The Origin of Society, Part 1
Genesis 4:17-22
Well, let's open our Bibles to the fourth chapter of Genesis. I was saying to Patricia as we were driving down tonight that I think I've reached the point in my life where I don't preach very many sermons anymore, if a sermon by definition is a sort of self-contained message. If seems as though in more recent years, rather than sermons, we are doing expositions of Scripture, and that we are much more concerned with the meaning of the text than with creating some form of communications, or some style. And that's as it should be in one sense. Although I think it's good to be able to capture all your thoughts in one unit and present it, I find it difficult to do that. I think particularly because I know I'm coming back every week, and so I don't feel the pressure to get it all in. At the same time, we don't want to have a rambling exercise where we're just meandering through the text in a sort of uncontrolled fashion. And so what we endeavor to do is to capture the essence of a text, but not be limited by time as to what is available to us in that text. And the fact of the matter is that you can't always get all that's there in one message or two or three or - however many.
People ask me if I plan my message series in advance; and the answer is, "Well, I plan the book I'm gonna teach; I plan the chapter I'm gonna teach; I plan the section I'm gonna teach, but I can't plan how long it's gonna take me to teach it because I'm not particularly interested in the homiletics of it; I'm not particularly interested in the form of it or the style of it, or capturing it in some format that is sort of all contained in one unit. What I'm much more concerned about is getting the meaning here and digging out the riches of what is available in the text." And for that, it takes time; and so we spend the time in these expositions. But always with a theme; always with a general, overarching theme.
And when we come to Genesis chapter 4, verses 17 to 26, we come to a theme, the origin of society. The origin of society. If you want a sub-category to that, secular and sacred society. This is the origin of society here. And while on the surface the text may appear to be rather isolated, rather anecdotal and somewhat pedantic, that is strictly informational, and it may appear at first reading to be sort of minor details about the first family, it is in fact much more than that. It is broad; it is sweeping information on the story of civilization, the story of society, the story of culture, the story of man in his development in a very unique era of human history. And that unique era of human history is pre-flood. As often scholars call it, the "antediluvian" (the ante in the sense of a-n-t-e, meaning "before,"); the "antediluvian society," or civilization; that is, the civilization on the world before the flood.
Now you remember, when we come into Genesis chapters 6, 7, and 8, we're gonna be looking at the universal flood. God sent a flood which covered the entire earth, and it drowned all humanity with the exception of eight people. The only ones who survived the flood were Noah and his wife, his three sons, and their three wives - a total of eight people. The universal flood destroyed all humanity with the exception of those eight people.
If you turn over to chapter 6 for a moment, you have there an explanation of why God sent the flood. Verse 5, "The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. And the Lord said, 'I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.' But Noah found favor [or grace] in the eyes of the Lord." Then it goes on to mention Noah as "a righteous man, blameless in his time; he walked with God... became the father of three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, the earth was filled with violence. And God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth." And of course, as you know, the Lord sent the flood.
Go over to verse 21 of chapter 7. "All flesh that moved on the earth perished, birds and cattle and beasts and every swarming thing that swarms on the earth, and all mankind; and of all that was on the dry land, all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, died. Thus He blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky, they were blotted out from the earth; and only Noah was left, together with those who were with him in the ark."
So what you have then, is you have a pre-flood society. The cataclysmic flood that covered the whole earth and drowned all of humanity and every other living creature outside the ark that moved on the earth - that flood not only drowned all of humanity but, listen carefully, it re-shaped the planet. And we'll get to that when we get to the flood itself. It created, very likely, the current continents. It literally readjusted land and water, and reshaped the earth. As a result of that, it totally destroyed the first world civilization.
Now because of that, archeologists essentially, in all their digs and all their enterprises, are finding things that related to the post-flood world. There are no doubt fossils, of course; and there are occasional times when they are found fossils of the pre-flood society, buried deep in fossil ferriferous rock strata in the earth's crust. Very few artifacts of the pre-flood era have been found. Most of what archeologists work with is what has come and gone in society after the flood, starting with Noah and his family. Therefore, essentially, the only history we have of the earth pre-flood, is Genesis chapter 4. It is therefore a very monumental portion of Scripture. If we want to understand this part of human history - this element of the saga of man - then we have to understand Genesis chapter 4, because it is the only record of the antediluvian society. It is the only record of the pre-flood civilization. Here then is God's Word - the only account in existence of the first civilization.
Now, prior to the flood, the world was different as we know. And we'll learn more about it when we get into the study of the flood, but there was essentially no weather. There was essentially no wind, no rain, no snow. The terrain may well have been more gentle. There may have been greater flat land surfaces. The climate was mild and warm. There were abundant plants and abundant animals covering the earth, and it was a very congenial environment; not at all like the current environment with all of its tendency toward natural disasters.
We also know about the pre-flood time because we have a Genesis 5 genealogy. And the genealogy of Genesis 5 is the genealogy up to Noah. It starts with Adam in verse 1 and goes all the way down to Noah and his sons in verse 32. That is the genealogy of the line of Seth, pre-flood. We learn from that genealogy that people lived for hundreds of years - for half a century. Adam himself living 930 years, a man named Methuselah living 969 years; people lived very long lives.
We also know, because it's repeated in the genealogy of chapter 5, that they begat sons and daughters. Now we cannot really imagine how many sons and daughters 900-year-old people could have. But assuming that being 900 was like being 90 in our world, they could certainly be having children into their 400s, or 500s. And so they would be having children at a rapid rate; who then would be having children, who then would be having children, etc., etc., etc. Any good guess would take into the lifespan say of Cain, who lived 800 years. In that 800 years in the life of Cain, one can imagine that the earth was populated with hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions. And conservative estimates are - and I say conservative estimates are - that by the time you go another 800 years, which is 1600 years to the flood, 800 years after Cain, by the time you get to the flood, 1600 years later, you could be having between 7 and 10 billion people on the earth.
Now remember, they live a long time. They have many children. The climate is mild. The earth is a congenial environment. It was a different world. In that early generation, all marriages at first were brother-sister marriages. But there were no mutant genes in the genetic system in any of those children. There was a pristine element in humanity at that time. It hadn't degenerated so that even with that sort of intrafamily marriage, there was no genetic harm that could have resulted. It wasn't until many, many, many generations after the flood that Moses laid down the law of God, forbidding marriage within a family; because those marriages had become genetically very dangerous; and thus incest was prohibited in the law of Moses.
But there was, before the flood, a pristine purity in the human genetic system and its bloodstream with so very, very few accumulated mutant genes. Together also with a primeval absence of disease-producing organisms, which only gradually developed through the outworking of the curse. That's one of the reasons they lived so long. The original created microorganisms were no doubt beneficial, and served to assist life in that first great age span.
So we very likely have a civilization that could populate the earth to the level of beyond 7 billion people, according to some. The people would be living, as I said, in a much more congenial environment. They would be stronger than we would ever imagine. You have to be very strong to live 900 years. They would be very resistant to disease and illness and aging; they would be extremely healthy. They would be very intelligent, and would they ever be skilled. Can you imaging doing something for 600 years? You'd get it down! Can you imagine playing a musical instrument for 600 years? Any skill, they would be very experienced - in experience and riches; they would be very productive. So here is a society that's immensely creative, immensely productive, very strong, very healthy, and very, very intelligent. Because the curse is causing a constant decline in every aspect of life, we're getting weaker physically. We're propped up now by certain scientific inventions in the area of medicine; but generally, the law of entropy works, and matter breaks down. They were more intelligent, more skilled, more experienced, more productive, stronger, healthier, and they lived in a far more benign and congenial environment. This was an amazing, amazing golden age, pre-flood.
It's a fascinating age to think about. But the fact of the matter is, we only have one record of it; just one little window. And that comes in Genesis chapter 4, and then in Genesis chapter 5 - the genealogy. That's all we have; that's all we know about that golden age. But it is very instructive and wonderfully helpful for us to learn what God has revealed for us.
Now though, as I said, the world would be populated by millions and billions of people by the time the flood came and destroyed them all, the Holy Spirit chooses to build the history around two families. The family of Cain and the family of Seth. Both of them were sons of Adam. So we're talking about the first family. Now in chapter 4 verses 16 to 24, we have the story of Cain's family; and in verses 25 and 26, we are introduced to Seth's family. And then in chapter 5, we have the genealogy of Seth's family. So the contrast here is between two families.
Now this is again the wonderful mind of God instructing us because, if you want to know the truth, there are only two families in the world today - just two. There's the secular family, and there's the sacred family. And that's the way it's always been. There are only two families, from the divine perspective, on the planet. And Cain and Seth model for us the secular family and the sacred family. Cain and secular culture; Seth and sacred culture. Cain and material society; Seth and spiritual society. Cain and those who rebel against God; Seth and those who worship God. And those are the only two families there are, right? That's - you're either in one or the other. You're either a Cainite or a Sethite. You're either involved in the secular culture or the sacred culture; the material society or the spiritual society; you're either a rebel against God or a worshipper of God.
And so, what we learn here is about Cain, first of all, and secular culture, and then about Seth and sacred culture. The line of murderous Cain is evil. And that line is illustrated by Lamech, as we will see. The line of righteous Seth is good. And that line is illustrated by both Enosh in this fourth chapter and Enoch, in the fifth chapter. And so we are simply seeing God divide for us all of humanity, pre-flood, the way all of humanity, post-flood, is divided. There is the secular, the material, the rebellious, and the evil culture; and there is the sacred, spiritual, worshipping, and righteous culture. And those two coexist on the planet until the end of history.
But let's go back pre-flood and look at the only accurate historical record we have of that civilization. First of all, Cain and secular culture. Verse 16, "Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. And Cain had relations with his wife and she conceived, and gave birth to Enoch; and he built a city, and called the name of the city Enoch, after the name of his son. Now to Enoch was born Irad, and Irad became the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael became the father of Methushael, and Methushael became the father of Lamech. And Lamech took to himself two wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other, Zillah. And Adah gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. And his brother's name was Jubal; he was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe. As for Zillah, she also gave birth to Tubal-cain, the forger of all implements of bronze and iron; and the sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah. And Lamech said to his wives, 'Adah and Zillah, listen to my voice, you wives of Lamech, give heed to my speech, for I have killed a man for wounding me; and a boy for striking me; if Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold.'" Now at first reading, as I said, it seems a bit obscure, a bit far-reaching, a bit irrelevant; but as you look a little more closely at this, you're gonna be as fascinated as I have been by it.
It is important to say as we take a look at Cain and secular culture that secular culture is in itself a provision from God for man's life. You do not want to miss that. Secular culture is a provision from God for man's life. It is a common grace. It brings to man the enjoyment of God's creation. God has given man all things richly to enjoy on this amazing an astonishingly rich planet. The earth itself is so replete with riches that it never ceases to stagger us. We can draw out of the earth all of the materials that we use to build things and to produce fabrics, clothing - there just seems to be no end to it, from natural products like cotton all the way to petroleum products like plastic, and everything in between.
We are able to mine out all matter of metals and smelt them down and sort them out from the places where they are encased; and all precious metals and all precious jewels, and all the way from the pearl, which is floating in the sea in that little creature the oyster, to the diamond, which is harder than any substance on the earth, which has to be struck out of a rock bed. All of those riches. Everything that we enjoy all the time - electricity, the ability to pick up a telephone and talk to somebody across the earth and have a one-second time frame in which my voice goes up to a satellite and comes back down to a system that directs it into his ear without a wire. That's all within the framework of God's creation. That's all part of common grace. And that contributes to communication, it contributes to culture, it contributes to society.
And because man is made in the image of God, he is phenomenally created. The creativity of man is staggering. If you have gone to Europe, as I recently have, and you have trekked around Europe you see, even looking back - I mean, we're all aware of the creativity of man in terms of computers and in terms of modern science and electronics and Internet and medicine and all of those kinds of scientific things - but even if you step back and you look at the monumental achievements in architecture, the massive achievements in edifices and buildings that were built by