Sunday
Morning Bible Study
December
3, 2006
If you take the ages listed in Genesis 5 literally, it’s not to come to the
conclusion that the Bible might be saying that the earth is quite young. While
science tells us that the earth is over 4 billion years old, the account of the
Genesis 5 might lead us to think that the earth might only be six thousand
years old.
I know that some of us have this idea that the theory of evolution is a
foregone conclusion. We have been raised to think that scientists are unbiased
and have come to their conclusions regarding evolution on purely objective,
clinical reasoning. That same kind of reasoning concludes that to believe in
God’s design and creation of the earth, and to even stretch that idea further
by claiming that the earth isn’t billions of years old but rather only
thousands of years old – is purely a non-rational, unscientific, irrational,
emotional conclusion. Usually when we who espouse a young earth talk of such
things, those who are smarter than us will nod their heads and think to
themselves, “poor, deluded fool”.
A Russian scientist and a Czechoslovakian scientist had spent their lives
studying the grizzly bear. Each year they petitioned their respective governments
to allow them to go to Yellowstone to study the bears.
Finally their request was granted, and they immediately flew to NY and on west
to Yellowstone. They reported to the ranger station and
were told that it was the grizzly mating season and it was too dangerous to go
out and study the animals. They pleaded that this was their only chance, and
finally the ranger relented. The Russian and the Czech were given portable
phones and told to report in every day. For several days they called in, and then
nothing was heard from the two scientists. The rangers mounted a search party
and found the camp completely ravaged, with no sign of the missing men. They
followed the trail of a male and a female bear. They found the female first and
decided they must kill the animal to find out if she had eaten the scientists
because they feared an international incident. They killed the bear and opened
her stomach to find the remains of the Russian. One ranger turned to the other
and said, “You know what this means, don’t you?” The other ranger responded,
“Of course, “The Czech is in the male.”
All that to simply say that scientists aren’t perfect. They make mistakes too.
Would you allow me a minute or two to challenge your world view?
When Dr. Henry Morris published his book “The Genesis Flood”, in 1961, he
began to shake things up in the world of science. He not only posed
difficulties towards the evolutionary theory, but he showed the possibilities
that the biblical record might actually be accurate, and not just a collection
of fanciful stories.
Since that time, there have been a growing number of scientists who have
begun to question evolutionary theory from their own respective fields of
study. If you want to do more study, start by checking out the website at the Institute
for Creation Research, www.icr.org.
Helium versus Uranium {slide one, “Zircon”}
In one article, D. Russell
Humphreys, Ph.D., talks about a series of experiments, the “RATE
project”, that involved the study of zircon crystals. Zircon is formed when
molten rock cools. As the crystals are formed, they absorb Uranium 238. After
forming, the crystal ages and the Uranium 238 decays to form lead and helium. There
are two different ways to gauge the age of the crystal. The typical way is to
measure the amount of Uranium 238 and lead found in the crystal. But Dr.
Humphreys theorized measuring the age by measuring the amount of helium found. To
get an unbiased result, they hired a non-creationist laboratory through a third
party and asked them to do the studies. When measuring the decay of the
Uranium, the laboratory determined the crystals were 1.5 billion years old. But
when measuring the helium, the data came back saying the material was only
6,000 years old. Dr. Humphreys goes on to suggest a way of accounting for the
discrepancies, validating a young earth.
Moon problems {slide 2 “Receding Moon”}
In another article, Thomas G.
Barnes, D.Sc. raises some difficulties about the age of the earth in regard to
the moon.
First, you need to understand that if the moon was any closer than 11,000
miles from the earth, the gravitational forces from the earth would break the
moon into tiny pieces and cause it to form rings around the earth, like Saturn.
This is called the “Roche Limit”. Second, we know that the moon is receding
from the earth at a constant rate – we can measure it. If the moon started at
the “Roche Limit” and you multiply the rate of recession over 4 billion years,
the moon would be much, much farther away than it is. Dr. Louis B. Slichter,
Professor of Geophysics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology treats this
problem in great detail and concludes that “the time scale of the earth-moon
system still presents a major problem.”
Summarized: The distance of the moon from the earth validates a young
earth.
{slide 3 “Lunar Dust”} The dust on the moon is
another problem. Before landing on the moon, the evolutionary theory presented
concerns that the moon would be covered with a huge layer of dust accumulated
over 4.5 billion years. Some were concerned that the astronauts would be
swallowed up in dust when they landed. Yet when Neil Armstrong stepped outside
the lunar module, there was only a thin layer of dust. It speaks of a young
earth.
Magnetic problems {slide 4 “The Earth’s Magnetic
Field”}
Another issue raised by Dr. Barnes is the rate of decay of the earth’s
magnetic field. In 1830, Karl Gauss first measured the strength of the earth’s
magnetic field. Since then science has documented that the magnetic field is
decreasing at a steady rate. It loses 5% of its strength every 100 years. The
earth will no longer have a magnetic field by the year 3391. {slide 5 “Protection”}That ought to concern us since the
magnetic field protects us from cosmic rays and the solar wind. At the time of
Jesus, the magnetic field was three times stronger than it is today. If you go keep
going backward in time, say 4 billion years, well you can’t because the
magnetic field would be impossibly strong. But you could project it back 6,000
years. {slide 6 – Gen. 5 - Blank}
:1 This is the book of the genealogy of Adam. In the day that God created
man, He made him in the likeness of God.
the book of the genealogy of Adam – the language used in this phrase
suggests a written record. The phrase is used in chapter 2, 5, 6, 10, 11, 25,
36, and 37. The suggestion has been made that it refers to specific written
records, the records that Moses collected and used to put together the book of
Genesis. This would imply that these first couple of chapters might actually be
the written record of Adam himself.
:2 He created them male and female, and blessed them and called them
Mankind in the day they were created.
:3 And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own
likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.
Adam was created to be in the likeness of God. But after Adam’s sin in the
garden, mankind is now after the likeness of Adam. The implication is that sin
is now being passed on from generation to generation.
{show slide 7 – graph of Gen. 5 genealogies and dates}
:4 After he begot Seth, the days of Adam were eight hundred years; and he
had sons and daughters.
We mentioned last week about the issue people have with Cain’s wife. Where
did Adam’s first son Cain get a wife? He married one of his sisters. Adam and
Eve had other children than the ones whose names we know.
:5 So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and
he died.
If Adam lived this long, then Adam was still alive when Noah’s father,
Lamech, was born.
{click on slide 7 – highlight names above Adam’s}
:6 Seth lived one hundred and five years, and begot Enosh.
:7 After he begot Enosh, Seth lived eight hundred and seven years, and had
sons and daughters.
:8 So all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years; and he died.
Some have suggested that since some of the genealogies in the Bible aren’t
complete, but have gaps in them, like those in Matthew, that this genealogy
might also have gaps in it as well. But the problem with that suggestion is
that unlike Matthew’s genealogy, this one attempts to make a clear link from
one generation to the next, giving you the age of the father when the son was
born, and the age when he died.
Over the next couple of verses you can read about …
:9-20 Enosh …Cainan…Mahalalel…Jared…Enoch
:21 Enoch lived sixty-five years, and begot Methuselah.
:22 After he begot Methuselah, Enoch walked with God three hundred years, and
had sons and daughters.
:23 So all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years.
:24 And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.
With everyone else in this list, it mentions that the man died. There is no
mention of Enoch dying. Instead it simply says “God took him”. The implication
is that Enoch was the first human to ever not die. There would be another,
Elijah, who would be taken straight to heaven.
The writer of Hebrews tells us:
(Heb 11:5-6 NKJV) By faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not
see death, "and was not found, because God had taken him"; for before
he was taken he had this testimony, that he pleased God. {6} But without faith
it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is,
and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
Enoch was pleasing to God because he had faith. He trusted in a God he
couldn’t see.
Enoch was an example of what will happen one day in the rapture.
(1 Cor 15:51-52 NKJV) Behold, I tell you a mystery: We
shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed; {52} in a moment, in the
twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the
dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
Enoch was walking on the earth, and suddenly one day he was
gone. He did not die.
Jude writes,
(Jude 1:14-15 NKJV) Now Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied
about these men also, saying, "Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands
of His saints, {15} "to execute judgment on all, to convict all who are
ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed in an
ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken
against Him."
Enoch may have been thinking of his own ungodly generation of people before
the flood. Yet his words were prophetic in talking about what is just around
the corner in front of us. Not only does Enoch remind us of the rapture, he
reminds us of the coming judgment on the earth.
:25 Methuselah lived one hundred and eighty-seven years, and begot Lamech.
:26 After he begot Lamech, Methuselah lived seven hundred and eighty-two
years, and had sons and daughters.
:27 So all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred and sixty-nine years;
and he died.
Methuselah – His name can mean “His death shall bring”, “man of the dart”, or
“When he dies, judgment”
Methuselah is known as the oldest man in history
{Show slide 8 – “Gen. 5 – The Numbers”}
There are three signs of old age. The first is your loss of memory, the
other two I forget.
Illustration
Forgotten Something
A man was driving on his way home from Christmas shopping for the family.
He was very absorbed in thinking about how much the gifts were going to cost
him when all the bills came in. Suddenly a thought struck him that he had forgotten
something. Twice he stopped and counted all the parcels and searched all of his
pockets. However, he could not find a missing item on which to pin the source
of his feeling. Finally he resigned himself to a malady of old age and
determined he had everything with him. When he reached home his daughter ran
out to greet him. “Hi, Daddy! How was the shopping? Did you get me any good
presents? Where’s Mommy?”
{click “+ 600”} If you track the dates, the
flood of Noah came 600 years after Noah was born (Gen. 7:6), the year 1656
after Creation. That also happens to be the year that Methuselah died.
One suggestion is that Methuselah died in the flood.
Another suggestion is that God was waiting to bring the flood until after
Methuselah died.
The name Methuselah’s godly father (Enoch) gave him seems to hint at the
coming judgment in the flood, “When he dies, judgment” or “His death shall
bring”
He may have been the last of the good guys. And when he died, there was no
more reason to delay the judgment.
If God was waiting for Methuselah to die before the
judgment, isn’t it interesting that this man lived the longest life in history?
What a picture of God’s grace.
(2 Pet 3:9 NLT) The Lord isn't really being slow
about his promise to return, as some people think. No, he is being patient for
your sake. He does not want anyone to perish, so he is giving more time for
everyone to repent.
(Ezek 33:11 NKJV) "Say to them: 'As I live,'
says the Lord GOD, 'I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the
wicked turn from his way and live…
Some people have the idea that God can hardly wait to
punish the slightest little sin. The evidence says just the opposite.
How about those ages of men?
{click on slide 8 – show averages}
If you took the average of all the guys up through Noah, but take out Enoch
because he never died, you find that the average age of men before the flood
was 912 years old.
How could these men have lived so long?
If you pay attention to the life spans recorded in the Bible, you will
notice that after the flood, life spans began to decrease dramatically.
Noah continue to live 350 years after the flood and died at the age of 950,
but he was the last one to live that long.
Shem lived to be 600 years old. His son, born two years before the flood,
lived to be 438 years old. Three generations later, Peleg lived to be 239 years
old, and the decline continued to Joseph who lived to be 110 years old, just
thirteen generations after the flood, a 90% decrease.
Could the flood have changed the conditions on the earth that would affect
the lifespan of man?
We suggested back in Genesis 1 that the record seems to indicate that there
was some sort of water canopy that originally surrounded the earth.
(Gen 1:7 NKJV) Thus God made the firmament, and
divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were
above the firmament; and it was so.
When the flood of Noah occurs, those waters fell as rain.
(Gen 7:11 NKJV) … the windows of heaven were
opened.
It seems possible that with the collapse of the water canopy, the earth was
exposed to an increased amount of radiation which in turn could have affected
man’s lifespan.
God’s original creation was “good”. Adam would have lived with perfect DNA.
Yet increased radiation with the collapse of the water canopy would begin to
degrade man’s genes, which he would pass down from generation to generation.
{click for blank slide 9}
:28 Lamech lived one hundred and eighty-two years, and had a son.
:29 And he called his name Noah, saying, "This one will comfort us
concerning our work and the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the
LORD has cursed."
Noah – Noach – “rest”
Lamech had the idea that Noah was a special child.
He was a child of promise, a child of hope. He would save the world by
saving his family in the ark.
:30 After he begot Noah, Lamech lived five hundred and ninety-five years,
and had sons and daughters.
:31 So all the days of Lamech were seven hundred and seventy-seven years;
and he died.
:32 And Noah was five hundred years old, and Noah begot Shem, Ham, and
Japheth.
The significance of names
If you’ve been our church for awhile, you will hear me speak from time to
time on the meaning of someone’s name. I imagine that for some this seems kind
of strange. In our culture, we don’t place a lot of meaning on a person’s name.
We tend to either name a child after someone who was important to us, or we
will pick a name on how it “sounds”.
In ancient times, a person’s name had great significance.
The name might tell a story about the birth of the child.
Isaac named the first twin “Esau” (“hairy”, Gen. 25:25) because the baby
was covered in hair. He named the second twin “Jacob” (“heal-catcher”, Gen.
25:26) because he was holding onto his brother’s heel when he was born.
The name might speak of some historical circumstance that was taking place
at the time of the birth.
When Eli was the high priest, his two sons Hophni and Phinehas were also
priests, and they were wicked men. God decided to bring judgment against the
nation to get their attention. There was war with the Philistines and the
outcome was that the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant, killed
Hophni and Phinehas, and Eli died of shock. Phinehas’ wife was pregnant and she
gave birth to a boy which she then named “Ichabod” (1Sam. 4:21), meaning “the glory has departed”, because that
was what had happened – God’s glory had departed from Israel
with this great defeat.
The name might even be prophetic in nature, a name that speaks of a future
event or the future of that child.
The angel Gabriel told Joseph to name his baby boy “Jesus” or “Ya-shua”
(“Yahweh saves”, Mat. 1:21) because
He would save the people from their sins.
Though I am not sure you can make a point out of every person’s name in the
Bible, we’ve already seen explanations given for several of the names:
(Gen 3:20
NKJV) And Adam called his wife's name Eve (“havah”, “life producer”), because she was the mother of all
living.
(Gen 4:1 NKJV) Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and
bore Cain (“acquired”), and said, "I have acquired a man
from the LORD."
{click for slide 10 – “The names of Gen. 5”}
You might think I’m going out on a limb here, but if you translated the
list of names found in Genesis 5, you come up with something pretty
interesting.
Adam
|
Man
|
Seth
|
Appointed
|
Enosh
|
Mortal
|
Kenan
|
Sorrow
|
Mahalalel
|
The Blessed God
|
Jared
|
Shall come down
|
Enoch
|
Teaching
|
Methuselah
|
His death shall bring
|
Lamech
|
The Despairing
|
Noah
|
Rest
|
Follow the thoughts –
{click for first group} “Man appointed mortal sorrow” – Man, Adam, was the one who rebelled
and sinned in the garden, bringing death to all men.
(Rom 5:12 NLT) When Adam sinned, sin entered the
entire human race. Adam's sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for
everyone sinned.
{click for second group} “The Blessed God shall come down teaching” – We celebrate the
incarnation at Christmas, when God came down and took on human flesh. Jesus
came to teach us about how to find the way back to God.
(Mat 1:23 NKJV) "Behold, the virgin shall be
with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel," which
is translated, "God with us."
{click for third group} “His death shall bring the despairing rest” – Jesus Christ would die
on a cross in order to pay for our sins. If we will trust in Him, we will find
forgiveness with God and rest for our souls. Jesus said,
(Mat 11:28-30 NKJV) "Come to Me, all you who
labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. {29} "Take My yoke
upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will
find rest for your souls. {30} "For My yoke is easy and My burden is
light."
Is there a message here in Genesis 5? I’d say there is.
It’s a message of hope. Even though Man blew it and rebelled against God,
God Himself would one day make things right, God would make a way back to Him.
The invitation is open to you to come back to God…