Exciting Reading
At
first glance, Genesis 5 is a chronology.
Woo-hoo. And that’s typically my
response to chronologies. I’m not going
to remember the names. And I’m certainly
not going to waste brain cells remembering how long they lived when I know that
Genesis 5 is not that hard to find if I ever want to look them up. So it’s really easy to open the Bible, see the
contents of the chapter, and say “Pass.”
I’ll start again with Genesis 6 tomorrow.
I
don’t think that’s always a bad thing.
The chronologies aren’t in here to give us wisdom or any special
teaching. They are simply here to list
how God got humanity from one place to another.
The point of this chronology is to attest that God is faithful and God
was there from Adam to Noah. There’s
something significant about that, though.
God is indeed faithful.
Oh,
and God endured it. God was there for
all their mistakes and sin. God was
there for each generation of joys and sorrows.
God was there while creation was figuring itself out. So not only is God faithful, but far more
experienced in humanity than even we are.
That’s pretty significant, too.
Similarities in the lineage of Seth and Cain
The
list of names for Seth’s line are so very similar to Cain’s line and we also
now have a seriously direct attempt at a comparison. It’s almost as if the author of Genesis is
saying: “The world has its effect on the lineage of Cain and look at how far
they fell. Yet God had His effect on the
line of Seth and look at how they stayed near to God.” In many respects, this is the birthplace of
“remnant theology.” When the world –
even when the people created by God’s own hand – turn away from Him, God raises
up a remnant. I think that’s pretty
significant, also.
Enoch’s Great Testimony
One
last little tidbit: notice the words about Enoch. Yes, Enoch is one of two men in the Bible who
ceased to physically exist without their death being described. But for today, I’m going to focus on the
turning point of Enoch’s life. The ESV
translates Genesis 5:22 thusly: “Enoch walked with God after he fathered
Methusalah 300 years and had other sons and daughters.” It seems to be telling us that Enoch walked
with God after he became a father. Now,
there is a bit of interpretive license going on there, but the text really does
seem to indicate that when Enoch became responsible for someone else he took
his faith with God much more seriously.
The
neat thing is that one need not have children to experience that. As a pastor, I know that feeling. I know what it is to lay awake at night
worrying and praying for those friends of mine who have come to see me as their
pastor and spiritual mentor. I know what
it is like to long for phone calls or conversations – much like a parent longs
for the days when their children ask them to help them grow. There is something about being “over” another
person that can really kick faith into overdrive whether it is as a parent or
as a “spiritual parent.” And I mourn for
those for whom this sense of “spiritual overdrive” just doesn’t ever kick in.
So,
I encourage you to read those words wisely.
If you are the child of a person who obviously experienced that “faith
overdrive,” thank God for that. If you
are the spiritual child of a person that has been a spiritual parent to you,
thank God for that, too. And if you are
the spiritual parent to anyone, thank God as well.
Huh. I got something out of the chronology after
all. Go figure…
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