Christ died for us. That is the measure of God’s love for His people.

Notice in verses 20 and following that we have the genealogy of the Horites. They were the people that the Edomites drove out in order to possess the land of Seir. So there we see God’s providence in making a people for the Edomites to drive out, so that they would leave the Promised Land, so that Israel could inherit the Promised Land. God’s providence goes back even another layer to the people that the rejected people would drive out! That should amaze us.

Even though Esau was the rejected son, nevertheless, God had promised that Esau would become a mighty nation. God promised that Esau would throw off the yoke of his brother Jacob. In order to do that, he would have to be a mighty nation.

Eventually, we come in history to the Herods, who were Edomites. Herod the Great, who persecuted Jesus and tried to kill him, was an Edomite. He was a representative of the seed of the serpent. As we have seen in Genesis the seed of the serpent and the Seed of the woman constantly are fighting with one another. It is spiritual warfare, often physical, though now it is only spiritual.

So you look at other people, wicked people, and see them prospering. It makes you mad. What we have to remember when that happens is that our land that we will inherit is far better than what they will acquire. They may get land on earth, but they will not inherit heaven. They will not inherit the true Promised Land, the new heavens and the new earth. That is only for those for whom it has been prepared. We must be patient and realize that God is bringing it about. It may not happen on the time-table that we would like. However, it is happening.

Genesis 11:10-32
We have come to the end of a very important part of Genesis with this post. Just to let us know where we are, we are finishing the first eleven chapters today. That might seem like we are going to spend forever in Genesis, but that is not true. The first eleven chapters are quite a bit more dense than the rest of the book. Many sermons from now on will take a whole chapter at a time.

The first eleven chapters are all about God creating a world, that world falling into sin, and God judging the world, bringing grace along with judgment. Now today we are going to transition into the story of Abraham. Moses does this by way of a genealogy. Now, we have seen this kind of genealogy before, but this one is a little different, and in this case, the differences are wonderful for us.

In chapter 5, we will remember that the genealogy there started with the age of the patriarch when he had his first son, then it would say how many years after that he live, and mention the fact that he had other sons and daughters, and then he would die. There were ten generations from Adam to Noah. We saw that Enoch was in the seventh position, which is a position of honor in genealogies, as is the tenth spot in a genealogy. You will remember that there are two kinds of genealogies: those that go from father to son to son to son, and those that branch out. We have seen both of these kinds of genealogies in Genesis. The table of Nations in chapter 10 is a branching kind of genealogy, whereas our passage today is a straight-line genealogy from father to son. In this case, no special honor is given to the seventh spot, but there are ten generations, just as in chapter 5, and the tenth generation is something special: Abram is in the tenth generation. The chapter 5 genealogy ends in three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. Our genealogy here has ten generations, ending in three sons also: Abram, Nahor, and Haran. We can see that the Lord saw the wickedness of the world increasing over these ten generations, and at the end of the first ten generations, God judges the world. At the end of the second ten generations, God also acts, but this time with grace in the life of Abraham.

There is another very wonderful difference between chapter 5 and chapter 10. The chapter ten genealogy does not mention the fact that the patriarch died. In chapter 5, Moses wanted us to remember that we are mortal, and that all mankind dies, except for that bright spot in the genealogy, Enoch, who does not die. Here in this chapter, none of the patriarchs are said to die. Of course, they did die. But the fact that Moses does not mention that fact is significant: this is the line of promise, through which death will meet its own end. The promise of defeating death goes through the promised seed of Adam and the woman. That promise will eventually end in Jesus Christ.

But this is only the end of a long process that continues in our passage. Notice several things about this genealogy: the lives of the patriarchs get shorter and shorter. This fulfills what God had said about the lives of mankind in Genesis 6:3: “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.”

And again, there are some interesting overlaps in ages. Seth outlives his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson Abram by 35 years. Shem’s son Arpachshad dies when Abraham is 148 years old. Shem outlives all his descendents except Eber all the way to Isaac. Arpachshad’s sons Shelah outlives Abraham as well by 8 years. Shelah’s son Eber, the father of the Hebrews, also outlives Abraham. Peleg is the first descendent not to live all the way until Abraham is born. That was in the days when the Tower of Babel was built. Immediately after the Tower of Babel incident, the lives of people got much shorter. In fact, Peleg only lives a little more than half the number of years that his father Eber lived. God does this for the benefit of mankind.

Previously, mankind was allowed to live so long that they could become unbelievably wicked. Now, they will not live so long, and thus have to remember that they are mortal, and that their lives are like a drop in the bucket compared to eternity. We have to remember that in our own time as well. Especially young people have to remember that they are not indestructible. It is quite possible to live your life ignorant of the fact that you will die. We try to shove off that realization as long as possible. We only remember when someone dies, and then we get the uncomfortable realization that we could be next. We should remember our mortality more often, so that we will rely on God’s grace more often.

Notice something else that is interesting. Most of the patriarchs have children when they are about 30 years of age. That is not true of Abraham’s father Terah. Probably this is because Moses wants to tell us that the chosen family will always have trouble conceiving children. Every single one of the patriarchs has a barren wife. Sarah is barren, Rebekah is barren, Rachel is barren. They are all needy people. Barrenness was viewed as a sort of death in the Ancient Near East. Without children, you weren’t alive. That explains a lot of things in the OT. Rachel said to Jacob, “Give me children, or I’ll die.” What she really means is, “Make me alive, because right now, I’m dead.” Hannah was willing to completely give up her first-born son if the Lord would grant her request. Elizabeth in the NT was barren for a long time, until the Lord visited her, and granted her conception. Barrenness was death in that time period.

So being given a child was just like being resurrected from the dead. When God gives Sarah a child, the Lord is giving her new life. The same thing happens with Rebekah and Rachel, Hannah, and Elizabeth. They are given new life. It points to the resurrection from the dead of our Lord Jesus Christ. That gives us new life from the dead. No longer are we spiritually barren. But we who believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior have received that new resurrection life within us.

We are in a position of deadness ourselves. We are just like Sarah, of whom it is said, “Now Sarai was barren; she had no child.” We do not have the Holy Spirit in us. We are dead in our trespasses and sins. We have no life in us. We are not merely sick. We are dead. Then God comes within us and makes us alive again. He gives us a new heart, a heart of flesh and not a heart of stone. God gives us the Holy Spirit. New life is conceived within us, just as God overcomes barrenness in the patriarchal family. The fruit of that in our lives is good works, just as the fruit of God’s work in Sarai was a new baby, a rather obvious fruit. We then are called to recognize that nothing that we do is going to make us alive, but we must trust in God as Abraham and Sarah did, in order to make us well.

So where does that leave us right now? It leaves in in a wandering situation. Terah and his family are going on a pilgrimage. The trouble is that they know where they are going, but never get there in Terah’s lifetime. They have to wait on God. Moses writes this in a way that any Israelite coming out of the Exodus would understand: namely, that Abraham’s position is exactly like the Israelites wandering in the desert. They have been saved from their spiritual barrenness, saved out of the land of Egypt, but they have not come to the promised land yet. This is the same situation that the church is in right now. We have been saved from death and sin, but we do not yet have our glorified bodies, and we do not yet live in the new heavens and the new earth, which is our promised land. Moses writes this to encourage the Israelites, because Abraham does eventually arrive at the promised land, just as the Israelites will eventually enter and take possession of the promised land. But they get discouraged while they are wandering. They sin, and get themselves into all sorts of trouble. They forget about God and His deliverance, just like we do. They grumble and complain, just like we do. The call is for us to remember what god has done in bringing us from death to life, remember how God has preserved us in our wilderness wanderings, and remember that God has saved a place for us in the new heavens and the new earth. Hebrews 11:8-10 says this: “And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, for he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.” May we be just like Abraham in his faith.

Genesis 5
“The basic fact about human experience is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore.” Now that statement may be a bit of an exaggeration. However, there is a kernel of truth there. We get up in the morning, cook breakfast, eat breakfast, work, drive the kids to school, work, drive the kids home from school, work, cook supper, eat supper, put the kids to bed, go to sleep, and do the whole thing all over again the next day. Life seems like an unending cycle that cannot be broken. The cycle is monotonous and boring. There are yearly cycles too, especially in farming. They can get monotonous as well. Do you ever feel like screaming out at God that you want to get out of life? Life feels like this genealogy. So-and-so is born, lives until a certain age, has a son, lives another length of time, has other sons and daughters, and then dies. Sounds rather boring, rather like an unending cycle that never changes. There is nothing new under the sun. Underlying all of this boredom is the thought of death itself. That is what makes the cycle unbearable: after all this work and toil, the only thing that happens at the end is death. How boring. Does death have the last word? Is that the end of all our striving? Is all our striving losing?

It would seem that death reigned from Adam onward, as Paul says. Death reigned because of sin. The text starts out by a contrast between God’s creation and man’s creation. God creates mankind in His own image, in the image of God. Adam, though, has a son in his own image. That tells us that the Fall is going to perpetuate itself in the following generations. Seth is in the image of God. However, it is an image that is filtered by the distorted image of Adam. It is not a direct image of God. That is the point of the first five verses. That starts this seemingly unending cycle of birth and death.

But we notice one thing right away. These first human beings lived a very long time. This has caused some scholars to be exceedingly skeptical about whether these numbers are to be taken literally or not. They surprise us because the numbers are so large. However, once we consider that human beings were created to live forever, and that the life-span gradually gets shorter and shorter after the Flood, then we should not have any difficulty in taking Moses at his word. We need to notice two things about these long lives. First of all, we need to see that the ages of Cain’s descendents are not recorded for us. That is because all of Cain’s descendents will perish in the Flood. The other thing we need to know is that these numbers are actually small. The Babylonian tradition about the kings who existed before the Flood records some very interesting numbers indeed. There is a document called the Sumerian King List, which gives us the name of ten kings who reigned before the Flood. They reigned anywhere from 18,600 years to 43,200 years. Eight kings ruled for a total of 241,000 years. Beside these numbers, the Genesis account records very modest and small numbers. The point of the Genesis narrative is that no ancestor ever lived longer than 1000 years. Not even Methuselah lived that long. 1000 years is symbolic of eternity, or of a perfect period of time. The Bible says that 1000 years are like one day to God. Man never lives even as long as one of God’s days. This should give new meaning to Revelation 20, which says that Jesus Christ reigns for 1000 years. More on that later.

However long these men lived, there is the depressingly monotonous refrain at the end of every account, “and he died.” However, there is one example that is different from all the others. Enoch does not die. Enoch lives to be 365 years old, the number of days in a year. Have you ever noticed that? Notice also that twice in these brief verses, it says that Enoch walked wit God. What does “walking with God” mean? It means to have close fellowship with God. The Bible tells us that two cannot walk together unless they be reconciled. Methuselah then was saved. He believed in the promise of the Messiah, the one who would crush Satan’s head. Long life (which is what Enoch does not have) is not the most sacred and honorable blessing that can come from God. Enoch had something better. As Matthew Henry says, “As he did not live like others, so also he did not die like others.” Walking with God is the reason for the great reward that Enoch receives. Enoch does not die. In the place of that phrase that we would normally expect to see, there is this marvelous statement: “and he was not, for God took him.” From Hebrews 11 we learn that Enoch walked by faith such that God allowed him not to taste death. A little girl once told this story in a wonderful way: “Enoch and God used to take long walks together. And one day they walked further than usual; and God said, ‘Enoch, you must be tired; come into my house and rest.’” If there is faith, hope and love, these three, Enoch’s faith is what God turned to sight, and Enoch’s hope God turned to fulfillment.

What happened to Enoch would have been a tremendous boost of hope to all those living. Of all his ancestors, only Adam had died, and of his descendants, only Noah was yet to be born. It took place about half-way from creation to the flood. Death does not have the last word! Now remember that what Enoch went through is not the same as a resurrection from the dead. Hebrews makes it plain that Enoch did not taste death.

Enoch’s son is the longest living person in the Bible. He lives 969 years and dies in the year of the flood. The shortest lived ancestor is the father of the longest-lived ancestor. Enoch, though, did not provide complete freedom from death. Methuselah, though the son of Enoch still died. Another solution would be needed. Notice that Methuselah is the father of Lamech.

Now Lamech lives 777 years. Remember that Cain’s descendant Lamech was the seventh from Adam, and boasted of having a 77-fold revenge. Now the descendant of Seth lives 777 years. This is probably not coincidence. What Moses wants to do here is to compare the two Lamechs. There is no comparison. Lamech descended from Seth is a prophet, while the Lamech descended from Cain was a false prophet. What does Lamech say? He says that Noah will acquire relief from the work. Notice that it says “out of the ground.” The NIV gives us the impression that the ground is the cause of the painful toil. He ESV is better here when it says that Noah came out of the ground. In other words, from ground that the Lord had cursed, the Lord would also bring someone to relieve the curse of the ground. The next several chapters of Genesis will tell us whether Noah did in fact get a hold of that rest that Lamech was talking about.

Verse 32 is rather curious. Noah waited 500 years to have his three sons. This is quite remarkable. None of the other ancestors waited this long to have children. The only reason I can think of for this delay is that God providentially kept Noah from raising a family until Methuselah and Lamech were old enough such that they would die before the Flood. This goes to show us that God preserved the promised line of Seth such that not one of Seth’s line died in the Flood.

So how do we see Christ portrayed in these obscure verses from the Old Testament? Well, first of all we have to see that Enoch was just like Elijah, who was just like John the Baptist. Elijah was the second person that God took away without seeing death. Death has been cheated twice; once for Enoch, and once for Elijah. Enoch is another kind of John the Baptist. He precedes Noah, who is the type of Jesus Christ. The word “type” here means a person or a thing or an idea that is a shadow of the reality. A “type” points to something to come later on. A “type” corresponds in at least one recognizable way with that reality. Enoch corresponds to John the Baptist, because Enoch is a herald of Noah. He is the one who comes before. This means that Noah is the “type” of Jesus Christ. Just as all the world would be descended from Noah, so also all Christians would be descended from Christ. There would be one world family in Noah, and so there will be one world of Christians in Jesus Christ. Noah underwent a baptism in the ark, and Jesus underwent the baptism of his death and resurrection. The only way anyone could be saved in Noah’s day was by being inside the ark. The only way anyone can be saved now (normally) is by belonging to Christ’s body, the church. There is no ordinary possibility of salvation outside the true church of Jesus Christ. We will explore those connections in the weeks to come as we look at Noah.

So do we walk with God? Again, what does that mean? We have seen that it means an intimate relationship with God. That can only happen through Jesus Christ, who walked with man, and walked with His Father. Christ bridged the gap between God an man. Man had sinned. The result was death. Jesus came into that death situation in such a way that life was the result. Now, anyone can come into a relationship with God. One only needs to believe in Jesus Christ, that He took our sins on Himself, and gave us His righteousness. We can now stand before God clothed in Christ’s righteousness. We can now walk with God by walking in the Holy Spirit. Galatians 5 tells us what walking with God now looks like. Read Galatians 5:16-26. I believe that it is not too difficult to understand what the fruit of the Spirit is. The problem is doing them. As G. K Chesterton wrote, “Christianity is not a religion that has been tried and found wanting; it rather has been found difficult and never tried.” Certainly, we want to say that we cannot walk with God without the Holy Spirit to direct our steps. However, if we are Christians, then we are to walk. We have been reconciled, just like Enoch has been. We have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us now. How do we walk? We make use of the means of grace: we come to hear the Word of God, we partake of the Sacraments (and if you are not a member of a church such that you can partake, I would urge you to consider joining a church, or becoming a communing member, especially if you are a youth who has not joined yet), we pray, we read out Bibles, we have fellowship with other believers. We should not neglect any of these things. We should rather take every opportunity we have to do these things. That is part of what it means to walk with God. Walking with God also means that we are walking with our fellow believers. It is most definitely NOT true that we can just have a relationship with God, and not have one with the church. Christianity is never supposed to be this “God, the Bible, and me” sort of thing. Paul tells us not to neglect the gathering of the saints. I read Paul as saying that whenever the church meets we should try to be there, knowing of course that emergencies come up, and that we cannot be there every single time. But we should try to attend as much as possible. All of these things we do are not part of our becoming a Christian. They are the result of becoming a Christian.

When we walk with God, then God has promised that if we live until the time when Christ returns, then we will meet Jesus Christ in the air, and we will always be with Him. Enoch’s story promises that for us. Jesus says, “Come to me, all who are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” Enoch was tired, as the little girl said. So he went to Jesus, and Jesus gave him rest. He will do the same for you. Rest in Him.

I am talking about a very limited subject, but one which has been constantly misinterpreted by the scholarly community. I am referring to the issue of whether there are gaps in the genealogy in Genesis 5.

In other genealogies, there do appear to be gaps. For instance, in Matthew 1, there are three kings that are deliberately left out in order for the number in each segment to equal 14. Matthew is making there the theological statement that Jesus is the Davidic king. But is the same thing true whenever we see genealogies in the Bible?

In Genesis 5, we see this formula: X lived Y number of years and fathered Z. After fathering Z, X had lived Y1 number of years (having had other sons and daughters). I would beg to ask those who favor a chronological gap in the geneaologies this question: how does one account for the word “after,” as in Genesis 5:4? Where exactly is the gap supposed to fit in this genealogy?

Furthermore, at the beginning and end of Genesis 5, it is obvious that there is no gap: Adam fathered Seth, and Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Are we to now suppose that there gaps in between the 2nd and 9th generations? Would it not appear more natural to interpret all the generations as having no gap, since the genealogy plainly starts and ends that way?

It is an inclusio, which is a fancy term that means “literary bookend.” The inclusio here is the no-gap genealogy of Adam-Seth and Noah-sons. Usually an inclusio means that whatever is in between is to be treated in a similar way. For instance, in Matthew 5, the Beatitudes start and end with Kingdom Beatitudes. Hence we can infer that all the Beatitudes in between also are referring to the Kingdom.

What is the importance of discussing this question? Well, it does have a bearing on whether Genesis can be made to fit with the theory of evolution. Evolution requires billions of years. Those scientists who require an old earth to fit their theories (which BY NO MEANS constitutes all scientists), but who also want to square their ideas with Scripture, tend to interpret these genealogies as having gaps. I wish to close that gap to these scientists. Just because there are gaps in some genealogies does not mean that there are gaps in all genealogies in Scripture.