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Noah and his sons are all descendants of Adam. They carry original sin with them.



y R ead Genesisy 4:17-5:5

y 6:1-9:29

y

11:1-9



y Lamech came seven generations after Cain.

y Seven is not only a covenant number: it is often asymbol of perfection in the Bible.

y Lamech had two wivesthe first record of bigamy orpolygamy in the Bible.

y Song of Lamech Genesis 4:23-24

y Lamech has defied Gods will by violating the marriage

covenant which is the primary covenant and a holy institution created by God.



y Instead of treating other people as images of God,Lamech and his followers live in a world of wars andbloody revenge.

y Seven generations down from Adam through Cain, theline of evil has reached its ugly completeness.

y Lamechs code of revenge is exactly the opposite of Gods intention. (Mt 18:21-22)

y Christians multiply forgiveness as disproportionately as Lamech multiplied his revenge



y Adam and Eve had another son named Seth.

y Seth had a son named Enosh

y At that time men began to call upon the name of the

LORD(Gen 4:26)y That means they began to worship God.

y Cain named a city after his son to make a name forhimself, but when Seth has a son, his work is not for

himself but for God.y Cains line care only about their own glory, but Seths

put the glory of God first.



y Genesis tells us that Seth was created after the imageand likeness of Adam, his father, just like God created

Adam.

y

God isnt just our Creator. God is our Father as well.y Cains family reached its evil completeness in the

murderous tyrant, Lamech, whereas the family of Seth was built on worshiping God.



y The descendants of Cain saw the whole world in termsof wars and personal glory.

y The descendants of Seth, although they worshipped

God, still had the seeds of sin in them that we allinherit from Adam and Eve.

y Gen 6

y Who are the sons of God?



y Because God created Adam in his own image andlikeness, and Adam fathered a son named Seth in hisown image and likeness, the Sons of God must be the

family of Seth.y The daughters of men, are the descendants of Cain.

y Lamech, a descendent in the seventh generation of Cainites, was a polygamist. Now Seths descendants fell

into that same sin and took multiple wives.



y In the OT, breaking the marriage covenant alwaysbrings Gods judgment.

y Gen 6:3 says that in response God shortened mens

lives, but that didnt stop the spread of evil.y The Nephilim [or giants] were on the earth in those

days, and also afterward, when the sons of God camein to the daughters of men, and they bore children of

them. These were the mighty men that were of old, themen of renown. Gn 6:1-4



y In Hebrew, the men of renown is literally the men of shem, the men of the namewhich is what the wordshem means.

y They were wicked tyrants who were making a name for

themselves.y The whole world became dominated by a culture of pure

evil.

y The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great inthe earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of hisheart was only evil continually. And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him tohis heart. Gn 6:5-6



y The earth was filled with violence. Gn 6:11

y There was one righteous group left: Noah, his wife, histhree sons, and their families.

y God decided to make a new beginning, starting thehuman race over again with Noah as the founder.

y Noah, was instructed to build an arka giant boatcapable of carrying his family and enough animals to

repopulate the earth.



y God would send a great flood, but Noah would be safe,and God promised, I will establish my covenant with

you Gn 6:18

y

The number 7 is used throughout the flood story. (7pairs of clean animals, 7 days until the flood came,etc.)

y 40 days and 40 nights it rained. 40 is an important

symbolic number in Scripture. Periods of trial andrepentance often come in 40s in the Bible.



y For 150 days, there was nothing but water, then the waters started to recede and in the 7th month the arkcame to rest on Ararat, a mountain in what is today

eastern Turkey.y Noah released his passengers, and the animals spread

out to repopulate the earth.

y Noah built an altar to offer sacrifice to the Lord. Like

Adam, Noah would be the priest for his whole family which, after the Flood, was all that was left of humanity.



y Many other Middle Eastern cultures had flood stories.

y The most famous is the Epic of Gilgamesh, similar tothe story in Genesis.

y It is likely that all the flood stories are a remembranceof the same flood.



y The human race was founded again, with a righteousman as its founder, but the flood did not eliminate sin.

y Noah was not perfect and, just like every human, he

inherited the sinful nature of Adam and Eve.y God new that man would sin again and he promised

never to destroy the earth by a flood again.



y God blessed Noah and his family, saying, Be fruitfuland multiply, and fill the earth Gn 9:1

y Those are the same words God spoke to Adam and Eve

at the dawn of creation.y God gave Noah and his family dominion over the living

things of the world.

y The stories of Adam and Noah are so similar that there

can be no doubt that the Flood begins a new creation.



y God established a covenant with Noah and his family.

y God gave them the earth and all its goods, to havedominion over them, but there were conditions.

y A covenant goes two ways: a blessing for abiding by itsconditions, and a curse for breaking it.



y Christians see the Flood as a typea symbolicprecursor in historyof Christian baptism.

y The story in Genesis tells us in a symbolic way what

happens when a Christian is baptized.y Our old world of sin is washed away, and we are

created anew, reborn in the waters of baptism.

y Like Noah, we still carry the potential of sin with us

after baptism, but we have received Gods blessing andhis promise that he will not destroy us.



y Gen 9:20-27

y Hams disrespect undermined his fathers authority ata time when his was the only authority.

y His sin earned a curse on his descendantsinparticular on Canaan.



y Noah there gave his blessing to Shemone of the two casesin Genesis where the first-born son didnt succumb to prideand end up being passed over in favor of his youngerbrother.

y

The role of the first-born is always very important in apatriarchal society.

y God chooses his servants according to his wisdom, notaccording to our rules.

y One of the recurring themes in Genesis is the preference fora younger son as heir instead of the first-born.

y Shems family would be the foundation for the People of God.



y Chapter 10 in Genesis is called the Table of Nations because it tells which nations came from each of Noahs sons.

y

The most interesting list is the descendants of Ham.y Egypt, Canaan, Philistia, Assyria, and Babylon all come

from Hams line.

y All the nations that were the enemies of the Israelites

are descendants of the wicked Ham.



y The descendants of Ham who settled in the Plain of Shinar (in modern Iraq) decided to make a name forthemselves.

y

The word name in Hebrew is shem.y The Hamites are saying they intend to make a shem

for themselves.

y They are rebelling against the of Shem, the first born

son of Noah.



y The tower-builders think they can reach heaven by themselves, without following Gods way.

y God intervened to put a stop to their scheme by

confusing their language.y They had to give up the project because they couldnt

understand each other.



y The city they started to build eventually becameBabylonthe symbol of everything that was evil anddecadent

y

Meanwhile, the people of Shem went on worshippingGod properly.



y This presentation is based on the text Understandingthe Scriptures: A Complete Course on Bible Study by Scott Hahn, published by Midwest Theological Forum.

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