A Genealogical Excursus
A Genealogical Excursus
Well, thank you so much, musicians, for leading us in praise today. And we just considered how the body has many members. They each play a role.
Joshua, Pastor Joshua, had let me know that we've missed a couple of baby announcements. So, brother, thank you for playing the baby announcement, gifting role in the body. You know, what's so ironic is we had trivia night, Friday night, and I'd been tasked with coming up with some certain trivia questions, and I thought, boy, it'd be interesting to tally up all the babies that have been born at Cornerstone over the years, and we came up with 46.
So I was thinking about 46 baby names, including these recent ones, and then didn't even dawn on me this morning that we've not announced those. So on official announcements, Elena Joy Angelo was born 8-6 at 6.30 in the morning, and Desmond Ryan Clark on the second. And so I just wanna be rejoicing in God's gift to both of those families, and, man, children are truly, surely a blessing from the Lord.
I want you to take your Bibles this morning and turn with me to Genesis chapter five. Genesis chapter five. If you've ever gone on a cruise before, perhaps, you've taken an excursion.
Okay, I don't know that I'm a cruise guy. I tend to get motion sick pretty easy, so I've never been on a cruise, but as I understand it, you arrive at your destination, and then you can sign up for excursions. So an excursion might be like parasailing or a snorkeling adventure or a jungle zipline, and they're very exotic.
And so this morning, we're coming to Genesis chapter five, and I wanna introduce this chapter to you as a genealogical excursus, okay? An excursus, that sounds very exotic. It sounds like an excursion. An excursus, excuse me, is where you diverge a bit from the main point to focus on something that's related, but it's not exactly the main point.
Genesis five is a very important chapter, and we're gonna look at it this week and, Lord willing, next week as well. When we do that next week, we will dive into a lot of the theological significance of this chapter and glean lessons and implications. But this chapter is actually very debated, would be a good word for it.
There's a bit of an inquest to change what I believe is the simple meaning of the text. And so this morning, I wanted to take an excursus where we really lay out the principles for the study of Scripture and help understand how do we even approach interpreting a text like Genesis five. So for the kids in the room, today we're gonna talk about genealogy.
There's a couple kinds of genes, okay? There's genes that you wear, like the pants that you put on, and that's one kind of genes. There's another kind of genes, and those relate to your family history, okay? So what color of hair you have, what color your skin is, how tall you're gonna be, really part of your personality, it's your genetics, it's your genes, it's what you get from your mom and dad, comes down through family lines. The Bible talks a lot about families, family tree, family heritage, ancestry, bloodlines.
Genetics in this case would be seen from that word genealogy. It's really the study of a generation of how families grow and how families expand. And so for most of us, we come to the genealogies in Scripture and what happens? I mean, if we're honest, okay? How many of you have ever been in your Bible reading plan and contemplated maybe, just maybe, skipping over or skim reading the genealogies, right? Okay, we've all done it.
Thank you for the few honest folks in the room. Come to a genealogy, and frankly, you just kind of feel like skipping over it. And if you've ever felt that way, you're certainly not alone.
And yet we have to recognize that the Bible does say, all Scripture is inspired by God. And that would mean, yes, even the genealogies have been breathed out by God and wait a minute, they're profitable. Are you serious? Genealogies are profitable, okay? So two weeks guys on Genesis five on a genealogy here, because genealogies, even genealogies are spiritually profitable.
So this morning we're gonna do an exotic excursus to look at a genealogy in Scripture. I think the reason why we struggle with genealogies is because the practical benefit of them is a little harder to see. I don't know that I can think of someone who said to me, and you know what, this morning, I was in a genealogy for my quiet time.
And I just felt so close to Jesus. And I just got so many things that I've been carrying with me this week from reading that genealogy. There's a purpose, but it's a little bit less obvious perhaps in terms of the practical benefit than other passages of Scripture.
Sometimes they can even get ignored. One commentator writes, when Christians read the book of Genesis, they tend to focus on the narratives, that would be the stories. But skip over the genealogies.
After all, who wants to read a boring long list of baguettes? We much prefer to read the majestic opening of the creation account in Genesis 1, and the interesting, often tension-filled stories of the Garden of Eden, of Cain and Abel, and Noah and the flood, and the Tower of Babel. Then we move on to the longer, more complicated narratives of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob, Leah, and Rachel, and Joseph and his brothers, who are the ancestors of the 12 tribes of Israel. He goes on and says, if we stop to think about the genealogies in Genesis or elsewhere, we wonder what purpose they serve.
What is the purpose that they serve? And so this morning, we want to look at this genealogy. And this genealogy is greatly debated because it begins to address questions like how old is humanity? How long have we been here? Who's the authority to speak to such a matter? So this morning, I want to read this passage. And then I want you to get your thinking cap on, be ready to turn a few pages, and we're going to establish really why God put Genesis 5 in your Bible.
The text begins in verse 1. 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. He blessed them and named them man when they were created.
When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered his son in his own likeness after his image and named him Seth. In the days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years, and he had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died.
When Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered Enosh. Seth lived after he fathered Enosh, 807 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Seth were 912 years, and he died.
When Enosh had lived 90 years, he fathered Kenan. Enosh lived after he fathered Kenan, 815 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Enosh were 905 years, and he died.
When Kenan had lived 70 years, he fathered Mahalel. I always mess that one up. I've been practicing it all week.
Mahalel. Kenan lived after he fathered Mahalel, 840 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Kenan were 910 years, and he died.
When Mahalel had lived 65 years, he fathered Jared. Mahalel lived after he fathered Jared, 830 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Mahalel were 895 years, and he died.
Glad we're through that one. When Jared had lived 162 years, he fathered Enoch. Jared lived after he fathered Enoch, 800 years, and had other sons and daughters.
Thus, all the days of Jared were 962 years, and he died. When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah, 300 years, and had other sons and daughters.
Thus, all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he fathered Lamech.
Methuselah lived after he fathered Lamech, 782 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Methuselah were 969 years, and he died. When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son, and called his name Noah, saying, out of the ground the Lord has cursed.
This one shall bring us relief from our work, and from the painful toil of our hands. Lamech lived after he fathered Noah, 595 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Lamech were 777 years, and he died.
After Noah was 500 years old, Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth. This reads the genealogy from Adam to Noah. It's a divine record.
It is inspired by God. It is all scripture. It's been breathed out by God.
And as we're gonna see, Lord willing, next week, there's some tremendous themes here. The echo of death is reigning through this entire genealogy. We're gonna see the remarkable gem of Enoch, and what his life looked like, how it stood like this bright, dazzling diamond in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.
We're gonna see the expectation of Noah, and the redemption that God would bring through Noah's life. And so, there's some wonderful themes that we're gonna see as we go through that. But as we come to this text, there's a question as to how are we to understand Genesis 5? There are those that would say that when you read this with modern, post-enlightenment goggles, you begin to get the wrong impression.
That this was not intended for us to understand as an actual genealogical history, but rather that it's either selective, meaning there's many generations that have been skipped over, and this is just kind of a smattering of a few key individuals, or else this is really just to be taken symbolically. It's to be understood really as something that is not designed to be taken literally, but rather symbolically. There's kind of a deeper lesson and a deeper meaning.
And so, what I wanna do with you this morning is begin to walk through this text and understand what I believe is driving the conclusion to see this as symbolic rather than literal, and also to help you understand not only what you believe, but why you believe it. And so, this morning's message would be a success if you leave not thinking merely, I think that this genealogy was recorded literally because my pastor said it, but rather because after studying the scripture and seeing it in its plain sense, that's your own conclusion. And so, we're gonna begin where we always do.
Verse one, this is the book of the generations of Adam. So, let's just start here and let's look at the text. And here's what lens I want you to be thinking of.
I want you to be thinking of kind of the prima facie, okay? Prima facie means on the face of, at first glance. What I mean is this, oftentimes, and we looked at this in Genesis one and two, someone with a PhD and many, many, many years of studying the Bible comes and on their YouTube channel says, you can't really trust what your eyes are telling you with the basic reliability of scripture. There's all this other information that you're not privy to outside of the Bible that really obscures the plain sense.
What we're arguing for here is that God designed revelation not to conceal, but to reveal. He designed it to be understood. His expectation is that the common folks of the earth, as long as they had the scripture in their own language, as long as they had access, they'd be able to read it, comprehend it, and benefit from it, okay? So never be intimidated by those fancy arguments.
Rather, at first sight, prima facie, what does the text itself yield? Genesis 5.1, this is the book of the generations of Adam. Perhaps your translation says this is the account. Generations means the history of the family, okay? This is the lineage of Adam, very simply.
His descendants. I could say it's the order of the births. It's the origin of the family.
That's the word here for generation. So on the face of it, why is this in the Bible? Well, it is, there's no tricks here. It is to explain to us the lineage of Adam.
Not only that, but you read that God wants to preserve this record and it's in a book. This is the book of the generations of Adam. And this is interesting because generations is gonna come up over and over and over in Genesis.
Now, we've already mentioned that briefly before, but this entire book is very much about generations. So we're gonna see him in the next coming weeks. We're gonna see him throughout the various chapters as we see generations and generations.
But it's unique here to be called the book or literally the scroll of the generations. And so what's depicted there is that this is a written record, a written history. We even use that expression in our day when we're talking about something that is concrete.
It's not just oral tradition, but we say, go to the record books. You could go research that in the record books. The Bible speaks of God having record books, a record book of all the deeds that you've committed in the body in this life.
He speaks of another record book, the Lamb's book of life where names are recorded. So the idea here is that this was a scroll written down. It's possible that this was written by Noah or patriarchs before him and preserved in the flood, but this is some kind of a written record of the family line, the generations of Adam.
It's an actual lineage. I was thinking about that. You certainly would have had, with how long these people lived, plenty of time to write down your lineage.
I tend to lose interest in that project, so I've tried to research my family history. And as soon as I hit a minor roadblock, I'm out. It's just too much concentration.
But even for a major procrastinator, I mean, imagine if you're living on the earth for 900 years, like, I'm gonna write my lineage in 500 years, and you'd be able to do that. You could procrastinate that long. So somehow, some way, there was a scroll written of the lineage.
Whether God gave that to Moses and he just wrote it down inspired by the spirit, or the God through means preserved the written record, this is the record, the bloodlines, the genealogy after Adam. So these are actual people. It's a family tree.
And of course, God is very concerned, as we will read throughout Genesis and even the rest of the Old Testament on things like bloodlines, that the ancient people were because there'd be a right family heritage and property and succession and perhaps a power over a region or an area. And so bloodlines are very important in the ancient times. But in the Bible, they're important because ultimately they point to what? To a Messiah.
There's a Christotelic ending here. And in fact, if you wanna jot a cross-reference, if you look up in Matthew's gospel, which we'll look there later, Matthew chapter one, verse one, begins with this same language. The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
So there's only two places in scripture that you're gonna read, the book of the generations, the book of the genealogies. It's right here in Genesis chapter five, regarding the first Adam. And it's gonna appear again in Matthew chapter one, speaking of the second Adam.
So here's the family history. We're not relying just upon memory. And so just immediately, prima facie, what does this begin to tell you? This begins to tell you the very purpose of why this was written.
It was written to record and convey, to memorialize for all time, the family record concerning Adam. This is an official record keeping. That is what the text claims.
Okay? And so we begin to look at this and we understand that these are the very accounts that God has given for us. And when we come to it, it's a little challenging because certainly we can't be definitive about all of the populations from this line. We know that Adam, back in chapter four, was said to have many sons and many daughters.
Estimates at even a very conservative, a very conservative growth rate would indicate that Adam most likely lived to see millions of descendants. I mean, well, that sounds bogus. I mean, do you realize how old our nation is? We have 300 million people living right now in the United States.
Certainly we've had people immigrate, but a lot of that's been population growth through reproduction. Adam lived to be 930 years old. So even at a very moderate growth rate, he likely saw certainly even in the short millions, if not tens of millions of people.
And so this is not recording all of Adam's descendants. It's not designed to do that. Rather, it's one particular line and it is the line of Seth.
And this is going to be then in contrast to the line of Cain. And so Cain is really representative of all the reprobate, all the unbelieving on the earth. Seth is going to be the faithful line, the remnant, if you will, the believing line.
What about all of Adam and Eve's other children? Well, we know by Genesis 6, that essentially everyone on the face of the earth is wicked. So as you conceive of what's happening in Genesis chapter 5, you need to view Seth's line as the vast minority on earth. Okay, this is the minority.
This is the believing line. The earth is teeming with populations. One line is given.
Why this one line? Well, ultimately this is going to be the line that goes to Noah. That line is going to then go from Noah to Abraham and then from Abraham, what, to David, and then from David to Jesus. Right here you have the faithful line being preserved, okay? Faithful line being preserved.
And so certainly we don't know the exact populations because it's impossible to know the exact mix of a male to female, how many children Adam and Eve had. We don't know the death rate. We don't know what kind of infant mortality they had.
We don't know what age they began reproducing. We don't know how close children were born together. We don't know what kind of wars and famines and disease and how that modeling would impact the population growth.
But we do recognize here that one line is being highlighted specifically for our instruction. And this is because it has messianic implications. So what have we gleaned so far from these opening verses? On the face of it, prima facie and our approach, plain sense meaning.
We see this is a formal record of Adam's lineage to Noah. It's designed as a link to connect Adam to the flood. And it is not a complete record of Adam's descendants.
This is rather tracing one line down the family tree. And this genealogy then, if you are interested in such things, is known as a linear or a vertical genealogy. And that's because its focus is getting from A to Z, from one person to another person.
That is the point here. And so all of this so far is relatively undisputed. And yet there are those who then would come and say, the point is getting from Adam to Noah and everything that's in the middle really doesn't matter that much.
The point is just that we need to get from Adam to Noah. That is what is being established. Everything else relating to chronology, which chronology would be the sequence or the timing by which things take place, that's irrelevant.
It's not about chronology. One person says this, the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 present an unbroken line of individuals from Adam to Abraham with numerical data that allows the construction of an approximate chronology for that period. So what are we asserting? Well, the fact that there's all these numbers in here mean that we can construct some type of at least an approximate chronology.
Now this author goes on to state the problem with that. The resulting chronology, however, is greatly at odds with that which widely accepted geological, archeological and non-biblical historical records affirm. See what happens? If we begin to take this and say that these numbers essentially on the face of them mean what they say, that that would lead us to construct a chronology and the conclusion of that chronology is greatly at odds with that which widely accepted geological, archeological and non-biblical historical records affirm.
He goes on to say the philosophical problem that this presents the biblical scholar who wishes to respect the truthfulness of scripture is significant. He goes on and says a seeming majority, a seeming majority, not of unbelievers, listen to this, a seeming majority of evangelical scholars has elected to reevaluate the Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies in order to harmonize them with these other sources. I was shocked.
I mean, we're talking about generally conservative theologians, we're talking about reformed theologians that would come to Genesis 5 and walk away with a non-chronological interpretation. And what I wanna demonstrate for you is that whatever is driving that conclusion is certainly not from the text itself because the text is very plainly intended to be a chronology. And so the question really primarily, because I don't think that the symbolic view is worth much.
I mean, we'll briefly mention it, but essentially here's what the view is. If you were to take this as being non-chronological, you'd come to the text and you would say, here's the problem. There's 10 generations lined out, 10 is an even number.
We're gonna see 10 in the next generation. We're gonna see 10 in Ruth's line. So seems like what's happening here is the desire for symmetry.
Therefore, there's some missing names along the way. And so what's here is true in so far as it goes, but there's a bunch of gaps. There's a bunch of names missing.
So it's actually not really a chronology. It's just listing out various names. So that's the argument.
Now, this is not ridiculous on the face of it because the Bible does at times leave names out of genealogies. And a lot of times what happens is, and I see this a lot in like maybe a YouTube clip, we're kind of picking on YouTube right now, but someone will make a statement, kind of assert it, come to their conclusion and they don't demonstrate it. So here's what you'll hear.
The Bible leaves names out of genealogies in other places. And so we're just gonna assume that the Bible's leaving names out of genealogies here. And what I wanna demonstrate for you is I think that's invalid, okay? So a couple of places that we would see this would be in Matthew chapter one.
That'd be kind of the most, one of the most notable. So turn with me to Matthew chapter one. And what we're gonna try to do is just examine these claims and see if it's a valid claim to state that there are gaps in the Genesis account.
Matthew chapter one, verse one, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. So here we have, again, the same concept, the same moniker over it. So, right? First kind of method of Bible interpretation is comparing scripture to scripture.
And so you're immediately saying, okay, I see some key words here. We have the book of the genealogy in Genesis five, book of genealogy in Matthew one, they match. Begin to go down and work your way through this genealogy.
What happens is you come to Matthew chapter one, verse eight and you read, and Asaph, the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat, the father of Joram, and Joram, the father of Uzziah. It's okay, what's wrong with that? Well, if you haven't memorized the genealogies in first Chronicles 22 through 25, you might have missed that there are three names missing there. So we're not gonna turn that once you jot down, it's a long section.
I'm gonna demonstrate for you in a moment, but there's three other names in the genealogy in first Chronicles 22 through 25. So Matthew cuts them out. He goes straight from Jehoram to Uzziah and he cuts out Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah.
He cuts three names out of the list. Then he does it again. Verse 11, when you read, and Josiah, the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the deportation to Babylon, Matthew again cuts out three names.
If you're gonna jot down the cross-reference there, second Chronicles 36, one through nine, we find out that in fact, Josiah was the father of Jehoahaz, Jehoahaz, the father of Jehoiakim, and then Jehoiakim, the father of Jeconiah. So Matthew pulls three names out of the genealogy and look, there's no footnote. He doesn't even say he's doing it.
He just pulls the names right out. So there is then a biblical example of a genealogy that is missing some names and we're not actually told about it. There's no footnote made.
In fact, Matthew has a purpose here. He has 14 generations, 14 generations, 14 generations. He pulls it out, he doesn't footnote it.
I'm gonna show you one other place that this occurs and then we're gonna circle back. So turn with me to first Chronicles, first and second Kings, first and second Chronicles. It's in the Old Testament, first Chronicles chapter six, and then you can put your finger in Ezra seven.
So we're gonna test your books of the Bible knowledge and your finger dexterity. Okay, so you got first Chronicles six and Ezra chapter seven. We'll actually start in Ezra chapter seven, beginning in verse one.
And after this, in the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, Ezra the son of Saria, son of Azariah, son of Hilkiah, son of Shalem, son of Zadok, son of Ahitab, son of Amoriah, son of Azariah, son of Marath, son of Zarahiah, son of Uzzi, son of Buki, son of Abishu, son of Phinehas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron, the chief priest. This Ezra went up from Babylonia. Okay, so Ezra here is describing himself in the third person.
He's talking about his lineage. Now we turn back to first Chronicles chapter six, and we're seeing the same family line. And yet this one occurs in more detail and there's an inconsistency.
Look at verse eight of first Chronicles chapter six. Ahitab fathered Zadok, Zadok fathered Ahimaaz. Sorry, I'm butchering these.
I honestly, I did practice them and it's just, it's a struggle. Ahimaaz fathered Azariah, Azariah fathered Johanan, and Johanan fathered Azariah. It was he who served as priest in the house that Solomon built in Jerusalem.
Azariah fathered Amoriah, Amoriah fathered Ahitab, and Ahitab fathered Zadok. Now, what is a little bit additionally confusing is Azariah was a popular name in that family, so they keep adding it in. But I want you to notice here that Ezra is pulling out six generations, six names of the family members are missing.
In Ezra chapter seven, he just says, son of Shalom, son of Zadok. But when you look at those relationships in verses eight through 12, you see that there's actually six people that are missing, that Ezra just yanks right out and he says nothing about it. So is it true? Could we make the claim that genealogy sometimes contain gaps in the Bible? Absolutely.
Are they footnoted? They're not. Okay, so we've established that. But now here's what I want you to see, couple of things as we observe these as Bible students.
What is the point that is being made in 1 Chronicles six? To show the exact lineage of parent child, that's the point. You read that whole section, that's what's happening contextually. It's easy to understand.
When you come to Ezra chapter seven, what is the point? I believe it's in verse five, where Ezra says ultimately that he's a descendant of Aaron, the chief priest. Ezra's point in Ezra chapter seven is not to document the father son relationships in detail. His point is, guess what? I belong in the Aaronic line and I'm gonna save some space.
So I'm gonna skip a few generations. What is Matthew's point? Well, listen, Matthew one, one. This is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ.
What the son of David, the son of Abraham. What's Matthew's point? Matthew's point is not to document all of the father son relationships. His point is to document that Jesus is the son of David and the son of Abraham.
And interestingly enough, that language even is very clear, that idea of sonship. That's exactly what's taking place in Matthew's gospel. He keeps talking about so-and-so is the father of so-and-so, the father of so-and-so.
And so in the scriptures, if you were a grandson or great-grandson or great-great-grandson, you could be called the son of. You could be called the son of. And so Jesus rightly then is called the son of David and son of Abraham.
Did Jesus have two dads and one was named Abraham and one was named David? Absolutely not. He was descended in that line and he was known as the son of David and the son of Abraham. So what we see so far, just to pause and get our bearings, what we see is that there are genealogies in scripture that pull names out without telling you they're doing it, when they have the agenda of really just showing the connection between A to Z. What's Ezra's main point? I'm connected in the Aaronic line.
I'm connected to Aaron. I'm not giving you all the fathers and sons. What's Matthew's point in his genealogy? Jesus is the King of the Jews.
He's the rightful descendant of Abraham, the rightful descendant of David. I'm not really interested right now in all the details of the father-son relationships we're getting to the point. So now we come to Genesis chapter five, turn back to Genesis chapter five.
And the point is made that Moses intention here is not to give us details about father-son relationships, rather Moses point is simply to say Adam to Noah, there's a direct link, there's a direct line. So that is certainly a possible Bible position, but let's look at the details of the text. Verse three, when Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness after his image and named him Seth.
Okay, well, that's pretty clear there. The father-son connection. In fact, the verb that's being used there is in the hip pile form, which probably makes no sense to you.
It barely makes sense to me. But every time that verb for fathered is used in the hip pile, it always relates to an actual father to an actual son. The text is explicit.
And we come to Seth, look at the language it appears again in verse six, when Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered Enosh. Do you see how it sounds different than merely saying the son of? It doesn't say Enosh was the son of Seth and maybe there's a bunch of generations in between. Rather, it's very clear the fathering relationship.
Furthermore, this is absolutely concrete in the case of Lamech. Not only does Lamech in verse 28 father a son, in verse 29, he called his name Noah. Now you might really love your parents.
Generally, you don't let grandma and grandpa name the baby. Lamech is naming his own son. It was his right.
Lamech is the one naming Noah. So ironclad in the case of Adam naming and fathering Seth, we see that Adam named Seth back up in verse 25. It was Adam and Eve who gave birth to Seth and named him.
We see Lamech naming Noah in verse 28. And then in verse 32, when we read that Noah fathered Shem, Ham and Japheth, we're gonna read later that those were in fact, Noah's biological descendants. So right here in the record, you have example after example, after example, concrete of fathers bringing sons into the world.
And naming them. Not only that, but what is the cumulative effect of reading all of these numbers? Cumulative effect is that this is actually a high priority for Moses. He's intending to convey and communicate something by the numbers.
They're not merely an accident and they're not inconsequential. In fact, you'll find that there's a formula, really like a mathematical formula that goes all the way through this genealogy. It goes like this.
A lived for X years and then fathered B. A lived Y years after he'd fathered B. A's whole life lasted X plus Y years. Say, well, of course, I mean, that's just kind of how genealogies work. That sounds normal.
It's not how genealogies usually work. Turn over to Genesis 36. And I wanna show you, this certainly Genesis five doesn't look like Matthew's genealogy.
It doesn't look like what we read in first Chronicles. I wanna show you, it doesn't even match later genealogies here in the book of Genesis. Genesis chapter 36, we're reading here about Esau's descendants.
And this is kind of more the type of genealogy that we're used to finding in the Bible. These are the generations of Esau, that is Edom. This is that generations, genealogies.
This is Esau's line. This is recorded by the spirit. It's intended for our benefit.
How does it read? Verse two, Esau took his wives from the Canaanites, aided the daughter of Elon the Hittite, Oholibama. I thought that would be a cool name to have. Oholibama, the daughter of Anna, the daughter of Zibion the Hivite, and Basemath, Ishmael's daughter, the sister of Nebaoth.
And Adah bore to Esau Eliphaz, Basemath bore Ruel, and Oholibama bore Jeush, Jelum, and Korah. These are the sons of Esau who were born to him in the land of Canaan. Then Esau took his wives, his sons, his daughters, and all the members of his household, his livestock, all his beasts, and all his property that he had acquired in the land of Canaan.
He went into a land away from his brother Jacob for their possessions were too great for them to dwell together. The land of their sojournings could not support them because of their livestock. So Esau settled in the hill country of Seir.
Now, I'm not gonna keep reading this entire one. We'll get there at some point. But did you notice how different that was? Remarkably different from what we read in Genesis chapter five.
I mean, this is concerned with kind of how the family's spreading out, the locations that they're ending up in. I'm not thinking of it this way. Like if you were to do Christmas letter stereotypes, yeah, that'd be fun.
Right, there's the Christmas letter that you get, and it's written in, it's just kind of, it's a flowing thought. It's been a great year. Bob retired.
We welcomed two new grandkids. We went to these three different places. I mean, I'm not reading that and thinking, okay, I just got the exact chronology.
I know there's other Christmas letters we get. So in January, we did this. And then in February, we did this.
And then in March, we did this. And I'm, okay, that's a chronology. It's ordered, it's sequential, there's dates, it's specific.
And I would dare say these are obvious differences. So when you come to Genesis chapter five, and you read things like verse three, when Adam had lived 130 years, a number and a measurement. Then he fathered a son in his own likeness after his image and named him Seth.
And the days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years. And he had other sons and daughters. That's all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died.
I don't know how you could possibly understand that, apart from understanding it to convey chronology. I was astounded reading. I was astounded reading how many conservative theologians would even tip their hand to say, well, there are numbers here, but God didn't design for these to be added up and viewed sequentially.
I'd say, what do you think we're supposed to do with them? I mean, you have more numbers than you do names. It's like plainly obvious, so at least have an explanation. So some would say, well, the numbers are symbolic.
That one is quite interesting. There are people who take this, that the numbers are symbolic. You know what I was unable to find was anyone who could tell you what the symbols meant.
A few will take a stab, 777 years. There's some explanations on him. But other than that, I mean, what does it mean that Adam lived 930 years? If it's a symbol, then it must mean something.
Like we need to be able to take the symbol and then say, here's what the symbol means. It's symbolic of this reality. So Genesis chapter five, as I would posit, it is designed by God to convey to us the family line of Adam to Noah.
There's incredible theological lessons that we're gonna look at and explore next week, but it is in fact also a chronology. So yes, I believe it is Christotelic. It is showing the line that the Messiah will come from.
That is an ultimate purpose, and yet it did not need to be chronological, and yet it is. One more thing, and I think that this is fascinating when it comes to the discussions on chronology. Let's just say, let's just say that there were generations missing.
Two problems with that. Number one, even those that would assume generations are missing have a hard time closing the gap from what you see here, which is less than 2,000 years, to reconciling that with the idea that people have been on the planet for millions of years. And you understand how many gaps we would need in the genealogies? Matthew one, we're talking about Matthew dropped three here, Matthew dropped three here, Ezra dropped six over here.
I mean, we're talking about hundreds of generations that would be missing if that were the case. And then not only that, but I believe prima facie, on the face of it, the way you read it mathematically, it wouldn't matter anyway, it's impossible. Look again, verse three, when Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness after his image and named him Seth.
Let's say that then there's a bunch of generations that are missing, that are not recorded here. Well, the days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years. Thus all the days Adam lived were 930 and he died.
Verse six, when Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered an Osh. Seth lived after he fathered an Osh 807 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Seth were 912 years and he died.
Do you understand the chain link there? Even if you were to try to insert gaps of missing generations, the way that the math is constructed is unbroken. It's unbreakable because you have the exact date of how old Adam was when he gave birth to his son, how long he lived after that son, how old that son was when he had his son, how long he lived after that, the way it's constructed requires chronology. Now it's true that there's probably some rounding that goes on there.
I doubt that Adam lived 130 years to the day and then he died on his birthday. So certainly these are rounded up and down. I mean, I don't know the exact details, but it gives us at least the sense of an approximate chronology, an approximate chronology.
So what I wanna leave us for this morning. Well, whenever I dive into a text of scripture like this, I gotta tell you these studies always absolutely thrill my heart. And the reason is because I like you can get unnerved sometimes when I hear arguments against the clarity of scripture, or I kind of start to think that there's some things that maybe I don't know that I need to know or some things that I'm missing.
My soul is so refreshed to go back to the basics or myself, what do I know to be true? Well, I know that all scripture has been breathed out by God and that it's profitable for instruction, for a proof and for training in righteousness. And then I believe in the perspective of scripture that God speaks in such ways to be understood. He designed it not to conceal, but to reveal.
And then when I come back and I just humbly sit before the text, sometimes it doesn't come right away. It takes some elbow grease, if you will, you gotta kind of roll up your sleeves and get after it. But then when that clarity comes, you know what it does? It just produces a conviction.
It produces a confidence. We're not just making this up saying, you know what, the earth is young and I read a magazine that promoted that idea and I kind of latched onto it. And that's what I've always believed and that's what I articulate.
I know I believe it because it's exactly the way God recorded it here for me. And I believe that's actually what he intended me to take away from it. I hope that you find great relief and encouragement from coming back to the simple study of scripture and letting the text speak for itself.
So I hope that excursus was beneficial. I think there's probably some things that I left out. I had about 50 pages of notes coming into this, which is about 40 pages too many.
So I was trying to cut a bunch of things out and cut it down. But next week, we're gonna come back and we're gonna explore, assuming now that this is a chronology, the rich theological realities that God intended to convey for us through, of all things, a genealogy. Will you pray with me? Father, I thank you for the marvelous distinctions that we get in your word.
And I'm such a boring guy. If I were to write a Bible, it would be nowhere near as fascinating and as glorious that you chose to convey truth to us, not merely in a spiritual encyclopedia, but rather you taught us in a variety of ways. As a writer of Hebrews would say, in many portions and in many ways.
And so Lord, I thank you for even this record that we have. I thank you for your desire to reveal to us where we began. And I would say, even to some degree, how long ago you created Adam.
Lord, what a gift this is to us. I pray that you'd thrill our hearts, that you'd refresh us in our study of the scriptures this week with these realities in mind. Lord, thank you for the confidence that we can have in your trustworthiness.
We love you and praise you in Jesus' name, amen.
Joshua, Pastor Joshua, had let me know that we've missed a couple of baby announcements. So, brother, thank you for playing the baby announcement, gifting role in the body. You know, what's so ironic is we had trivia night, Friday night, and I'd been tasked with coming up with some certain trivia questions, and I thought, boy, it'd be interesting to tally up all the babies that have been born at Cornerstone over the years, and we came up with 46.
So I was thinking about 46 baby names, including these recent ones, and then didn't even dawn on me this morning that we've not announced those. So on official announcements, Elena Joy Angelo was born 8-6 at 6.30 in the morning, and Desmond Ryan Clark on the second. And so I just wanna be rejoicing in God's gift to both of those families, and, man, children are truly, surely a blessing from the Lord.
I want you to take your Bibles this morning and turn with me to Genesis chapter five. Genesis chapter five. If you've ever gone on a cruise before, perhaps, you've taken an excursion.
Okay, I don't know that I'm a cruise guy. I tend to get motion sick pretty easy, so I've never been on a cruise, but as I understand it, you arrive at your destination, and then you can sign up for excursions. So an excursion might be like parasailing or a snorkeling adventure or a jungle zipline, and they're very exotic.
And so this morning, we're coming to Genesis chapter five, and I wanna introduce this chapter to you as a genealogical excursus, okay? An excursus, that sounds very exotic. It sounds like an excursion. An excursus, excuse me, is where you diverge a bit from the main point to focus on something that's related, but it's not exactly the main point.
Genesis five is a very important chapter, and we're gonna look at it this week and, Lord willing, next week as well. When we do that next week, we will dive into a lot of the theological significance of this chapter and glean lessons and implications. But this chapter is actually very debated, would be a good word for it.
There's a bit of an inquest to change what I believe is the simple meaning of the text. And so this morning, I wanted to take an excursus where we really lay out the principles for the study of Scripture and help understand how do we even approach interpreting a text like Genesis five. So for the kids in the room, today we're gonna talk about genealogy.
There's a couple kinds of genes, okay? There's genes that you wear, like the pants that you put on, and that's one kind of genes. There's another kind of genes, and those relate to your family history, okay? So what color of hair you have, what color your skin is, how tall you're gonna be, really part of your personality, it's your genetics, it's your genes, it's what you get from your mom and dad, comes down through family lines. The Bible talks a lot about families, family tree, family heritage, ancestry, bloodlines.
Genetics in this case would be seen from that word genealogy. It's really the study of a generation of how families grow and how families expand. And so for most of us, we come to the genealogies in Scripture and what happens? I mean, if we're honest, okay? How many of you have ever been in your Bible reading plan and contemplated maybe, just maybe, skipping over or skim reading the genealogies, right? Okay, we've all done it.
Thank you for the few honest folks in the room. Come to a genealogy, and frankly, you just kind of feel like skipping over it. And if you've ever felt that way, you're certainly not alone.
And yet we have to recognize that the Bible does say, all Scripture is inspired by God. And that would mean, yes, even the genealogies have been breathed out by God and wait a minute, they're profitable. Are you serious? Genealogies are profitable, okay? So two weeks guys on Genesis five on a genealogy here, because genealogies, even genealogies are spiritually profitable.
So this morning we're gonna do an exotic excursus to look at a genealogy in Scripture. I think the reason why we struggle with genealogies is because the practical benefit of them is a little harder to see. I don't know that I can think of someone who said to me, and you know what, this morning, I was in a genealogy for my quiet time.
And I just felt so close to Jesus. And I just got so many things that I've been carrying with me this week from reading that genealogy. There's a purpose, but it's a little bit less obvious perhaps in terms of the practical benefit than other passages of Scripture.
Sometimes they can even get ignored. One commentator writes, when Christians read the book of Genesis, they tend to focus on the narratives, that would be the stories. But skip over the genealogies.
After all, who wants to read a boring long list of baguettes? We much prefer to read the majestic opening of the creation account in Genesis 1, and the interesting, often tension-filled stories of the Garden of Eden, of Cain and Abel, and Noah and the flood, and the Tower of Babel. Then we move on to the longer, more complicated narratives of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob, Leah, and Rachel, and Joseph and his brothers, who are the ancestors of the 12 tribes of Israel. He goes on and says, if we stop to think about the genealogies in Genesis or elsewhere, we wonder what purpose they serve.
What is the purpose that they serve? And so this morning, we want to look at this genealogy. And this genealogy is greatly debated because it begins to address questions like how old is humanity? How long have we been here? Who's the authority to speak to such a matter? So this morning, I want to read this passage. And then I want you to get your thinking cap on, be ready to turn a few pages, and we're going to establish really why God put Genesis 5 in your Bible.
The text begins in verse 1. 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. He blessed them and named them man when they were created.
When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered his son in his own likeness after his image and named him Seth. In the days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years, and he had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died.
When Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered Enosh. Seth lived after he fathered Enosh, 807 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Seth were 912 years, and he died.
When Enosh had lived 90 years, he fathered Kenan. Enosh lived after he fathered Kenan, 815 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Enosh were 905 years, and he died.
When Kenan had lived 70 years, he fathered Mahalel. I always mess that one up. I've been practicing it all week.
Mahalel. Kenan lived after he fathered Mahalel, 840 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Kenan were 910 years, and he died.
When Mahalel had lived 65 years, he fathered Jared. Mahalel lived after he fathered Jared, 830 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Mahalel were 895 years, and he died.
Glad we're through that one. When Jared had lived 162 years, he fathered Enoch. Jared lived after he fathered Enoch, 800 years, and had other sons and daughters.
Thus, all the days of Jared were 962 years, and he died. When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah, 300 years, and had other sons and daughters.
Thus, all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he fathered Lamech.
Methuselah lived after he fathered Lamech, 782 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Methuselah were 969 years, and he died. When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son, and called his name Noah, saying, out of the ground the Lord has cursed.
This one shall bring us relief from our work, and from the painful toil of our hands. Lamech lived after he fathered Noah, 595 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Lamech were 777 years, and he died.
After Noah was 500 years old, Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth. This reads the genealogy from Adam to Noah. It's a divine record.
It is inspired by God. It is all scripture. It's been breathed out by God.
And as we're gonna see, Lord willing, next week, there's some tremendous themes here. The echo of death is reigning through this entire genealogy. We're gonna see the remarkable gem of Enoch, and what his life looked like, how it stood like this bright, dazzling diamond in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.
We're gonna see the expectation of Noah, and the redemption that God would bring through Noah's life. And so, there's some wonderful themes that we're gonna see as we go through that. But as we come to this text, there's a question as to how are we to understand Genesis 5? There are those that would say that when you read this with modern, post-enlightenment goggles, you begin to get the wrong impression.
That this was not intended for us to understand as an actual genealogical history, but rather that it's either selective, meaning there's many generations that have been skipped over, and this is just kind of a smattering of a few key individuals, or else this is really just to be taken symbolically. It's to be understood really as something that is not designed to be taken literally, but rather symbolically. There's kind of a deeper lesson and a deeper meaning.
And so, what I wanna do with you this morning is begin to walk through this text and understand what I believe is driving the conclusion to see this as symbolic rather than literal, and also to help you understand not only what you believe, but why you believe it. And so, this morning's message would be a success if you leave not thinking merely, I think that this genealogy was recorded literally because my pastor said it, but rather because after studying the scripture and seeing it in its plain sense, that's your own conclusion. And so, we're gonna begin where we always do.
Verse one, this is the book of the generations of Adam. So, let's just start here and let's look at the text. And here's what lens I want you to be thinking of.
I want you to be thinking of kind of the prima facie, okay? Prima facie means on the face of, at first glance. What I mean is this, oftentimes, and we looked at this in Genesis one and two, someone with a PhD and many, many, many years of studying the Bible comes and on their YouTube channel says, you can't really trust what your eyes are telling you with the basic reliability of scripture. There's all this other information that you're not privy to outside of the Bible that really obscures the plain sense.
What we're arguing for here is that God designed revelation not to conceal, but to reveal. He designed it to be understood. His expectation is that the common folks of the earth, as long as they had the scripture in their own language, as long as they had access, they'd be able to read it, comprehend it, and benefit from it, okay? So never be intimidated by those fancy arguments.
Rather, at first sight, prima facie, what does the text itself yield? Genesis 5.1, this is the book of the generations of Adam. Perhaps your translation says this is the account. Generations means the history of the family, okay? This is the lineage of Adam, very simply.
His descendants. I could say it's the order of the births. It's the origin of the family.
That's the word here for generation. So on the face of it, why is this in the Bible? Well, it is, there's no tricks here. It is to explain to us the lineage of Adam.
Not only that, but you read that God wants to preserve this record and it's in a book. This is the book of the generations of Adam. And this is interesting because generations is gonna come up over and over and over in Genesis.
Now, we've already mentioned that briefly before, but this entire book is very much about generations. So we're gonna see him in the next coming weeks. We're gonna see him throughout the various chapters as we see generations and generations.
But it's unique here to be called the book or literally the scroll of the generations. And so what's depicted there is that this is a written record, a written history. We even use that expression in our day when we're talking about something that is concrete.
It's not just oral tradition, but we say, go to the record books. You could go research that in the record books. The Bible speaks of God having record books, a record book of all the deeds that you've committed in the body in this life.
He speaks of another record book, the Lamb's book of life where names are recorded. So the idea here is that this was a scroll written down. It's possible that this was written by Noah or patriarchs before him and preserved in the flood, but this is some kind of a written record of the family line, the generations of Adam.
It's an actual lineage. I was thinking about that. You certainly would have had, with how long these people lived, plenty of time to write down your lineage.
I tend to lose interest in that project, so I've tried to research my family history. And as soon as I hit a minor roadblock, I'm out. It's just too much concentration.
But even for a major procrastinator, I mean, imagine if you're living on the earth for 900 years, like, I'm gonna write my lineage in 500 years, and you'd be able to do that. You could procrastinate that long. So somehow, some way, there was a scroll written of the lineage.
Whether God gave that to Moses and he just wrote it down inspired by the spirit, or the God through means preserved the written record, this is the record, the bloodlines, the genealogy after Adam. So these are actual people. It's a family tree.
And of course, God is very concerned, as we will read throughout Genesis and even the rest of the Old Testament on things like bloodlines, that the ancient people were because there'd be a right family heritage and property and succession and perhaps a power over a region or an area. And so bloodlines are very important in the ancient times. But in the Bible, they're important because ultimately they point to what? To a Messiah.
There's a Christotelic ending here. And in fact, if you wanna jot a cross-reference, if you look up in Matthew's gospel, which we'll look there later, Matthew chapter one, verse one, begins with this same language. The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
So there's only two places in scripture that you're gonna read, the book of the generations, the book of the genealogies. It's right here in Genesis chapter five, regarding the first Adam. And it's gonna appear again in Matthew chapter one, speaking of the second Adam.
So here's the family history. We're not relying just upon memory. And so just immediately, prima facie, what does this begin to tell you? This begins to tell you the very purpose of why this was written.
It was written to record and convey, to memorialize for all time, the family record concerning Adam. This is an official record keeping. That is what the text claims.
Okay? And so we begin to look at this and we understand that these are the very accounts that God has given for us. And when we come to it, it's a little challenging because certainly we can't be definitive about all of the populations from this line. We know that Adam, back in chapter four, was said to have many sons and many daughters.
Estimates at even a very conservative, a very conservative growth rate would indicate that Adam most likely lived to see millions of descendants. I mean, well, that sounds bogus. I mean, do you realize how old our nation is? We have 300 million people living right now in the United States.
Certainly we've had people immigrate, but a lot of that's been population growth through reproduction. Adam lived to be 930 years old. So even at a very moderate growth rate, he likely saw certainly even in the short millions, if not tens of millions of people.
And so this is not recording all of Adam's descendants. It's not designed to do that. Rather, it's one particular line and it is the line of Seth.
And this is going to be then in contrast to the line of Cain. And so Cain is really representative of all the reprobate, all the unbelieving on the earth. Seth is going to be the faithful line, the remnant, if you will, the believing line.
What about all of Adam and Eve's other children? Well, we know by Genesis 6, that essentially everyone on the face of the earth is wicked. So as you conceive of what's happening in Genesis chapter 5, you need to view Seth's line as the vast minority on earth. Okay, this is the minority.
This is the believing line. The earth is teeming with populations. One line is given.
Why this one line? Well, ultimately this is going to be the line that goes to Noah. That line is going to then go from Noah to Abraham and then from Abraham, what, to David, and then from David to Jesus. Right here you have the faithful line being preserved, okay? Faithful line being preserved.
And so certainly we don't know the exact populations because it's impossible to know the exact mix of a male to female, how many children Adam and Eve had. We don't know the death rate. We don't know what kind of infant mortality they had.
We don't know what age they began reproducing. We don't know how close children were born together. We don't know what kind of wars and famines and disease and how that modeling would impact the population growth.
But we do recognize here that one line is being highlighted specifically for our instruction. And this is because it has messianic implications. So what have we gleaned so far from these opening verses? On the face of it, prima facie and our approach, plain sense meaning.
We see this is a formal record of Adam's lineage to Noah. It's designed as a link to connect Adam to the flood. And it is not a complete record of Adam's descendants.
This is rather tracing one line down the family tree. And this genealogy then, if you are interested in such things, is known as a linear or a vertical genealogy. And that's because its focus is getting from A to Z, from one person to another person.
That is the point here. And so all of this so far is relatively undisputed. And yet there are those who then would come and say, the point is getting from Adam to Noah and everything that's in the middle really doesn't matter that much.
The point is just that we need to get from Adam to Noah. That is what is being established. Everything else relating to chronology, which chronology would be the sequence or the timing by which things take place, that's irrelevant.
It's not about chronology. One person says this, the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 present an unbroken line of individuals from Adam to Abraham with numerical data that allows the construction of an approximate chronology for that period. So what are we asserting? Well, the fact that there's all these numbers in here mean that we can construct some type of at least an approximate chronology.
Now this author goes on to state the problem with that. The resulting chronology, however, is greatly at odds with that which widely accepted geological, archeological and non-biblical historical records affirm. See what happens? If we begin to take this and say that these numbers essentially on the face of them mean what they say, that that would lead us to construct a chronology and the conclusion of that chronology is greatly at odds with that which widely accepted geological, archeological and non-biblical historical records affirm.
He goes on to say the philosophical problem that this presents the biblical scholar who wishes to respect the truthfulness of scripture is significant. He goes on and says a seeming majority, a seeming majority, not of unbelievers, listen to this, a seeming majority of evangelical scholars has elected to reevaluate the Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies in order to harmonize them with these other sources. I was shocked.
I mean, we're talking about generally conservative theologians, we're talking about reformed theologians that would come to Genesis 5 and walk away with a non-chronological interpretation. And what I wanna demonstrate for you is that whatever is driving that conclusion is certainly not from the text itself because the text is very plainly intended to be a chronology. And so the question really primarily, because I don't think that the symbolic view is worth much.
I mean, we'll briefly mention it, but essentially here's what the view is. If you were to take this as being non-chronological, you'd come to the text and you would say, here's the problem. There's 10 generations lined out, 10 is an even number.
We're gonna see 10 in the next generation. We're gonna see 10 in Ruth's line. So seems like what's happening here is the desire for symmetry.
Therefore, there's some missing names along the way. And so what's here is true in so far as it goes, but there's a bunch of gaps. There's a bunch of names missing.
So it's actually not really a chronology. It's just listing out various names. So that's the argument.
Now, this is not ridiculous on the face of it because the Bible does at times leave names out of genealogies. And a lot of times what happens is, and I see this a lot in like maybe a YouTube clip, we're kind of picking on YouTube right now, but someone will make a statement, kind of assert it, come to their conclusion and they don't demonstrate it. So here's what you'll hear.
The Bible leaves names out of genealogies in other places. And so we're just gonna assume that the Bible's leaving names out of genealogies here. And what I wanna demonstrate for you is I think that's invalid, okay? So a couple of places that we would see this would be in Matthew chapter one.
That'd be kind of the most, one of the most notable. So turn with me to Matthew chapter one. And what we're gonna try to do is just examine these claims and see if it's a valid claim to state that there are gaps in the Genesis account.
Matthew chapter one, verse one, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. So here we have, again, the same concept, the same moniker over it. So, right? First kind of method of Bible interpretation is comparing scripture to scripture.
And so you're immediately saying, okay, I see some key words here. We have the book of the genealogy in Genesis five, book of genealogy in Matthew one, they match. Begin to go down and work your way through this genealogy.
What happens is you come to Matthew chapter one, verse eight and you read, and Asaph, the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat, the father of Joram, and Joram, the father of Uzziah. It's okay, what's wrong with that? Well, if you haven't memorized the genealogies in first Chronicles 22 through 25, you might have missed that there are three names missing there. So we're not gonna turn that once you jot down, it's a long section.
I'm gonna demonstrate for you in a moment, but there's three other names in the genealogy in first Chronicles 22 through 25. So Matthew cuts them out. He goes straight from Jehoram to Uzziah and he cuts out Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah.
He cuts three names out of the list. Then he does it again. Verse 11, when you read, and Josiah, the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the deportation to Babylon, Matthew again cuts out three names.
If you're gonna jot down the cross-reference there, second Chronicles 36, one through nine, we find out that in fact, Josiah was the father of Jehoahaz, Jehoahaz, the father of Jehoiakim, and then Jehoiakim, the father of Jeconiah. So Matthew pulls three names out of the genealogy and look, there's no footnote. He doesn't even say he's doing it.
He just pulls the names right out. So there is then a biblical example of a genealogy that is missing some names and we're not actually told about it. There's no footnote made.
In fact, Matthew has a purpose here. He has 14 generations, 14 generations, 14 generations. He pulls it out, he doesn't footnote it.
I'm gonna show you one other place that this occurs and then we're gonna circle back. So turn with me to first Chronicles, first and second Kings, first and second Chronicles. It's in the Old Testament, first Chronicles chapter six, and then you can put your finger in Ezra seven.
So we're gonna test your books of the Bible knowledge and your finger dexterity. Okay, so you got first Chronicles six and Ezra chapter seven. We'll actually start in Ezra chapter seven, beginning in verse one.
And after this, in the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, Ezra the son of Saria, son of Azariah, son of Hilkiah, son of Shalem, son of Zadok, son of Ahitab, son of Amoriah, son of Azariah, son of Marath, son of Zarahiah, son of Uzzi, son of Buki, son of Abishu, son of Phinehas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron, the chief priest. This Ezra went up from Babylonia. Okay, so Ezra here is describing himself in the third person.
He's talking about his lineage. Now we turn back to first Chronicles chapter six, and we're seeing the same family line. And yet this one occurs in more detail and there's an inconsistency.
Look at verse eight of first Chronicles chapter six. Ahitab fathered Zadok, Zadok fathered Ahimaaz. Sorry, I'm butchering these.
I honestly, I did practice them and it's just, it's a struggle. Ahimaaz fathered Azariah, Azariah fathered Johanan, and Johanan fathered Azariah. It was he who served as priest in the house that Solomon built in Jerusalem.
Azariah fathered Amoriah, Amoriah fathered Ahitab, and Ahitab fathered Zadok. Now, what is a little bit additionally confusing is Azariah was a popular name in that family, so they keep adding it in. But I want you to notice here that Ezra is pulling out six generations, six names of the family members are missing.
In Ezra chapter seven, he just says, son of Shalom, son of Zadok. But when you look at those relationships in verses eight through 12, you see that there's actually six people that are missing, that Ezra just yanks right out and he says nothing about it. So is it true? Could we make the claim that genealogy sometimes contain gaps in the Bible? Absolutely.
Are they footnoted? They're not. Okay, so we've established that. But now here's what I want you to see, couple of things as we observe these as Bible students.
What is the point that is being made in 1 Chronicles six? To show the exact lineage of parent child, that's the point. You read that whole section, that's what's happening contextually. It's easy to understand.
When you come to Ezra chapter seven, what is the point? I believe it's in verse five, where Ezra says ultimately that he's a descendant of Aaron, the chief priest. Ezra's point in Ezra chapter seven is not to document the father son relationships in detail. His point is, guess what? I belong in the Aaronic line and I'm gonna save some space.
So I'm gonna skip a few generations. What is Matthew's point? Well, listen, Matthew one, one. This is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ.
What the son of David, the son of Abraham. What's Matthew's point? Matthew's point is not to document all of the father son relationships. His point is to document that Jesus is the son of David and the son of Abraham.
And interestingly enough, that language even is very clear, that idea of sonship. That's exactly what's taking place in Matthew's gospel. He keeps talking about so-and-so is the father of so-and-so, the father of so-and-so.
And so in the scriptures, if you were a grandson or great-grandson or great-great-grandson, you could be called the son of. You could be called the son of. And so Jesus rightly then is called the son of David and son of Abraham.
Did Jesus have two dads and one was named Abraham and one was named David? Absolutely not. He was descended in that line and he was known as the son of David and the son of Abraham. So what we see so far, just to pause and get our bearings, what we see is that there are genealogies in scripture that pull names out without telling you they're doing it, when they have the agenda of really just showing the connection between A to Z. What's Ezra's main point? I'm connected in the Aaronic line.
I'm connected to Aaron. I'm not giving you all the fathers and sons. What's Matthew's point in his genealogy? Jesus is the King of the Jews.
He's the rightful descendant of Abraham, the rightful descendant of David. I'm not really interested right now in all the details of the father-son relationships we're getting to the point. So now we come to Genesis chapter five, turn back to Genesis chapter five.
And the point is made that Moses intention here is not to give us details about father-son relationships, rather Moses point is simply to say Adam to Noah, there's a direct link, there's a direct line. So that is certainly a possible Bible position, but let's look at the details of the text. Verse three, when Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness after his image and named him Seth.
Okay, well, that's pretty clear there. The father-son connection. In fact, the verb that's being used there is in the hip pile form, which probably makes no sense to you.
It barely makes sense to me. But every time that verb for fathered is used in the hip pile, it always relates to an actual father to an actual son. The text is explicit.
And we come to Seth, look at the language it appears again in verse six, when Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered Enosh. Do you see how it sounds different than merely saying the son of? It doesn't say Enosh was the son of Seth and maybe there's a bunch of generations in between. Rather, it's very clear the fathering relationship.
Furthermore, this is absolutely concrete in the case of Lamech. Not only does Lamech in verse 28 father a son, in verse 29, he called his name Noah. Now you might really love your parents.
Generally, you don't let grandma and grandpa name the baby. Lamech is naming his own son. It was his right.
Lamech is the one naming Noah. So ironclad in the case of Adam naming and fathering Seth, we see that Adam named Seth back up in verse 25. It was Adam and Eve who gave birth to Seth and named him.
We see Lamech naming Noah in verse 28. And then in verse 32, when we read that Noah fathered Shem, Ham and Japheth, we're gonna read later that those were in fact, Noah's biological descendants. So right here in the record, you have example after example, after example, concrete of fathers bringing sons into the world.
And naming them. Not only that, but what is the cumulative effect of reading all of these numbers? Cumulative effect is that this is actually a high priority for Moses. He's intending to convey and communicate something by the numbers.
They're not merely an accident and they're not inconsequential. In fact, you'll find that there's a formula, really like a mathematical formula that goes all the way through this genealogy. It goes like this.
A lived for X years and then fathered B. A lived Y years after he'd fathered B. A's whole life lasted X plus Y years. Say, well, of course, I mean, that's just kind of how genealogies work. That sounds normal.
It's not how genealogies usually work. Turn over to Genesis 36. And I wanna show you, this certainly Genesis five doesn't look like Matthew's genealogy.
It doesn't look like what we read in first Chronicles. I wanna show you, it doesn't even match later genealogies here in the book of Genesis. Genesis chapter 36, we're reading here about Esau's descendants.
And this is kind of more the type of genealogy that we're used to finding in the Bible. These are the generations of Esau, that is Edom. This is that generations, genealogies.
This is Esau's line. This is recorded by the spirit. It's intended for our benefit.
How does it read? Verse two, Esau took his wives from the Canaanites, aided the daughter of Elon the Hittite, Oholibama. I thought that would be a cool name to have. Oholibama, the daughter of Anna, the daughter of Zibion the Hivite, and Basemath, Ishmael's daughter, the sister of Nebaoth.
And Adah bore to Esau Eliphaz, Basemath bore Ruel, and Oholibama bore Jeush, Jelum, and Korah. These are the sons of Esau who were born to him in the land of Canaan. Then Esau took his wives, his sons, his daughters, and all the members of his household, his livestock, all his beasts, and all his property that he had acquired in the land of Canaan.
He went into a land away from his brother Jacob for their possessions were too great for them to dwell together. The land of their sojournings could not support them because of their livestock. So Esau settled in the hill country of Seir.
Now, I'm not gonna keep reading this entire one. We'll get there at some point. But did you notice how different that was? Remarkably different from what we read in Genesis chapter five.
I mean, this is concerned with kind of how the family's spreading out, the locations that they're ending up in. I'm not thinking of it this way. Like if you were to do Christmas letter stereotypes, yeah, that'd be fun.
Right, there's the Christmas letter that you get, and it's written in, it's just kind of, it's a flowing thought. It's been a great year. Bob retired.
We welcomed two new grandkids. We went to these three different places. I mean, I'm not reading that and thinking, okay, I just got the exact chronology.
I know there's other Christmas letters we get. So in January, we did this. And then in February, we did this.
And then in March, we did this. And I'm, okay, that's a chronology. It's ordered, it's sequential, there's dates, it's specific.
And I would dare say these are obvious differences. So when you come to Genesis chapter five, and you read things like verse three, when Adam had lived 130 years, a number and a measurement. Then he fathered a son in his own likeness after his image and named him Seth.
And the days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years. And he had other sons and daughters. That's all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died.
I don't know how you could possibly understand that, apart from understanding it to convey chronology. I was astounded reading. I was astounded reading how many conservative theologians would even tip their hand to say, well, there are numbers here, but God didn't design for these to be added up and viewed sequentially.
I'd say, what do you think we're supposed to do with them? I mean, you have more numbers than you do names. It's like plainly obvious, so at least have an explanation. So some would say, well, the numbers are symbolic.
That one is quite interesting. There are people who take this, that the numbers are symbolic. You know what I was unable to find was anyone who could tell you what the symbols meant.
A few will take a stab, 777 years. There's some explanations on him. But other than that, I mean, what does it mean that Adam lived 930 years? If it's a symbol, then it must mean something.
Like we need to be able to take the symbol and then say, here's what the symbol means. It's symbolic of this reality. So Genesis chapter five, as I would posit, it is designed by God to convey to us the family line of Adam to Noah.
There's incredible theological lessons that we're gonna look at and explore next week, but it is in fact also a chronology. So yes, I believe it is Christotelic. It is showing the line that the Messiah will come from.
That is an ultimate purpose, and yet it did not need to be chronological, and yet it is. One more thing, and I think that this is fascinating when it comes to the discussions on chronology. Let's just say, let's just say that there were generations missing.
Two problems with that. Number one, even those that would assume generations are missing have a hard time closing the gap from what you see here, which is less than 2,000 years, to reconciling that with the idea that people have been on the planet for millions of years. And you understand how many gaps we would need in the genealogies? Matthew one, we're talking about Matthew dropped three here, Matthew dropped three here, Ezra dropped six over here.
I mean, we're talking about hundreds of generations that would be missing if that were the case. And then not only that, but I believe prima facie, on the face of it, the way you read it mathematically, it wouldn't matter anyway, it's impossible. Look again, verse three, when Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness after his image and named him Seth.
Let's say that then there's a bunch of generations that are missing, that are not recorded here. Well, the days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years. Thus all the days Adam lived were 930 and he died.
Verse six, when Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered an Osh. Seth lived after he fathered an Osh 807 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Seth were 912 years and he died.
Do you understand the chain link there? Even if you were to try to insert gaps of missing generations, the way that the math is constructed is unbroken. It's unbreakable because you have the exact date of how old Adam was when he gave birth to his son, how long he lived after that son, how old that son was when he had his son, how long he lived after that, the way it's constructed requires chronology. Now it's true that there's probably some rounding that goes on there.
I doubt that Adam lived 130 years to the day and then he died on his birthday. So certainly these are rounded up and down. I mean, I don't know the exact details, but it gives us at least the sense of an approximate chronology, an approximate chronology.
So what I wanna leave us for this morning. Well, whenever I dive into a text of scripture like this, I gotta tell you these studies always absolutely thrill my heart. And the reason is because I like you can get unnerved sometimes when I hear arguments against the clarity of scripture, or I kind of start to think that there's some things that maybe I don't know that I need to know or some things that I'm missing.
My soul is so refreshed to go back to the basics or myself, what do I know to be true? Well, I know that all scripture has been breathed out by God and that it's profitable for instruction, for a proof and for training in righteousness. And then I believe in the perspective of scripture that God speaks in such ways to be understood. He designed it not to conceal, but to reveal.
And then when I come back and I just humbly sit before the text, sometimes it doesn't come right away. It takes some elbow grease, if you will, you gotta kind of roll up your sleeves and get after it. But then when that clarity comes, you know what it does? It just produces a conviction.
It produces a confidence. We're not just making this up saying, you know what, the earth is young and I read a magazine that promoted that idea and I kind of latched onto it. And that's what I've always believed and that's what I articulate.
I know I believe it because it's exactly the way God recorded it here for me. And I believe that's actually what he intended me to take away from it. I hope that you find great relief and encouragement from coming back to the simple study of scripture and letting the text speak for itself.
So I hope that excursus was beneficial. I think there's probably some things that I left out. I had about 50 pages of notes coming into this, which is about 40 pages too many.
So I was trying to cut a bunch of things out and cut it down. But next week, we're gonna come back and we're gonna explore, assuming now that this is a chronology, the rich theological realities that God intended to convey for us through, of all things, a genealogy. Will you pray with me? Father, I thank you for the marvelous distinctions that we get in your word.
And I'm such a boring guy. If I were to write a Bible, it would be nowhere near as fascinating and as glorious that you chose to convey truth to us, not merely in a spiritual encyclopedia, but rather you taught us in a variety of ways. As a writer of Hebrews would say, in many portions and in many ways.
And so Lord, I thank you for even this record that we have. I thank you for your desire to reveal to us where we began. And I would say, even to some degree, how long ago you created Adam.
Lord, what a gift this is to us. I pray that you'd thrill our hearts, that you'd refresh us in our study of the scriptures this week with these realities in mind. Lord, thank you for the confidence that we can have in your trustworthiness.
We love you and praise you in Jesus' name, amen.
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