Let's say that your grandfather was the most notorious crook in history. Oh my gosh, well then as a grandchild you got one of two choices. Right, right. You can either disavow and distance yourself from him. Or you can claim that you are even worse.
Well, let's find out what happens in Kane's family today. On More Than Inc.
Well, good morning. I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy. And we have our Bibles in front of us. Do you have your Bible in front of you?
I have mine. Because we are reading through Genesis and we're in chapter four of Genesis. And last time, why don't you tell us what happened last time?
Okay, we had the story of Cain and Abel. We had the first children born and we had the first murder. First murder. Right. And we're on the same page.
God asking Cain, what have you done? And Cain lies. I don't know where my brother is. Am I my brother's keeper? Incredibly famous line.
And God continues to question Cain and then finally says, you know, you don't want to be with me. I'm going to let you go. Right. And Cain makes his choice to walk away from the presence of the Lord. That's where we left it off.
Yep. He alienates himself from society. He alienates himself from God. And he's on his own. And he's going to the land of Nod, which, by the way, Nod means wine.
He needs wandering.
So he's off wandering. But we haven't stopped the story on Cain.
Sounds like he went out the door and there's nothing else to talk about. But he's in this estranged relationship from God. Yeah. Not because God cast him out, but his own actions caused him to cast himself out. And now he's a wanderer.
Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, if this was a science fiction piece, he would have just been disintegrated when he did this horrible stuff with God. But he's not. And interestingly enough, God even provides him some protection so he's not ruthlessly killed while he's wandering.
And this is the mercy of God on Cain. Yeah. So if you hear anyone talking about the mark of Cain, we don't know what that was. We don't know what nobody knows. We don't know what it was, but a lot of people take that wrongly.
They'll say the mark of Cain was a horrible kind of judgmental thing. And it wasn't. It was a protective device. All you have to do is read the story. Just read the story.
Read the story. Many people see the mark itself as a curse, and it wasn't. It was protective.
So anyway, the story does still continue with Cain, unbelievably, even though he's killed his own brother. And today we are in the middle of chapter four of Genesis, and we're going to see where the story continues. Continues with Cain. And then the time is telescoped here. It's really collapsed down because clearly some time has passed between verse 16 and verse 17.
Right. Because all of a sudden we find Cain all grown up and married. Right. Now, the question hangs in the air: well, where did this wife come from? Right.
You know, we don't have a definitive answer for that, but it's probably true that Adam and Eve had produced a great number of children. By this time, and they were so genetically diverse, they married this first generation, intermarried, and it was not a problem. There was no law set about marrying your siblings or your first cousins.
Well, if there wasn't anybody else on earth, right.
So, so yeah. And a lot of scientific Christians will say what you said, basically, there was so much genetic. Power in their genes. Wealth, diversity, that the need to kind of intermix with other people was not that necessary because they had like a superset of all human genes.
So that's really an interesting line of thought.
So you can explore that on your own. But anyway, I don't have an explanation, but here she is. Cain experiences his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. Right. By the way, we're in verse 17.
We're in verse 17, Proverbs chapter 4. And when he, or when he, Cain, built a city, he called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch.
So. Huh.
So the first thing we're told after Cain walking away from the presence of the Lord is he begins a family and then he builds himself a city for his own way and names it after him. Names it after no, God is nowhere present in this half of the chapter until the very last line. Right, right. Names it after his son, like I intend to establish a family that's after me, not after God, right? Right, right.
Kind of built in your own image, named by your own offspring. Yeah, this is very much a very selfish kind of perspective. And he doesn't seem to be wandering when he's building this city. It's true.
Well, I like he builds himself a place. He builds himself a place. He doesn't find a place. Right. So what he does, you know, I said before that he was alienated from society.
This is his way of creating his own society that he won't be alienated from. But it is a godless place. It's a godless place. We're going to find out. Generations of godlessness getting worse and worse and worse.
Yeah. And the fact that he names the city after his own son, Enoch, is a very self-centered, anti-God kind of thing. Right. It's a prideful thing, is what it is.
So this is clearly against what God said his future was going to be. And Cain says, well, I'll see about that. And in his pride, he does this.
So it's interesting that with verse 18 now begins the very first of the genealogies that we. That the Old Testament is so identified with, but but Genesis in particular. But this first tracking through these next five or six generations after Enoch or after Cain are so interesting. There is no mention of God here. And it's kind of this progression from bad to worse.
Yeah, we'll see that. And by the way, before we get into 18 and we look at this genealogy, I suggest you pull out a piece of paper and a pencil. Like I did, look, there's mine. Very good. And I made like a family tree of what's going on.
I've got one here, too. It's not as detailed as yours. Just because it helps me a whole lot.
So, and it'll come in handy in a little bit. You need to know the players. Yeah. Yeah. You can't know the players without a scorecard.
So here we go.
So we have a lot of time passing, and we don't have dates or numbers on these. And some of the later genealogies, we know how old the men were when they fathered their children. But here we don't have that.
So the writer here must be communicating something other than just how old they were.
So let's start reading verse 18. Look at who they are. To Enoch was born Erod. And Erad fathered Mehujael. Very good.
And Mahuzhel fathered Methushael.
Now that's not the same name as the one that's going to come from another line later. And Methuselah fathered Lamech. and Lamic took two wives.
Okay, so presumably that's important because up to this point they were all just doing what Adam and Eve had done. Yeah. Recognizing that one man for one woman is good. Right. Right.
But something about Lamech, this violent... We pause at Lamech. Yes. And that's kind of where the whole thing was driving towards, was the character of Lamech.
So let's read about Lamech. 19. Why don't you pick it up? Yeah, and Lamech took two wives, which, by the way, is against the design from Genesis 2, 224.
So Lamech took two wives. The name of one was Adah, and the name of the other, Zillah. Adda bore jabel. He was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. His brother's name was Jubal.
and he was father of all those who play the lyre and pipe. H'm Zillah also bore Tubulkane he was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron, and the sister of Tubulkane was Na'ama.
So that's a lot of detail right here in this generation. It's like this pause. We pause at Lamech and his children. At these two wives and their respective children. Why do you think we're taking this pause here?
Yes. Well, If you're a Bible scholar, you'll ask that question, you'll write it on a piece of paper, and as you continue to read through Genesis, we'll see if these names pop up again.
So don't lose track of them. Totally strikable.
So, here we're going to get a little song that Lamech sings to his wives. Oh, in 23, yeah, it's a song. Yeah. It's a disgusting song, ain't it?
Well, it it's yeah. Listen to it. Lamech said to his wives, Adda and Zillah, hear my voice, you wives of Lamech. Listen to what I say. I've killed a man for wounding me, and a young man for striking me, If Cain's revenge is sevenfold, Then Lamech's is seventy sevenfold.
Yeah. He wrote a song to sing to his wives about him killing a man who had only wounded him. A young man at that? Isn't it interesting that he's bragging about his violent response to anybody who opposes him being completely out of proportion to the crime? Yeah, yeah.
There's so much arrogance in this. There's even a comparison with the horrible guilt of Cain, his great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather, who's way back. Might have still been living, actually, given how long people lived. Yeah, it's very likely, in fact, almost for sure that he is still there. But I mean, to brag in a song to your wives about killing a young man who only had wounded him, and then to compare the heinousness of his crime to that of Cain, which was epic, which was epic.
I mean, well, Cain's the original murderer. Yeah. And here, five generations later, he's saying, oh, you thought Cain was bad. I'm the baddest of the bad. Right, right.
And he's bragging about it: this extravagant, excessive violence. Yeah. There's even some, there is even some, now this is a little speculative, but when he says Cain's revenge is sevenfold and Lamech's is 77fold. You remember the revenge that we talked about last time we were in chapter four with Cain was when God gave him the mark. Right.
God said, You know, if anyone touches you seven times, I'm going to hurt them, basically.
So, so the speculation here is: is Lamech actually saying that in the same way that God was going to avenge any death of Cain sevenfold, that here God Himself will avenge any death of Lamech, 70 or Lamech Himself, or Lamech and 70, 77 times more. Protectable. What I'm saying is that it is as though Cain walked around saying, God's my avenger, and it's going to be horrible to be seven times.
Now, is this Lamech? And I'm not sure this is a good interpretation, but is this Lamech saying, I'm so bad that God's going to protect me, just like my great-great-great-grandfather, and He's going to protect me not just seven times, but 77 times. God's on my side, He'll protect me from any down. Oh, I'm not sure. And I wonder if Lamech isn't saying, I am this much more powerful than Cain.
God only protected him seven times. Yeah, it can be taken either way. In either case, they're both full of pride. Full of arrogance. Arrogance.
Full of bluster. And over violence. Yeah, murder of another man. Yeah, and domination. Like, you better not cross me.
It's going to cost you. I'm the worst.
So you can only imagine why he addresses this to his wives. Except that, you know, we have opportunity to observe modern-day polygamy where we live. We do. And it is characterized by violence and domination. It has a strong plural wives.
And this is the beginning of it. And threats. And threats. And threats. Keeping them in line by threatening them.
I'm a dangerous guy. This is, hmm, here's the beginning of it right here. Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting because here we are the line of Cain versus the line of Abel, who's now dead, but the line of Cain, who started off this line in grotesque sin and walked away from God and murdered and stuff like that.
And here we are now, five or six generations after that. It's even worse. It's even worse. And, And even his offspring, Lamek is boasting about how much worse it's gotten.
However, in the midst of that, as we go through his ancestors before that, it's kind of interesting. It paints a picture of kind of like a growing culture, a growing humanity culture, because you got the guy who's actually in charge of food in a way, you know, tents and livestock and stuff like that, kind of food, livestock raising and stuff like that. And then you move to Jubil, who's kind of a musician, so you have a nod toward the arts. We are very cultured people.
Well, and storytelling, singing songs.
So we got the food down, we got the arts down, and then you move to kind of technology and science with when you get to Zilla, you know. And so I'm not Zilla, when you get to Toubulcane, yeah, the forger of Browns and Ire, which is very advanced, you know. And this is actually very like the cultural order that these things kind of come along in. This is what we see archaeologically. But what we see, even though for like a humanist, you look at this progression and say, oh, what a wonderfully progressing culture.
They move from just feeding themselves to actually appreciating the arts and appreciating technology and what they can do with bronze and iron, both big deals. Yeah, so bronze and iron aren't necessarily tools. They're weapons. They're weapons. So that's the irony of this entire thing.
It looks like kind of an encouraging progress of humanity. But At the end of it, you've got Lamech who's killing people and threatening his wives and singing songs about how great his killing is.
So that's a funny admixture here: mankind is. Is changing and growing, and things are happening. And even though on one level, a surface level, it looks positive, on the other level, it's still deeply, deeply flawed, even to this very end with Lamech killing this guy.
So the evil goes right alongside the progress.
Well, the population is growing, the culture is growing, humanity is growing. Humanity is growing. And in fact, this whole progress forward, what looks like positive progress for humanity, will always have this deep-seated core of evil that's part of it because of the fallenness from the garden. And that's the thing that even to this very day, people in culture look and say, well, people are either basically good or people are usually bad. And so, you know, a lot of people like to highlight the progress, but want to willingly overlook the fact that man is deeply troubled inside, riddled with sin.
And regardless of what the progress looks like, whether it's the arts or technology or food or any of that kind of stuff. Man is still deeply fallen, and it just kind of clings around his legs as he progresses through life. And yet, God allows this kind of development, right? We need to develop tents and livestock. We need to develop culture.
We need to develop the technology. And so, God has allowed those things to move forward, fully watching the development of this sin taking root and mastering the race of people that he himself had created. Yeah, and that's a good way to look at it, where the culture itself grows and progresses, but continues to carry forward the sin. And that thwarts all of his purposes of trying, man's attempts to try and create, say, a utopian culture. We can do better things with science.
We can do better things with food.
Now no one's going to be hungry anymore because we can do food so well. And now we're going to appreciate the arts and the beauty and all that kind of stuff. But in the end, that utopian society is still going to fail because it's full of people. who are full of sin. And we'll continue to murder each other.
Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, yeah, and that's what's given birth to that proverb: you know, absolute power corrupts absolutely, right? That every one of these areas is a potential place for corruption, for twisting, for the seizing and misusing of power. Right, right. But the bottom line is that regardless of the progress of mankind and how clever and smart mankind gets to be, his problem still always is going to shoot himself in the foot, is his own sin. And we see that today.
Boy, you know, that just triggered something in me about Lamech being the guy, the first guy who took two wives, right? It's kind of, it's along the same line. It's, well, if one wife is good, two wives is better. Right. He can just continue to satisfy his appetite.
Life will be better if I do this, right? When one is tired, I can go see the other one. It's just really a. Ooh, it's just sad and sickening. It's creating your own culture.
It's creating your own Eden when it's bound to just break apart. Yeah, and it's not Eden at all. It's not going to Eden at all.
So, did you notice in that last line about the 77fold? Did that remind you of anything from the New Testament? Oh, forgiveness. Forgiveness. Because Peter asks Jesus, how many times do I forgive?
Seven times? And Jesus says, oh. 77 times. Yeah. Meaning countless.
Yeah, you can find that in Matthew 18. But it's a An idiom of saying, you know, lots. Yeah, more than you can count. More than you can even count. Which is why Lamech's boast here at the end of 24 is that.
He says, Cain's revenge, oh, we'll give that a seven, but me, you can't even put a number on it. That's what this means. You know, it's interesting that this is centuries before the law, of course, but when God gives the law, And Moses writes it down. The law, some of the very earliest parts of the law, speak of limiting. The damages that are due to some to another, right?
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, not seven deaths for one, right? One death for one. Right, right, right.
So, you know, the law limited the punishment according to the crime.
Well, in fact, to counteract what Lamech himself does in his boast, because this young man wounded him, right? Just wounded him. And what was the response? Way over the top, he kills him. Right.
So that's what the eye for eye was. No, you can't, if someone wounds you, you're only allowed to wound them back. You can't kill them. Right, it's a limitation. It's a limitation on that kind of retribution.
Which actually says everybody's valuable. Every human being has a value. Right. And if someone happens to. Verbally assault you, you can't kill them in response.
So that's, I mean, that's what we're talking about here. People have value from God's perspective. Yeah. Well, let's close out this chapter. What do you say?
Okay, so this was a very long look down the generations, right? Many generations. Many generations, but it's possible that they were all, all those named fathers were still living. Yeah, that's true because the lifespans were so long.
So, you know, we'll get to that in a few weeks when we read these genealogies where it tells us how old they were when so-and-so was born, and then they lived another so many years. Right. Very, very long life expectancies. And we'll get to that. We'll talk about that in the few chapters.
So you just saw seven generations after Adam and Eve. Right. Yeah. Okay. But now we're going to do this big circle back.
Yeah. We go back the seven generations. Back to Adam and Eve. Yeah. Back to Adam and Eve.
We don't know at what point this happened, but. In verse 25, and Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son, and called his name Seth. for she said, God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him. Mm.
Okay. Now, we start into also beginning to track the line of Seth. Verse 26, to Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. And at that time, people began to call upon the name of the Lord. Oh, much more.
Well, this is the first appearance of God in this entire chapter. I'm much more encouraged after all that darkness of Cain. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And uh you know she calls his name Seth Because God is appointed.
Seth means appointed or arranged for or granted is a good word for it. Right. And I find this is an interesting contrast because originally she included herself in the credit before because remember I've gotten a man. I've gotten a man, yeah. And with the help of God.
Right. So it was me and God together. Here she just says, this was God.
So you can see her attitude kind of changing as a, and who gets the credit for it. God's the one who has granted this. I mean, literally, God's done this.
Well, there's also this sense of God has. God has given me a substitute. For the one that was murdered. Yes. Really compassionate.
Oh, there.
So she still has hope. She's looking for that promise of the coming one who will end the. And the serpents. Curse.
So, even though the end story with Cain is really discouraging, she might start to think, well, you know, God's not going to give me any more children, because look how Cain turned out. But no. Abel's gone and God replaces him with Seth. Yeah. So, you know, it's possible that this episode with the birth of Seth comes very quickly upon the departure of Cain, right?
That in the process of bearing many children, which Eve did. Otherwise, how would the earth have been populated? Right, right, right.
That we've just circled way back in the story. We don't know for certain, but now we're going to begin to see develop a parallel line of those who call on the name of the Lord coming down from Seth to Enosh and on down from there. We're going to track a different line because we've seen how. Kane's line turned out.
Well, yeah, that was the beginning of chapter four, that was a big fast forward. Right. Let's turn to the very end and see how that works out. How that works out. Oh, great progress for humankind, but in the end, you still have a lamech who marries two wives and he's killing people that wound him.
I mean, so. Why is it? Here's the question. Why is it at this time? After Enosh is born and grows up, that people begin to call on the name of the Lord.
Oh. And of course this is speculation. But when you just when you see the train wreck that Kane's family is, and they may, like we said, the lifespans are so long, many of them could have been coexisting all the way through the six or seven generations. When you see that kind of train wreck over there, The people coming down from the Seth line would say, you know what? Maybe following the Lord is the smart way to go.
Maybe it's in our best interests to be with our Creator. Maybe the Creator knows better than we do how to live a life that's fulfilling and that's rich.
So from this point on, what do you say we call upon the name of the Lord? Yeah, because we've seen what happens in a line of people who walk away from God. Right, right. And for me, that's what this chapter is so much about. The first half of chapter four is train wreck humanity.
And this last section of chapter four is. Let's call on the name of the Lord. And there's a corporateness about it, right? This is people began to call upon the name of the Lord.
So there's a sense of we, hmm, of us and them, kind of. Those who are toward God and those who are away from God turned away from God. And that will be a constant theme throughout Genesis as well. There are peoples. There are peoples who turn towards God and peoples that turn away from God.
And hey, let's see how that worked out for them. Even those who turn toward God, and I would say the descendants of Abraham, they don't have an easy route. I mean, throughout the course spans of his descendants, they make some horribly bad decisions and turn away from God.
So, you know, the whole thing that God's trying to say in very practical, pragmatic terms is: if you want to find out where life is. Then you need to call upon the name of the Lord. He's your creator, He's the one that made you. He's the one that designed the Garden of Eden in terms of having fellowship with you, He provided for you, He loves you. You can deny him, you can turn away from him, but does that make a lot of sense?
Oh, look at those people that come from Cain. No, it doesn't make a lot of sense to turn away from God.
So we see kind of the outplaying of the sin crouching at the door, just waiting to take advantage and exploit the wickedness that's a tendency toward wickedness in Cain's line. And we all have that tendency toward wickedness, but it is only the calling on the Lord. that gives us any hope of repentance and restoration. Yeah, and that's the core message of the gospel, the good news. And even as man in his choice decides to be secular and humanist and disregard God and push him away, thinking, I've got a better idea how to make a culture that's utopian, that'll give us life, that's wonderful, in the end, you get lameks that kill people.
That's what you get. I mean, it's the whole book of Judges. You know, they did what was right in their own eyes. How did that turn out? Not creative.
Not so hot, yeah. Yeah. So the message that Jesus is bringing when he comes on the scene is, you know, God loves you and he's dedicated to your good, but you've got to embrace him. You can't just stiff arm him. You've got to embrace him.
And you have to embrace the fact, number one, that you're sinful, like Lamech, like Cain, and yet still that has not chased God away. He's provided a solution at his cost. To bring you into his life. He invites repentance. Hard questions.
That's right. What have you done? What have you done? Will you be honest about those things? Will you embrace me anyway?
Will you recognize my mercy at its face value? That I'm still for you. And will you own your sin and turn to me? Yeah. And if Cain had owned his sin, I think his whole future would have been remarkably different.
But he doesn't. He embraces it and goes off in a huff. And even his descendants to the sixth and seventh generation brag about how twisted they are. That's no recipe for life.
Well, that's a terrible place to leave things. Yeah, well, we'll come back and hopefully get better. People begin to call on the name of the Lord at this point in the story. That's hopeful.
So I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy. And we'll see where that goes next time here. I'm North and Inc. There are many more episodes of this broadcast to be found at our website, morethanink.org.
And while you are there, take a moment to drop us a note.
Well, after all that dark news about Cain and his offspring, at least we finish on they began to call upon the name of the Lord. That's great. What good news that is after reading about Lamech. Yeah, yeah. Come back.
We'll see you next time here. Bye. Bye. Mm.
This has been a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City.
