GENESIS 4:17-5:32
Translations Used - NIV, NET, ESV

4:17-22
- Families, Cities, Culture (music), Technology (forging uses bronze and iron)
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4:23-24
- Wives plural?
- Revenge multiplied?
- Lamek takes God’s mercy upon Cain as his license for violence
- "God’s grace to Cain becomes an ugly counterfeit" (LaCocque)
- Lamek is Cain with the volume turned up – a life of anger and bitterness and vengefulness

Humanity is off to the races making culture, building cities…but still the problem of the brother, the problem of the other, persists.
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4:25-26
-1st type of worship in this way of calling on the name of the Lord

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Chapter 4 is Bookended with birth of Abel and Seth
Eve’s words with Abel "I've created" versus with Seth, "God has granted"
Seth is the new Abel – the line of the woman

In Chapter 4 we are presented with two lines/ways of life
1. Way/Line of Cain/Serpent - go off and make a city, and fight and struggle - murderous, arrogant speech – death and violence
2. Way/Line of Seth/Woman - gratitude, begin to call on the name of the Lord

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Chapter 5 Genealogy
- 10 generations between Adam and the Flood
- Image bearer idea repeated
- Summaries of special people
- Long lifespans

Mesopotamian Kings List
- 10 generations from beginning to Flood
- Long Life spans
- Enoch and Enmeduranki as the 7th generation and both taken up into the spiritual/heavenly realm
- Noah and Ziusudra – both the hero who God speaks to in order to save himself and his family and animals from an impending flood

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Where you’ve come from influences who you are.

“A genogram is a way of recording and interpreting your family's history so you can better understand the genetic, medical, social, and cultural aspects of your family.”

Think about your family tree.
What patterns are present?
What were/are the key relationships of your parents and grandparents like?
Is there any history of abuse?
History of similar addictions or failures?
How did your family talk about money, sex, grief/loss, anger, vulnerability and trust, success, feelings?

What has your line been?
- Who were the vengeful Lamech’s?
- Who were the Enochs?
- What do you need to leave behind or intentionally rewrite?

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Main point - Genealogies remind us of God’s faithfulness and activity in human history.

ESV 5:29 – “out of the ground”
Noah – comfort, hope, rescue
- New type of Adam
- Foreshadow of Jesus

This translation has a sort of earthy vibe to it that resonates with the rest of the biblical narrative.
- God is always working through us and with us
- He’s active in the material world not just the spiritual

Something about this God that he works in and through history and humanity.

"This kind of story easily leads to an incarnational faith that runs toward real crucifixion and real resurrection." - Paraphrase Walter Brueggemann

Something about a genealogy, no matter how you read it, that testifies that God is working in the world through humans.

New Type of Prayer
"God, if it be from you will, bring it from the sky.
But if not from the sky, bring it from the ground of my life."
- Carry me through this, teach me, develop me, redeem this, grow my faith, keep me faithful.

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Genesis 5 shows up in Luke 3

Jesus as the new Adam.
Jesus as the snake crusher (Luke 4 and onward)
Jesus as the reversal of the curse, hence Luke tells his genealogy in reverse order and uses it to tee up Jesus vs. the serpent in Luke 4.

Jesus invites people into a new way of life, a new family.
To those caught up it the way of Cain, of 77 times vengeance.
Jesus will say, not 7, but 77 times. (Matthew 18)
Jesus comes to set us free from all of the brokenness in our family trees that have wounded us and misshaped us

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Genealogies are a reminder that the story was always going somewhere.
Your story is going somewhere.
Trust Him.
The God who has been faithful from Adam all the way to Jesus, all the way to today.