The Beginnings
(Genesis 4-11:26)
Ray C. Stedman
Copyright © 1978 by Ray C. Stedman. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief quotations in reviews, without written permission of the publisher.
Quotations from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1946 (renewed 1973), 1956 and © 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, and are used by permission.
A Discovery Book. Published by Word Books, in cooperation with Discovery Foundation, Palo Alto, California.
Library of Congress catalog card number: 77-83286
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 0-8499-2818-4
First Printing, January 1978 Second Printing, July 1978
Contents
In a companion series of studies from Genesis called Understanding Man, I focused on the true nature of man as revealed in that section of the Scriptures (Genesis 2:4-3:24). Of course that was not an exhaustive study of man; the whole Bible is in part an elaboration of this fascinating subject. Furthermore, as we look at the famous characters in the chapters comprising the current study--Cain and Abel, Enoch, Noah, Nimrod, and a doomed cast of thousands--we certainly have some additional pointed insights into the nature of man.
But in these chapters (Genesis 4-11:26) relating early human history we also see the underlying threads of all human society, for all time. Moses has provided us with a very sturdy framework for understanding ourselves--in society--which is how most of us live, give or take a few hermits.
The general and persistent thrust of mankind is to band together, even though the result is nearly always disastrous. In one place we can see bumper stickers proclaiming that "We Are One," while in another place there are signs announcing the rules of apartheid. There are tides, upheavals, and movements in human society which no sociologist can come to grips with apart from understanding the reasons for them as given to us in the Bible.
These reasons are not spelled out as such. They are presented as parables and left for us to understand, if we will. Without doubt, there was a real Cain, there was a genuine 40-day deluge, there was a solid gopher-wood ark, and there was an actual tower of babbling confusion. There is no need to question the historicity of these events, nor is it my intent to prove them historical. I believe they are, but further, that they are recorded so as to teach us graphically the principles upon which man has built his society, and the inherent flaws in those principles. The point is not simply to accuse man; God's point, always, is to show a better way.
Part of the process of discovering God's way is first to come to an understanding of the dismal effects of man's way. Always the bad news precedes the good news. The cross precedes the resurrection. But keep in mind that the expulsion from Eden was also the beginning of redemption, the first step into the kingdom of God.
We are all more than individuals; we are political beings. We struggle to understand how to live in community--especially, in recent years, in the Christian community. But we will fail, with the best of intentions, unless we understand what Moses has set before us in the chronicle of the beginnings of man in his first attempts to live in society.
Genesis 4:1-8
HISTORY, AS WE KNOW IT, is largely the story of the wars, battles, and bloodshed of mankind. It is the chronicle of man's progress from the primitive ax to machine guns, napalm, and nuclear explosions. But why is this? Why has humanity throughout the entire space of its history wrestled unendingly with this terrible problem of human hatred and bloodshed? The shallow answers which have been given, such as economics, adventure, greed, power politics, have all long since been shown to be insufficient and superficial, though you still hear them echoed from time to time. The key to our twentieth-century dilemma actually lies in a story that took place at the dawn of history, the story of two brothers. The account begins in chapter 4 of Genesis:
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 tiller of the ground. In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel brought of the firstlings 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 countenance fell. The Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? 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 master it." Cain said to Abel his brother, "Let us go out to the field." And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him (Genesis 4:1-8).
Here we have what is obviously a highly condensed account. This story undoubtedly covers a span of many years--perhaps more than thirty or forty years, or even as many as a hundred. We are not told how old the two were when Cain slew Abel, but undoubtedly they had grown into manhood and most likely were in their early thirties. The story begins with the birth of Cain and the joy of his mother, Eve, and it centers on three highly important matters: the naming of the boys; the offerings which each presented; and the reaction of Cain to God's rejection of his offering.
Let us begin with this name, Cain. It is a very significant name because, as the account tells us, it means "gotten" and comes from the Hebrew word, ganah, which means, "to get." You will recognize it is as the derivation for our English word, "begotten." We speak of begetting our children, and this comes from the name, Cain. The text says Eve named him Cain because, as she said, "I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord."
That latter phrase is a bit weak in translation. It is not merely "with the help of the Lord" (which is true of every birth), but what Eve probably said was, "I have gotten a man, even the Lord." By that she was referring to the great promise God had given her, saying she would bring forth a seed who would bruise the serpent's head (Genesis 3:15). She understood that the "seed" would be a divine Being, so when her first child was born--a male--she felt perfectly justified in naming him, "Gotten." "I have gotten a man, even the Lord."
It is characteristic of predictions in the Bible that they do not often include a time element. Eve apparently had no idea how long it would be before this promise would be fulfilled. Remember that Jesus said to his disciples, "It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority" (Acts 1:7). We can never know precisely when great predicted events are going to be fulfilled, though we can often know when they are approaching fulfillment, as in the case of the second coining of the Lord.
Seeds of Arrogance
Now when the second child is born an ominous element enters the story, for the name of this child is Abel, which means "frail." This suggests that already the physical effects of sin were becoming apparent in the race. The second child born into history was perhaps a frail, sickly child, so he was given the name, Abel. But regardless of whether or not this was physically true, this name certainly suggests that there was a difference in the attitude of the parents toward the children. Adam and Eve regarded these boys in two different ways: Cain was the strong one; Abel the weaker. It would be very natural for them to favor Cain as the firstborn, the stronger of the two, born "under a lucky star," a child of destiny, one designed perhaps to fulfill great promise. Perhaps this strong hint of favoritism right at the beginning offers an explanation for what follows in the story. Already, at the very birth of these two boys, the seeds of arrogance and conceit have been planted in the heart of Cain by his unsuspecting parents simply by the way they treat their children. How significant that is--and how frightening! Sometimes seeds can be planted in early childhood that will come to fruit many years later, bringing heartache and despair to parents. (The interesting thing here is that it is not the neglected child who suffers most, but the favored one. I will leave that for all amateur psychologists to chew on.)
Now the scene shifts to a much later time. The boys are grown and are supporting themselves. Cain is a rugged farmer, a tiller of the soil. But that work is obviously too hard for Abel, and he becomes a keeper of the sheep. This indicates that from the earliest dawn of history mankind has understood and been involved in agricultural and pastoral pursuits. He was not, as we sometimes gather from dioramas in our museums, originally a hunter only.
A Time and a Place
We are now told that in the course of time both Cain and Abel brought an offering to God. There are two things strongly implied by this account. First, it is clear that there was a prescribed time indicated for the bringing of an offering. The phrase which in our version is translated, "In the course of time," is, in the Hebrew, "At the end of days." This is a strong suggestion that there was a definitely prescribed period. Perhaps it was once a year, at the end of days--i.e., at the end of the winter season, just before spring.
Second, it is clear from this account that a prescribed place existed for this offering. They were to bring it "before the Lord," to a definite place. There they were to appear in the presence of the Lord. If you link this with the closing words of chapter 3, there is a clear suggestion that when God set the cherubim and flaming sword at the gateway to Eden, he thereby created a mercy seat. Many centuries later, when the divine pattern was given to Moses for making the tabernacle, it included a mercy seat with cherubim, whose wings would meet over the mercy seat. That was the place where offerings were to be placed. The Day of Atonement was consummated at the mercy seat when once a year the High Priest brought in a lamb for all the people. Perhaps this traces from this earliest account of an offering. Thus, it is very likely that at the gateway of Eden was a mercy seat, where once a year Adam and Eve and their children were to come with an offering for the Lord.
In passing, I want you to note that Adam and Eve had evidently taught their boys all that they knew and had learned of God, and had trained them to worship. Man, in his primitive condition, was not groping blindly after God, seeking through centuries of patient endeavor to find his way to an understanding of divine truth. Mankind began on that level, as Paul makes clear in Romans: Men who knew God, who knew who he was, departed from that knowledge and turned to idolatry. The sons of Adam and Eve knew everything their parents knew about God.
When we come to the offerings Cain and Abel bring to God, however, we see a significant difference between the two men. Cain's offering of fruit was instantly rejected, but Abel's lamb was accepted. How that rejection and acceptance were indicated we are not told, though perhaps we might find a clue from the stories of Gideon and, later on, of Elijah on Mount Carmel. When these men offered to God, fire came down from heaven and consumed their offerings. This was the indication of its acceptance by God. We can, of course, make much of the fact that Cain ought to have known better than to bring an offering of fruit to God. He surely knew from his father that God had cursed the ground, and to offer the fruit of a cursed ground to God was obviously to insult him. Also I think we can say that Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel unquestionably knew the most basic truth which the Word of God labors to get across to us, and which runs through the entire length of Scripture. It is given to us in Hebrews: "Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins" (Hebrews 9:22).
Why is that so important? Primarily because it is designed to teach us something crucial. All these symbols of Old Testament are designed to teach us important things, so what is it that this teaches us--"Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins."? It teaches that the problem of sin is no light matter. It cannot be handled by a good resolution or an earnest resolve. It is not settled by simply deciding to turn over a new leaf, or to change one's attitude. Sin is something that is embedded in the race and touches the springs of life. It can only be solved by death. That, of course, is what ultimately explains the cross of Jesus Christ. In his coming, he could not merely teach us good things; in order to deal with the problem of sin, he had to die.
A Smile to a Frown
But I do not want to dwell on this now. Although I think it is clearly here, it is not the heart of this story.
The account says that Cain was angry at God's rejection of his offering and his countenance fell. Obviously, he came expecting God to accept his offering. Perhaps he was very pleased with himself. Perhaps he felt that his offering of fruit and grain was much more beautiful, much more aesthetically pleasant than the bloody, dirty thing that Abel put on the altar. But when the smoke rose from Abel's offering and his own remained untouched, Cain's smile changed to a frown. He was angry and resentful, and the whole appearance of his face altered.
How well we know this feeling! And for the same reason--jealousy! Cain was jealous because his brother was accepted and he was rejected. As the New Testament tells us, he was angry "because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous" (1 John 3:12). Is it not amazing the things that make us jealous? We are jealous because our neighbor has a bigger car than we have, or his child plays with a doll that can talk, while our children have to play with some cheap little thing from the 5 & 10 cents store.
Our fellow worker has a desk that is nearer to the window than ours. Or perhaps he gets a longer notice of commendation in the company paper than we do, or he has softer carpets on the floor, or he has two windows instead of one in his office. It is amazing how such petty matters can cause us to rankle with feelings of envy and resentment.
The basic reason underlying our resentment is the very reason Cain was angry. He did not like the way God was acting. He did not like what God had chosen to do for Abel. With him it was not a question of being upset, theologically, because fruit was not as good as a lamb. There is no implication of that in this story. From our perspective we can see such implications, but that was not what was troubling Cain. What bothered him was simply that God did not conform to his idea of rightness. When God presumes to cut across the grain of our expectations, we are all offended, aren't we? We are quick with the question, How can God do a thing like this? Why does God permit this? It is all because we want our thoughts to be the program on which God operates. When he presumes to do anything else, we get angry with him. Oh, it is true that in a church service we can all nod our heads at Isaiah's words, "God's thoughts are not our thoughts nor his ways our ways." But when he actually begins to act on that basis, how upset it makes us! We feel that he has betrayed us, played us false in some way.
A Simple Question
But notice God's grace. He does not flare back at Cain with thunderbolts of judgment. He simply asks him a question, "Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen?" That is the best question to ask a jealous, resentful individual. Why? Think it through, now; why are you so angry? Why are you filled with resentment against this person? I have learned that when men and women ask me, as they sometimes do: Why does this have to happen to me? What have I done that I should have to go through this thing? The only proper answer is: Why shouldn't you? These things happen to everyone and to anyone; why shouldn't it happen to you? Why should you escape? Why should you resent it? Why should you assume that you have special privilege or an immunity to the normal problems, injustices, and trials of life?
That is a hard question to answer, isn't it? But notice that God goes on to light a lamp of warning before Cain. He says, "If you do well, will you not be accepted?" What does he mean here by "doing well"? He is certainly not saying, "Well, Cain, just do your best. Try hard to please me and everything will be all right." It has a specific meaning here. It means, "If you bring the acceptable offering; if you will go to your brother and trade some of your grain for one of his lambs and bring that lamb, whose blood is to be shed for the remission of sins, indicating that you understand at least something of the problem that sin proposes, then you too will be accepted. It is not too late. I'm not going to judge you now. You can go back and repent, you can change, and if you do well in this way, you will be accepted just like Abel, for I am no respecter of persons. It is truth that I deal with," says God, "and I don't care what kind of a past a person has; I will accept anyone who determines to act in truth and honesty.Ó
ÒBut if not, then look out! Beware! If you let this moment pass,Ó says God to Cain, watch out! Now that it has all been made clear to you, if you refuse to repent, to go back and bring the right offering, watch out. Sin is crouching at the door of your life like a lion, ready to jump on you, to seize you, and to destroy you. God is saying to Cain and to us: Don't treat jealousy or resentment lightly, because it is not a light thing. If you let it fester, you will soon find yourself in the grip of a power greater than, you can handle, and you will do things that you didn't ever think you would do.
Have you found that out? I certainly have. Whenever we let resentment against God fester in our heart, and then stuff it all down inside and fondle it and play with it, sooner or later we will say something we didn't intend to say or do something that we didn't intend to do.
This is what happened here. Cain disregards God's warning, refuses to repent--nursing his jealousy along--and soon his mind conceives a diabolical plot, a way to get even, How powerfully it makes its appeal to him. Ah-hah, he thinks, now I've got him. That brother of mine who thinks he's so good, who thinks he's so holy, now I've got him! With a disarming smile he comes to Abel and says, "Brother, let's go out into the fields and talk." And there the murderous ax rises and falls and Abel sinks to the ground with a smashed skull, murdered by his brother's hand.
Murder by Insult
What makes a man kill his brother? During the Vietnam war I remember seeing a picture in a news magazine of a Vietnamese officer executing a captured Viet Cong. When that picture appeared, someone wrote a letter to the editor commenting on it, The letter said, "What a terrible thing! There stands that turtle-headed little man pointing a pistol at this man's head and shooting him in cold blood. How can a man do a thing like that!" In the next issue a very provocative and perceptive reply appeared: "The reader asks, 'What causes a man to act like that?' The answer is: the same thing that causes someone to call another person 'a turtle-headed little man!'Ó
It is true, isn't it? It is the same thing. Have you noticed how often Scripture links insult and murder together? For example, there are those scorching words from the lips of Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount:
"You have heard that it was said to the men of old, 'You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall he liable to judgment.' But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, 'You fool!' shall be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift" (Matthew 5:21-24).
John tells us that if we hate our brother, we have murdered him in God's sight. What he is really telling us is that we refrain from killing the ones we resent only because we fear reprisal. It was a very frequent occurrence in the days of the Old West for someone to simply draw a gun and shoot a person out of a momentary irritation. Why? Because there was no law to take reprisal against him. He could immediately express what he felt in his heart.
Do you see how far removed our thoughts are from those of God? What we regard as trivialities, mere peccadilloes or trifles, he sees as monstrous, terrible things threatening our peace, our health, and life itself. So he tries to warn Cain: "Cain, you don't know what you are doing. If you let this thing rankle in your heart, before you know it you will have killed your brother." In the letter to the Ephesians the apostle Paul says, "Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and [thus] give no opportunity to the devil" (Ephesians 4:26-27). There the devil is, waiting like a roaring lion, crouching at the door, ready to spring on you if you give him an opportunity. What is the opportunity? Allowing your wrath to last beyond the setting of the sun, to carry it over into another day, to form a grudge, a permanent dislike for an individual. When you do that, the door is wide open and nothing can stop Satan from beginning to poison your life and destroy you.
The New Testament tells us to be at peace with one another. We are not even to let our worship delay us in making peace. If you bring your gift and there remember that your brother has something against you--or you have something against him--leave your gift and go to your brother. Be reconciled, then come and settle things with God. That judges me! Does it not judge you? In the light of this story, how much we can see that the evil of our day springs out of these seeds of dislike for one another and of refusal to repent when the grace of God warns us of the power we are dealing with.
How about you? Are you angry with someone? Do you harbor a grudge in your heart? Are you holding resentment against another individual? Are you seething with hurt feelings because of something someone has said--perhaps years ago--or even weeks ago? What about it? If you do well, if you bring the offering that God has provided, if you offer the forgiveness which he makes possible, you will be accepted. Peace will flow again into your heart and life, and with it, health and strength. But if you allow it to fester, to lie there unsettled, it will master you.
Prayer: Our Father, you who know our hearts, deal earnestly among us that we will not lightly put these things aside. Help us, Lord, to realize that the wolves are now howling in the cellars of our nation's soul because of the unjudged dislikes of Christians toward one another, the unsettled resentments that have grown into family feuds that have gone on for weeks and months and years. God grant to us grace to deal with this matter in the way that has been so abundantly provided by the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus on our behalf, so that we may be tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven us. We pray in his name. Amen.
Genesis 4:9-16
WE HAVE NOW EXAMINED the causes for human hatred and warfare and have seen that wars and murders spring from seeds of unreasoning jealousy and envy which are allowed to lie unjudged in human hearts. Men kill because they hate; they hate because they will not accept God's ordering of life. They want their own way, they want God to act as they want him to act (or perhaps I should say, as we want him to act).
Now we come to a very closely related problem which has at various times threatened to tear our nation apart: the problem of race relations, of human brotherhood:
Then the Lord said to Cain, "Where is Abel your brother?" He said, "I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?" (Genesis 4:9).
Cain's insolent and arrogant response to God's question is a sign of his inward unacknowledged guilt. This is always the way of guilt--to disclaim responsibility. Cain replies, "My brother? What have I to do with my brother? Am I my brother's keeper? Is it my responsibility to know where my brother is?" The hypocrisy of that is most evident. Though Cain could disclaim responsibility for knowing where his brother was, he did not hesitate to assume the far greater responsibility of taking his brother's life.
We hear much of the same thing today. In 1968 we were reeling from the shock of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King. Many in those days were saying things like this: "Well, it's not our fault that Dr. King was killed. Why should we suffer for what some fanatic did? It's not our responsibility." Others said, "He ought to have known this would happen. After all, if you stir up trouble, sooner or later you will pay the price for it." No one can deny the logic and truth of a statement like that. Yet it is very obviously incomplete, and there is nothing in it of facing responsibility and no honest answering of the terrible question from Cain's "Am I my brother's keeper?Ó
I believe we were all guilty of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and for all that precipitated and made that death inevitable. We are guilty now, every one of us who has permitted the unspoken dictates of our society to keep us from forming friendships with black people, or who has refused to break through the barriers which have silently and powerfully been raised by prejudice, pride, and isolation.
The rioting over civil rights has in large measure died down now. And yet the issue is still unsolved, or unresolved. Most of us are content to breathe a sigh of relief and return to our comforts, without having been touched by what happened in those turbulent days.
Two or three decades ago Dr. Carl Henry wrote a book called "The Uneasy Conscience of Fundamentalism," which bothered many people when it first came out. In it Dr. Henry pointed out that the isolationism which many Christians adopt, the isolationism which removes us from contact with non-Christians, has also successfully removed us from grappling with some of the pressing social questions of our hour. We have often been quite content to sing about going to heaven, but have shown very little concern for the sick and the poor, the lonely, the old, and the miserable of our world. Isaiah 58 is a ringing condemnation of such an attitude on the part of religious people. Other passages from the Scriptures make clear that God is infinitely concerned in this area of life, and those who bear his name dare not neglect these areas. Let us be perfectly frank and honest and admit that this is a manifestation of Christian love which we evangelicals have tended greatly to neglect. The evangelical church, therefore, has largely become almost exclusively white, middle-class, Protestant, and Republican.
I have nothing against any of those designations except that their preponderance indicates something is wrong with the church. The church was never intended to minister only to one segment of society, but is to include all people, all classes, all colors, without distinction. Both the Old and New Testament are crystal clear in this respect. These distinctions are to be ignored in the church. They must be, otherwise we are not being faithful to the One who called us and who, himself, was the Friend of sinners--of all kinds.
Because this neglect is rather obvious, even though we sometimes shut our eyes to it, it has precipitated a violent rejection of Christianity by many. I ran across this poem which expresses very forcefully what many are thinking, especially among the young people, about the church:
Fat, old, smug church.
What are you waiting for?
Where is your Christ?
Up in the sky?
Back in the past?
Somewhere else?
There's a painted whore down at the bar.
Do you care?
There's a Negro family that can't find a home.
Do you care?
There's a hippy, high on LSD
Who in hell cares?
Who in heaven cares?
You fat, old, useless church!
That picture is overdrawn, granted, but it is true enough to hurt. We must be perfectly honest and admit that this has been the weak spot of evangelical life--this failure to move out in obedience to God's command to offer love, friendship, forgiveness, and grace to all people without regard to class, color, background or heredity. We believe that the gospel is salt for preserving society from corruption, and that in calling out "the mystery of godliness," God is forming a secret society which constitutes the church as a counteraction to "the mystery of lawlessness" which is also at work. These are opposed, one to the other, and when lawlessness surges to the front as it has today and seems to flow unchecked through the cities of our nation, it is because the mystery of godliness has been thwarted and held back, contained, and not turned loose in the midst of society.
If we still are reluctant to face some of the things this passage brings before us, perhaps we need to look on to Cain's punishment, given in verses 10 through 12.
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 till the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength; you shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth" (Genesis 4:10-12).
God uses a very vivid figure here to describe his knowledge of Cain's deed. Cain thought he was acting in secret, but of course everything is open before God. God said, "The blood of your brother is crying to me, shrieking to me, from the ground." Abel's blood shouts to God. It makes demands upon his justice and his love. Hebrews refers to the blood of Jesus, which speaks "more graciously than the blood of Abel" (Hebrews 12:24). We know what that means. The blood of Jesus is crying out before God for forgiveness: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." The blood of Jesus is crying constantly for mercy, for grace to all who take refuge under it, and thus it does speak more graciously than the blood of Abel.
But the blood of Abel speaks, too. That is what God is saying to Cain. "Your brother's blood is crying something out to me that I can't ignore. It is shrieking to me from the ground." Crying for what? For redress, for vengeance, for justice, for the righting of wrong. It cries to a God of justice and says, "Do not let this deed go unavenged. Do something about this." Now notice carefully that it is crying out for vengeance from God, not man. "Vengeance belongs to me," says the Lord. It never belongs to man. In fact, when man assumes that role, he only makes things worse. He unleashes a vicious cycle which escalates rapidly into all-out anarchy, sometimes civil war, and revolution. But nevertheless, God is driven to act. That is what this ancient story of Cain and Abel tells us. God cannot allow these things to occur without responding. His sense of justice must do something about the murderous act.
What then does God do? He sentences Cain! He assigns a punishment to him, and the nature of it is very significant. Notice, there are no thunderbolts of wrath here. God does not seize hold of Cain and take his life in vengeance. What happens is what writers sometimes call "poetic justice," i.e., a strangely fitting result. Cain was a man of the soil, a tiller of the ground, and in this work he took pride and found joy. A man's work is always his pride. Cain was a farmer who delighted in producing beautiful crops of fruit and grain. But now he has poured the blood of his brother upon the ground. So now the ground, the arena of his pride, will be cursed. It will no longer yield him its strength. He will find, in his attempts to work the ground, nothing but frustration, sweat, tears, and toil.
Cain, in other words, has lost his "green thumb." The ground will no longer release its fruitfulness to him; his working of the ground will be fruitless labor. He will therefore be forced to wander from place to place, as the crops fail wherever he goes. He will find himself unable to make a living anywhere, so he will become a wanderer on the face of the earth.
I wonder if we are not still hearing echoes of this strange sentence upon Cain today. What is the pride of America? In what have we most taken pride? Is it not in our great American cities--these great showplaces of wealth and power--these planned communities which we intended to be models of knowledge, wisdom, and happiness, where all the problems of life would be happily solved?
But what has happened? Because we would not answer God's question, "Where is your brother?" and we replied, as Cain, in arrogance and defiance, "Am I my brother's keeper?" from time to time smoke rises from American cities. The streets of our cities are filled with broken glass, stores are looted, riots threaten, and homes are burned. The pride and glory of America is severely threatened at this very hour, and we have not seen the worst of it yet. But to me, the ultimate fate is not the physical violence which threatens our nation, but the fact that America has lost its way home. American families no longer know how to have a home. We have become wanderers--lonely, empty, restless; a nation on wheels, driven, and homeless--vainly seeking to find something to satisfy. We are fugitives from a pitiless fate.
But the account closes on a hopeful note:
Cain said to the Lord, "My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me this day away from the ground; and from thy face I shall be hidden; and I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will slay me." Then the Lord said to him, "Not so! If any one slays Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold." And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest any who came upon him should kill him. Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod [which means "the land of wandering"], east of Eden (Genesis 4:13-16).
It is obvious from this account that Cain fears the vengeance of his other brothers. You ask, "What other brothers?" In the very next chapter, verse 4, we are told plainly that Adam and Eve "had other sons and daughters" besides the ones named in the Scripture. This is the answer to the question many have asked out of a kind of naive ignorance, "Where did Cain get his wife?" The answer is, he married one of his sisters. This was still a common occurrence as late as the days of Abraham, who married his half-sister. But Cain knows that his life is in danger wherever he goes. Wherever he is, he will run into relatives (can you imagine anything worse?) who will be motivated either by fear or vengeance to take his life.
Cain now is obsessed with his guilt, haunted by it. He knows he can go nowhere in human society without constantly wondering if people's attitudes toward him are sinister ones, or whether they are friendly and can be trusted. Out of his obsession with guilt he says to God, "My punishment is greater than I can bear. I will live in constant danger of reprisal." But God says, "No, you won't." And God puts a mark upon him (which has now become a proverb) by which, as he says, "Any one who sees this mark will know that God himself protects Cain, and whoever takes this life will be avenged sevenfold."
I do not know what the mark of Cain was. It is impossible to tell whether it was some physical mark, some sign in his body which indicated that he was God's property, or something else. Perhaps it was a hopeless, pathetic look that would stir pity in people's hearts, so that Cain became an object of universal pity to those who saw him. The point is that even the guilty man is still God's property! God throws a circle of protective love about Cain and says, "Yes, he is guilty. He's a murderer--but he is still my property, and don't forget it in your dealings with him."
Mark of Grace
The mark of Cain, then, is not a mark of shame, as we usually interpret it. It is not a mark to brand him in the eyes of others as a terrible murderer to be shunned and treated as a pariah. It is, rather, a mark of grace by which God is saying, "This man is still my property. Hands off!" The heart of God is always ready to show mercy. There can only be one reason why God thus protected Cain. It was in order to give him time to think and to repent. This is ever the way of God. In 2 Peter we are admonished not to make the mistake of regarding the longsuffering of God as weakness. There are those who seem to feel that since twenty centuries of Christian life have gone by and nothing has happened that God will never do anything to right wrongs. Don't make the mistake of thinking that God is impotent. Rather, Peter says that it is his mercy; it is his grace, giving men time to repent in order that none may perish but that all may come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). Thus God gives even Cain a moment of grace, space to repent.
Is this not what God is saying to America in this hour? The time is short. We must not treat these events lightly that are happening in our country today. These are not isolated instances; they are not merely something that will all blow over, as trouble has sometimes blown over in the past. Violent incidents represent outbreaks of long-suppressed abuse that finally breaks through. It can no longer be contained, nor can we dismiss it with a wave of the hand. We hold the key to correction and relief. When God said to Nineveh, "Yet forty days shall this city be overthrown," from the king down to the commonest person they repented in sackcloth and ashes, in genuineness of contrition for their evil acts. Even though Jonah's nose was put out of joint because God showed mercy, God nevertheless withheld his judging hand from the city, and it was not until a hundred years later that Nineveh was destroyed, as God had predicted. So we must take a saving message to the oppressed and disadvantaged in our society.
Recently, a number of us had the privilege of meeting in fellowship with Dr. Edward Hill, a black pastor from the Watts area in Los Angeles--a wonderful, gifted, gracious man of God. He told us that only the day before Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was murdered he had said to some white friends, "If you white people ever pray for any colored man, then pray for Dr. Martin Luther King. He is the one who is doing more to restrain the forces of radicalism and violence among the Negroes than any other person, and you ought to be holding him up in prayer." Then he told of his own experience.
"Seventeen years ago," he said, "my heart was as filled with hatred and bitterness against white people as any black Muslim today." Raised in Houston, Edward Hill was exposed to the usual treatment of blacks in the South: white and colored waiting rooms, white and colored drinking fountains, white and colored seats on buses and trains, etc. All of these created in him a boiling bitterness and hatred against whites. But one day he joined a singing group led by a white man, a pastor. When they went out on their first trip together, the leader of the group called them together and said something that struck home to Ed Hill's heart and was the opening wedge for the gospel of grace: "Now look, we're going out into various places to sing together, and we're going to be pilgrims in a strange country. We are like strangers going out to a different land. In some places some of our members are going to be asked to eat in the kitchen. When they are asked to eat in the kitchen, we're all going to eat in the kitchen. When some are asked to use a certain restroom, we'll all use that restroom because we're pilgrims together."
Dr. Hill said, "I couldn't believe my ears. At first I thought it was a joke and that he was just putting on a show. But as I traveled with that man, I saw that he meant what he said. For the first time I understood the love of Jesus Christ, and that finally led me to accept him." Thus a man who gladly assumed the role of his brother's keeper found a way to a bitter young man's heart and kept him from hatred and violence.
So Abel's blood cries to our times as it once shrieked in God's cars. We date not sink to Cain's evil. Our prejudices must be overthrown, and our customs which are based upon prejudice must be re-examined. We must take deliberate action to manifest the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Friend of sinners, for in Christ there is neither east nor west, black nor white, male nor female, bond or free; all are one in him.
Prayer: Forgive us, our Father, for the many weeks and years in which we have failed to judge ourselves in this particular area. How many times we have glossed over our prejudices and treated them as unimportant trivialities, never realizing that our silence shouts and our refusal to act speaks volumes. Lord, we ay that in this late hour of our history we may be faithful to you in every direction and manifest more fully than we ever have before the saving love that is without prejudice or respect of persons. Thank you for this sharp word from the Scripture to our own hearts, helping us to understand what is happening in our nation today. May we face it in realism and in truth. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.
Genesis 4:17-26
As we work our way through this section of Genesis, we are like explorers who have traced a mighty river to its source and who are now beginning to grasp the character of the land to which they have come. We have already traced the causes of war, crime, and prejudice to their roots in the hearts of men who refuse to be honest before God. In this story of Cain and Abel we have a kind of cameo of history, a microscopic picture of the entire scope of human history. This, of course, is why the Bible is always so contemporary; it deals with elements of human life that never change. The next element we can trace back to its source in Genesis is what is called culture or civilization, and especially the part city life plays in the shaping of human society. This is introduced for us in chapter 4.
Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch; and he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch (Genesis 4:17).
We know today that this city actually existed, for archeologists have found the word, Enoch, is the earliest word for city in any human language. In the ancient area of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers the oldest inhabited cities known to man were called "Enoch." In much the same way, people who live near big cities like New York or San Francisco refer to them as "the city." It is interesting that it was Cain who built the first city and thereby turned the family into the state, thus introducing the social and political problems that are screaming at us for solution in this twentieth century. It is very suggestive that the first city was built by a condemned murderer!
The City of God Withheld
Now, it is clear from Revelation 21 that it was ultimately God's intention for men to live in a city. The dream of the city which God intended for man runs throughout the whole of Scripture. We are told in the book of Hebrews that Abraham "looked forward to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God" (Hebrews 11:10). So, from the earliest dawn of history, men were looking to the coming of a city. You will find references to it in the Psalms and other places. But everywhere in Scripture a contrast is drawn between the city of God and the cities of men.
God withholds his city and it has not come even yet. He withholds it for a very good reason: he is waiting until men are ready to live in a city. God first goes about so1ving the fundamental problem of humanity--its self-will and defiance of authority--and then he puts men together in the close life of a city. But we have reversed that. Man, in his arrogance, has assumed that he is quite able to live in intimate relationship with his fellow man and has clustered together in cities throughout history. The result has been the violence, social injustice, and unending bloodshed which history records.
The supreme mark of fallen man is clearly evident in this passage: he wants everything NOW. That is the trouble with man as he is today; he wants everything right now. Instant luxury. Instant comfort. Instant relief. Everything, now! To accomplish it, man ignores the problem of evil. He treats it as though it were nonexistent, dismissing it with a wave of his hand--and goes ahead to build his city on ground that is already red with the blood of his brother. That is the story of history.
Now the city he builds is certainly a most imposing one. The technical brilliance of man is evident even this early in the history of our race. We can trace some of the development of man's expertise in this next section:
To Enoch was born Irad; and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael the father of Methushael, and Methushael the father of 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 cattle. His brother's name was Jubal; he was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe. [It is from this we get our word, jubilee.] Zillah bore Tubalcain; he was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron. The sister of Tubalcain was Naamah (Genesis 4:18-22).
Even the names here are highly suggestive. As you study the Bible, learn to look up the meaning of Bible names. Sometimes there are differences of opinion as to what they mean, depending upon the root from which the name was taken, but these names are very significant. Irad, for instance, means "the city of witness," i.e., (in this context) witness to the glory of man. Already the idea of the exaltation of man is coming in and it will culminate soon in the tower of Babel, erected to the glory of man. Mehujael means "smitten of God," which perhaps suggests a rather defiant attitude: "God has smitten, yes, but we're going to make a success of this anyway." Methushael is most contemporary; it means "the death of God." You can see how far back into history that idea goes! Lamech means "strong" or "powerful," and again reflects clearly the boasting of man in his fallen state. Jabal means "traveler"; Jubal, "trumpeter"; and Tubalcain, "metalworker"--especially with regard to jewelry and ornamentation.
All this is most remarkable; we have here the ingredients of modern life: travel, music and the arts, the use of metals, the organized political life, and the domestication of animals. All of this is intended for man. Nothing that fallen man longs after was to be denied him as far as God was concerned, but it was to be given when man was ready for it. The whole tragic story of civilization is that man insists on it before he is ready for it. How often in history we have said that the story of some human event was "too little, too late." Here it is obviously "too much, too soon."
The Red Thread
These things look impressive and it is desirable to have comforts, luxuries, and advances, but what this passage so clearly brings before us is that it is all built on shaky ground. I do not think I could put that any better than to quote the words of Helmut Thielicke. (Helmut Thielicke, How the World Began: Man in the First Chapter of the Bible (Philadelphia, Pa.: Fortress Press, 1961). In a study on this passage, he says:
The strange thing is that the closer we come the more clearly we see the red thread that runs like a pulsing, bloody artery through the myriad figures of the world. This motherly earth, on which even the greatest of men walked, on which they erected cities and cathedrals and monuments, has drunk the blood of Abel. And this blood of the murdered and abused appears in stains and rivulets everywhere, including the greatest figures. Cain, the "great brother" and progenitor of mankind, betrays his mysterious presence.
Somewhere in every symphony the tone-figure of death is traceable. Somewhere on every Doric column this mark is to be found. And in every tragedy the lament over injustice and violence rings out.
That is what we are trying to forget. We point boastfully at our great skyscrapers, our manicured gardens, our beautiful public avenues and parks, and say all this is the mark of human ingenuity, human ability. But we cover up and ignore the tragic areas of abuse and privation, of darkness and injustice, of violence and intrigue that go along with man's accomplishment. But see how honest, upright and frank the Scriptures are. They make us face right up to truth. The account goes right on to interject two more elements that must be included in an evaluation of human culture:
Lamech said to his wives:
"Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
you wives of Lamech, hearken to what I say:
I have slain a man for wounding me,
a young man for striking me.
If Cain is avenged sevenfold,
truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold" (Genesis 4:23-24).
In this passage you have the first mention of polygamy in the Bible. Someone has said that polygamy has its own punishment; it means more than one mother-in-law! But perhaps there is not even that here; Lamech may have actually married sisters who had the same mother. It occurred to me that perhaps he was simply trying to do research into the nature and character of womanhood, studying it from A to Z, from Adah to Zillah! If you will forgive me that, we'll come back to the text and note that this marks the unfailing accompaniment of civilization: an open toleration of sexual excess. It traces back to this early Cainite civilization. Man's restlessness, even in that early day, seeks fulfillment in multiple marriages, but to no greater success than the woman of Samaria in our Lord's day or any Hollywood movie idol of today.
The second element that is always present and necessary to acknowledge, if we are going to properly evaluate culture, is reflected in this oldest song in the world. Notice that these verses about Lamech are put into poetic form. They represent an early song, a kind of taunt on Lamech's part, in which he justifies his violence. He boasts to his wives, "Listen to what I have to say: I have slain a man for wounding me." Evidently, a young man had assaulted him and, in self-defense, he claims, "I slew him." He boasts of this to his wives and justifies it, reasoning that if God would avenge Cain sevenfold, although he had taken the life of his brother in cold blood, then' surely, "I will be avenged seventy-sevenfold for having acted in self-defense." Here we have the first clear instance of a pattern that has repeated itself a thousand times over in human history: the justifying of violence and murder on the ground of the protection of rights.
There is a picture of civilization: Technical brilliance, producing comforts and luxuries; the substitution of the state for the family; the trend toward urban over rural life; the increasing toleration of sexual excess; and the passionate vindication of violence on the grounds of the protection of rights. Sound familiar? Human nature has not changed one iota in the ten thousand years of history recorded since Cain. Listen to this plaint from a fed-up adult:
Our youth now loves luxuries. They have bad manners, contempt for authority. They show disrespect for elders and they love to chatter instead of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants, of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their food, and tyrannize their teachers.
So said Socrates, 425 B.C.! Well, what is the problem? It all comes down to this clamant cry of the human heart to have everything now. Men do not want to wait for anything. They do not want to face the fact that perhaps they are not ready yet, that certain changes need to take place in themselves first before they are ready to move into close companionship with one another and live together. It is a refusal to acknowledge the basic problem of human life--the self-centered heart.
Cleansing First
This attitude is manifest in the superficiality of our lives--the fact that we make trivial things sound like they are horribly important. Have you been listening to the toothpaste ads on the TV recently? If you believed the ad, you would think a certain brand of toothpaste could change your whole life. Those ads are intended to be taken in at least a quasi-serious way. But the things that do change life we treat as mere trivia--only for religious people, those few who, can't keep their minds off the mystical. They are the ones to whom a true change of life, a born-again experience makes its appeal. How clearly the Scripture puts its finger on the problem of human life--the refusal of human beings to be healed first before they claim the blessings God intends for the race. The cleansing of grace must come first, and then the seeking of God's city.
A father told me recently of the struggles of his son. It was the old, old story of the prodigal son who felt that what his father taught and believed was boring, uninteresting, and useless. Life made its adventurous appeal to him, and he succumbed to the lure of new things and exciting adventures and relationships and refused to stay with his family. He got involved with drugs, bad women, and evil friends, and finally, almost wrecked in health and broken in spirit, he was so tortured and tormented within that he was on the verge of suicide. He realized what was happening to him and, at the last moment repented, came back, and found peace of heart and grace in his father's house. The father said to me, "I don't know why it is that he had to learn the hard way." Well, why is it? It is because men refuse to face the facts about their fallen humanity. For those who refuse to face facts, there is grinding tribulation way to learn than by hard experience; the grinding tribulation and tumult of having to live with facts we will not recognize.
Another Workman
But this is not necessary. Even this early in the human race it was not necessary. God has another plan ready.
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 child instead of Abel, for Cain slew him." To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time men began to call upon the name of the Lord (Genesis 4:25-26).
Once again these names tell us something. Seth means "appointed." Eve said, "I will call him 'Appointed' because God has appointed another son to take the place of Abel." When the man of faith is taken out of the world, God's work does not end; he raises up another. I have been greatly impressed by the epitaph on the tomb of John Wesley in Westminster Abbey in London. I stood before it some years ago, and read, "God buries His workman, but He carries on His work." So here, too, the work of God is going forward; he appoints another son, another man. The name of Seth's son was Enosh, which means "mortal." The idea here is that in the midst of this Cainite civilization, with its proud refusal to recognize the cancer eating away at the heart of humanity and its desire to achieve on a false basis the luxuries and comforts that God intends, there were yet those who recognized their mortality, and, thus, their dependence upon God. There were those who took God's appointed way and, as the account goes on to say, "they began to call upon the name of the Lord." They recognized that God must heal the heart before we properly have the things that our urges cry out for; that the cancer within us must be dealt with before we can begin to live.
This has been the story of the Scriptures from beginning to end. All the way through, the Scriptures have been at pains to point out to us that there are only two ways to live. Jesus said so, did he not? There is the broad way--which many are taking, which looks so logical but lead to destruction, and there is the narrow, which begins at the point where an individual stands alone before God and must make a decision--the narrow way that leads to life as God intended life to be lived.
Which way are you taking? Are you lured by the siren call of the world, with its appeal to luxury, comfort, ease, achievement, and acquisitiveness? It is not that Christians cannot use these things. The Apostle Paul tells us we are "to use but not abuse" the things of the world. But throughout the Scriptures we are warned, "Love not the things of the world, neither the things that are in the world." Do not make these the center around which you build your life. If these are all-important to you, you are doomed. You will not find life. Jesus said if you try to save your life on these terms, you will lose it. But if you lose your life for his sake, you will save it.
Let God heal the sickness of the human heart with its hunger for self-centeredness, self-exaltation, its desire always to be the center of attention; let God heal that through the working of the gospel, through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then you can begin to live. It is the way that leads to life. It may be that this life will not include in it luxuries and comforts, but they are down the line somewhere. God has these in mind for all his people. All that the heart hungers after will ultimately be supplied in Jesus Christ. This is why the Apostle Paul cries,
"For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours; and you are Christ's; and Christ is God's" (I Corinthians 3:21-23). But they are only available to those who begin with the healing of the heart and the cleansing of the life in Jesus Christ.
Prayer: How foolish we have been, our Father, to try to satisfy our hearts with these empty things of culture and civilization. How foolish we have been to think that a man who is made to be satisfied by God shall ever find heart satisfaction in anything else. How often history has taught its the lesson that those who try to satisfy themselves with something less will end up by repudiating that thing itself, and finding life nothing but a weary desolation of spirit. How long, Father, before we begin to believe you? How long before we begin to take seriously the truth you have told us out of love for us, and turn from setting these secondary things first in our lives. Teach us to make life count, not now but for eternity, that we might enter into life as you intended it to be lived. We pray in your name, Amen.
Genesis 5:1-27
IN GENESIS 5 we come to the first of the familiar genealogies of Scripture. These genealogies have proved to be a stumbling block to many who seek to read through the Bible. They start well, but when they get to a desert of genealogies they give up their reading. These genealogies are somewhat difficult. I am tempted to handle them in the fashion of the old Scots minister who was reading from the opening chapter of Matthew. He started reading, "Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob begat Judah," and he looked on ahead and saw the long list to follow and said, "and they kept on begetting one another all the way down this page and halfway into the next." But it is a mistake to ignore these genealogies; a careful examination of them can be surprisingly fruitful.
This one begins with a brief introduction and continues, in a standard formula of presentation, throughout the chapter. Look at the first five verses:
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 a hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. The days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years; and he had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died (Genesis 5:1-5).
Now, it is important that we take careful note of the title of this chapter. The phrase, "This is the book of the generations of" occurs only one other place in Scripture. Perhaps you have already guessed that it occurs the second time at the opening of the New Testament in the first verse of Matthew, "This is the book of the generations of Jesus Christ." Here in Genesis it is, "This is the book of the generations of Adam."
The Story of a Race
We are told here that God created man in the likeness of God. This is a recapitulation of what we have seen before. "Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them ManÉ" or literally, he named them "Adam." Notice, he did not name them "the Adamses"; it was "Adam." I think the revisers are quite right in translating this "Man," because it is clear that we have here the story of a race, not merely an individual. There is only one man in the Old Testament and that is Adam. There is only one in the New Testament, and that is Jesus. There are only two men who have ever lived in history, Adam and Jesus--the first Adam and the last Adam; the first Man and the second Man. Thus these two books are introduced by this same phrase, "The book of the generations ofÉ" The phrase does not describe ancestry, but characteristics; it describes the nature of these two men as they develop into a race.
We are further told that it was God who named Adam. When Adam named the animals, it was necessary that he understand their character and their nature in order to choose an appropriate name for them. The name reflected the character. Now it is true that only God understands man, therefore, only God can name man because he is the only one who understands him. This is why we so desperately need the revelation of man that comes from God. It is also why psychology cannot be realistic or accurate unless it takes into account what we read in the Scriptures about man. God knows more about man than man does, because God created and named him.
The first thing said in Adam's book is that Seth was made "in the image and likeness" of his father. He was the exact duplicate of what Adam was, as every son and daughter of Adam has been since. Again, this is why the Bible is so contemporary--it is dealing with us. We find ourselves here because we too are sons and daughters of Adam and share the same characteristics as Seth, the son of Adam, one generation removed. When the account uses this phrase, "in his own likeness, after his image," it is referring to both the hidden, inner pattern of man and the actual outward characteristics. Seth was what Adam was, in both his inner life and his outer life. He was, therefore, a fallen man, as we, by the same descent, are fallen men.
Not a Strict Chronology
There then follows a chronology that continues through the rest of the chapter. There are several factors of great interest in this to which I will call your attention as we run through it. First, it is evident, upon careful study, that this chronology was not intended to be a time schedule. This was Bishop Ussher's mistake. He is the one who is responsible for the date, 4004 B.C., that appears in some of our Bibles as the date of creation. He figured this all out (without the aid of a computer) back in the seventeenth century by using these Bible chronologies. But scholars have since pointed out that this is not what they call a "tight" chronology. It does not trace an unbroken lineage of individuals. Rather, it highlights certain individuals. The son that is mentioned for each man is not necessarily the firstborn son; it says of each of them, "He had other sons and daughters." Out of that family one is selected to be included in this genealogy.
The intent of this genealogy, then, is not to give us a tracing of time. This is underscored by the fact that the versions of this account in other languages have different numbers of years for the people involved. The Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, has a quite different period of years involved, as does the Syriac Version. The obvious intent of the genealogy is to highlight certain selected names. We will come back to the reason a bit later.
The second factor to note about this account is the exceedingly long period of years these men lived. Most of them lived about nine hundred years. Sometimes, perhaps, we might wish we could imitate them, but at other times we feel they were the most cursed of individuals to have to live that long. But the record remains and has raised a problem for many. Several attempts have been made to explain this account. Certain scholars suggest that what we have here is not individuals, but clans, family groups. The years given would be the length of time that family group held together as a single unit, much as the clans of Scotland have. But this is very difficult because it is clear that several of these names clearly refer to individuals. Enoch, for instance, "walked with God." That cannot refer to a clan; but to an individual. Seth, the son of Adam, is also clearly an individual.
Five-Year-Old Father?
Others seek to explain this longevity by taking the years as lunar months; i.e., each "year" would approximate our modern month. If you figure out these men's ages on that basis, it does come out rather interestingly in the upper limits. It would make Methuselah probably about eighty-five or ninety years old when he died, which would destroy his record as the man who lived the longest. But at the lower limits this system becomes absurd. It would mean that Seth became the father of Enosh when he was five years old, which is most remarkable. Some of the miracles required by these explanations are far more incredible than simply to take the account as it appears.
We must conclude, then, that this passage indicates that conditions on earth were widely different before the flood. Earlier chapters in Genesis have suggested the same. It was doubtless true that men lived much longer before the flood than they do today. There have been a number of interesting scientific suggestions made as to why this is true, such as the presence of a canopy of ice or vapor that would shield the earth from harmful rays and create hothouse conditions even at the poles. But it is highly probable that God intended man to live approximately a thousand years before a change took place that would introduce him to a different mode of existence, of course, all this was changed by the flood.
The third factor that is of great interest is the repeated occurrence throughout this account of the phrase, "and he died." Every individual's entry ends with this phrase: "And he died," "and he died," "and he died," like the tolling of a great bell resounding throughout the passage. Eight times it is recorded, "and he died," contradicting the lie of Satan in the garden when he said to Eve, "If you eat of this fruit you will not die." But here is the factual record. Everyone who came along lived so many years and then he died (except Enoch, whom we will come to in a moment)
This suggests also that all the forms of death, as we now them today, prevailed then. There was physical death, but there are plenty of ways to die. There were also the incipient forms of death that we recognize in our lives today, such as malice, jealousy, hatred, meaninglessness, despair, and emptiness. All these are forms of death in other words the absence of life, as God intended life to be. Life before the flood was very much like it is today: a generation seeking after comfort and luxury, brilliant in its technological achievements, banding together in cities and thus creating an artificial form of life, but experiencing hatred, violence, emptiness, and despair.
But now we come to one exception to the tolling of the bell of death--one man of whom it is not said, "and he died." This is evidently the highlight of this chapter, the reason why all this is given to us:
When Enoch had lived sixty-five years, he became the father of Methuselah Enoch walked with God after the birth of Methuselah three hundred years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him (Genesis 5:21-24).
All of a sudden our interest is stimulated. The whole passage rolls on almost like a movie film until it abruptly stops and focuses on one man. Instead of saying, "and he died," it says, "and he was not, for God took him." The book of Hebrews, in the eleventh chapter, recounts the story of Enoch and tells us that this phrase, "and he was not, for God took him," means that he was "taken up (or translated) so that he should not see death." In other words, here is one of only two men in all history who never died. Enoch is one; Elijah is the other. Enoch did not see death but he was taken up.
Too Far to Go Back
Twice this account says that before he was taken up he walked with God. I love the story of the little girl who was telling her mother the story of Enoch. She said, "Enoch used to take long walks with God. One day he walked so far God said, 'It's too far to go back; come on home with me.'" That is what happened to Enoch. Obviously, the intent of this passage is to focus our attention on this phrase, "he walked with God." What does it mean to walk with God? Here is a man who, in the midst of a brilliant but godless generation, walked with God. What does it mean? Well, it is exactly the same today as it was then. To walk with God is accomplished now in exactly the same way. Enoch did not literally walk with God; this is unquestionably a figurative expression, but a figurative walk involves the same thing today as it did then.
First, it means he went in the same direction God went. He was moving the way God was going. God is forever moving in human history. He is moving right now to accomplish certain things in human life, and he has been doing so for centuries. The man who walks with God is the man who knows which way God is going and goes the same way. What way is that? What direction is God moving? Perhaps we cannot indicate it positively, but negatively we can say that God moves always in unswerving hostility against sin. He is opposed to that which destroys and wrecks human life. No matter how good it looks, no matter how attractive it seems or how luridly it is painted, God is against it. And the man who walks with God is the man who walks in unswerving hostility toward sin in his own life and refuses to make up with it or permit it to rule or to reign. That is the first thing in a walk with God.
Second, to walk with someone means to keep in step. You cannot walk with another if you do not keep in step with him. Sooner or later there comes an imbalance, and you will bump into him, or he bumps into you. Therefore, you must keep in step. It is most interesting that in the New Testament a walk is described in just this way. It is a series of steps. A walk is not like moving on one of those endless belts. It is not smooth; it is a repetition of almost falling. Have you ever analyzed your walk? Every time you take a step you almost fall. You allow your body to go off balance and then you catch yourself with your other leg. Then you shift to that and you almost fall again, only to catch yourself. The man or woman who walks with God lives all the time on the verge of a fall.
That is an adventurous life. It means if God is not there to support and strengthen you, down you go. You are counting on him, depending on him to come through and to keep you steady. That is what a walk with God involves--venturing out, never being satisfied with the status quo, never being content to remain in a quiet state and doing nothing. It is forever moving at the same pace God moves. It means taking a step when God insists. I have discovered in my own life (and see it reflected in many others) a tendency to want to sit down after I have taken a step and rest awhile. We all have felt God pressuring us to do something--take a new step, stop this, start that, or venture out in a new direction--and after God pushes us awhile, we do it. Perhaps we have been resisting for quite awhile before, but then we take the step and we feel good. We have accomplished something. Then God comes along and says, "Now I want you to take another step." And we say, "Oh, no, Lord. I had a hard enough time taking this one. Just leave me alone now for awhile. You walk on for a bit and then come back." But the worst thing that can happen to us is for God to walk on ahead.
He did exactly that with the children of Israel when they came to the edge of the Promised Land. He said, "I want you to walk with me into the land." But they said, "No, not us. You go by yourself, but we're not going." So God said, "All right, then you will wander for forty years in the wilderness until you come back to this same place. I'll leave you alone. If you don't want to go in, you don't have to go in." The terrible thing about God is that he gives us what we want. If we want it badly enough, he will let us have it, and it will be the worst thing that ever happened to us. Enoch was a man who learned to move as God moved, to walk in step with him.
The third thing about a walk is that there was no controversy between them. They were in agreement. "Except two be in agreement, how can they walk together?" asks the Scriptures. There must be no controversy between us if we are going to walk with God, but we must agree with the way he sees things. What changes this makes in our lives! Sometimes there are real struggles as we are corrected in our view of things by the Word of God. But if you want to walk with God, you must see things as he sees them, as Enoch did. For three hundred years he walked with God. This is the same activity to which we are called. We are to "walk as children of light." We are to walk "in the Spirit" We are to walk "worthy of God," through the midst of a godless generation exactly as Enoch did.
No Social Security
But notice that Enoch did not always walk with God. The first sixty-five years of his life was quite another story. Evidently he reflected for sixty-five years the same godless attitude as those around him. You ask, "Well, what started him walking with God, then?" And the answer is given to us here. It was not receiving his Social Security payments when he reached sixty-five, but it was the birth of a son, a boy whom he named Methuselah. The account says so: "Enoch walked with God after the birth of Methuselah three hundred years." So it was the birth of this baby that started him walking with God.
Surely there is more to this than simply the fact that he became a father, although I have noticed that becoming a father has a profound effect upon a young man. It makes him more thoughtful, more serious, gives him a more sober outlook on life. It does have a very beneficial effect. But there is more to it than that, and here it is revealed by the name Enoch gave to his son. Methuselah, is a very interesting name. It means, literally, "His death shall bring it," or, loosely translated, "When he dies, it will come." What will come? The flood! Enoch, we are told in another passage of Scripture, was given a revelation from God. He saw the direction of the divine movement, looked on to the end of the culture, the comforts, and the mechanical marvels of his own day, to the fact that there must come an inevitable judgment on the principle of evil in human life. He saw the certainty of destruction of a world living only to please itself. When he saw it, his baby was born, so, in obedience, evidently to God's word, he named the baby, "When he dies, it will come.Ó
This revelation to Enoch is given in the next-to-the-last book of the Bible. If you want to see what a unit the Bible is, notice how Jude and Revelation tie in with Genesis. In the fourteenth verse of Jude we read, concerning certain godless men who would be present in any age, but especially in the last age:
It was of these also that Enoch in the seventh generation from Adam prophesied, saying, "Behold, the Lord came with his holy myriads, to execute judgment on all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness which they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him." These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own passions, loud-mouthed boasters, flattering people to gain advantage (Jude 14-16).
That was the world of Enoch's day, and Enoch saw the end of it. He saw that the Lord was coming to execute judgment on it. Now I know there are those who take that passage in Jude to refer to the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in a secondary way it does refer to that. But its primary reference is to the judgment of the Enoch saw the coming of the flood, and he named his child, "When he dies, it will come." If you figure out the chronology of this from the life of Noah who was six hundred years old when the flood came, you will find that the very year that Methuselah died, the flood came. It happened exactly as God had predicted.
969 Years of Grace
But the grace of God is revealed here in the fact that this boy lived longer than any man ever lived, nine hundred and sixty-nine years! That is how long God waited before he fulfilled the threat implied in the boy's name. Can you imagine what a fascination this boy must have been to his family? How they watched him every time he went out? "When he dies, it will come." But God let him live longer than anybody else to reveal the heart and compassion of a God who dislikes to bring judgment but does so because of the moral demands made upon his nature of truth.
Now we see the reason for this table of genealogy. First, it is given to highlight the supreme purpose of revelation, to teach us the possibility and importance of a walk with God. That is what men are called to do, to walk with God. It is the greatest glory that can come to any human being, to learn to walk with and be a friend to God. Enoch was the friend of God. Second, this genealogical table is given to warn us of the day when evil shall ultimately be stopped. God cannot allow human evil to increase endlessly. He restrains it, but when it reaches a certain limit, he judges it. That is the repeated story of history. This is the message of the book of Jude. It happens again and again in history. But, as Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 10, there is always a way of escape provided.
That way of escape is indicated again in a most fascinating way in this chapter by the meaning of the names listed. There is some difference among authorities as to the meaning of these names, depending upon the root from which they are judged to be taken. But one authority gives an interesting sequence of meanings. The list begins with Seth, which means "Appointed." Enosh, his son, means "Mortal"; and his son, Kenan, means "Sorrow." His son, Mahalalel, means "The Blessed God." He named his boy Jared, which means "Came Down," and his boy, Enoch, means "Teaching." Methuselah, as we saw, means "His death shall bring"; Lamech means "Strength," and Noah, "Comfort." Now put that all together.
God has Appointed
that Mortal man shall Sorrow;
but The Blessed God Came Down,
Teaching that His Death Shall
Bring Strength and Comfort.
Is this book from God?
God has given us each a life to watch just as Methuselah's generation watched his. It is our own life. God has written "Methuselah" on each one of us. "His death shall bring it" or "When he dies, it will come." How far is it till the end of the world for you? When you die; that is the end of the world. That is the end of man's day. Is it fifty years from now, ten, tomorrow? Who knows? But at any moment, when you die it will come.
Is it not foolish how we try to escape the inevitability of the end? Yet everything hangs on that. For us, it will be the end of Adam's book when all that Adam is in us is at an end, and there is nothing more to be reached in it. Then only what Christ has written in us will survive. You have heard the little motto,
Only one life, 'twill soon be past.
Only what's done for Christ will last.
That is a pithy expression of what we find in this chapter. In Revelation when John saw the dead standing before God, the books also were opened. What books? I think it was Adam's book and Jesus' book. The book of the generations of Adam and the book of the generations of Jesus Christ.
Now one question lingers: What are you doing today in this godless generation? Are you walking with God? Have you learned to keep step with the Almighty? Have you learned to trust what he says and walk in his direction? That is the only basis for any hope of escaping the judgment of death, as Enoch did. Jesus said, "Because I live, you shall live also. He that believeth in me shall never die." For the believer in Christ, death loses its fearful character and is but a momentary transition into the place God has for you.
Prayer: Thank you, Father, for helping us to view reality, to see through the tinsel, the glitter, the sham, the illusion of life. How helpful it is to see the possibilities of a walk with you as Enoch walked with you, and to believe you and trust you. Teach us so to walk that we may overcome the world and one day you will say to us, "Come on home; it's too far to go back." We thank you in Jesus' name, Amen.
Genesis 6:1-8
ARNOLD TOYNBEE HAS INDICATED that there have been in the past more than twenty-one different civilizations, each one in turn collapsing and giving way to another. So we should not be at all surprised to find here in this definitive passage of Scripture a description of the signs that accompany the imminent collapse of a civilization.
The Bible, as you know, speaks of "times and seasons" in the affairs of men. "Times" are those major divisions of history which are marked by a special character. The Bible speaks, for instance, of the "times of ignorance," referring to the ages before the coming of Christ when men lived in relative ignorance of God. It speaks again of the "times of the restitution of all things" in the future when God will work out all his purposes and unite all things together in Christ. We use similar language when we speak of the "dark ages," characterized by widespread ignorance and moral darkness. But "seasons" are those divisions of time in which certain events come to the fore. I do not think I can do better than to quote Archbishop Trench from his Synonyms of the Old Testament in this respect.
The "seasons" are the joints of articulations in the times; the critical epoch-making periods, ordained of God, when all that has been slowly, and often without observation, ripening through long ages, is mature and comes to birth in grand decisive events which constitute at once the close of one period and the commencement of another.
Remember that Jesus said to his disciples after his resurrection, "the times and seasons are not for you to know." They will unfold as history goes on its way, but we cannot predict when they will occur in the span of time.
It is very important that we recognize these divisions when they do occur, and especially to understand what our Lord meant when he said, "As were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of man" (Matthew 24:37). Now we are studying the days of Noah. Our Lord linked these two epochs together and said that one is the parallel of the other. If we are living in the days immediately preceding the return of Jesus Christ, we shall find conditions in our day similar to the days of Noah. So in Genesis 6, we have the real story behind the headlines of history. Here we find three steps traced for us that mark the signs of imminent collapse of a civilization.
Mysterious Invasion
The first one is given to us in verses I through 4, where we have the account of a demonic invasion:
When men began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair; and they took to wife such of them as they chose. Then the Lord said, "My spirit shall not abide in man for ever, for he is flesh, but his days shall be a hundred and twenty years." The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown" (Genesis 6:1-4).
Interest immediately focuses on the question: Who were these sons of God? Why is this account suddenly interjected into the story of mankind? One suggestion that we must take note of is that here we have the blending of two lines--the line of Cain and the line of Seth (which have been followed briefly in previous chapters), and that here is the intermarriage between these two lines, that of the godly (the line of Seth), and the ungodly (the line of Cain). But there are several severe objections to this idea. One, of course, is that this would make the line of Cain the "sons of God," and that hardly seems fitting in view of the biblical picture of the character of Cain and his descendants. It would be much more likely for that description to be applied to the sons of Seth. Then, too, it appears that the ungodly have only sons, while the godly have only daughters. Now that is a perfectly acceptable view as far as I am concerned, since I have four daughters. But it hardly seems possible to take it seriously; it is all too clear that this theory does not take account of all the factors.
There is an alternative view that takes note of the fact that in Scripture it is only by a specific divine act of creation that any being can be termed a son of God. God is a Spirit and man is flesh, and in the New Testament we are told that "that which is born of the flesh is flesh, but that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." So you cannot have men of flesh termed "sons of God" without a divine creative act being performed. In the New Testament Adam is called a son of God because he is the direct result of divine creation, and Jesus Christ is called the Son of God because he is eternally begotten of the Father. Believers are also called sons of God because they are born again by faith in Jesus Christ in a divine creative act. Finally, in the Bible angels are called sons of God for they came directly from the creating hand of God and are not reproduced sexually as men are. It is interesting that in the Old Testament every other use of "sons of God" refers to the angels. You will find in the book of job, for instance, that the angels are called sons of God.
Now we learn from Jude and Peter in the New Testament that there was a fall of the angels, and the time of that fall is given as "the days of Noah." There are two very interesting passages that link up with Genesis 6. In 1 Peter 3, we have a passage that has been a puzzle to many but which applies directly to this account. Peter says of Jesus that he went "in the spirit" and preached to "the spirits in prison." Now there has been much controversy as to what this means. Some have thought it means that Jesus descended into hell and preached to the spirits in hell during the three days between his crucifixion and resurrection. Personally, I do not ascribe to that theory at all. I think it means that through the Spirit Jesus preached in the days of Noah, speaking in the person of Noah. Noah, we are told, was "a preacher of righteousness," and the Spirit of Christ preached through him.
But the passage goes on to say that the ones preached to are now spirits in prison:
Éwho formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water (1 Peter 3:20).
Also in 2 Peter 2:4, Peter recounts a fall of the angels:
For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of nether gloom to be kept until the judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah (2 Peter 2:4-5).
Note that he links this fall with the days of Noah. Then in the book of Jude we have another reference to this event:
And the angels that did not keep their own position but left their proper dwelling have been kept by him in eternal chains in the nether gloom until the judgment of the great day; just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise acted immorally and indulged in unnatural lust, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire (Jude 6-7).
There Jude gives us the nature of the sin of the angels. He said it was like that of Sodom and Gomorrah; it was "unnatural lust." This, you can see, is directly in parallel with the statement in Genesis 6, that the "sons of God" came in to the daughters of men and married them, taking wives as they chose. This is evidently regarded in the Scriptures as an unnatural act. Thus we have the picture of fallen angels joining in sexual intercourse with the daughters of men and producing a strange race.
Improper Dwelling
There have been those who object to this idea by pointing out that Jesus said that angels are sexless. In Matthew 22:30 he does say that those who are in the resurrection "will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven." It must be noted, however, that he is speaking here of angels "in heaven," as opposed to angels in hell. Some have suggested that perhaps there was a time when angels did have sexual powers, and this of course would permit the kind of a thing recorded here. However, it seems more likely that the explanation is given to us by Jude when he says of these angels that they "left their proper dwelling" and presumably took up improper dwelling places. Now, bodies in Scripture are called dwelling places. This very term Jude uses is found elsewhere in Scripture to apply to the body. Its use here implies that the angels took up residence where they did not belong. The same thing is described in the New Testament in the days of our Lord--the many cases of demonic possession recorded so frequently in the pages of the Gospels. Evil spirits and fallen angels possessed the bodies of men, and these demon-possessed men married women and produced a race of strange beings called here in Genesis 6, the Nephilim. They were a race of giants. The word, Nephilim, supports this whole idea, because it means "the fallen ones.
All this strongly suggests that demonic possession has the ability to affect genetic structure. The chromosomes are changed so that the progeny are markedly different; a sort of mutation takes place, and the result is a pronounced change in the children of such a union. We know today that LSD has this kind of an effect upon the genetic structure. Chromosomatic changes take place, and children can be malformed and mentally deficient because of the use of LSD by their parents. It is interesting that in the book of Revelation drugs are linked with demonism and there is some indication that drugs are a means by which the human spirit is opened up to the control of demonic beings (Revelation 9:21). The May 3, 1968, issue of Time magazine reported a new theory to the effect that "a genetic abnormality may predispose a man to antisocial behavior, including crimes of violence . . ." A normal male baby has an XY chromosome pattern, but occasionally one is found with an XYY pattern. According to an all-woman team of researchers in Scotland this "May be a supermale, overaggressive and potentially criminal." It was further noted that "the XYY (males) averaged 6 ft. 1 inch tall, whereas the average for others (tested) was 5 ft. 7 inches.
It is clear that the result of this union of demon-possessed men with women was a race of mighty men, "men of renown." Here, I think, is the explanation for the mythological stories of demi-gods--half man and half god--such as Hercules. Mythology is no mere invention of the mind of man; it grows out of the traditions, memories, and legends which were a corruption and perversion of primitive truths.
We are further told in this passage that this occurred "also afterward." This "also afterward" means that after the flood a similar incursion of demonic beings took place. This second invasion resulted in the presence in the land of Canaan of certain gigantic races which are called Canaanites. Perhaps you have stumbled over those long lists of "-ites" in the Old Testament and are familiar with these various races--the Jebusites, the Geshurites, the Hittites, etc. All of these are divisions of the Nephilim (they are also called The Rephaim in the Old Testament) who were already there when Abraham came to the promised land. They represent an attempt on the part of demonic powers to derail the divine program of bringing a Redeemer into the world through the human race.
It is interesting that archeologists have now discovered the giant cities of Bashan, and they confirm the fact that races of gigantic beings did exist in this area whose beds are ten, eleven, or twelve feet long. (They had king-size beds in those days, because the kings were really that big). It was these people that the Israelites were commanded to exterminate completely. They were to wipe these giant cities off the face of the earth, to exterminate the whole populace and their animals.
Immediately when this invasion of demonic powers into mankind takes place, notice that God, in his governing grace, limits it: