And He Was Not, For God Took Him

And He Was Not, For God Took Him

Genesis 5
Intro:

If this is your first Sunday visiting us, we are going through the book of Genesis and we are up to chapter 5 this morning. Recently I read the story of a young Christian woman who invited her unbelieving uncle to church. He scoffed at the Bible but to please his niece he finally agreed to go to church with her. The young lady was so excited that he was finally coming to church with her, but her excitement turned to disappointment when she discovered that the passage the pastor was going to be preaching from was none other than the passage we are looking at this morning: Genesis 5. She wondered why the one Sunday her uncle agreed to come to church the Lord allowed this to be the passage the pastor preached from.

You see, chapter 5 is one of those "genealogy" chapters -where the whole chapter is basically a family tree: so and so begat (or fathered) so and so who begat so and so. On top of that the names are difficult to pronounce! To be honest sometimes when I come to a genealogy in the Bible I read the first verse and the last verse, and just let my eyes pass over everything in between. So if you're visiting us this morning - you might be wondering why you came!

But genealogies in the Bible are not unimportant and actually, if we take the time to look, there are some really important spiritual lessons contained in them. And that is what we are going to find this morning in Genesis chapter 5.

Just a recap from last week: Adam and Eve had a first son and named him Cain and hoped that he might be the one through whom the promised Redeemer would come. Then they had Abel and life really seemed to be looking up again. But envious of his younger brother, Cain killed Abel and the Lord banished Cain, and Adam and Eve lost two sons in one day. And their hopes that the promised One would come through one of them died too. Chapter four then tracks the line of Cain and their drift from God, up to the seventh generation, with the strange story of Cain's violent grandson Lamech.

But chapter four ends on a bright note. God blesses Adam and Eve with a third son, Seth and the chapter ends with these encouraging words: At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord.

Chapter 5 will track the line of Seth - the line of faith, the line through whom Jesus Christ will one day come, and there are many valuable lessons we can find in these verses - I want to focus our attention on three this morning.

Gen. 5:1-17

I. There is a relentless reminder that we are mortal

One of the first things we notice is that they live a long time. Most of them live close to a thousand years. Adam doesn't even have Seth until he is 130 years old and he goes on to live to be 930 years old. I think this can be attributed to two things: first, Adam and Eve were created physically perfect and the purity of their genetics would be strongest in their immediate descendents and then gradually be corrupted by sin. Also the world was different before the flood and after the flood we see the life spans begin to shorten until Moses would write that the days of men are just 70 years.

But though they live longer, what stands out is that at the end of each patriarch's life (with one exception), their story is closed with these words, and he died. Adam lived, had children, and he died. Seth lived, had children, and he died. Enosh lived, had children and he died. Their lives end with death. That is the human condition and this chapter contains a relentless reminder of our mortality. We will all die.

ILL: I didn't finish the story about the young niece who invited her uncle to church only to be disappointed that this was the chapter her pastor preached from. What she didn't know was that as they walked home he couldn't get that refrain out of his mind, and he died. The next day he searched for a family Bible and read those lines over again. And he died. He realized that one day he would also die and where would he spend eternity? That very day he asked Jesus Christ to forgive him and make him His child.

And he died. All of us will die one day too - we may not like to think of it, but we know it's true.

ILL: Just yesterday Janice told me that someone who was in our care group back in PA died in July of leukemia. He was in his fifties. Although I know he is with the Lord I felt a sense of sadness knowing that he is gone from this earth.

Keeping our mortality in view helps us have the right perspective of life

Let me ask you a personal question: how do you view death? How should a Christian view death? First of all we see from Genesis that death was not a part of God's original creation plan. Death entered in with sin and it is an enemy. And for the Christian - like my friend who passed away - it is also the gateway to life and we'll talk about that in a minute. But keeping our mortality in view also helps to frame our perspective of life. They lived, accomplished, and died - leaving the accomplishments (the legacy) of their lives behind - whether good or bad.

It has been said that nothing clears the mind like death - and nothing helps us to remember what's important in life like death. Years ago I conducted a funeral for a guy who had died. I had never met the man, but I felt like I got a glimpse into his life in the funeral. He had been an alcoholic who struggled with a violent temper and as his children shared, it was clear that none of them felt close to their dad. For me the saddest moment came when one of his daughters shared a poem she had written for him entitled "What I Wish We Had". It was a sad testimony of the empty legacy he had left behind him. One line read "You gave Christmas gifts, and fixed them when they broke" and she began to cry because that was the only thing she could remember him doing to show love or tenderness.

And he died...

Every day we are building the legacy we will leave behind. May we show our loved ones affection and love while we have them and they have us. But more than that may we point the people in our lives to the Lord Jesus Christ who can and will save all who call upon Him in truth. May we be His witnesses and display His gospel through our lives. And if we could overhear what our friends and loved ones say about us at our funeral, may we hear things like, "he helped to know Jesus Christ as my Savior. She helped me to grow in my faith. I trust Jesus more because I knew him."

There is a relentless reminder of our mortality - and it's a good thing.

II. There is the encouragement of Enoch's example (Gen. 5:18-24)

Enoch is the seventh generation from Adam - the counterpoint to Lamech, the seventh generation from Adam through Cain. The story of Lamech is told to show how far Cain's line had drifted from God. Enoch's story shows how close to God one of Seth's line had become. Enoch walked with God and he was not, for God took him.

There are only two people in the whole Bible (and human history) who never died: Enoch and Elijah. Do you know why these two and these two only were chosen to be taken to heaven and not die? Do you know why of all human history two people were not allowed to die? Do you know?

I don't. I have no idea. Some speculate that they may be the two witnesses in Revelation who end up getting killed by the antichrist. God saved them to die later. Could be. I don't know.

But Enoch walked with God. He was a friend to God. He loved being with God. He loved God's path, God's ways. He loved righteousness and hated ungodliness. And he was one of two people who never died. So it might seem like Enoch is so unlike us and so set apart from the human race that we might wonder how we could find anything to be encouraged about from his life. How do we relate to a guy who walks so close to God that God just beams him up?

Actually you have more in common with Enoch than you might think! God didn't mean for Enoch to be a discouragement to us but a type of us. Enoch is like us and we are like Enoch in several important ways:

a. Enoch walked by faith and so do we (Hebrews 11:5-6)

By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God. 6And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. Hebrews 11:5-6 (ESV)

Enoch didn't walk with God and please God independently of God. He walked in faith - and that pleased God. It was his faith that enabled him to see the supreme worth of God over everything else. The writer of Hebrews finds an important lesson about faith for all of us in Enoch's life - it is impossible to please God without faith. Faith calls us to draw near to God and believe that God is a rewarder of those who seek Him (like Enoch did). We do not please God when we try to be good religious people for God apart from God. We please God when we turn to God's Son Jesus Christ in faith and believe with all our souls that He has saved us by His precious work on the cross. And as we walk in faith in the Lord Jesus He promises us that He will always be with us and never forsake us. In fact, He has given us His Holy Spirit as a guarantee that He is ours and we are His forever.

b. Enoch never died and neither will we

I know my first point was we all die, but Jesus promised us that all those who believe in him will never die. There's no contradiction here - there's a way that Christians will die, and a way that Christians will never die. We will die physically, but if we trust in Christ we will never die spiritually. Death isn't dying for the Christian - it's the gateway to the kingdom of Christ. To leave this world is to immediately be in the presence of Jesus.

Enoch isn't there as a discouragement in the midst of this cycle of life and death, he is there as a beacon of hope - a hope that is greater than death. God trumps death. He will bring His people safely through death into the kingdom of the Son He loves. And there we will be with the Lord Jesus forever.

III. There is the revelation of God as a patient and long-suffering God (vv. 25-32)

I don't blame you if you're wondering, "Where is he going with this point? I know that God is a patient God but I don't see anything in these verses that makes that point."

But it's in there. See Enoch has a son and he names him Methuselah. We know him as the oldest guy in the Bible. But the fact that Methuselah lived longer than anyone else reveals God's patience and long-suffering character. Enoch was a prophet, and he saw that something cataclysmic was coming - that something is the flood and we will be reading about it soon.

So Enoch the prophet named his son, Methuselah, which means, "When he is dead it shall be sent." Methuselah then has a son named Lamech (not the Lamech of Cain), and Lamech has a son named Noah. Now follow my math here:

• Lamech lived to be 777 years old and died when Noah was 595 years old.
• The flood occurs in the 600th year of Noah's life - five years after Lamech died.
• Methuselah lived to be 969 years old and lived 782 years after fathering Lamech, which means he lived 5 years longer than Lamech.

Methuselah died in the year the flood came. When he is dead it shall be sent. God endured the growing evil and sin patiently - and Methuselah's long life symbolizes that patience. He is the same patient and long-suffering God today.

Conclusion:

I want to close by speaking specifically to those who are not yet Christians. Or those who aren't sure where you are. Or those who want to know more about what it means to be a Christian.

It is no secret that we are mortal and one day (we don't know when) we all will die. One of the most important questions to ask yourself is, are you prepared for that day. Are you prepared for eternity? God is patient, but there is a day when judgment comes and then it's too late.

Jesus said that anyone who believes in him will never die. In fact, Jesus says that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. It's that simple. Put your faith in Jesus. Put your trust in Jesus. Put your life in Jesus' hands and under His Lordship. Do it now. Let's pray.