Our Lasting Hope - Genesis 5
When have you hoped for something that, when you finally got it, it turned out not to be everything you hoped it would be?
When have you hoped for something that, when you finally got it, the satisfaction turned out to be only temporary?
Is there something still out there for you that makes you think, “If only that happened,
that would be enough for me, that would complete my life, that would make me whole.”
And you put hope in that, whatever it may be. Hope is powerful and good.
Hope is central to the Christian faith, and essential for life in general. We must be propelled by the hope that the future holds good things for us. You probably understand that the Scriptures teach that sin has affected everything. And that included hope. How we hope, where we place our hope, what we hope for.
We are prone to worldly hope.
This results in either an inward sense of hopelessness or a pattern of thinking and living which shows that lesser hope has overtaken lasting hope, that hope in the things of this world has overtaken hope in God. Each day we are urged to hope too much in this life, and we are naturally enticed to do so.
But Jesus came to restore God-centered hope, to give us what Scriptures calls “good hope through grace.” Jesus sets us free from sin and death and from what they have done to our ability to hope.
Because Jesus restores God-centered hope, we must look to Him to rehabilitate our hopes, to teach us how to hope.
But how does looking to Jesus fix our hope?
How does He change how we hope and where we place our hope? Genesis 5 speaks to that question. The people of God in ancient Israel, who were the first to hear these words, were much like us. They were prone to worldly hopes. God delivered them from slavery, formed them into a nation, and gave them His law so that they could learn to hope in Him. Psalm 78 in the OT says, [5] “He established a testimony…and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children…so that they should set their hope in God.”
Genesis 5, written down by their leader Moses, taught them some things about hope, three things we see here that pointed them toward hope in God, three hopes ultimately fulfilled in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
You can find these listed on page 6 in your WG. We must look to Jesus because:
He secured the transformation for which we should hope,
He ensures the future for which we should hope,
and He embodies the Person in which we should hope.
We instinctively hope for transformation, for a better future, and in people. But lasting fulfillment in these things comes only in and through Christ Jesus.
As we move from Genesis 4 to Genesis 5 we quickly see that this contains another genealogy. These genealogies trace two lines of descent from Adam. The genealogy of Gen. 4 is bad. It follows the line of Cain after he killed his brother Abel. Cain’s descendants grew increasingly bad. But this genealogy is good.
These two genealogies build on God’s description of the two “seeds” or “offsprings,” the offspring of the serpent and the offspring of the woman, both of which would come from Eve but with two very different futures. Scholars refer to this as “seed theology.” It is apparent through the Scriptures: Satan trying to destroy God’s chosen, the seed of the serpent trying to take down the seed of the woman.
The descendants of Cain were seemingly hopeless, but through the descendants of Seth, the son born to Adam and Eve in place of Abel, hope springs. Scripture reveals that from Seth’s line would eventually come Jesus of Nazareth. Now notice that verses 1-2 are a review of the creation of Adam and Eve, “made in the likeness of God,” in the image of God. You probably noticed that Adam and those who followed lived very long lives.
Naturally, this raises questions. “Is this true?” and “If so, how is it possible?” Well, certainly sin had not yet taken the toil on the creation that it has up to our time in history. That likely had something to do with it. But no explanation is given; this is simply the facts. There’s no reason to believe that their days or years were measured differently than ours.
The point seems to be, however, that though their lives were longer, they still died.
And verse 3 reminds us why. It says, “When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image.” John Currid points out something key here. Genesis 1:26 says, “God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” OT Scripture loves repetition for the purpose of emphasis. Why would the words “image” and “likeness” be reversed in Gen 5?
It is because the nature that Adam passed on even to Seth is reversed from what Adam inherited from God. Adam still bore the image of God, but that image was marred by sin, and that sinful nature was imputed to Seth. And so it's no surprise that in verse 8, Seth dies.
Moses wrote these things down for the people of Israel after their deliverance from Egypt to explain to them, among other things, why the world is the way it is.
Why do we all naturally sin?
Why are people evil, and why does everything break down in the world?
Why is every person full of contradictions, and why do we battle within ourselves?
And why do we all die in the end?
Adam passed sin and death to everyone, and now we long for freedom from these things.
It’s hard to watch the toil that time takes on a person’s body and mind. It’s terrible to see sickness and disease eat away at a person. It’s tough to get older. It’s sobering to slowly come to terms with your own mortality, whether sin and death are doing what they do to you or someone else as you observe their effects. And so we come to long more and more for transformation.
Probably more so than ever before in history, people have the ability to transform themselves. Information is at our fingertips. We can learn so much. Guides for physical fitness are everywhere; we can strengthen our bodies and minds. These things can perhaps keep disease at a distance and even possibly delay death, but the clock keeps ticking, and the grave is never full. Any transformation we achieve in this life is only temporary. We age and we die.
But in Christ we have the hope of a lasting and complete transformation. In Philippians 3, the apostle Paul writes that it is Jesus, “who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.”
Through His glorious resurrection, Jesus Christ secured the transformation for which
we should hope. The people of ancient Israel were to put their hope in God just as we should today. They perceived dimly what God has allowed us to see clearly: the glory of the Lord Jesus and the hope of transformation that He provides.
Now, hope is always oriented toward what is to come, although you might argue that hope is associated with the past in that we hope that we will not regret past decisions or mistakes. But still, hope is basically a “future thing.” We hope that past mistakes will not have a negative bearing on our lives in the future. Hope deals with what is yet to come.
If you look at verses 6-21 again, you notice that they are very repetitive. “He lived…he fathered…he died.” Over and over. But when we get to verse 22, Moses surprises us. He breaks from the pattern to state that, “Enoch walked with God.”
That’s new. The language indicates that Enoch had an ongoing relationship with the Creator.
He had something reminiscent of what had been possible in the garden in Eden. This is highly encouraging in a world that, according to Genesis 4, was going mad. It turns out that God is knowable, that He will graciously walk with man. This is cause for tremendous hope.
And verse 24 is an even bigger shock. It says, “Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.” To this point in history, early humans had seen people die. Where did they go? The ground. The bodies remained but the light of life was gone. Is that it? Do we simply cease to exist?
God took Enoch. Where did He take him? And are their others there? And can we go there? Do we go there? This event with Enoch showed the people that death is not the end.
There is a future beyond the grave.
And this becomes increasingly clear throughout the course of redemptive history and the revelation of Scripture. A future beyond death. A future with God for those who know and walk with Him. Notice also that verse 23 states that Enoch lived a significantly shorter life than his ancestors and definitely shorter than his own son, Methusaleh.
There is a principle here that Paul also refers to in his letter to the Philippians. He wrote, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain…I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account.” Long life on earth is good, there is much to accomplish for the Lord, but eternal life with God is exceedingly better.
This is what we all want: a future we can look forward to. What does the future in this life hold? No one knows for sure. What is certain? Death and taxes? Sure, but something else. God gave the apostle John a vision of the Christian’s future, after the return of Jesus Christ on the last day after the final judgment. In Revelation 21, John writes, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.” He goes on to say, “I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. [4] He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
This is the future for which we should hope, and Jesus Christ ensures it.
You likely have many hopes for your future; some may come to pass, some may not. God does bless His people with good things; but He calls us to suffer as well. Each of our lives look different: different experiences, troubles, and crosses to bear. But our future, you see, from the greatest among us to the least, is the same in Christ. Eternity with God awaits for those whom He calls to Himself.
We naturally put vain hope in various kinds of personal transformation, and we love vain hopes for our future, but also, we are prone to trusting in, or putting our hope in, people.
We put too much hope in people.
We put too much hope in someone of the opposite sex, parents put too much hope in their children. We put too much hope in our heroes and our government officials.
And it’s not that these things are not good or that they are not God’s will, but in the end, no ordinary person can fulfill every hope and longing. One thing that is clear from Genesis 5 is that all people have inherited the same nature that results in sin and death.
But we did see earlier in Genesis that God promised hope through a person. In Gen. 3:15 God hinted at a savior who would defeat evil, an offspring of the woman who would crush the serpent’s head. Seth carried on that hope, and that hope continued through his lineage, to Lamech, and to his son, Noah.
Again, Genesis 5 is so repetitive that when Moses breaks from his routine, we should take special care to discern the purpose. Notice verse 28 and the beginning of 29, “When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son and called his name Noah.” That sounds very similar to the angel’s words to Joseph in Matthew 1, when the angel of the Lord says of Mary, “She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.”
Noah’s name is fascinating. The word sounds like the Hebrew word for “rest.” It’s not the word for rest, but it closely resembles it and the sound of his name was like a sigh of relief. His father Lamech groaned beneath the weight of sin and death.
Do you ever do one of these (long sigh)? After a tough day, in the midst of great trouble? When have you felt the weight of sin’s curse? Notice the rest of verse 29, Lamech “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.” Noah would carry on the hope of Genesis 3, of the seed of the woman, of God’s chosen one to redeem His people.
We will look at Noah more in Genesis 6. Noah would not be the ultimate fulfillment of the promise, but from him would descend the Person who would fulfill that hope.It’s not wrong to put your hope in a person, but it must be the right Person.
Jesus Christ embodies the Person in which we should hope.
Jesus brings the relief we hope for. Philippians 2 says that “though he was in the form of God, (he) did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Jesus is the only Person who can carry the weight of our hopes. He secured our transformation, He ensures our future, and He did so by giving Himself for our sake.
To what worldly hopes have you been holding too tightly?
Has your hope in this life exceeded your hope in the life to come?
Has hope in earthly things replaced your hope in the Lord Jesus Christ?
As we go to this table, we should remember that this is a table of hope. Early 20th century British writer G.K. Chesterton makes a good point about the nature of hope. He says, “As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is mere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength at all.” All other transformations, all other futures, and all other people are ultimately hopeless.
But Jesus is our lasting hope.
Have you humbled yourself before Him? Have you placed your hope in Him?
Please bow with me in prayer.