“Adam made love to his wife again, and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth, saying, “God has granted me another child in place of Abel, since Cain killed him.” Seth also had a son, and he named him Enosh. At that time people began to call on the name of the LORD.” (Genesis 4:25-26)
God gave Himself a new Remnant, instead of using the Cain branch left over after Cain murdered Abel. The Cain branch was Not My People, Not My Remnant because Cain didn’t revere God or listen to His call to do what was right. Cain doubled down on sin, murdered his brother, so he and his descendants were made restless wanderers from the presence of God. Seth and his descendants, while also having an inherited sin nature, would choose instead to call on the Name of the Lord and be restored to My People status.
We will see, time and again, that My People always get preserved
and restored in due season.
Questions for reflection:
A time goes on Cain, and his descendants, go from bad to worse. Seth and his descendants present a return to calling upon God. How do these two sons of Adam display the choice any man has and the ramifications of that choice upon future generations?
Look at this chart. Consider the meanings of the name Enosh (humanity’s son of Seth, grandson of Adam) leading to Enoch (generations descended from Seth), a man who walked with God and never died. How does God always preserve a remnant to walk faithfully with Him? In my series on the Remnant I asked, “Why might Eve, the mother of all living, have associated the third-born Seth with being in place of Abel, her second born who was killed? In what ways might redemption already be in the picture? Why does redemption focus on the remnant and not promote the trunk of a family tree?” Seth’s line would continue to Abraham, the great patriarch.
There are 3 Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.
In God’s eyes, one of those is definitely the Not My People branch. Which one?
By focusing only on the trunk of the family tree (Adam or Abraham, etc.), we can fall prey to such moral equivalence between My People and Not My People. In that Remnant series, I also asked considering Seth and other children of Adam, “Wait, you might say, how do I know other sons of Adam didn’t form the remnant too? Noah. Stay tuned for Luke 3:36.” Yeah, we’ll get to Noah, too, and God’s decisiveness about My People/Not My People. They are not the same.