As I mentioned this morning, it's not often you hear study through first Chronicles, and perhaps that's because if you've tried to read First Chronicles, you run into a problem immediately that you don't know how to pronounce a lot of the names. And there are a lot of names and there are people you don't know. And so it becomes almost like reading somebody else's family Bible, like the the page, the dedication page, and family Bibles that have the list of names. You might be at an Airbnb or something, and there's Family Bible is out and you flip through it. And I mean, it is fascinating to see that so and so three hundred years ago, you know, prayed for so-and-so and married so-and-so, and you start tracing down, but ultimately you don't know their names. And so it's hard to have a devotional life through that. But I hope that our time in the Book of Chronicles isn't like that for you. That as you're going through it, you recognize that it is your family. You know, when it's your family, it's different. Um, my dad right now is going through a family family tree kick where he is, uh, spending a significant amount of time, I would say, investigating, uh, our family lineage. And I have learned a bunch, and the stories are interesting to me, and I think they're interesting to my kids, too. At least they they pretend very well that it's interesting to them. Uh, because it's people that were related to. And that's the nature of this in the book of Chronicles. These people are our people. And that's the way the book was originally written. It was written to Jews that had come back from exile. They'd return from their time, kicked out of Israel. They'd returned from time in captivity. And it is a very different kind of reception that this book receives than many of the other books in the Bible. If you think of the Torah, the Torah was received by the Israelites as they were a million strong entering the Promised Land. And you think of Samuel and kings. Those are received by the Israelites while they were a nation, and they had a temple. And the Book of Kings ends with them going into exile. But it was written to people that understood what a nation was, who the twelve tribes were, what the temple was, the messianic promise that would come through the line of David. They knew who the line of David was. Chronicles is not written like that at all. When Chronicles is written, it's written more like Daniel. These people don't have a nation. They don't know who the twelve tribes are anymore. They're gone. They're gone. They don't know where the line of David is. And even if they had somebody from the line of David, they wouldn't have a throne to put him on. And so Chronicles is written in an entirely different environment than much of the rest of the Old Testament. And so it's a mistake, I think, to view Chronicles just as Samuel and Kings Part two, which is how we often view it, because so many of the stories overlap from Samuel and Kings, of course. And that's kind of the product. I hope this isn't too boring to you, but it's kind of the product of its name and where it's placed in our English Bible. The Hebrew name for Chronicles is just the word for the annals of history. That's the the Hebrew name for this book. And we don't even use that word anymore. Annals of history. We don't use that word anymore. So what do we call it? Records or something? Historical records. And, uh, yeah, it's just it's kind of fallen on hard times. When it was translated into Greek, it was split into two books, First and Second Chronicles, and it was titled The Leftovers. Which is an unfortunate, uh, title. It wasn't until it was translated into Latin that it took back a proper Title. The Latin title for the book is The Chronicles of the Entire Sacred History. Um, that's what it reads in Latin, the chronicles of the entire sacred history. And it has this idea of this progress of the ages. The the news of every era of human history. That history falls in a different eras and chronicles gives you the sweep through all of them. And that's a much better title. Unfortunately, in the Latin division of the Bible, they moved the book from where they gave it a better title, but they moved it to a worse place. They put it, um, right after Kings and Chronicles. So in the in the Latin ordering of Scripture, it's, it's where it is in the English ordering of Scripture, which is you just read, sorry, you read Samuel and Kings and you just read these stories and then you get Chronicles again. So it's like, what is this doing here? If you're reading the Bible the way it's laid out in your English Bible, you've just finished Kings, and now you're starting with this again, and you think, why here and why now? That's not the way it is in the Jewish Bible and the Jewish Bible. Samuel and Kings is part of the prophets. It's in the prophetic section and Chronicles is in the writing section. So it's an entirely different section of the Bible, which just is the clue to you that it has a different purpose, it's got a different audience and it's a different purpose. The books of the prophets, as I'm sure you know, the prophets are bringing judgment on Israel. And so the Book of Samuel and Kings is received as the history of their kings and their people, as well as the judgment that God gave them for their sins. That's not how Chronicles functions. It's not designed to tell them about the judgment of God. It's designed to encourage them about the prophetic promises of God. What's coming in the future, that God has a plan for them. He has a plan to rescue them, ultimately to restore David's line to the throne. That's where this is going, that God has an ultimate plan. He has not forgotten his promises to his people. The people who receive Chronicles, remember, they've come back from exile. They've been wandering in the nations. Israel's gone now. They've come back into the Promised Land there at the time, a province of Persia, soon to be even the fall of the Persian Empire is even hinted at the end of Second Chronicles. It's soon to be the Greek Empire. These are people who have an Israelite and Jewish identity, and they're looking and grasping for an Israelite and a Jewish hope. They're wondering where the Savior is. And so the book starts with these genealogies that let's, you know, there is a continuity in God's promises. God's promises have withstood exile before the last seventy years. Your great grandfather getting ripped out of Jerusalem. That's not the first time God's promises have gone into exile, so to speak. God's promises have been active in the world since Adam, and with every rise and every fall of an empire, God has been at work. And so far from being just take Two of Kings and Samuel, the Book of Chronicles is designed to give hope to an otherwise hopeless people. And there's a theme to this book that God has determined people's fate through every generation. That God has a plan for people and he is determinative of it. He sets the course. It's God who's in charge of the rise and falls of families and the ebbs and flows of nations. And so the book begins, of course, with genealogies. I remember when we were pregnant with our our first and I read the book of First Chronicles, and I was looking for baby names. I was shopping for baby names. We have Madison is our oldest. Not in Chronicles Arpachshad did not have the same ring to it. Well, the book begins, of course, with Adam, and Adam has his own place over all of history. Adam here represents the age of innocence, of human life, the age of innocence. The word Adam here is almost a preamble to a prologue. If this first genealogy is the prologue, Adam is the preamble to it. Now, this might look like a long list of names here, but if you just zoom your eyes out real quick. Chapter one, verse one to chapter one, verse twenty seven. You see that? That's a list from Adam to Abraham, Adam to Abraham. So we're going to look at the second part of this list. Next week we'll just look at Adam to Noah tonight. But this list Adam to Abraham is split into two smaller lists. And each list is ten people long. So while it looks like a long list of names, and there's a lot of names that don't fit into the list, we'll get to some of those next week. Ultimately, the core, the bones, The skeleton of this genealogy is two lists of ten names. Adam to Noah, and then Noah to Abraham. And that's done as a mnemonic way. It's not an exhaustive genealogy. This is not every person from Adam to Noah or Adam to Abraham. This is just split into two groups of ten so that you can memorize it and write it down. I'm not suggesting you memorize it. I'd rather you memorize Psalm one nineteen than these list of twenty names, but maybe as we study them, they'll just kind of hang on in your minds. The reason it goes through genealogy is because if you want to know where you are, you need to know where you came from. That's not just a window barrier, jabber crow kind of line. It is an actual line about the reality of the human experience. If you want to know who you are, you need to know where you came from. This is why people ask, what's your, uh. I remember when when my kids had a project at school, they had to do this. What's your ethnic background? And you had to bring in a poster about it and all this stuff, And, um, I don't know. This is before my dad was infatuated with the family trees. So my mom was adopted, and my dad was from New Mexico, and I'm from New Mexico. And it doesn't really go further back than that. And so I insisted that, um, our kids did a Mexican presentation for their Ethnic Heritage Day and was informed, no, it's supposed to be some nation. I was like, well, American then, but that bothered me too, because, you know, I just want you all to know this, that Bernalillo, New Mexico, was founded one hundred years before Plymouth Rock. So knock it off. Instead, they went with, did your side of the family Irish and Italian or whatever? Like, ah. We have better food. If you want to know who you are, you need to know where you came from. And so this is a reminder to the Israelites that they go back to a time before there was nations And a time before there was lots of people. Well, there's one person, Adam, and that's where this starts. We have this idea that every age of human history is like ours. That's an arrogant idea. It's really hubris. It's this idea that every era of world history is not only like ours, but of any other. Errors are not like ours. They're the deficient ones. And there's ways in which that's true, I suppose. I mean, indoor plumbing. Yay! But there's other ways in which it's not true. Adam dwelled in a garden. He lived in a garden. He walked with God. He had an intimate relationship with God. It was a time in the world history that's not at all like our world. Not at all. It's just fundamentally different. And sometimes we can dismiss the differences of other eras of world history Because we're historically arrogant, because we think that our era is the best, and life in the world has always been like it is now. But that arrogance ends up corroding the Bible, because if you have that arrogance, then you come across this idea that God created the world in six days, and the first human being was Adam, and the second was Eve, and they walked in the garden in a sinless state. And you dismiss it as poetry, you dismiss it as some kind of far fetched fable tale, the fairy tale that Jews told their kids to tell them where the world came from. And some cultures have turtles, and the Jews had Adam and Eve kind of thing. And you do the same thing with the flood. You say the flood wasn't that historically significant. It didn't really happen. It's just a story that you tell people to to tell them the dangers of sin and to explain where things came from. But that's not at all the way the Bible is. The Bible is a serious book about serious things described in a serious way. And it begins with Adam, who truly did walk in the garden with God. The idea that Adam was made by God and then placed into the garden. The garden is a key part of Adam's existence. Even the word garden has the same connotations in Hebrew it has in English it has the connotations of of life and abundance and provision and protection. The difference between, you know, a wild watermelon patch. You know, watermelons are invasive and they grow broad and they grow wide. They take over things. The difference between a garden with that and a field with that in the wild is protection. And a garden. There's a fence and predators can't get in and animals can't get in. And everything dangerous is kept out. A garden also implies work. It's a really a beautiful word for that reason. It it implies protection and provision, but it also implies required work. If you don't work at your garden, it stops being a garden very, very quickly. You go away for like two weeks and you come back. And the difference between the garden and the world outdoors is gone. You have to go to war against the world to keep your garden. And so Adam is placed into the garden and is told to work it to cultivate the land. He was also told to be fruitful and to multiply something he can't do himself. Obviously he can't multiply himself. And so the Lord creates a helper for him. Eve. And so the beginning of this genealogy, though it starts with Adam, of course, obviously is implied Eve here, because other people come, they have a son, for example. And so, you know that Eve was provided. It doesn't have to be spelled out. There aren't any women, by the way, in first Chronicles one, but there are some in First Chronicles two, and we'll look at those in a few weeks. Eve was made from Adam's body and put next to Adam's body, and was supposed to help Adam's body by bringing life into the world. Adam, meanwhile, was made from dirt and placed in dirt and supposed to work the dirt to bring life into the world. Through that, they each had their own sense of calling, but together. And they were perfect. The Lord said that they were good. They were righteous. Even they had a righteousness. It wasn't a righteousness that was their own. It was a righteousness that was given to them by God through the act of creating them. It was not a righteousness they earned, although they did walk in it. They did walk in obedience and walk in righteousness. They walked with God. So Adam and Eve had a true righteousness, a true holiness, a true godliness, a true perfection. You could say, but it was, of course, capable of change the condition of mankind. And the the garden was righteous, but it wasn't confirmed. It wasn't a confirmed righteousness. And what I mean by confirmed is it hadn't been put through a test yet. They were created righteous and created perfect, but they were created as living beings in a world of life. They're supposed to produce life and encounter life, and they're given a test by God, a command by God not to eat the tree. They're supposed to be fruitful and multiply. But they weren't supposed to eat the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They could eat the tree of life, of course, which meant that they would live forever, but they were not supposed to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And it's that test where their righteousness is put on display. Yes, they are righteousness, but it's not a confirmed righteousness or a perfected righteousness. And at some point you're just splitting hairs with words because I'm saying they're righteous and they're perfect, but it's a perfection capable of change, and it's not a perfect righteousness. But you understand what I mean. Their righteousness was given to them by God, and they truly did walk in it until they met their first challenge in it. And in their challenge, of course, they relied on themselves, not on God. They trusted themselves and their own discernment. They did not trust the righteousness that God gave them, because if they did, they would not have wanted to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If they trusted the righteousness that God gave them, they would have trusted God's knowledge of what righteousness is. But they doubted the righteousness that God gave them. Though they were righteous, they doubted that righteousness unless they could see it for themselves. So that is stepping outside of faith. And they thought, if I can see God's righteousness and the knowledge of good and evil for myself, then I will be like God and know the difference between good and evil. And it's that questioning of God that shows that their righteousness was corruptible. It was not a perfected righteousness. It shows that their perfection could change. And that is a key understanding in Scripture, because if you start to confuse those distinctions, you end up with a form of works righteousness. You end up with this idea that Adam and Eve, on their own, could obey God and therefore be righteous on their own. That never enters into Scripture. The idea that people could be righteous on their own is never in the Bible. They were righteous because God gave them righteousness. But when encountering a trial, they trusted themselves, not their faith. And their righteousness was corroded, corrupted, marred just like the image of God was in their life, corroded and corrupted and marred. They lost the eternal life that God had given them. The tree of life was taken away from them. The image of God was marred. They hid from God rather than walking with him, they hid from him. They failed their test. And the test, by the way, was a simple test. Don't eat from that tree. They did not have a complex moral law code to figure out. They didn't need priests. They didn't need rabbis. They didn't need law degrees. They didn't need to learn Hebrew to study the Old Testament and figure out the Torah. Enumerate the commands. Memorize the Ten Commandments. They didn't need any of that. They needed to know. God said, don't eat that tree. Don't do it. And that's the test they failed. And I love in God's providence that it was such a simple test, because that shows you just the futility of man's own effort at righteousness. It's not like they failed because they didn't understand. They failed because they trusted themselves, not God. And of course, that brings forward the judgment from God. They're banished from the garden. Expelled from the garden. A curse comes on all of creation life. That was lovely. A minute ago in the garden. They're now sent into the wilderness. Where the thorns and thistles grow, where the weeds fight back. You know, before the fall in the Garden of Eden. It doesn't seem like there were thorns on any of the leaves. There was nothing corrupted in there. But outside the garden they had the kudzu everywhere. I don't know if they actually had the kudzu, but you know what I mean. They had the weeds that take over. They had the weeds that fight you. You pull them and you turn around and you look back and they've multiplied again. They have thorns. They have animals that bite. Now creation is cursed. And it's not just that it's going to be hard to work, which it will be. That's Adam's curse. Remember, Adam was made from dirt, commanded to work the dirt. And his curse is that now the dirt is going to hurt him. He's going to sweat laboring over it. And when he dies, he's going to be buried in it. Eve goes through a similar confrontation. She was made from flesh to give life to flesh. And her curse is in the flesh. Childbirth will be painful. It'll be a life in a sense of suffering. Mortality. That's the judgment. They're going to be sent out into the world to wander. They'll have to build cities. Now, the antithesis of a garden is a city. Well, that's what they're going to have to do, is wander around. And yet there's this promise of judgment. That judgment will be taken away. They'll have salvation. Salvation comes through the seed before they are kicked out of the garden, before the age of innocence closes. God tells them there will be a Savior who will come through the seed of the woman. That's an early prophecy of the virgin birth, of course, because the seed comes from the man. But the Savior will come from the seed of the woman, and the Savior will crush the head of the serpent, bringing restoration, returning the world back to the garden one day. That's the earliest promise. And that's embedded in the name Adam. And of course, it doesn't say all that in one Chronicles one one. It just gives you the name Adam. But that's the background of Adam. If you knew him, that's what you would think of when you. And you do know him. You have chapters in the Bible about him. And so when you read his name, it's not divorced from all that. When you read his name, that's what the author is telling you. This is who we are. We're from Adam. We come from him. Well, this Adam gives way to the second era of human history. That of conscience. That of conscience. Adam gives way to Seth there in verse one. Seth was not their first son or their second. He at the very least was a third. But he was likely much further down the list, because by this time they'd been alive a long time and had, you know, their cities starting to grow. Lots of children were there. But Seth is noted in the genealogy because Seth was the substitute. Do you remember? They had Abel, and their hope was in Abel. Abel was a grown man. By the time he died. He was murdered by Cain. And Adam and Eve had such confidence that Abel would be the one who would crush the head of the serpent. They really thought that Abel might be the Savior, and Abel was, of course, killed by Cain. We'll talk more about that in a little bit. And so Adam and Eve prayed to the Lord, and the Lord gave them another son, the name Seth. And the word Seth means seed. But Seth stands in as a substitute. There's other names here, of course. Enoch is next. Different than Enoch. Enoch is before Enoch. Enoch lived nine hundred years back in Genesis five. It tells you it was in Enoch era, his lifetime, that people begin to call upon the name of the Lord. And so people begin to scatter around the world. They made cities and the word city is used. But it could be, you know, ten families together, ten couples with their own, their own kids. The human gestation period was still nine, ten months back then. They're living hundreds of years. You're going to see we're going to get to somebody in a second who is. His dad was one hundred and sixty five years when he was born. So human population is exploding at this point, and they're starting to form these communities together. But there is sin in the world. Of course, there is conflict and strife and division. And it was in Enoch's lifetime that people began to call upon Yahweh for help. They cried out to God, help me, God, I need help. Enoch gives way to Keenan and gives way to Mahalalel, which is a cool name. It means praising God. And so you're starting. You're naming your kid, praising God. At this point, you're seeing how some of these names are carrying on the hope of their parents. When Abel was murdered. Will name the kid Seth. Maybe he'll be the seed, In Enos era. People are are calling on God. And so now there's a child named for somebody who's worshiping God. So God's answering the call. In other words, they're calling on God, and God's answering the call. And in response, they're praising God, and they're teaching their kids to praise God. And that gives way to Enoch. Enoch, Enoch's dad, was one hundred and sixty two years when he was born, and Enoch died at age three hundred and sixty five himself. He only lived to be three hundred and sixty five years old, and I say only lived to be three hundred and sixty five years old, because that was young. That's the youngest person who's died other than Abel so far, um, he was he was a spring chicken at three hundred and sixty five. And, of course, did he die? No. At his young age, the Lord came to him and he knocked, walked with God, and then he was no more. The text doesn't say what happened to him, and it's jarring how young he was when he disappeared. Translated as the word of the most commentary commentators use. He was translated from this life into the next. And so Enoch is a figure of righteousness. The book of Hebrews calls him a man of righteousness. He's a man of faith in God, and God rewarded his faith by giving him righteousness and taking him with himself. Enoch, interestingly died before Noah was born. It's a long period of time here. Like I said, it's a condensed genealogy, but there is a lot of centuries going by in this. Again, our arrogance can't conceive of this. Our arrogance doesn't understand what life was like back then. People living this long and dying at that age, being considered young or being taken out of the world by God before God walked with Adam in the garden. Now Enoch walked with God and is no more taken out of this world. It's as if the world wasn't worthy of him and God took him away. That gives way to Methuselah. Methuselah is the oldest person there in this list, and he died right before the flood. He too was a righteous man. And then Lamech. Lamech was also. It says in Genesis five verse thirty, the father of Noah. And he had other sons and daughters. All the days of Lamech were seven hundred and seventy seven years old, and he died. These are the list of people that are given you here in the first part of the genealogy, that take you all the way up to Noah. Now, what's so different about this time period is that in this section of world history, there are no nations. That's one of the things that is difficult to get your mind around. There were no nations there. There weren't national borders. There weren't different languages. There weren't different ethnicities. There weren't even different cultural regions. The Earth hadn't been divided yet. It's not necessarily that everybody knew each other because human population was growing, but everybody spoke the same language and had the same background. They all shared the same genealogy, so to speak. And there was a division between the line of Seth and the line of Cain. There was a difference between those that were murderers and idolaters and those that were worshiping Yahweh. There was differences between them, of course, but the differences weren't ethnic. They weren't racial. In fact, there was only one race, the human race. There weren't distinguishing distinguishing features between racial separation or or cultural distinctions like that. Those aren't going to come until after the fall. And I harp on this point just for a second, because this is something that's hard for us to get our minds around. It's hard for us to stretch our minds around that. In fact, today it's very common to hear people argue that there were races before before the flood, and there were ethnic differences before the flood. And what's interesting about this, and I hope you find it interesting, is that you find people kind of on the woke left that argue that, and you also find people on the Christian nationalist right that argue that it's almost like that the horseshoe theory in politics or people in the far left and the far right start saying the same thing. You see that with this exact concept, where it becomes very important for some people to say that racial distinctions are are so important that they would have been there without the fall even, and they were definitely there before the flood, because they are good and virtuous and are important part of human nature. And that's not true. Biologically, we know there's no such thing as as race. Race is a biological fiction, of course, but there are cultural and ethnic differences in the world for for sure. And those differences come later in human history. They're not here now. They're not here during this era of conscience. So why is it called the era of conscience? Well, without government there are no laws. So that means that every person does what is right in their own eyes. Now, that can be good or it can be bad. It can be good. If you listen to your conscience, it can be bad if you do not listen to your conscience. So this is the nature of mankind during the era of conscience, there fallen. But they're responsible. They don't have words given to them from God. They haven't received the word of God. They have the conversations with God that Adam had. They have the conversation with God that Cain had. But even that conversation reveals the function of conscience. Because in that conversation with Cain. Do you remember what God told him? Cain? Don't you know what is right to do? Sin is crouching at your doorstep. You must master it. Have dominion over it. He told Cain, you know what is right. What was Cain supposed to do? He was supposed to confess his sins and offer a sacrifice for sins. And he was supposed to intuitively know that. And that was not too hard to fathom because Abel figured it out. Now, where would these people figure out that they're supposed to offer a sacrifice for sins? Well, that comes from when Adam and Eve sinned, God immediately killed an animal and made a covering for them. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. And Cain and Abel knew that in their conscience. But Abel acted on it, and Cain repressed it. And that becomes the pattern here for human history. The pattern in human history then becomes, are you going to listen to your conscience or not? Governments are going to come later and governments are going to have their own laws, because lo and behold, we figured out that human consciences are not a good restrainer of evil. Conscience is strong enough to convict you of sin, but it's not strong enough to hold you back from it. And this is why you should always listen to your conscience. Your conscience is. It predates human law. The conscience does. It has echoes of the garden in it. Your conscience isn't perfect. Sometimes it'll tell you something. Sin that's not a sin. And sometimes it's not activated when it should be. It should be warning you against doing something and it's not. So your conscience is broken because of sin in your own life, but it is still a very trustworthy God. That's why it's a sin. To violate your conscience in this part of Chronicles gives you this list of the nations here. And it gives you, I mean, the list of these people before there were nations here. And it does that because it's important for the Israelites to think their nation is gone. But their history started before there were nations anyway. That's why this would be encouraging to them. Their nation is gone, but their history predates nations and this time of human history. There's a moral awareness. Without an external law, there's no police, there's no government, there's no nine eleven, there's no jails. Even if you murdered someone, what's going to happen to you? Nothing. Cain murdered Abel. And what happened to him? He was marked. Not only was he marked by God, but God gave a command to everybody. Don't touch him. So capital punishment was banned and outlawed. There were sin and death and the responsibility to approach God by sacrifice. This is the era of conscience. There were sin offerings, of course. But there was murder and violence. The earth was practically unlivable. In fact, God said he wouldn't tolerate it anymore. So you have mankind in the era of conscience. They're living according to their conscience. They were given the test to restrain their evil by conscience and, of course, faith. To believe that God rewards those who diligently seek them. That's what they were supposed to do. That's what Enoch did. It wasn't an impossible. Enoch did it. Nevertheless, most people failed. They were spiritually dead and accountable to God, but they failed. They were supposed to do good and avoid evil. That's what God told Cain. Do good and avoid evil. Do what is right and it will go well for you. God tells him. That's God endorsing the activity of the conscience. They are supposed to respond to God in faith. They did not, and so they incurred judgment. This era of time ends in verse four with Noah. Noah, of course, brings the flood into the world. Noah means rest. He was supposed to bring rest to his people, but he did not. Instead, he brought judgment into the world. The world was flooded. The world was flooded. Destroyed. Nobody lived except those that fled to God and joined the ark by faith. And that gives you the rescue. Salvation through the Ark. If the era of innocence ended with the promise of rescue through a human offspring, they are of conscience. Ends with this picture that God knows how to rescue those who come to him by faith. He can judge the whole world. It's not hard work for God to judge the whole world, but with every judgment he makes a way of salvation. He opens the door and says, Come to him in faith. The door of the ark was opened to the world. Any of the people who wanted to come could have come. Noah preached for one hundred and twenty years. Noah preached. Nobody came except eight people. That's it. And so when the door closed, the world was destroyed. God washed away the era of conscience. The conscience remains. Of course you have one. The conscience remains. But the era of conscience is over. The flood was the punishment that closed the age. But the ark was the instrument of rescue. Now, I hope as you're piecing these two ages together. That's as far as we'll get tonight. I hope as you're piecing those ages together, you see that the pattern here remains age to age. The pattern here is that God gives commands that violating his commands brings judgment. If you keep his commands, you live. But we're incapable of that. If you break his commands, you incur judgment. But with every judgment, God gives the promise of rescue for those who put their faith in him. We don't walk with God in the the garden anymore, but we have the same promise that Adam did. Believe him and come to him in faith and you'll live. We have more of a promise because of course, the seed promised to Adam comes to us in Jesus Christ. The ark prefigured the work of Christ. The Christ opens his arms to save and rescue anybody who puts their faith in him. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin. And so Jesus leads a sinless life and then goes to the cross and dies, bearing the penalty for our sin, so that God can truly be said to be the one who judges by pouring out his wrath on sin, but also the one who saves by opening his arms and receiving people through faith in Christ. Adam shows you that God is the creator. Noah shows you that God is the rescuer. He is the judge. Of course, both Adam and Noah understood that, but he is also the rescuer. We can be like Enoch with faith in God. We can walk with God in this life. Not all of us will die, as Scripture says, but some of us will be changed, transformed in the twinkling of an eye when the Lord returns and rescues those who are his. Lord, we're thankful for the promise of rescue that comes through Chronicles. You are a good God and you have been good ever since the first day of creation. Light enters the world and you are good. Land enters the world and you are good. The water is separated and the son is put in the sky, and the earth is populated with the animals. And you are good. And of course, then Adam could testify to your goodness. Enoch walked with you, and in your goodness you took him to yourself. Noah trusted you, and in your goodness you rescued him and the eight people in the ark. Lord, you are indeed a Savior who knows how to rescue those who come to you by faith. We give you thanks for being a good God. Your goodness goes back to the ages. We're thankful for that. In the name of Christ we pray. Amen. And now for parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson. If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website. If you want more information about the Master's Seminary or our location here in Washington, DC, please go to TMZ.com. Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C. area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel. I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service. But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church. Now, may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly. Serve the Lord faithfully and share the gospel boldly.