Posts
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Most of us, after reading the genealogies contained in the Bible shoot a hand
up over our mouths to cover up a yawn, boring.
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However, God has included genealogies in his word for important reasons,
reasons that we cannot ignore.
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E.g., Matthew and Luke both include genealogies for the Lord Jesus. Matthew
includes his genealogy of Jesus to stress that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of
David; Luke includes his genealogy of Jesus to emphasize that Jesus is the son
of God.
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Ancestry, you see, is important and genealogies can tell
us much about family heritage: who they
were, when they lived, what they valued, even why they did what they did.
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E.g., my children are the eighth generation descended in direct line from
Leopold Frederick Langille, a French Huguenot who followed the teachings of the
reformer John Calvin.
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Many of the Huguenots were hard-working skilled trades people of the emerging
French middle-class
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For over 100 years, the Huguenots enjoyed relative peace being able to live,
work, and worship God freely.
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But following the ascension of Louis III persecution of the Huguenots forced Leopold,
as the head of the family, to consider leaving their home, Montbeliard, France
in 1751, and in 1752 Leopold Frederick Langille sailed with his family to
Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.
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Genealogies and the family histories that go with them when understood properly
give us insight into the lives of real people, who faced real hardships and
challenging decisions.
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And that's also true of the genealogies of the Bible.
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Let's ask ourselves a few questions: why
did Moses include Noah's record of the genealogy from Adam to Noah? What does
God want to teach us about himself, about his world, and about us? What do we
need to learn?
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First, we learn that the genealogy
was part of a book. "This is the book of generations of Adam" Genesis
5:1
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Contrary to evolution early man wrote and spoke from the beginning
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Second, we learn that there are 10 generations
from Adam to Noah and these 10 were the family heads descended in direct line
from Adam through Seth, who was born 130 years after creation.
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Third, these 10 family heads are
mentioned again in 1 Chronicles 1 and Luke 3:36-38, which reveals that the
biblical writers understood this genealogy as real and reliable history.
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Fourth, we see that these family
heads had remarkably long lives.
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Our ignorance of the age before the flood begs the question, were these years,
solar years, i.e., the time it takes the Earth to travel completely around the
sun in its course, which is how we measure years today?
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Do those long lives reflect real years or do they reflect something else?
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a) Some have suggested that the years
are really months, but that is absurd.
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If the years were months, then Adam was just shy of 11, when Seth was born.
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Seth was under nine when Enosh was born and Enosh was only 71/2 when Kenan/Cainan
was born.
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Surely, it's a lot easier to accept the ages of the family heads of Genesis 5
as they are...than to make the ridiculous suggestion that these family heads
were prepubescent boys.
- b) Long lived human beings give us insight
into the "very good" nature of God's original creation.
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The long lives of human beings in the pre-flood world are a reflection of God's
original intent in creating a world without death in which men and women were
meant to forever in fellowship with God before the fall.
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The people of the pre-flood world were physically superior, they did not have
the genetic problems that exist in humanity today, and they lived in an
environment that was much more beneficial to life and health.
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Death and the curse took time to take their heavy toll upon God's once very
good creation and the image of God in humanity, but death and the curse did come
as the geneology chimes 9 times, "and he died..."
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Fifth, this account is what we would
expect of a real historical genealogy.
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We have persons' names. We have their ages when the new family heads were born,
and we have their deaths.
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Sixth, these real accounts of births
and deaths trace the exact years of history from the beginning of creation to
the birth of Noah.
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Using basic math, we add up the years which gives 1, 656 years from the creation
of Adam to Noah's age at the beginning of the flood.
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Adding the other genealogy from Genesis 11, which gives the genealogy from
Noah's son, Shem, to Abram (later Abraham) we can calculate that God created all
things around 6,100 years ago.
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To allow for billions of years of evolution, we have to completely ignore, deny
or explain away the biblical record.
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Fact or fantasy: the Bible plainly teaches God created all things about 6100
years ago.
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Seventh, the names of Genesis 5 are
prophetically significant.
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Names in the Bible are always chosen for their significance, which is something
that's important for my family.
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Toni and I named our children thinking of this approach.
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We named Abbi, Abbi Spencer. Abbi comes from Abigail which means "my
father's joy" and Spencer, also my middle name, means steward.
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Abbi brings joy to both her earthly father and her heavenly Father. Her name is
a blessing that she may be a steward of the joy of God.
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We named Zoe, Zoe Grace. Zoe is the NT word used of the new life available in
Jesus Christ and that life is received by God's grace.
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Zoe Grace is a blessing, as she represents new life in the Lord Jesus which
comes by grace.
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Now back to the names of the family heads of Genesis 5.
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Seth, whose name means
"appointed one" and whom the Bible tells us, was his father's very
image, was named likely because his mother and father hoped it would be he who
would crush the serpent's head.
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It was also he who was appointed to replace Abel.
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Both Adam and Seth, as men created in the image of God and after His likeness,
foreshadow the coming of Jesus who is the very image of the invisible God.
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Enosh means "mortal
frailty" and it was in the days of Enosh that people began to call upon
the name of the Lord, Genesis 4:26.
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It's interesting that already Adam's descendents, especially Seth, noticed the
frailty of life around him and named his son appropriately.
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Kenan/Cainan means "Smith"
which is, of course, someone who works with metal.
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Metallurgy, the science of working with metals, according to the Bible, has
been around since the earliest of times.
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Yet another fact that flies in the face of the evolutionary story.
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Mahalaleel means "God be
praised" and is surely a reflection that family heads of Seth's line
continued to worship God faithfully.
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Jared means "descent" his
name may be a commentary by Mahalaleel upon seeing the descent of society all
around him into evil and violence as the population began to increase rapidly.
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Jared was the father of Enoch whom the Scriptures up-hold as a prophet.
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Enoch means "dedication"
which is a very appropriate name for one who walked with God.
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In Genesis 4 we are told of another Enoch, but in Cain's line, and that Enoch
was dedicated to persevering under the judgment of God and continuing the line
of Cain.
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Enoch, of the line of Seth, walked with God for 300 years after he fathered
Methuselah whose name means, "When he dies, judgment."
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"Enoch walked with God and he was not, for God took him." Genesis
5:24
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With the exceptions of Adam and the yet to be born Noah, all of Seth's line was
living at the time of Enoch's disappearance from this world into the presence
of God.
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Methuselah, "when he dies, judgement,"
died the year of the flood. His name and life was a prophetic testimony,
Enoch's prophetic legacy to the coming judgment of God upon the corrupt and
violent world of those days.
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Lamech means "Conqueror."
This Lamech is quite different from the Lamech descended from Cain in chapter 4.
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While the Lamech of Cain boasted he could conquer anyone who dared defy him,
the Lamech of Seth hoped to conquer the growing evil and violence in the world,
going so far as to name his son, Noah
meaning "comfort" or "rest."
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Lamech looked forward to the days of rest prophesied by his grandfather Enoch
who, according to Jude in the New Testament, prophesied the second coming of
our Lord Jesus not just the judgment of the flood.
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"Listen! The Lord is coming with countless thousands of his holy ones to
execute judgment on the people of the world. He will convict every person of
all the ungodly things they have done and for all the insults that ungodly
sinners have spoken against him." Jude 14b-15
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It was Noah, Mr. Comfort, Mr. Rest, whom God called to build an ark and through
whom God re-established the world.
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Noah continues to be a man who represents comfort and rest in a world filled
with the chaos and violence caused by sin.
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For those who have faith in Jesus Christ, we look forward to the day of his
return.
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On that day, the faithful will fully experience all the comfort and rest that
he has in store for us as God's kingdom comes in all its fullness.
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So, are genealogies important? You
bet they are.
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We learn that human beings were created with speech and writing ability that
they used from the beginning.
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We learn that other biblical writers treat the early genealogies as real
histories.
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We learn that this genealogy is like every other historical genealogy.
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We learn that human beings lived remarkably long lives, which was part of God's
original plan.
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We learn that we can trace the exact year when God created the heavens and the
earth through the biblical genealogies.
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Finally, we learn, that from beginning to end, the names of Genesis 5
prophetically look forward to the coming of the One who will crush the
serpent's head, conquering sin and death, judge the world and usher in the
kingdom of God, the age of eternal peace, comfort and rest, even Jesus Christ.
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Fact or fantasy: the Bible plainly
teaches God created all things about 6,100 years ago.
