We turn to the second reading of God's inspired word, our sermon text for this morning, which is Genesis chapter four, 17 through 26. Page four of your Pew Bibles. Stand please, out of respect for the reading of God's inspired word. Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. When he built a city, he called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch. To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad fathered Mahujael, and Mahujael fathered Methujael, and Methujael fathered Lamech. And Lamech took two wives. The name of one was Adah, and the name of the other, Zillah. Adah bore Jabal. He was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. His brother's name was Jubal. He was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe. Zillah also bore Tubalcain. He was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron. The sister of Tubalcain was Naamah. Lamech said to his wives, Adah and Zillah, hear my voice, you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say. I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain's revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech's is seventy-sevenfold. 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. To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God abides forever. Amen. You may be seated. Genesis is the book of beginnings, and we've been enjoying, delighting, receiving the word of the Lord from this very first book of the Bible. But Genesis is the book of beginnings not just because it's the first book of the Bible, we've seen it's the book of beginnings because it takes us all the way back to the start, all the way back to the beginning of creation so that we can understand God, understand His world, and understand ourselves correctly. Now this is important, and you know why, because it's so easy to start thinking of ourselves, thinking of God, thinking of the world in a way that is far from reality. So Genesis, the beauty of Genesis is it gets us all here on Sunday morning and starts to recalibrate us, reframe us, so that the way we're seeing the world is proper. And we saw this with creation, didn't we? We saw that when we look at the sun, moon, and stars, and the mountains, and the oceans, we're not just looking at bare facts of nature, we're not just looking at At raw data out there, but we're really looking at is a temple a majestic house that God has built a place where he ought to be worshipped The oceans are his basement The sky is his attic and the the mountains and the ground that we stand on honor are his living room. So creation recalibrated in our minds, and then we of course saw the great distortions of sin. We saw how Adam and Eve believed the serpent, they believed the lie, they heard him when he said, did God really say? And so what we see is that sin is not just a mistake that every human being commits, because all men err, no, sin is rebellion against God, and it is a belief in the serpent's lie. Again, recalibrating creation, recalibrating how we think of sin. And I want to suggest to you this morning that what we start to see as the book of Genesis unfolds in this passage is the book of Genesis is recalibrating the way that we're thinking about civilization. creation, sin, and now civilization. What is civilization? Civilization is what happens when you put a bunch of people together and they start building things and they build cities and infrastructure and empires and they organize things. And what we see, of course, when we go to an ancient history museum is you'll see a big display labeled the cradle of civilization. You can come up close to it and you can see old artifacts You know, iron instruments and hammers and ancient tools. And some of you are familiar with this. I find that remarkably interesting. The cradle of civilization. But of course, if we're not careful, we might be far off with that as well. Genesis, in fact, I would propose we are far off in the way we think of civilization today. Genesis is helping us, God is helping us to go back to the beginning, back to the true cradle of civilization, where we see who man is, who man is when a bunch of men are put together, and how we're supposed to think about all this. Because believe it or not, Actually is shaping tremendously the way that we ought to think about our role today as the people of God and as the church Genesis 4 has much to say about civilization and culture what I want you to see we've already seen this over the past three four weeks that the book of Genesis is starting to answer the question of man's beginnings with sets of twos and Two seeds, Cain and Abel, and before them, the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. And now what you need to see today is there are two civilizations, two cultures. There's secular culture and there's redeemed culture. And Genesis 4 leaves little doubt about this. Secular culture. Culture that thrives but it thrives apart from God It began with impressive inventions and we see that here look at what's going on in Genesis chapter 4 Cain's descendants built cities They composed music they crafted weapons. They forged tools out of metal. It's like, you know when you hear about tubal cane and Jubal and You hear of these these ancient people what it's like is we're being walked through a museum and we're being introduced to these first inventors and It's something else, isn't it? We tend to think of ancient people as simpletons just Neanderthals drawing On the walls of caves and of course, this is this is a lie The first men the descendants of Cain Were creative image bearers And of course, I have to address this because there's some confusion right away. You say, how are there people at this time? How did Cain, where did Cain's wife come from? Right? A tricky question and one that I can simply answer by saying, first of all, it's highly controversial. Second of all, you need to understand that if we're looking straight at the scriptures, it appears that Cain's wife was one of close blood to him. And I think you'll know what I mean. Those who are of age to understand, this was somewhat of a much closer relative than we are comfortable with today for many different reasons. This is a sticking point for many people as they turn to the Bible and say, is this really an accurate explanation as to where civilization came from? Where did Cain get his wife? I think it is accurate. We do believe the word of God, we take God at his word, and we see that at this time where people were living much longer lives than they are today, they were also marrying in much closer relation at this time than we are used to today. This is where Cain got his wife. This is where society started to multiply rapidly to the point where you have cities and perhaps even pyramids striking out into the sky. Creative image bearers doing what they do. They're inventing. And this is the spirit of human ingenuity that lived on then and lives on today. We see it today in the cars that zoom down the street, the planes that zip through the sky and the pocket sized computers that we carry with us wherever we go. This is invention, this is society, this is culture. And it's impressive. Isn't it amazing what people are able to make today? What they're able to, I mean, you think of the Wright brothers, right? Dayton is home, it's first in flight. I don't care what North Carolina says. Dayton is first in flight. Isn't it amazing when you go over to the Carillon Museum and just walk through the ages of invention and say, Wow, how did someone think of this? Why can't I think of that? And yet we see that when you put a bunch of men together and they start thinking together, because we're made in the image of God, we create just like God created, just on this lesser level, and we do amazing things. We create culture and civilization that makes the creatures around us just look in awe and say, wow, that's something else. Impressive, yes, but dangerous. Because there's a fatal flaw in such culture. And you see the flaw of secular culture here at the very beginning in Genesis four. The fatal flaw is that apart from God, mankind ultimately uses culture for evil rather than for good. The fatal flaw is sin. And we see it because right when we're hearing of this catalog where we're being walked through the Carillon Park of the ancient world, right when we see Tubalcain and Jubal, we're also introduced to Lamech. Did you hear about Lamech? He's quite the man, isn't he? And not in a famous way, but an infamous way. He has notoriety. This man, Lamech, you have to notice that Moses, who wrote the book of Genesis under inspiration by God, is being incredibly careful in the way he's constructing this narrative. Because he's taking Cain, Cain's line, and he's showing you the seventh man descended from that line. The number seven is very important in biblical narrative. It's very important in a book of Genesis because it shows what it's the number of perfection, the number of maturation. And it's showing that when you get to the seventh of the line, that's what you're to expect from the rest of the line. When we go, when we start with Cain, we start with the seed of the serpent, which we know he is by this time. And we trace seven from him. We come to Lamech and we see that the fruitfulness, the fullness of his line is nothing but rotten fruit. Rotten fruit. Lamech epitomizes this problem because the fruitfulness of Cain's godless line is extreme pride. Cain tried to hide his sin, but by the time he gets to Lamech, he's not even trying to hide it anymore. He's flaunting it, and he has this song. We have this song that he sings to his wives. We'll get into his wives in a moment. But what is this song about? It's this song of prideful bragging about the evil things he's done. That's what you get seven descendants away from Cain. That's where Cain's line is going. That's where the seed of the serpent is going. Here's where the line of Cain goes. It goes to a godless culture which alters God's institutions. Lamech takes to himself two wives, the first time in the Bible that we hear of polygamy. And from here on, we're going to hear about it a lot. But I want you to show, I want you to notice that this is an obvious deviation from God's design for marriage in Genesis 2. In Genesis 2, you had this beautiful picture of one man and one woman together for one whole life. And now you see Lamech, this rotten prideful man, and he's taking to himself two wives. And you need to understand that the scripture often teaches us something is wrong by showing us the bad guys doing it. You'll say, hey, where's the place where the scripture explicitly condemns polygamy? And I might be able to find you one or two implicit places, but here you can see this obvious case. The Bible teaches you something is off, it's wrong by showing you a bad guy doing it in deviation from God's original design. And it's as if you just had this big bold statement here, polygamy is wrong. Marriage is supposed to be between one man and one woman. What's Lamech doing? He's sinning. He's altering God's institution of marriage. And today, of course, we see this because godless society redefines many of God's institutions, doesn't it? Godless society redefines marriage. Godless society denies the most basic gender distinctions known to nature. It distorts parent-child relationships, inverts them. And so we see the song of Lamech today, not being sung in hushed tones, but being sung louder and louder and louder. Look at what I can do now. Look at my sin. And guess what? No one's stopping me for it, are they? So we see godless culture with all of its inventions and greatness being known for altering God's institutions. We also see godless culture devaluing human life. And you hear this in Lamech's song too. I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. What's Lamech saying? He's saying that some child, the word here is literally for a child, has somehow, I don't know, struck him, nicked him with a sword, and so Lamech says, I'm gonna kill him. Right, you say, that's really overstated. It is. Lamech is showing that he's this bloodthirsty man who doesn't care about human life ultimately. He'll snuff it out if it bothers him in the least, if it's inconvenient to him. And so there's no eye for an eye here, he's saying, You know, a little wound, a little a little nick from a sword results in death from me. And then he brags. He says, look, Cain's revenge was sevenfold. Mine's going to be 77 fold. It's almost the opposite of it is what we hear in Jesus. Right. Jesus says, you know, if if someone offends you, you forgive them. How many times? Seventy seven times. And Lamech is saying, my vengeance, my hatred of man is going to extend 77 times. It's not hard at all to find today violence like this against image bearers. You do see it in the womb. One baby killed in the womb for every five newborns who get to see the light. You see it in our schools. Sick people snuff out innocent lives with senseless gun violence. All of this. All of it leading up to a lesson, Lamech's lesson. Civilization can boast of man's abilities, but it cannot save a sinful race. It can't get to the heart of man, which is twisted and wicked. It can't fix total depravity. Society can build things and improve quality of life, but it cannot get to the heart. That's the kind of solution we need. I mentioned the Wright Brothers earlier. You know, in 1903, they were cheering as their Wright Flyer became the first in flight. And it was less than 10 years later that they watched in horror as their planes flew over foxholes and bombarded down bullets on soldiers in World War I. And Orville Wright said, we dared to hope we had invented something that would bring lasting peace to the earth. But we were wrong. We just keep hoping, don't we, that the cure for cancer will arrive, and maybe that will bring lasting peace, or maybe some politician will rise to the scene and enact some policies and civilization that will bring this lasting eon of justice and compassion. We just keep hoping that somehow the cure to humanity's ills lies in civilization's structure and its resources, but it does not. The further we get down Cain's line, the further you get from Lamech, the more you see, it's just more of the same, more of the same. Can anything fix this mess? Can anything redeem culture? And the answer, of course, is yes. We see in this passage, not just a secular culture known for its inventions and its ruthlessness, but also you see in this passage the hints of a redeemed culture that is smaller, that is less noticed, but it's there and it is pivotal to understanding the hope that continues on for a fallen world after Adam's sin, after Cain's murder. after Lamech's boasting. And here it is at the end of our passage, in the hope of Seth and his offspring. Now I want you to see this redeemed culture, and I want you to see it in contrast to the prideful pattern of an evil society. And you notice that what the righteous people start to do is they began to build a culture centered around the knowledge of God. You see, Eve has another son. And at this point, she's not looking to Cain with much hope, right? But she looks to Seth and says, finally, the Lord's given me another child. And she names him the appointed one, right? He's the one that's going to carry on this hope given to her in Genesis 3.15, that there would come a seed from her own body who would crush the serpents. And she says, This hope lives on, not through Cain, but through Seth. And what happens after Seth starts to have children and his descendants start to add up? Well, in those days, verse 26, in those days, people began to call upon the name of the Lord. And isn't that refreshing? Isn't that exactly what we need to hear right after that ruthless song of Lamech, that violent song of Lamech, that God-defying song of Lamech? Then we start to hear people singing hymns in praise to our God, calling upon his name. And what you see here is the first instance of the Bible of public worship, because we see throughout the rest of the scriptures, Calling upon the name of the Lord is just another way of affirming public worship. First Chronicles 16. speaks of calling upon the name of the Lord and speaks of all of Israel doing this together when they come together in one place and lift up their voices to the God of the heavens. And isn't that amazing that this is happening here? While the sons of Cain were adding wives and taking lives, the sons of Seth were gathering for the very first worship service. It's these righteous men tucked away at the end of our passage. that provide us with an important example, an example that we must live by today. If we have any hope for humanity, here's the hope. In an affluent and arrogant and a godless society, we must preserve knowledge of God. It's the only hope. How do we do that? The text has supplied us with several examples, several directions. The first, we worship. We do what we're doing here this morning. Public worship recalibrates our humanity. It takes us back to the beginning, back to what society did in the very beginning to preserve itself from godlessness that threatened to destroy it. When we gather like you're doing this morning, when we come together in public worship, we're reminded of what all our creative efforts are aimed at. When we invent things, when we build infrastructure, when we come together, what's that all about? It's not just about making a name for humanity that lives on and on. It's not finding a way apart from God to solve the world's problems. No, it is glorifying God, taking dominion for him. And what else? and looking to him as the only source of the solution to our problems. Technology cannot save us. We've tried that. Solve some problems, creates more. Creates as many as it fixes. Politicians cannot save us. And yes, you need to hear that, especially in this election season. They will not bring you lasting peace. Do not put your trust in them. Do your duty as citizens. Benefit this world with your vote. But realize that they cannot solve the sin problem. Only Christ can save us. Romans 10, 13 says, whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And in that passage, it's as clear as day, we are talking about the Lord Jesus Christ, the God whom Seth and his remnant worship. called upon when they were faced with a godless society is the Savior we now call upon today, this morning in worship, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's exactly what we need to do. When we see a godless society that is confused to its core, when we see God's institutions being twisted and neglected, when we see human life being devalued, what do we do? What can the righteous possibly do? We cry out to the Lord and our prayer, Lord, help us, Lord, save us. To the rest of the world, to the tubal canes and the jubles and the canes, it's going to look like foolishness. What are those people doing? They think their prayers can matter? Get to work, invent something that's gonna fix our problems. But to the redeemed people of God, we realize that prayer is posturing us before the Lord, who alone can solve our deepest corruptions of civilization. So we worship. And then we witness. We live as a witness. We pick up the tools of our society. We grab a hold of our iPhones. We fly planes. We build infrastructure. We build things. And we do these not in a way that society uses them, not for evil, but for good. We use human ingenuity and creativity in a way that shines the spotlight on our Lord and God so that people say, wow. That culture, that remnant, that church over there, they've got something that I don't have. Be blameless and innocent, children of God, without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life. Philippians 2.15. And so instead of using our iPhones for addiction to obscene images. We use our phones for Bible reading, for communication with those who do not know the truth, for any host of things that promote righteousness. You see what I mean? And we invest in the future generation. Because I want you to notice here, and this is looking just a bit beyond our passage today, but remember how we counted the seventh from Cain in order to see what his line would look like. We saw that seventh from Cain was a Lamech. Well, Moses has been very intentional here. If you count the seventh from Seth, you'll notice in Genesis chapter five, the seventh from Seth is also a man named Lamech. And he also says something, but what he says is about his son, Noah. 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. You see? God has not left us with generations that snuff out the truth. He's promised that a remnant will remain. And so we tend to that remnant by tending to our little ones, by raising them in the Lord. We must raise children who will pass a gospel legacy to succeeding generations. If we're going to do that, we have to teach our kids. We can't leave it to secular culture to do that. We have to actually educate our children and raise them in the Lord. And raise them to call upon the name of the Lord. We don't just sit around and think implicitly that's going to happen. Because if we don't, guess what's gonna happen? The canes and the lamex and the tubal canes are gonna grab a hold of them and say, look at all this cool stuff we have and forget the Lord. When secular culture crumbles, and if you haven't noticed, It's crumbling, it's crumbled throughout history and it will probably crumble again. When it crumbles, we must leave a righteous remnant that stands as this witness to God and rebuilds a civilization which honors the Lord. We do that through faithful discipleship. So that when the Lord returns, that remnants there, that seed of civilization, what does he promise to do? He's going to build a new heavens and a new earth, a civilization where the city of God, a civilization built upon his precepts is there. And he says, in that city, we see a picture of revelation of a city, which instead of being built on a pride that destroys civilization, it's built around the Lord who establishes lasting treasures. Blesses those who are part of it It is our privilege this morning to be part of such a culture to be part of such a civilization But only because of Christ Who died the death we deserve to die Pours out his spirit in our hearts So that we no longer sing the song of Lamech, but now we sing the song of the other Lamech a hope that God has sent his seed and will continue to establish our seed as a remnant forever. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we are citizens of this world, but Lord, as it is, we belong to two cultures, a culture around us which Lord is so impressive with what it produces, and yet it is so bent on using these things for sin. And Lord, we feel we feel the pull. We feel the temptation to move in this direction. But would you preserve us? Would you keep us faithful to to another culture, to the culture of the redeemed, a remnant that that takes and builds and is creative in its own respect? But Lord, one that shines in the midst of a twisted and crooked generation, your light and that is faithful to promote to the to the seventh and eighth and ninth and tenth generation faithfulness unto you. We pray that you would keep a remnant, keep a holy remnant faithful. You did this in ancient history. You promised way back then that you were going to send a Savior, and you did. Lord, now, as we look back on the Savior, would you continue to promote faithfulness to him through our children? And we pray, Lord, that we would be found faithful to you when Christ returns. We look forward to that civilization that you build, faithful and true and good. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.