Isaiah 7--Immanuel

"Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive a and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." Isaiah 7:14

Preaching from prophecy is a tricky thing. We are often tempted to look at the passages quoted in the New Testament as being fulfilled in Christ as if they had no immediate context. However, while the prophets did predict the future with the aid of the Holy Spirit, and while they did write out of a conviction that was tied to a messianic hope, they were nonetheless writing to those who lived in their own day as well. This makes the task of interpreting the prophets difficult. 

Take, for instance, the prophecy of a virgin birth from Isaiah 7:14. This is particularly difficult. While Matthew clearly identifies this as being fulfilled in Christ, it is hard to see this from the passage itself. There are a few objections that the majority of scholars point out. First, the Hebrew term which our Bible's translate as "virgin" in this verse is more accurately rendered "a young woman of marriageable age." While the Greek Septuagint translates the word specifically as virgin, the Hebrew does not require it. So, to be precise, the prophecy did not require a virgin birth in the sense that we understand that it is fulfilled in Jesus. Second, the immediate context of the verse suggests that Isaiah is talking about a sign that will happen in his immediate context. It appears that the sign is to be given for king Ahaz of Judah as a sign that God would protect them from the imminent danger of an attack from Syria and Israel, the Northern Kingdom. Isaiah says to Ahaz that the two kings he fears will no longer be a threat by the time the child is old enough to tell right from wrong. Finally, chapter 8, within the immediate context of Isaiah, we see that there is a child born who is intended to be a sign. Isaiah has a son named Maher-shalal-ash-baz of which it is said, "before the boy knows how to cry 'My father' or 'My mother,' the wealth of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be carried away before the king of Assyria." It seems as though Isiah's prophecy was fulfilled by the birth of his own son. Isaiah even says in 8:18 that his two children were given to him as signs from Yahweh for Israel. 

So how do we understand this in the light of what Matthew said? I believe he understood Isaiah 7 in the light of Isaiah 9. In Isaiah 9, we see another promise of a child to be born (9:6-7). In this promise it says that the child will be called "Mighty God" among other magnificent names. It also says that this child will sit on David's throne forever. In chapter 9, Isaiah is looking back to 2 Samuel 7:12-13. The LORD promised David, "When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring [seed] after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever." This promised seed who would sit on David's throne forever is none other than the blessing that would come to all nations through Abraham. This son was also none other than the seed of the woman promised in Genesis 3:15. I suspect, that in Matthew's mind the Isaiah 7:14 was connected with 9:6-7 and that these were pointing to something that would find their ultimate fulfillment in someone much greater than the immediate context suggested--they were fulfilled in Christ. Jesus was born of a virgin, he was God with us, and he was David's son who would sit on his throne forever.

"For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, and on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this." Isaiah 9:6-7

How Am I Going to Preach a Genealogy? Part 2

In the last blog post on this I treated how to interpret the text. What is the theological message that we should get from this genealogy in Genesis 5? In this post, I'm going to try to answer the question, "so what?"

Let's review the theological concepts of Genesis 5:

1. Humanity after Adam is still created in the image of God. Seth was created after the image and likeness of Adam who was created in the image of God.
2. Humanity has been broken and experiences death and the painful toil of labor. Every person listed in the genealogy except for Enoch experienced death, and Lamech acknowledges the desire for relief from the pain.
3. There is hope for eternal life and communion with God. Enoch was the grand exception to the pattern of death because he walked with God.
4. There is a Messiah who would reverse the curse, crush the Serpent, and bring relief to our pain. Lamech expected Noah to give rest to humanity from the curse upon the ground.

 Now how does that affect us today? I'll name two ways that affect us at Woburn Baptist Church this week. First, Dorothy, our piano player is in the hospital right now after having knee surgery. Second, another member, Jerry, lost his house to a fire this week. The concepts we see in this text connect to our current experience in this way. Why do human bodies wear out and experience pain? Because of the curse. We can do many things to try to relieve our pain. We can go to doctors. We can take pain pills. We can have surgery, but ultimately the curse of death that we have all inherited in Adam will take its toll. We will all one day die and after that face the judgement. This is one of the fundamental universal experiences of all humanity. We all want relief from this problem. The other problem is the futility of work. Solomon wrote of this experience. You work for a lifetime acquiring stuff, and you come to the end of your life and you leave it all to someone who didn't work for it. Jesus told a story of a man who horded wealth and didn't know that in that very night his life would be required. In an instant, we can loose everything. This is another consequence of the curse on the ground. Our labor will be futile. We can work and work all our lives, and in the end what we have can all be gone in a moment. This is another fundamental problem of human existence.

Lamech expected an answer to this problem. He was hoping in the promise that a seed of the woman would crush the head of our enemy and reverse this curse. He was trusting that God's provision would set all the wrong things right again. In this hope, he named his son Rest (Noah). In a sense, Lamech was right. Noah would be a man who saved the world. Noah was a type of Christ. Just as all those who were in the ark were saved from the flood waters, 1 Peter 3 says that all who are in Christ will be saved from death in Christ.

Jesus is relevant to our problem with sin's curse both in the next life and this one. We will be saved from death when we are resurrected at his coming, but we have hope in the midst of our painful toil now as well. We know that our labor is not in vain, in the LORD. God is working all things together for our good, so when our house burns down or when we are sitting in a hospital bed, we will know that our greatest treasure is Jesus, and while our outer man is wasting away our inner man is being renewed in Christ every day.

The message of the genealogy in Genesis 5 is a message of hope in the Messiah to bring healing to a broken world.

How Am I Going to Preach a Genealogy?

This is the book of the generations of Adam. (Genesis 5:1a)

I'm currently preaching through Genesis. We started with Genesis a few months ago and I felt like after completing chapter 3 we were at a good stopping point to do something different for a while. Last week I returned to Genesis 4 and I intend to preach up through chapter 11 before taking another excursion into something different. While I want to bring variety to the preaching diet, I also want to have the consistency of regularly systematically going through the biblical books. One of the reasons for this commitment is that I don't want to give into the temptation to skip over hard texts. This week is one of those weeks. In Genesis 5 we will look at the Genealogy of Adam through Seth's line. Genealogies are often looked at as boring and monotonous. However, because of my commitments, I'm not going to skip it. So, how will I preach it?

Options

There are basically three options I can think of for doing this. Two of these options are ones that I would not advocate, and one is the one I will be putting to practice. 

First, a preacher could preach through a genealogy going through and looking at the meaning of the names of each character presented. I would say that this is a mystical approach. The idea is that there is a hidden meaning in the names of the people in the genealogy and that knowledge of the original languages will reveal a hidden meaning of the text that isn't obvious to anyone else. While I'm definitely a proponent of the use of the biblical languages, I think this method falls short of faithfulness to the text. It falls into what is called the "word study fallacy." The problem with it is that texts have their meaning as words are put together into sentences. Looking at a word by itself will give you information about the language, but it's missing the forest for the trees! The meaning of the words is determined by the way that they are used, not their etymology, and not necessarily by combining all their lexical possibilities. While I've heard of people using this method before and church members being impressed, I think it misses the point. 

Second, a preacher could create a chart with all the lengths of the lives of all the people in the genealogy to try to show how old the world is. 

While I've seen this done before by people I love and respect, I think this misses the point as well. I am a six day young earth creationist, and I actually think there are a few things we can gain from this kind of exercise, but I don't believe this is the point. God didn't reveal these things to us to satisfy our curiosity about the age of the earth. I believe he had something much more deeply theological for us to understand. 

Finally, I advocate a literary approach. There are two principles that I will keep in mind as I describe this literary approach. First, the genealogies in the biblical text function as a bridge between narratives. Before this genealogy we see the narratives of creation, the Fall, the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, and a brief story about Cain's descendant, Lamech. The next major story in the narrative will be the Flood. The genealogy functions as a literary bridge from what has happened already to what is coming next in the narrative. It is showing us that all of these things are happening are connected. It is giving us a framework for the Pauline theology that all human beings are all descended from Adam and that the events that happened in the Flood narrative are further consequences of the Fall that had happened earlier.  Second, if we want to know what is significant in the genealogy, then we must look for the items which break the normal pattern. The emphasized points will be found in the variations.

Variations

The genealogy of Genesis 5 follows a distinct pattern. It goes like this: 

When (X) had lived (Y) years, he fathered (Z). (X) lived after he fathered (Z) (W) years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of (X) were (V), and he died. 

 There are three significant variations from this pattern that I see. 

1. Adam varies from the pattern. Instead of saying "When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered Seth," it says "When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth." This is significant for a few reasons. It shows us that the image of God from the creation narrative was passed on through successive generations. It shows us that even though sin had drastic consequences for humanity and introduced death, human beings are still image bearers of God. This variation in the pattern also does one more thing. It links Seth to Noah. It says "he fathered a son...and named him...." This is something we don't see in any of the following generations until you get to Noah, and it will be mentioned again later. 
2. Enoch varies from the pattern as well. It says, "When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he had fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters.... Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him." This break in the pattern does two things. It highlights an important part of the pattern. Everyone died! Every generation in the list ends with the words "and he died" except Enoch. From this we should see that the genealogy intends to show us that death came to all men through Adam--just as we read in Paul. However, Enoch is a significant break in this pattern. What does this mean? What does it mean that he walked with God? What does it mean that "he was not?" What does it mean that "God took him?" Each of those ideas are ambiguous in the text. It is hard to say with certainty. It has been traditionally understood that Enoch never physically died and that he was taken directly into Heaven just as Elijah was taken in a fiery chariot. Why didn't Enoch die? It can be assumed that it was because he walked with God. Enoch apparently had a close personal walk with God. We don't have any details telling us what this means. I do not think that it means that Enoch was sinless. Rather, Enoch walked in reliance on God. He trusted in God. I would guess that it means that he lived a life of faith in God. Unfortunately, we aren't given much information. Jewish apocalyptic literature abounded with curiosity and speculations as to what happened to Enoch, but as for the biblical record, we don't have much to go on. 
3. Lamech also varies from this pattern. Lamech was Noah's father, and he was also the last person in this genealogy to die. His record says "When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son, and called his name Noah, saying, "Out of the ground that the LORD has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands." Just as I mentioned before, the only other person of which it is said, "he fathered a son, and [called his] name" was Adam. This begins and ends the genealogy with the same break in the pattern. Then it gives a reason for Noah's name. "He will give us relief." The word for "relief" or rest is built off the same word as Noah's name. So Lamech named his son "Rest." What would Noah give humanity rest from? Noah was expected to give relief from "our work" and from "the painful toil of our hands" because of "the ground which the LORD has cursed." These are all references to Genesis 3. The "painful toil" that Noah was to give relief from was the painful toil mentioned in the pain of childbearing from 3:16 and the pain of man's labor in 3:17-19. The vocabulary links these passages, but so does the author's explicit reference to the LORD's curse on the ground. In short, I believe that Lamech expected Noah to be the seed of the woman who would reverse the curse and crush the serpent's head. It is on this basis that I believe it is legitimate to preach Jesus from the genealogy here in Genesis 5.  

When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son and called his name Noah, saying, "Out of the ground that the LORD has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands." (Gen 5:28-29 ESV)

 

Cain and the Seed of the Woman

Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, "I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD." (Gen 4:1 ESV)

From Genesis 3 to the end of the Old Testament, the entire story centers around the promise of a coming Messiah who would crush the serpent's head. Chapter three ends with the punishment upon Adam and Eve for their sin in the Garden of Eden. Yet mingled in the curse upon the Serpent there is a promise of a seed. There would be enmity between the seed of the Serpent and the seed of the woman which would one day be culminated when a specific descendant of Eve would defeat the Serpent of old. Chapter three ends with the grace of God when he made coverings for Adam and Eve out of animal skins, and the discipline of God as Adam and Eve were exiled from Paradise--East of Eden.

The next passage in the narrative picks up with a birth. The curse foretold that Eve would have seed, and that there would be difficulty in childbearing, so it is important to see a connection between these stories. The announcement of Cains birth was in answer to the promise of God. Yet the words used suggest that there is a problem before Cain and Abel ever bring their sacrifice. Eve names Cain with a word based on the verb for what she says she has done. She says, "I have "Cained" a man, with the LORD." The word means to acquire or to get, and while the ESV says "with the help of the LORD," the Hebrew text is more ambiguous. When she says this, is she meaning with God's help? Or is she meaning alongside him? Did Eve mean to take credit as though she had acquired Cain in her own effort--in a manner equal with what God can do? Ultimately, it is too ambiguous to be dogmatic about, but it would fit with a repeated theme within Genesis if she does claim to do it on her own. It would fit with the Tower of Babel when the people sought to make a name for themselves, and it would fit with Abraham and Sarah, when Sarah gave Hagar to her husband to acquire a seed through the work of man. Either way, there is reason to think that Eve saw Cain as a fulfillment of the promised seed. The question in an attentive reader's mind must be, "Is Cain the one? Is he the seed that was promised in 3:15?"

As the narrative continues it becomes clear that this expectation is wrong. Instead of destroying the seed of the Serpent, Cain appears to BE the seed of the Serpent who had enmity with his brother. This brings a tension to the story. Up to that point, the only sons of Adam and Eve that we had read about were Cain and Able. The first born was a murderer, and the second was dead, and the question remains, "how will God's promise of a seed be answered?" 

The last verses of chapter four answer the question. After tracing the line of Cain's descendants, the narrator returns to Adam and Eve and tells us that they had another son--Seth. It also tells us that in the days of Seth's son, men began to call upon the name of the LORD. Chapter 5 consists of Seth's genealogy and it comes to an end in Noah, another seed who was expected to bring the people rest and who saved all of mankind. The last verses of this story tell us that the LORD provided a seed who though whom the promise would ultimately come to fruition. As Genesis continues, the seed promise is narrowed down to the line of Abraham, and even to the line of Judah. And as New Testament believers, we know that the seed was ultimately fulfilled by Jesus the Son of David. 

And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth, for she said, "God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him." (Gen 4:25 ESV)