October 16, 2007

Genesis Chapter 5

The Portrait of the God of the Paltry

To receive the greatest possible blessing from this Bible study, please take a moment to read the passage.

 

            Prayer:

Heavenly Father, in Your word, You have hidden Your kingdom’s treasures. Teach me to value even the seemingly trifle verses, which I have a tendency to skim over or totally skip. Give me the “elbow grease” needed to rub those nuggets of Truth until they shine with your glory and I can clearly see Your inscription. In Jesus’ name, amen.

            Introduction:

            Find a penny pick it up and all the day you’ll have good luck!  Most of us have chanted that rhyme when we were children. But Paul says, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me” (I Corinthians 13:11 NIV). And like Paul, we have put away our childish rhymes and reasons. We no longer chant the verse, but how many of us still pick up the penny? In today’s economy, many people no longer think a penny is worth the effort it takes to bend over.

            Recently, I received an e-mail forward about a wealthy man who took the time to pick up loose change. When asked why a man of his affluence would bother with such trivial matters, he replied, “In God We Trust is still inscribed on American currency. I consider a coin on the sidewalk a personal reminder from God and I pause to check my attitude. I want to make sure it is God I am trusting in every moment.”

            What a wonderful reminder for all of us! Whether we find a coin or spend a dollar, it would be wise to pause, thank God, and examine our lives to be sure w are trusting the Almighty God and not the almighty dollar.

           Biblical genealogy, like a penny on the sidewalk, is often overlooked. However if God included it in His word, there must be an important message inscribed in it.

           The Lesson:

            Although Jesus, during His earthly pilgrimage, never married nor did He father a child, we see a picture of Him in the fifth chapter of Genesis among all the “begats” and names most of us can’t pronounce.

            Take a moment to read John 3:1-21. Nicodemus respected Jesus as a prophet sent from God, but the Pharisee wanted to know more. He wanted to know what he had to do to get to heaven.

            In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again” (John 3:3).

            As we study Genesis 5 with Jesus response to Nicodemus genealogy suddenly has a deeper meaning than historical happenstance. The first three verses of Genesis 5 are a brief summary of the creation of Adam and Eve and the birth of their third son, Seth. Notice neither Cain nor Abel are mentioned in Adam’s genealogy. Apparently, Abel died without any heirs and of course, Cain was exiled. However, Cain’s genealogy is included in the fourth chapter. But it is Seth who God has chosen to bless.

            In order for a child to be born, a seen must be planted. A change must take place before a new creation is birthed and when that happened the new live is in the image of the father.

            Look again at John 3:3. We must be born again to enter the kingdom of God. When we say we are born-again believers, the world is baffled and like Nicodemus, questions the logic of the statement. But we know—not think—we know that when we came to Jesus, He impregnated us with the Holy Spirit, a change took place, and we became a new creature in the image of our Father.

            If a woman confesses faith in Jesus and lives the same life style as before with no remorse for her sin, she has not been born again. Don’t misunderstand. We work out our salvation daily and build precept upon precept. There are sins in my life, which have taken much longer for me to let of than I wanted. But I am aware of them and am consciously striving to become more Christ-like.

            Paul also struggled with the sin nature. Read Romans 7:7-25. Paul has a keen awareness of the sin within him battling the Christ within him he concludes that he is no longer a slave to the law of sin, but a slave to God’s law through Jesus Christ who delivers us from sin.

            To be born again, we MUST see a change within our spirit to become more like Jesus Christ. And with that, others will reap the harvest of the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22). Notice one fruit LOVE has eight elements: joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Compare it to an orange: color, aroma, peal, juice, flavor, seeds, pulp, and vitamins. While there are similar fruits such as lemons and grapefruit, the orange’s distinct characteristics tell us that it is an orange. Similarly, the distinct characteristics of the fruit of the Spirit maybe closely imitated, but there is still only one fruit of the Spirit. And we can only produce it if we are born again.

            In darkness the seed of life is planted, but in order for the infant to survive it most be brought into the light of the world. Birthing a child is a tedious process consuming months of preparati8on, hours of hard labor and moments of excruciating pain. But when we hold that baby in our arms, touch his tiny face, and hear his cry, we know it was worth it all and are filled with hope.

            From the moment man fell, people looked forward to the Messiah—the One who would break the curse and set the world aright. The first mention of the Messiah occurs in Genesis 3:15—And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. Not only does it tell us that the Christ will crush Satan’s head, but it tells us that it is the woman’s seed not man’s. Whenever reproduction is discussed elsewhere in Scripture it always refers to the child as being the father’s seed. Grasp this! The woman’s seed will crush the serpent’s heel. Jesus did not come from a man’s seed, but from the Holy Spirit. This is a prophecy about the virgin birth. Only one child ever born can make the claim that He came from a woman’s seed. That is Jesus Christ who was born of a virgin.             

            Now we find this truth—people were looking for the promised One to restore nature. When Noah was born, his father claimed, “He will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the LORD has cursed” (Genesis 5:29). They were looking for the Messiah, but no at their own sinful nature. Lamech placed the blame of their hard labor on the “the ground the LORD has cursed.” Like Adam blamed Eve, Lamech blamed the cursed ground and adds: WHICH GOD CURSED. It almost sounds as though he is unthinkingly blaming God. Lamech missed the pointed. And so do we when we don’t own our sin. It isn’t anyone’s fault, but our own and we have to get to the place where we will accept our guilt and ask God to forgive us.

            Jesus said, “This is the verdict: Light has come to the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed” (John 3:19 & 20). If we desire to keep our sins hidden and refuse to confess them before Almighty God, we have no hope of being born again into the kingdom of Light. We become as a stillborn infant. Although the seen was planted in us, we die because we refuse to enter the light in fear of our sins being exposed.

            The seed of the gospel is planted in the darkness of a sinful soul, but the individual most enter into the Light of Jesus Christ to be born into His kingdom. At the precise moment of birth, that newborn is by no means beautiful. He is covered with mucus and blood—an awful sight. But the nurse takes him from the doctor and washes the debris from his tiny body. Then he is a wonder to behold.

            Jesus does the same for the sinner. As we enter His light, we are covered with the debris of sin—an awful gruesome sight. But the great Physician personally, takes us to the living water and washes making us presentable to the Father. And in His sight, we are a wonder to behold.

            Jesus encourages us to willing expose our sinfulness so that he can cleanse and nurture us making us fit to partake of His glory. “But whosoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God” (John 3:21).

            The truth is—All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). And what we have done by entering the light of this truth, which needs to be seen plainly as an act of God is: [we] are justified freely by his [God’s] grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus (Romans 3:24 NIV).

 

Conclusion and Challenge:

            As a child, a wise young man heeded the advice of his father who told him pennies add up. By the time the young man met the woman he wanted to marry, he had enough pennies saved to by her an expensive engagement ring.

       All Scripture adds to the richness of Christ as we have just witnessed. Let’s faithfully gather it all onto ourselves with God-given wisdom and understanding of applications.

            Start a new ministry. Print some business cards like the one above. If you like, replace my website with yours or your church’s site. Hand them out—with your tip a restaurants, to passers-by, to cashiers, put them in all your outgoing mail. Pray earnestly for our nation’s revival.

            If you don’t have a computer or time to make cards, but would like to invest in this ministry, write to me via e-mail or the address below. I’ll send you some-FREE.

My Address: Brenda K. Hendricks

                        P. O. Box 165

                        Freeburg, PA 17827