Genesis
5:25-28
The
same pattern from before returns again. We don’t know what other people also
walked with God at the time of Enoch, or whether anyone else really even
followed the Lord. There will always be a remnant that does, however, because
of faithful men and women that follow the Lord and provide examples for us.
Enoch
provided that example for Methuselah and then for. Lamech. Methusaleh lived 969
years, longer than anyone else in the Bible. More will be said about him later
on. However, a few things are interesting here.
Same
Name, Different Person
First,
Lamech shares his name with a wicked man in the line of Cain. We don’t know if
they overlapped substantially, though given the life spans they almost surely
overlapped some. We don’t know if they were in different parts of the world at
this time – or even if it was different continents or one like some geologists
suspect – and that view is possible, since the “fountains of the deep” also
opened up during the Floord, and massive earthquakes could have moved
everything around such that a fairly level Earth suddenly had massive mountain
ranges.(The tallest mountain, in fact, Mr. Everest, is still rising.)
Anyway,
whichever it was, Lamech and his counterpart, Lamech the Terrible, have some
interesting distinctions.
First,
Lamech doesn’t boast here the way the Lamech who descended from Cain did. He
simply lived a life that was apparently pleasing to God, though of course he
was a sinner who needed to be saved by faith just like any of us.
His
grandfather, Enoch, also shared a name with one of Cain’s sons, so it’s
possible CEnoch’s son, Methusaleh, knew of this. And, if Seth’s ilne’s Lamech
was born after, simply decided to name him the same thing, too.
Of
course, it’s also possible that Cain’s line’s Lamech was born after and it was
a case of the devil copying God to try to provide his own means of salvation,
one which leads to tyranny and Hell. The devil’s ways are always about works,
not by faith like God’s.
However,
it’s important to remember that just because something or someone has the same
outward appearance – such as a name – the inward heart much be looked at. Many
times, something with the same name is used innocently, too, or in the English
language just because there aren’t enough words, such as love – in the Greek
there is eros(lust, a physical sensation), phileo(brotherly love, love toward a
best friend), storge(family love, the way it should be, incredibly closeness
and devotion) and agape(God’s unconditional love, greater than that of a family
because God loved us before we ever knew Him and in fact while we were yet His
enemies.)
Works
are an outward action, just like a name. If Lamech in Cain’s line had decided
he was going to change his name to change his image, it wouldn’t have worked
unless his heart changed. God has changed peoples’ names once their heart was
changed – Abram became Abraham, Jacob became Israel(though he still went by
Jacob often, too), and Saul of Tarsus became Paul. This, however, signifies an
inward transformation.
When
we pay too much attention to the outward appearance, to the point we neglect
the inward man, we become like the Pharisees. We must guard against putting too
much emphasis on the outward appearance, including avoiding things that are
unbiblical, just like was noted earlier where Even added to God’s message in
Genesis 3 and said that they couldn’t touch the tree, when all God said was
they couldn’t eat it.
