New Beginnings Part 17
New Beginnings • Sermon • Submitted
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Transcript
Intro:
Intro:
Drew and Austin’s announcement
Excitement for what’s next
Family Dedication
Spiritual Toolbox
Flow:
Flow:
Today we wrap up our study in the first 11 chapter of Genesis.
If you look back, We’ve been in Genesis for the last 18 weeks
I have really enjoyed this series and hope that you have too.
I believe there are few sections of Scripture more crucial for us to understand than these 11 chapters. This is where the story of the Bible begins. And this is where we first come to understand who God is, who we are, where we come from, how we were created, what it means to be made in God’s image, how sin entered the world, and how the earliest civilization spread across the earth.
From these chapters come the foundational doctrines of the Bible—God, man, sin, judgment, grace, salvation, forgiveness, and the first promise of the coming of the Messiah, later to be revealed as the Lord Jesus Christ.
In these chapters we have learned about marriage, the family, the course of temptation, the dangers of anger, jealousy, sexual lust, drunkenness, idolatry and pride.
We learned something about the power of Satan to deceive us, the power of temptation to overcome us, the power of sin to destroy us, and the power of rebellion to divide us.
We also learned that no matter how evil the world becomes, God always has a remnant of people who still believe in him and still call on his name. When the judgment comes, as it did in Noah’s day, that godly remnant is spared by grace.
We learned that creation is true, that evolution as an explanation of human origins is not true, that the world was created by a direct miracle of God, that there really was a serpent who really did tempt Eve, that the first murder was a case of brother killing brother, that a man named Enoch walked with God and was taken up into heaven, that Noah built an ark to save his family from the flood that covered the whole world, that the rainbow means God always keeps his promises, that Ham’s sin led to his son Canaan and his descendants being cursed, that racism is both foolish and sinful, that all the nations descend from Shem, Ham and Japheth.
We seen Names We Can Hardly Pronounce and that God stopped the tower of Babel so that idolatry would not spread over all the earth and forced human civilization to spread over all the earth. We have seen and learned some amazing stuff. All of that, and more, is in the first 11 chapters of the Bible.
This morning we come to the final section of Genesis 11. And what do you know? It’s a genealogy! This is the third time I’ve preached on a genealogy in this series. Genesis 5 and Genesis 11 both contain genealogies. And the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 is a sort of geographic genealogy of Noah’s three sons.
We’ve become familiar with genealogies. It’s a list of names. So-and-so became the father of so-and-so who became the father of so-and-so. It’s like reading the phone book except the phone book is written in another language.
There are names like Arphaxad, Reu, Peleg, Eber and Serug. Basically this is a genealogy of the ten generations starting with Shem, Noah’s middle son, and end with Abram (whose named was later changed to Abraham). So the genealogy goes like this: Shem, Arphaxad, Shelah, Eber, Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor, Terah, Abram.
Basically we will be told each man’s name, how old he is when his first son is born, and how long he lives after that. In most cases we are also told that he has other sons and daughters. That’s what makes up most of this passage, and the general temptation is to read it and to shrug it off as a list of meaningless names. But those names represent actual people. Names matter because people matter.
10 This is the account of Shem’s family line. Two years after the flood, when Shem was 100 years old, he became the father of Arphaxad. 11 And after he became the father of Arphaxad, Shem lived 500 years and had other sons and daughters. 12 When Arphaxad had lived 35 years, he became the father of Shelah. 13 And after he became the father of Shelah, Arphaxad lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters. 14 When Shelah had lived 30 years, he became the father of Eber. 15 And after he became the father of Eber, Shelah lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters. 16 When Eber had lived 34 years, he became the father of Peleg. 17 And after he became the father of Peleg, Eber lived 430 years and had other sons and daughters. 18 When Peleg had lived 30 years, he became the father of Reu. 19 And after he became the father of Reu, Peleg lived 209 years and had other sons and daughters. 20 When Reu had lived 32 years, he became the father of Serug. 21 And after he became the father of Serug, Reu lived 207 years and had other sons and daughters. 22 When Serug had lived 30 years, he became the father of Nahor. 23 And after he became the father of Nahor, Serug lived 200 years and had other sons and daughters. 24 When Nahor had lived 29 years, he became the father of Terah. 25 And after he became the father of Terah, Nahor lived 119 years and had other sons and daughters. 26 After Terah had lived 70 years, he became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran. 27 This is the account of Terah’s family line. Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. 28 While his father Terah was still alive, Haran died in Ur of the Chaldeans, in the land of his birth. 29 Abram and Nahor both married. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milkah; she was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milkah and Iskah. 30 Now Sarai was childless because she was not able to conceive. 31 Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Harran, they settled there. 32 Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Harran.
As we consider this genealogy from the standpoint of the flow of biblical history, there are three facts that stand out very clearly.
The narrowing of the line of grace
There’s a direct correlation between Genesis and Jesus
There’s a direct correlation between Genesis and Jesus
I’ve stated this several times before but let me remind you that there is a straight line from the garden to the cross. Or a straight line from Genesis to Jesus and the end of Genesis 11 still stands to remind us of that.
What we see is that God is a choosing God. Before you want to bash me if you are free willer or want to take up arms with me if you are a Calvanist I’m not talking about it in the sense of our direct salvation.
No matter where you fall on the scale of the doctrine of election or even if you don’t even know what that means you can’t deny the fact that here God chooses some and not others.
Adam had others sons but God chose Seth; Lamech had other sons but God chose Noah; Noah had other sons but God chose Shem; Shem had other sons but God chose Arphaxad; Terah had other sons but God chose Abram. God continually narrowed the line across the generations.
But as we trace the story of the Bible from Genesis through the O.T. into the N.T. where we end up is that God ultimately chooses His Son. All of it leads us to Jesus. So Genesis 11 is beginning to show us that narrowing effect happening and it’s going to get down to the end of the funnel and what we will see, or more accurately, who we will see is Jesus.
He is the one who paves the way. He is the one who realigns us back with our Creator. He is the Messiah, the Savior of the world and it may all begin for us in Genesis but it forcing us to see that life is found through Jesus. That was the design and plan from the beginning.
We also learn from this genealogy that sin always destroys life.
In this case sin shortens the human lifespan. You may remember that in Genesis 5 the patriarchs lived for hundreds of years—several men lived over 900 years, and the shortest lifespan (apart from Enoch who was taken to heaven when he was 365 years old) was 777 years.
Things have changed by the time we get to Genesis 11. Shem lived 600 years, Arphaxad 438 years, Peleg 239 years, Nahor 148 years. When Joseph dies in Genesis 50, he is only 110 years old.
There are several explanations for this gradual shortening of human life, including vast changes in climate and environment after the flood that covered the earth and radically changed everything.
But the most basic fact is that as sin became deeply ingrained in human nature, life grew shorter and shorter. Sin always destroys life. We see that today through all kinds of different avenues.
The testimony of the Lord is clear on this point. The wages of sin is death. Always has been. Always will be. Sin leads to death. Death reigns because sin reigns on the earth. Sin and death are twin brothers that always go together.
Sin destroys your spiritual life.
Sin destroys your social life.
Sin destroys your personal life.
Sin destroys your physical life.
The declining life spans of Genesis 11 illustrate that profound truth. And they remind us if we want life that cannot be destroyed, we must find it from outside this sin-cursed world. We need the eternal life that Jesus offered when he declared, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10).
God’s faithfulness
We see from Genesis 11 God’s faithfulness through the generations.
We have to understand that these men were not perfect. It’s not as if God finds perfect people to cultivate and produce His plan
He uses imperfect people to demonstrate His power, glory, and faithfulness
So God is faithful to Arphaxad and Shelah and Eber, and Peleg, and Reu and Serug and Nahor and Terah and Abram
But here’s the truth for us this morning He is still faithful today.
The lineage of God’s chosen explodes through Jesus
Because of what Christ did for us on the cross we now have the capability to be part of this family too.
The God who was faithful then is still faithful today and will be faithful tomorrow.
The God was faithful to Abram was faithful to my dad and faithful to me and faithful to my 3 daughters and He’ll be faithful to my grandchildren and their children and their children.
And as long as time will last our God will be faithful to every generation
And the good news is: He is faithful to us, but his faithfulness doesn’t depend on us. He is faithful even when we are faithless. So I don’t have to worry or fret about the future that lies beyond my vision.
All of this isn’t even about me. Which leads me to our todays truth which is the same Big Idea from the very first message in this series and it’s this
Everything is about God
Everything is about God