Hello, my “Walking with Jesus” friends,
Who is the oldest living person you know today? My Dad is 98, but I have a friend in North Dakota who has a very close friend who is 10 years older than that, 108 years old!! In the early chapters of the Bible, we find several generations of people who lived well over 800 or even 900 years. The oldest of all was Methuselah, the son of Enoch. The Bible reports that Methuselah ‘lived a total of 969 years and then he died.’ (Genesis 5:27) Now what do you make of that my friends?
Some say the means of reckoning years in those ancient times was different from our day and thus those people were not really that old when using modern time reckoning. But I see no support of that claim. In Genesis 1, the ‘days’ God defined as the rising & setting of the sun are the same 24-hour periods as we have today. The rotation of planet earth and its orbit around the sun has not changed since God created our universe in Genesis 1!
Then why such prolonged life spans? Well, one good reason is that the earth was large and empty, needing to be populated, and thus parents had many children over a long period of time. Another reason is we can assume, based on what history tells us when looking at some parts of our world with very high infant mortality rates, that the prevalence of preventable disease must have been everywhere in the world in ancient times, thus while some people lived to be very old, we should presume that many, many died young.
In Genesis 5 I find 4 particularly interesting people, do you see them? First, of course, is Adam, the first human whom God created, and did you notice this statement in Genesis 5:1,2: “When God created mankind, He made them in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And God named them “Mankind” when they were created.”
That pretty well demolishes the gender confusion, gender hysteria issues of our day, am I right? God DESIGNED male and female obviously very different from each other in appearance, internal chromosomal structure and reproductive function. Any effort to confuse or distort or change God’s very distinctive two gender human design, made in His image, is beyond lunacy and even beyond barbaric!
Genesis 5 also introduces us to Enoch who “walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.” (Gen. 5:24) Clearly Enoch was a God honoring man who pursued a very special relationship with God and Enoch did not die a normal death. One day Enoch simply ‘was no more’! I assume it means God took Enoch up into God’s presence… body, soul and spirit! I believe this is an Old Testament example of what will happen to followers of Jesus Christ who are alive at the moment of the return of Jesus when deceased believers in Jesus are resurrected and living believers are transformed and raptured, as 1 Thessalonians 4 declares: “the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so, we will be with the Lord forever.” (1 Thess. 4:16,17)
Thirdly, as I’ve already mentioned, in Genesis 5:21-27 we are introduced to Methuselah, Enoch’s son, the man who lived longer than any other person. And finally in Genesis 5:28 we meet Methuselah’s grandson Noah, who of course is the person at the center of the great global flood story recounted for us in Genesis 6-9. Notice please this powerful reputation Noah had with God which I find in Genesis 6:8 “Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.” The preceding three verses are very sad as God deeply regrets what has happened to the human race HE made in His image: “The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.” (Gen. 6:5)
This my friends is the natural end result in the life of ANY person or any marriage or family when God is pushed away and the dark kingdom is invited to reign! God was deeply troubled by the moral chaos and spiritual depravity of our world, and so God made a horrible decision: “The LORD said, ‘I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created… for I regret that I have made them.” (Gen. 6:7) And in that decision, after several generations of His human race living in total rebellion against Creator God, God birthed the plan for a global flood which would destroy all life!
May I ask, how well do you know your ancestral tree? How many generations past can you name and are you able to identify any characteristics or significant achievements of those people in your family heritage? What SPIRITUAL heritage were you born into? And most importantly, what spiritual heritage are you now developing which you will pass on to your descendants? Who is the God your descendants will know because of your life?
Genesis 6, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, is a very sad page in the human history story. But God is ALWAYS looking for ANYONE whom He might use for HIS glory and Noah was that man in his generation! Genesis 6:9 recounts that “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God.” Now how was that possible with no church, no Bible, no pastors, and several millennia before Jesus came to earth??
Consider this: No doubt Methuselah had learned a great deal about God from his father Enoch, and Methuselah lived for 600 more years after his grandson Noah was born! Might old Methuselah be one of the best examples of the moral and spiritual influence potential of a grandfather on his grandson? (Psalm 71:17,18)
Clearly God and Noah had a very special relationship, and yet can you imagine how difficult it was for Noah to hear God’s heartbreaking announcement? “God said to Noah: ‘I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them…So make yourself an ark. I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens…Everything on earth will perish. But I will establish My covenant with you…” (Gen. 6:11-21)
As we close our reflections today my friends, we must try to understand what a catastrophic moment, in all human history, this decision was which God announced to Noah. God’s perfect plan for a perfect world had been rejected by the human race God made in His image. Humanity rejected God and invited the reign of Satan and the dark kingdom here on planet earth and the result was total anarchy, total implosion of every good plan God had put into motion. God had only one option… destroy it all and start over with one man, Noah, and his family!
Tomorrow we’ll look at that remarkable global flood event, but for today, we must understand WHY the human race decayed into such moral chaos, such evil and self-destructive violence.
The disciple John warned us with these words: “If anyone loves the world, the love for God the Father is not in them. For everything in the world – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, comes not from God but from the world. The world and its desires will pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.” (1 John 2:15-17)
And here’s a very special worship song, sung by two generations, to help us contemplate these important truths, and I’ll meet you here again tomorrow, my friends. . .
Today’s Scripture: Genesis 5 & 6.
Choose below to read or listen.
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Genesis 6
Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.
Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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