Genesis 5:1-32: Is There Any Significance in a Genealogy?

Genesis 5:1-32: Is There Any Significance in a Genealogy?

We’ve been working our way passage by passage through the book of Genesis, and today the next passage we come to is Genesis 5:1-32, so I’ll be reading a selection of verses from that passage. It says,

1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. 2 Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. 3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. 4 The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters. 5 Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died. 6 When Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered Enosh. 7 Seth lived after he fathered Enosh 807 years and had other sons and daughters. 8 Thus all the days of Seth were 912 years, and he died. 9 When Enosh had lived 90 years, he fathered Kenan. 10 Enosh lived after he fathered Kenan 815 years and had other sons and daughters. 11 Thus all the days of Enosh were 905 years, and he died. 12 When Kenan had lived 70 years, he fathered Mahalalel. 13 Kenan lived after he fathered Mahalalel 840 years and had other sons and daughters. 14 Thus all the days of Kenan were 910 years, and he died. 15 When Mahalalel had lived 65 years, he fathered Jared. 16 Mahalalel lived after he fathered Jared 830 years and had other sons and daughters. 17 Thus all the days of Mahalalel were 895 years, and he died. 18 When Jared had lived 162 years, he fathered Enoch. 19 Jared lived after he fathered Enoch 800 years and had other sons and daughters. 20 Thus all the days of Jared were 962 years, and he died. 21 When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. 22 Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. 23 Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. 24 Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. 25 When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he fathered Lamech. 26 Methuselah lived after he fathered Lamech 782 years and had other sons and daughters. 27 Thus all the days of Methuselah were 969 years, and he died. 28 When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son 29 and called his name Noah, saying, “Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.” 30 Lamech lived after he fathered Noah 595 years and had other sons and daughters. 31 Thus all the days of Lamech were 777 years, and he died. 32 After Noah was 500 years old, Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth. 

May God bless the reading of his Word.

Let’s pray: Father, your Word is more to be desired than gold and sweeter also than honey. So help us to see its value, taste its sweetness, and experience its power this morning through the Holy Spirit. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen. 

A Puritan pastor named Richard Baxter once said, “I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.” And, friends, that’s also my intention as well this morning. Because, unless Jesus returns first, the simple fact is that, within 100 years, just about every person in this room will be dead. We start the process of dying from the moment we’re born. As James 4:14 says, “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” You know, it’s interesting how, the older we get, the more we wonder, “Where did it all go? It seems like only yesterday I was so much younger and busy doing this or that. How did all those years go by so quickly?” Well, it’s because our life on this earth is a mist that appears for a few brief moments and then vanishes. 

And that’s why my job as a pastor is, in many ways, to prepare you for death. How’s that for a job description, right? To prepare you to die—and not just to die but, as Puritans like Baxter would say, to die well. Another Puritan named Edmund Barker once said that “Every Christian ha[s] two great works to do in the world, to live well, and to die well.” Now, when most people today think about what it means to “die well,” I imagine they probably think of things such as palliative care and advanced directives and things like that. If you do a Google search for the phrase “dying well,” most of the results are about those kinds of topics. Yet, as helpful as those things can be, I believe the Bible leads us to recognize that there are other matters that are far more important to consider than any of those practical arrangements. If we want to die well, we have to be spiritually prepared to die. 

Because, make no mistake: death is coming. The question regarding our death isn’t one of “if” but of “when.” So, think of this discussion not as an airplane flight attendant giving passengers instructions about what to do in the unlikely event of an emergency but rather as an Army instructor talking with a group aspiring paratroopers who are mere minutes away from jumping out of an airplane for the first time and giving them instructions about how to complete that jump successfully. Death is coming—and it’s coming quickly—so we need to be prepared. As Charles Spurgeon once said, “We are flying, as on some mighty eagle's wing, swiftly on towards eternity. Let us, then, talk about preparing to die. It is the greatest thing we have to do, and we have soon to do it, so let us talk and think something about it.” So how, then, can we die well? That’s the question I hope to answer before our time together this morning is over. 

And our main passage today, Genesis 5:1-32, certainly turns our attention in that direction. If there’s anything this passage sets before us, it’s the reality of death. Now, it starts out in verses 1-2 by reminding us of how God originally created people in his image. And part of what that means is that were created to live forever. However, as we’re about to see, that’s not the way things turned out. Because of Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God, recorded in Genesis 3, God announced some very serious consequences. And we read about one of those consequences in Genesis 3:19, where God says to Adam, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” So, that’s how death entered the world. 

And we then see that playing out in Genesis 5. This chapter is basically a genealogy from Adam to Noah. Now, the previous chapter gave us a very brief genealogy tracing Adam’s line through his son Cain. However, this chapter gives us a much more extensive and detailed genealogy tracing Adam’s line through his son Seth. And the reason for that difference in extensiveness and detail, I believe, is because the descendants of Cain would eventually be wiped out by the worldwide flood, whereas the descendants of Seth would include Noah, who was rescued from the flood, as we’ll see next week, and from whom the rest of the human race would come. 

It’s also significant to note that the fact that this genealogy is given is a strong indication that the first few chapters of Genesis are intended to be understood as real historical fact. Sometimes, certain Bible interpreters will try to write off the first few chapters of Genesis as legend or as some sort of myth that isn’t intended to teach actual history but rather simply to teach various moral or spiritual truths. However, Genesis 5 doesn’t really allow for that option. It certainly seems as though the author of Genesis 5 intends for us to interpret even these opening chapters of the book as a record of actual historical events. 

So, looking at verses 3-5, we can see how this genealogy begins: 3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. 4 The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters. 5 Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died. And, as we look at the rest of that chapter, we see that it pretty much follows that basic template for each generation. It talks about how long the man lived prior to becoming a father for the first time, who he fathered, how long he lived after he fathered that first son, and then the total number of years he lived until he died.  

By the way, there are different theories about why people lived so long back then. It’s kind of hard to imagine people living that long, but apparently it happened—perhaps because of something different in the characteristics of the earth or the physiology of human beings before the Flood. Whatever it was, though, that’s a long time for someone to live. Like, can you imagine being 300 years old and people picking on you for being too young to really know what you’re talking about? Or maybe some of the 800-year-olds are over here are having a conversation about youth culture among the young and hip and rowdy 200-year-old crowd. Yet, regardless of the fact that they lived for such an unbelievably long time, they all died eventually. 

Now, one notable exception is the record of Enoch in verses 21-24. At the young age of 365, God apparently exempted Enoch from death. That kind of thing is only recorded one other time in the Bible, with the prophet Elijah. I guess the lesson for us to take away from that is that God has the prerogative to do as he wishes. 

Yet, aside from Enoch, there’s one statement that we find repeated over and over and over again in this passage: “and he died.” “All the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died.” “All the days of Seth were 912 years, and he died.” “All the days of Enosh were 905 years, and he died.” “All the days of Kenan were 910 years, and he died.” And on and on it goes. Now, any time the Bible repeats anything, we always want to pay close attention to that. Since there was no such thing as bold font or italic font or underlining back in biblical times, repetition was a very important way in which biblical authors would emphasize something. So, we always want to pay careful attention to repetition. And this phrase, “and he died,” is repeated not just once but eight times. Eight times, this passage states that so-and-so lived for this long and then “he died.” It’s as if the biblical author’s going out of his way to emphasize the fact that, in this post-Fall world, death is now a reality of life. And that’s actually what I believe is the main idea of this passage. Death is a reality of life. Ever since humanity rebelled against God in the Garden of Eden, everyone dies eventually.

Now, one of the big questions this raises is, “How, therefore, can our lives be meaningful? If we’re only here for an incredibly short amount of time, and then our lives are just…over, how can our lives be meaningful? How can they be something other than a pointless exercise in futility?” That’s a question people have been asking for almost as long as the human race has existed. 

For example, the author of Ecclesiastes, most likely King Solomon, documents his search for meaning in life through various earthly endeavors. He tells us how he gave himself wholeheartedly to all kinds of different things like the pursuit of earthly accomplishments, earthly possessions, and earthly pleasures. And he ended up living quite the life. As you read about Solomon’s endeavors, you come to see that he was basically like Elon Musk and John Rockefeller and Hugh Hefner all in the same person. Many people would say that he had it all and loved to enjoy many different things.  

Yet, it’s very sobering to read what Solomon ended up concluding about all of these things. He says in Ecclesiastes 2:11, “Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.” And that’s pretty much the kind of thing we read over and over again throughout the subsequent chapters of Ecclesiastes. Solomon tries this over here and then pursues that over there but can’t find anything in this world that seems to have any lasting meaning. And the reason for that, he says, is that, no matter what you enjoy or accomplish in this life, death puts an end to it all. As he says in Ecclesiastes 9:5, “For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten.” In other words, the knowledge that you’re going to die one day in the not-too-distant future and that the memory of you will soon be forgotten makes it pretty much impossible to view anything you enjoy or accomplish as truly meaningful. It’s all a “striving,” or a chasing, after the wind. 

So, today, as we try to answer the question, “Is there any way life can have meaning?” I think we have to conclude with Solomon that the answer’s “no”—not as long as death rules over us and has the final say about everything we do. To borrow a line from Shakespeare’s character MacBeth, life really is “a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” It’s utterly pointless and futile. 

And that leaves us with a rather limited number of options for how to respond. One option that some people end up maybe not choosing but at least experiencing is depression. It turns out that if you really begin to dwell on the idea that you’re basically just a chunk of meat on a really big rock hurtling through an unimaginably immense universe that could care less about your existence and that the random chemical reactions that comprise your conscious thoughts will soon come to an end, that’s kind of depressing to think about. So, depression is a very understandable experience. Why even get out of bed in the morning if it’s all pointless anyway? 

Then, a second option for how to live in light of our impending death is denial. Just live in a state of functional denial that you’re going to die one day. Let yourself believe that death is something that happens to other people, not something that happens to you, and then go about your life as if it’s simply going to continue indefinitely. 

Then, a third option that may be the most common one for people in our society to choose is distraction. This often goes along with denial and basically involves busying ourselves with enough activities and earthly pursuits that we never really have time to think about the larger realities of life and death. We’re too busy hurrying from this responsibility over here to that activity over there to even give a second thought to how momentary all of it is. 

And then, there’s the fourth option of delusion. Just tell yourself that the things you do are meaningful even though you’ll soon die and be forgotten. Try your best to create meaning ex nihilo, as it were—or out of nothing. Speak meaning into existence. So what if human existence seems absurd from a logical perspective? Your life can have meaning because you say it has meaning. So just go out there and find some inspiring cliches on social media and make the declaration with all the enthusiasm you can muster that your life matters. 

So, as best as I can tell, those are the options that are available to the secularly-minded people of our society. You don’t even have to choose just one; you can mix a few of them together and see how that works. But these are the basic options that are available: depression, denial, distraction, and delusion. 

However, thankfully, the Bible offers us a fifth option, and that is deliverance. Through Jesus, the Bible says, we can actually be delivered from death. Even though we may still experience physical death one day, death for us won’t be the end but rather the beginning of life like never before. Instead of being the gateway into nothingness, death becomes the gateway into eternal life in the very presence of God. And just like that, life is filled with meaning—because it’s carried over into eternity.

It’s true that, in our natural condition, death rules over us in the sense that it casts a dark shadow over aspect of our lives. Yet, the good news of the gospel is that Jesus has defeated death. In 2 Timothy 1:10, Paul describes Jesus as the one “who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” The way Jesus accomplished that actually began with Jesus becoming human himself and voluntarily experiencing death when he allowed himself to be crucified on a Roman cross. He did that because our sins against God needed to be punished. God’s justice had to be satisfied. You know, there’s been a lot of conversation in recent years about justice in our society. And perhaps a good rudimentary description of justice is everyone getting what they deserve. Justice in society is achieved when everyone gets what they deserve. Well, the fact of the matter is that, because of our rebellion against an infinitely good and holy God, we deserve to be punished for all eternity. That’s justice. And, typically, that’s what would happen. We’d be the ones to suffer the punishment for our sins. But, in his mercy, God the Father sent his own Son Jesus to suffer that punishment in our place on the cross. He endured the punishment we deserved. 

Yet, that in itself didn’t constitute victory over death. Jesus couldn’t possibly deliver us from death if he couldn’t even deliver himself from death. A dead Savior, after all, is no Savior at all. Thankfully, though, Jesus didn’t stay dead but victoriously resurrected from the grave so that he’s now able to offer us an opportunity to share in his victory. 

That’s why, in John 11:25-26, Jesus says to a woman who was grieving the death of her brother, 25 “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” So, whoever “believes” in Jesus in the sense of putting their trust in him to deliver them from sin and death, even though they may die physically, will ultimately live spiritually. And, in that eternal sense, they “shall never die,” Jesus says. We also read in 1 Corinthians 15:20-22, 20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. So Jesus broke the pattern of death not only for himself, as Enoch did in Genesis 5, but for everyone who puts their trust in him. Enoch may have escaped death, but Jesus conquered death. 

So, the most important question you should be considering this morning is, Have you yet put your trust in this crucified and resurrected Jesus to rescue you from sin and death? Understand that you can’t earn God’s favor or merit eternal life. It’s a free gift that’s only received by looking to Jesus and putting your full trust and confidence in him. And until you’ve done that, you’re not ready to die. And perhaps, even today, you can sense that in your heart. Something within you is telling you that what I’m saying is true. 

You know, when I was a teenager, I was pretty good friends with two brothers named Mike and Cody. And one of the things we liked to do was go hunting. So, one day, their dad was with us, and we were in a field that they owned sighting in a new hunting rifle. And I guess we didn’t have binoculars or something, because we would shoot at the target and then pile onto the pickup truck, and their dad would drive the fifty or a hundred yards to see where it had been hit. And instead of turning the truck around every time, Mike and Cody’s dad would just throw it into reverse when he was driving toward the target. And so, the three of us teenagers were there sitting on the tailgate as this truck was driving in reverse. But Mike I guess wasn’t holding on very well and fell off the tailgate and got run over by this big crew cab truck. And to this day, I can still feel the sickening bump of this truck running over his body. I then remember all of us jumping out of the truck and seeing Mike there lying in the field writhing in pain with a big gash on his head. And I’ll never forget what he kept on saying. “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.” And normally Mike was a pretty tough guy. He was a football player and a woodsman and all the rest. But as he lay there in that field, he was basically crying, not because of the pain but because he didn’t want to die. 

Now thankfully, Mike did end up being life-flighted out of there and making a full recovery—praise God. But it was very revealing to see—in that moment of crisis—what was truly in his heart. And I wonder whether a similar fear is somewhere down in the depths of your heart today. If you found yourself staring death in the face, what would you be saying? Would you be ready for that? Would you be ready to face God? Because the reality, of course, is that that day will eventually come for each one of us. Even if it’s not today or tomorrow or the next day, the day will come when your sojourn on this earth is over and you find yourself standing before God. Are you ready for that?

You know, I began this morning by saying that, in a manner of speaking, my job description as a pastor is to prepare you to die. Well, I want to let you know that the only way you can be prepared to die is through Jesus and by putting your trust in him and turning your life over to him. Now, on the other hand, if you’re satisfied with the shallow cliches and vague sentiments spoken at most funerals nowadays as your comfort in the face of death, then I’m not sure I really have anything to offer you today. But if you want more than those shallow cliches and you want a hope that’s real, I’m here to tell you that that hope is available—and his name is Jesus. 

Not only that, but there’s also plenty to consider for those of us who have already put our faith in Jesus and are confident that we’ll spend eternity with him. You’ll remember that I mentioned the concept not just of dying but of dying well. How are we able to die well? What do we have to do in order to prepare ourselves for that? Well, I have to say that putting our faith in Jesus is certainly the foundational element but is by no means the only element of dying well. If we want to die well, then we have to live well. To state it concisely—and feel free to write this down if you’re taking notes—the key to being able to die well tomorrow is to live well today. The key to being able to die well tomorrow is to live well today.

And there are three reasons why I say that. First of all, living well is the basis of our assurance that we really are in Christ and that we really have been saved. If we’ve truly put our faith in Jesus for salvation, it’s going to show up in our life. We’ll be different people—not perfect, but different. So our assurance of salvation is directly tied to the life we live. Someone who isn’t actively living for Jesus has no biblical basis to think they’re saved, while someone who is living for Jesus and loves Jesus and desires to glorify Jesus with their life has a very strong biblical basis to believe they’re saved and can have incredible peace in their heart as they anticipate their transition from this life into the next. They have no reason to be anxious and every reason to be filled with peace. 

In addition, living well is not only the basis of our assurance but also the source of our satisfaction as we look back on a life well lived. That’s another reason why I say that the key to being able to die well tomorrow is to live well today. Part of dying well is being able to look back over our lives and be satisfied with what we’ve used our lives to do. So…how are you using your life? What kind of an impact are you making? What kind of a legacy are you leaving? It’s been said that “the best use of life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.” Are you doing that? Are you telling people about Jesus? Are you seeking to invest spiritually in the people around you? Are you striving to advance the Kingdom of God?

Another way to evaluate your life in the present is to ask yourself, how would you live if you knew you only had one year left on this earth? What would you stop doing? What would you start doing? And then, live that way. Stop doing what you believe you’d stop doing, and start doing what you believe you’d start doing. When the great theologian Jonathan Edwards was a young man, he wrote down a resolution that he intended to guide his life. He wrote, “Resolved, that I will live so as I shall wish I had done when I come to die.” Let that be your resolution as well. Live the way you think you’ll wish you had lived when it’s time to die. If you don’t think you’ll wish that you’d given more attention to gaining earthly prestige, accumulating lots of money, keeping up with the latest fashions, or being engrossed in the things of this world in general, then stop giving so much attention to those things—and instead focus your life on things that have eternal value. 

Then a third and final reason why the key to dying well tomorrow is living well today is that living well allows us to die with the joyful anticipation of heavenly rewards. If we’ve gone through our entire lives as if this life is all there is, we’re going to be sorely disappointed when this life is over. The day of our death will be a day of despair rather than a day of rejoicing. However, if we’ve gone through our lives with the mentality that this life is just a dress rehearsal for eternity and therefore have spent our lives preparing for eternity and laying up treasures in heaven, as Jesus tell us to do in Matthew 6, then when we come to the day when our transition into eternity is immanent, it’s a wonderful day. We get to joyfully anticipate enjoying the heavenly rewards we’ve spent our lives storing up. And that joyful anticipation is a key component of dying well. 

So dying well involves having confident assurance of our salvation, deep satisfaction with the way we’ve lived, and joyful anticipation of heavenly rewards. And experiencing those things in the future requires being very thoughtful and deliberate about the way we live in the present. Dying well tomorrow is only possible to the degree that we live well today. 

You know, having been a hospice chaplain for three years before I became a pastor, I can tell you that I’ve seen many people die. And I can also tell you that there’s an enormous difference between those on their deathbed who have lived for the Lord and those who haven’t. I think Spurgeon says it best when he states that, “It is a grand thing to see a man dying full of life.” How wonderful to see someone on their deathbed and yet more full of life than they’ve ever been. When someone has faithfully lived for Jesus and been devoted to Jesus and made Jesus the center of their life, then I have to agree with Spurgeon that “all the glories of midday are eclipsed by the marvels of sunset.”