Genesis: AUTHORITY
God’s Perfect Way: Genesis 4:25-26
Pastor John Weathersby
Sunday November 6, 2022
Notes/Not a Transcript
As pastor John took us through the bulk of chapter 4 in Genesis last week, we would do well to go back and review before we go forward.
What we have in chapter 3 is picking up from creation in 1 and 2. A picture of the fall and results of the fall. Someone, Michael, asked me how long do you think it was from the initial creation and the fall. I.E., how long from Genesis one and two’s picture of creation and the fall in chapter 3 – while we don’t know, I’d hazard a guess, less than nine months.
Why? Turn right or left and ask your neighbor.
In chapter 3, we see the fall, its results, and the promise of enmity between her seed and his (Genesis 3:15), and we start to see the immediate ramifications. That sin entered the world, spreading and issuing death to all in Adam. In Genesis 3, the original. Sin was man against God, doubting His word and assuming against God’s character and motives in Genesis 4. As sin spreads, we see it, and up-and-against man. Corrupted character impacts relations with God and treatment of one another. Without fear of God, we quickly learn that the sinner has no innate concern for his neighbor. We have also seen, in Genesis 4 see, a need to approach God through sacrifice and forgiveness. As post-cross believers, we know that once finished, sacrifice is the promised messiah (Genesis 3:15, Isaiah 53:7-11, Isaiah 53:5), so let us look to the end of Genesis 4 and see how that line of Christ and fulfillment would come to us.
Genesis 3:15 (ESV)
15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring;he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
Isaiah 53:7-11 (ESV)
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth;like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?
9 And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death,although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief;when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.
Isaiah 53:5 (ESV)
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities;upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
As we go, be encouraged that you’re seeing everything is set up and established to bring Jesus the perfect caption of our salvation (Hebrews 2:10-11, Hebrews 10:8-10) because Jesus is God’s perfect way.
Hebrews 2:10-11 (ESV)
10 For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.
11 For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers,
Hebrews 10:8-10 (ESV)
8 When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law),
9 then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second.
10 And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Before we jump in, I’ve been asked or heard the conversation about Cain’s wife:
· where did she come from, and
· some conversation around speculations related to the question
So let us pause on the way for 4:25 and talk about that.
First, it is essential not to interpret scripture from 2022 (or the present year/norms/times/understandings). Also, it is vital to conclude from what’s IN Scripture, not what ISN’T in Scripture taking giant leaps into theories that have no backing.
On those principles, let’s note a few things from Scripture.
1. God created everything, perfect and good
Genesis 1:31, in fact Very Good – a fresh genetic pool, no mutations, no mother-father pairs that both bring problems, just strapping healthy folks.
Genesis 1:31 (ESV)
31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
2. In genesis 3:6, the world receives a cursed through Sin.
Genesis 3:6 (ESV)
6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.
Genesis 3:17–19 (ESV)
17 And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
19 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.”
The sin of Genesis 3:6 caused fractured care in the garden with God from which all humanity was blocked off and away from the tree of life (Genesis 3:22-24) and the material substance created very good by God began its process of degrading.
Genesis 3:22-24 (ESV)
22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—”
23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.
24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
Romans 8:22 (ESV)
22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.
3. Could she have come from another race of people that also existed on earth? Perhaps God created them during the “gap”?
Could apples be oranges? Could clowns be normal – perhaps in a world where things that cannot be can be? But the truth is true in this world and never isn’t.
Genesis 3:20 (ESV)
20 The man called his wife’s name Eve because she was the mother of all living.
Acts 17:26 (ESV)
26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place,
This argumentation would be an affront to the Gospel and an extension of “did God really say” (with hissing esses). Because we see the first temptation and sin that ushered in death through Adam, in whom ALL are found
1 Corinthians 15:22 (ESV)
22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
All the corruption of sin is found in Adam and passed through Adam (recall Eve is of Adam too) so that Christ, through enduring the same face-to-face temptation of Satan to deny God as well as all temptations like us (see Hebrews 4:14-16)
Hebrews 4:14-16 (ESV)
Jesus the Great High Priest
14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.
15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.
16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Adam surveyed all the animals and found none suitable (Genesis 2:20/Acts 17:26); therefore, God made the woman of his side. No other race of people existed, just the two, mother of all living, and Adam, father, and provider of the curse to all humanity.
Jesus is the last Adam 1 Corinthians 15:45 taking the place of the first Adam through procreation with Eve. All people came; therefore, all elect have a way to redemption in Christ.
1 Corinthians 15:45 (ESV)
45 Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
- The law comes 2k years later.
We’re going to see a LOT happen in Genesis, from Adam and Even through their many sons and daughters, to Noah and His sons all the way to Babel in Genesis 11, where people groups and cultures scatter
The law comes through Moses’ interaction with God. He wasn’t born and adopted in Egypt until maybe 1500 wish years before Christ, meaning 2000+ years after creation. The law banning relative marriage came later in Leviticus. So who was his wife? It was his sister or niece, but we know that ALL HUMANITY comes from Adam and Eve, so that is the only answer. They’re of 2nd generation “very good” DNA.
I find it more difficult to believe that all life came from cave people with a strange origin who seemed to live to propagate all life and learned to make cars and houses through experimenting by hitting things in caves. They had no extrinsic intelligence. Just through experimentation and saying ugh, they figured it all out.
By God’s plan, all life came from one man and his wife, Eve (the mother of all living), and the gospel undoes what sin’s initial corruption did – restores, by faith, trust in God’s word and character, and provides the blood sacrifice of a perfect lamb (Jesus) such that God doesn’t wink away sin, but place it on the alter of His perfect son, as such we’re saved by grace through faith, and our righteousness is foreign in Christ received by undoing the first couples lack of faith.
What a great great God!
Genesis 4:25–26 (ESV)
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.”
26 To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time, people began to call upon the name of the Lord.
I remember once, as a kid asking my mom, “why don’t people go to the bathroom in movies.”
It’s like a dog. If a dog year is 1:7 or 7 years to one year, then 1 hour is 7 hours. If you are gone for an 8-hour work day, you’ve been gone for 56 hours. That is almost 2 and a half days! No wonder they’re excited when you come back!
Why do I say that – in the account of Cain, Able, and Seth – we have to remember this book, Genesis, is penned not to tell us EVERYTHING that happened and in order. But rather – what we need to understand about the origins of life and people so that we have what we need for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness. It’s why we see Genesis 2 and 3, telling the creation account from two perspectives (one, the creator authorial God Elohim two, the caring personal Yahweh Elohim here we see the line Moses want’s to follow in giving the Genesis origin after Cain and Able, the remedy the line of Seth.
Similar to neglecting the movie character bathroom needs (as someone obviously who is human would need to) isn’t important to the scene or character development so that you can know the story, or without wasting time because it’s precious in scriptures aim to be the teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness; the scriptures don’t give you what you DON’T need to those ends.
Seth’s line is important as he brings about Enosh at the ripe age of 105. We learn in verse 26 that in Seth’s son Enosh’s time, people began to call upon God. This line would point to father Abraham; of whom Christ said:
Matthew 3:9 (ESV)
9 And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.
This line of Seth comes as Cain killed his worshipful brother Able; Even the mother of all living named him Seth meaning “set in place of,” was the person a replacement. No, Eve knew the promise of Genesis 3:15 was rock steady. She had faith that the seed would crush the serpent’s head.
We’ll see in Genesis 5 Adam is 930 and the only other recorded death is this point is the martyr Abel. The Genesis record is designed to drive us to the fulfillment of 3:15’s gospel, that Eve trusted and that God would drive through Seth’s line, lovingly preserving for us the genealogy of Seth’s line giving the age of every patriarch when they had their firstborn and how the line would continue including the span of their life.
It’s important to remember what Genesis is. It gives us the record of God’s story of redemption. It is authoritative over life. It gives us what we need to know, not a detailed record of all events. So when the first recorded births are Cain/Able, followed by Seth, born when Adam was 130.
Now I know a thing or two about life, and that thing or two tells me that having three kids in 130 years of your marriage, to people who’ve been told to multiply the earth, is pretty surprisingly low. This is also why Cain was afraid on the earth because the ENTIRE FAMILY knew he had killed his brother – this 130-year-old man committed the first murder. Church, I hope this study strengthens your faith and reference for God and His word and encourages you to
1 Thessalonians 5:21 (ESV)
21 but test everything; hold fast what is good.
Hebrews 13:8–9 (ESV)
8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
9 Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them.
We have a great and merciful God who has given us His word and His son. Let us live to cherish them for His Glory!
Pray, Observe, App
