The following is an edited version of the lecture given on 7th Octover 2006 in the series entitled "I"In the Beginning."   Surely for your lifeblood I will demand a reckoning; from the hand of every beast I will require it, and from the hand of man. From the hand of every man's brother I will require the life of man. Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed; for in the image of God He made man.     (Genesis 9:5-6)   Jesus Came in the Form of a ManThis is the book of the genealogy of Adam. In the day that God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female, and blessed them and called them Mankind in the day they were created. And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. After he begot Seth, the days of Adam were eight hundred years; and he had sons and daughters. So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died.  (Genesis 5:1-8)   Genesis chapter 5 contains a continuous genealogy. When we read genealogies like this in the Bible, we find them rather tedious and tend just to skim through them quickly. It would be hard for us to read this genealogy, stopping to think about it verse by verse, as we might in the case of other passages in the Bible, such as Genesis chapter 1 or John chapter 1. Nevertheless, if you look here at verse 1, it says, "This is the book of the genealogy of Adam. In the day that God created man." There is a specific condition here. If we are going to read and think about this genealogy that is set before us in Genesis chapter 5, we need to give deep consideration to this condition. Here we have a genealogy of the descendants of Adam, but first it says that God created man in His own likeness. This genealogy in Genesis chapter 5 begins with Adam and continues to Noah, and we are told the names and ages of many other people who lived in between. The pronunciation and the meaning of the names that appear here, however, and the way the names are expressed are different from those we are used to, and as a result, they seem foreign to us. In western cultures, for example, people put their given name first and follow it with their family name, while in eastern cultures this order is reversed. However, neither of these methods applies to biblical names. Nevertheless, if we each go back far enough into our family trees, we will find that we all have this same genealogy in common. This is a very important fact. The names that appear here, however, also appear in Luke's Gospel in the New Testament.   Now Jesus Himself began His ministry at about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Melchi, the son of Janna, the son of Joseph.  (Luke 3:23-24)   The genealogy in Luke's Gospel starts with Jesus and slowly goes back in time. But in chapter 3 verse 36 it says,   The son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalalel, the son of Cainan, the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.  (Luke 3:36-38)   Many biblical scholars make various assumptions about this genealogy of Jesus in Luke's Gospel. For example, Matthew's Gospel begins with,    The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham: Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, and Jacob begot Judah and his brothers. Judah begot Perez and Zerah by Tamar, Perez begot Hezron, and Hezron begot Ram.  (Matthew 1:1-3)   There are 42 generations listed here, and it says, "So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations, from David until the captivity in Babylon are fourteen generations, and from the captivity in Babylon until the Christ are fourteen generations" (Matthew 1:17). Many people claim that the genealogy in Matthew's Gospel is that of Joseph, and the genealogy in Luke's Gospel is that of Mary. This is not completely wrong, but what I would like to say is that I do not think this is a question of great importance. This is because I consider the important point as being what God is explaining to us through the words recorded in the Bible, and, therefore, it makes no sense to try to force an answer, when one does not appear in the Bible. There is a reason for this. In Luke's Gospel chapter 3 from verse 31 to verse 34, we find the lineage from David to Abraham, and the same people appear in Matthew's Gospel. The generations that follow on after David, however follow the lineage of Nathan, one of David's sons, while Matthew's Gospel presents us with the genealogy of the kings, following the lineage of Solomon.In the genealogy in Matthew's Gospel, the topic is set with the words: "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham." This was to explain to the Jews, who were familiar with the scriptures of the Old Testament, that Jesus Christ was the Messiah whom they had been waiting for so eagerly for thousands of years. This is why the wise men from the east, who followed the star to Jerusalem, asked, "Where is He who has been born King of the Jews?" (See Matthew 2:1-3). Luke's Gospel was recorded from a slightly different point of view. It was written by Luke, the physician, who also recorded the book of Acts. These two books are connected as though they are part 1 and part 2 of the same account. The main flow of the book of Acts is an account of how Gentiles, who did not know God, became children of God through Jesus Christ, and thus the Church was established. The earlier book-Luke's Gospel-talks about Jesus, and is written so that everyone born into this world might come to find Jesus Christ. In the genealogy recorded in Luke's Gospel it says, "Now Jesus Himself began His ministry at about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph" (Luke 3:23). It says that people supposed, or presumed, that Jesus was the son of Joseph. This genealogy of Jesus, traces the lineage from Joseph back to Adam, and then from Adam to God. It is very easy just to skim through a genealogy like this and then read on, but think about this. Here we have the genealogy of the Messiah who has pardoned the sins of all the people in this world and taken upon Himself the sins of each individual person, but at the end of this genealogy, it becomes exactly the same as your own. The point of most important significance to us here is when it goes back to, "the son of God." Man was created in the image of God, and it was through that image that the blood of man has been passed down from generation to generation. This blood was also passed down to Joseph, the man who was believed to be Jesus' father.As we think about this, we also need to consider once more God's aim in creating man. In Genesis it says, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness" (1:26). The genealogy of mankind, which starts at this point, has continued throughout history until we come to the birth of this one man, Jesus, as it is described here in Luke's Gospel. When I read this, I think it is really very fortunate that this is the way it is. To think that if I trace back my genealogy I find that it includes people like this and they were also included in the genealogy of Jesus! In other words, Jesus Christ was born into this world in the same manner in which I was. So, in the Bible it says, "For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5). It uses the word "Man." These days, people celebrate the birth of Jesus at Christmas time, and they do not take it as being particularly significant that He was an actual human being. But Jesus came as a human being; He was born into this world, as the Bible says: "God created man in His own image" (Genesis 1:27). This was the last stage in the process of saving us from the fate of sinners-the state we inherited from the first man, Adam, as he disobeyed God's word.It may seem as though this genealogy recorded in Genesis is just a story from long ago and has nothing to do with us. If we think about these things, however, we can see that, in the midst of it all, God was guiding history, and He was planning to bring the Christ into the world in the midst of this history, in order that He might save us from our sins, by having that seed passed down through the generations over several thousands of years. This is not just some random genealogy; within it, there is an expression of God's love for us.In the genealogies in Genesis, First Chronicles, Matthew chapter 1, and so on, we come across a great many names. At times, we may even wonder if some of these names are really necessary. There are also times when we just force ourselves to read them, since they are the word of God. But sometimes something like this happens, doesn't it? There are some people who have a tendency to talk a lot-they just ramble on and on, regardless of whether or not anyone is listening to them. Such a person might give you a glass of juice, and as he does so, tell you all about the juice-who farmed the fruit and where, how the fruit was shipped, who squeezed the juice, which country the sugar in the juice has come from and how it was grown, how long it was refrigerated for, and so on. From the point of view of the person listening, the only thing that matters is drinking what has been given to him, but the person who has prepared the juice sees things differently. He has looked into the whole process involved in preparing the juice and, because he knows about all the hard work that has gone into this one drink, he wants to tell others about it. When we look now at the Bible that was written thousands of years ago, we may complain and ask, "Why are there all these names?" However, this is all part of the plan that was hidden away in God's heart-the plan that He had, after Adam sinned, to bring about the birth of one particular Person within the course of history and to establish the nation of Israel in this world, that through them this Person might be born. Take a look at the people who appear here in Genesis chapter 5. These days, what is the average number of childbearing years of a woman? It is probably 30 or 40 years at the most. But here in Genesis chapter 5, we find that the women continued to bear children for a very long time; it says that some of these people had children over a period of eight hundred years or more. That was a time when the words, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth" (Genesis 1:28) were a law to the people, and so it was their task to have children. So, some clever people worked out how many children a person could conceivably bear in the course of about nine hundred years and put calculations such as this into a computer to estimate what the population of the earth would have been in those days. In this way, they estimated that, at the time of Noah, the world population would have been a minimum of ten billion people. I do not know if this is true or not, but there probably would have been a lot of people. In those days, a tremendous number of people would have been born into this world, and each one of them would have been given a name. In any case, in Genesis chapter 4 we read that, after the death of his son-Abel-Adam, who had been created in the image of God, was given another son, whose name was Seth. It was from the time when Seth's son, Enoch, was born that "men began to call on the name of the Lord" (See Genesis 4:25-26). Then in chapter 5 the names of these people are listed. Amongst all those people in the world, we have here just one particular family. Let's think of it as if we were tracing back this one family.   The Sons of God: Those who Attain God's Standards of RighteousnessWhile I was reading this passage, I thought about what it says in Genesis chapter 6.   Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose. And the LORD said, "My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years." There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.  (Genesis 6:1-4)   There are times when people offer quick and easy answers to questions posed by the Bible, but if there is something I do not know, I would like to admit that I do not know it, and just talk about the things that I do know. So when it comes to the claim that the genealogy in Luke's Gospel chapter 3 is that of Mary, I have never said that this is actually the case, even though it seems quite likely. I do not make any comment because it does not say this in the Bible. Here the sons of God appear on the scene. I am not sure who this refers to either. But here, once more, "the sons of God" come in. In the Bible it says, "Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. And the LORD said to Satan, 'From where do you come?' So Satan answered the LORD and said, 'From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking back and forth on it'" (Job 1:6-7). Also, in Job chapter 38 it says, "When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy" (Verse 7). From the book of Job we can see that the "sons of God" that appear in this book are the angels who are around God. But then in the letter to the Romans it says, "For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God" (8:19). We find expressions like these at different points in history. The time referred to in this part of Genesis, however, is the time before Noah, before the flood, before Abraham, and before Moses presented the law to the Israelites; this was the time referred to in the verse that says, "The world that then existed perished, being flooded

정회원으로 가입하시면 전체기사와 사진(동영상)을 보실수 있습니다.