The World is Not Worthy

Man, those words are truly such a comfort to the soul, and if you did not grow up as part of a Reformed Christian tradition, then you don't have a clear understanding of God's role and your role in the work of salvation, and yet it is critical. It's critical for our assurance, it's critical for our joy and comfort. God is certainly exalted in that, and to understand that God finishes the work that He begins when He causes us to be born again to a living hope, when He makes us a new creature.

And I can distinctly remember even some of those truths that we were singing about really being etched on my heart as a young man thinking, but could it really be true that God delights in me? I just cannot fathom that because I know how undelightful I am. And then coming to understand, no, because of my union with Christ, this is true of me. So great anthem, great opportunity to sing that, even reflecting on MacArthur's service yesterday.

It's the longest service I've ever witnessed. I didn't watch the whole thing, but a good part of three hours, and just a magnificent testimony to the Lord's grace. Well, this morning, as we turn our attention to the Scriptures again, I mean, we have been all morning, but I invite you to take your Bible and turn with me to Genesis chapter 5. And once something goes drastically wrong, we will get, we will finish chapter 5 today.

We will be done with chapter 5 and move on. As I was preparing for this message, I was thinking about my upbringing a bit, and I was homeschooled for a number of years and then made the transition into public school. And as you can imagine, it's not necessarily the easiest transition, and then that was compounded by doing that as a junior hire.

And that's not already awkward and challenging enough. So I came into a public school context, and somewhat unsurprisingly, probably to all of you, I did not fit in. So being the oldest child, I was a bit naive.

So basically, I had no idea what anyone was talking about. I'd come home every day and say, here's a bunch of words I learned today. What do they mean? I think my haircut gave me away.

I think that my interests betrayed me a bit. And so, I didn't have a lot of immediate connections going into junior high, felt like a little bit of odd man out. I remember dreading the lunch hour because it was a full hour, and it doesn't take an hour to eat your lunch, right? Your lunch is pretty small as a junior hire, so I'd eat my lunch and then just kind of roam the halls by myself for a number of minutes.

But in addition to the peculiarities that I brought that were just the normal social dynamics of life and things that were causing me to feel out of place was the added dimension of being a Christian. And so, I distinctly remember being in a science class, and I knew we were going to be getting to the topic of the origins of the earth. I was well-equipped, I'd actually attended an Answers in Genesis seminar in Salem, Oregon.

I met Ken Hammer, I heard him speak. And so, I remember kind of praying and thinking about, how am I going to handle this? And we get to this section in the course curriculum, and so sure enough, we come to the origins of the universe. And my teacher, I'm sure he's not alive anywhere, I won't name his name, but he stated as fact the origin of the universe being the Big Bang and evolution.

It was absolutely unequivocally proven, and there was no other possible reasonable scenario. And I remember raising my hand and saying, with all due respect, I don't believe you're representing all of the situations accurately. And I don't remember exactly what I said, but I remember I was prepared and I'd thought through some things.

And to his credit, I think he probably had one like me every year, so he was gracious in his response. But I remember a sense of exhilaration in that moment of fellowship with Christ. It was a unique kind of fellowship.

It was the sense of, I'm convinced of this truth, and I really don't care if anyone else is, and I'm going to speak. Now, for every story I could tell you of times that I've actually done that, I have many that I've not done it faithfully, so I'm not preaching myself this morning. Ironically, this morning's titled message is, The World Is Not Worthy, and it's going to be about men of whom the world is not worthy.

I'm not saying that I'm one of those men, but I'm telling that story because to really get a sense for Enoch, who we're going to look at this morning, and Noah, it's appropriate to think of what it's like to feel like vastly outnumbered in your perspective, vastly outnumbered in what you believe, to be a minority, to feel like perhaps a bit of an outsider. And I know many of you in this room, there are some of you who are the only believer in your family. God snatched you out, and you're not just a minority maybe in society at large, you're a minority in your family.

There's something very vulnerable about that. There's something that's challenging about that. There's also something that is precious and exhilarating to entrust ourselves to the Lord, even as a minority, and to simply speak what is true.

I was reading this week a list of the hundred most influential people in history. Obviously, no one could do that definitively, but someone had written to Time magazine and tried to put in order. And honestly, I was, I'll say this, I was pleasantly surprised.

It was better than I expected. And that particular list, and they vary on who created them, but Jesus Christ was number one. I think they thought Christ was probably his last name, so you could be trained a little bit there.

Jesus of Nazareth probably would have been better, but Jesus was number one. It included many U.S. presidents, so it's kind of written from a Western perspective. And then, I mean, quite to my delight, it included Calvin, and Luther, and Augustine, and the Apostle Paul, and the Apostle Peter, and the hundred most influential people in the history of the world.

And I thought, you know, if I were creating a list of the hundred greatest saints, I'd put Enoch and Noah on that list. And I don't think these guys always get a lot of our attention, but they're called heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11. And this morning in Genesis chapter 5, we're going to begin to give our attention to Enoch and next time, Lord willing, Noah.

And these are men of whom the world was not worthy. That's the language of the author of Hebrews. In Hebrews chapter 11 verse 38, the world was not worthy of these men.

What does that mean? It means that the world could not really appreciate them. The world could not appreciate them. And in a sense, the world did not deserve men like this.

Genesis chapter 5 begins. This is the book of the generations of Adam, when God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. Male and female, He created them and He blessed them and named them man when they were created.

God is the owner of all things. He designed and created humanity. He put man on the earth.

And this now is the official record book of one of Adam's lines. As we said last week, we only know the names of three of Adam's sons, although he had many sons and daughters. We know of Cain, Abel, and Seth, who in effect replaced Abel.

This is the faithful line. And we've recognized, I think, quite exhaustively, I will just briefly mention it, the unique pattern of this genealogy, that there's a formula to it. When dad had lived X years, he fathered a son and the father lived so many additional years, Y number of years, he had other sons and daughters, thus all the years of dad were Z years and he died.

And so the scripture could have easily just said things like, Adam lived to be 930 years, Seth lived to be 912 years, Anosh lived to be 905 years, and we'd have no idea what the chronology was. The way this is written is really an ironclad chronology. It's designed to be totaled.

It's not just so that we would reflect upon ages. And so the years here, which follows the Masoretic text, puts the years from Adam to Noah about 1,656 years. So that would then put the age of the earth at roughly 6,000 years old or just over 4,000 BC.

And so as we begin to get into this text, we're just stunned by the sheer numbers. Verse 3, when Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness after his image and named him Seth, and the days of Adam after he fathered Seth, after he became the father of Seth, were 800 years. And he had other sons and daughters, thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years and he died.

I mean, this is just absolutely mind-boggling. I've been thinking about it for weeks and I still can't really get my mind around what it actually would have looked like. I mean, I have an uncle who's a day younger than me, and people think that's super weird.

I've had a lot of comments over the years, right? Grandma and my mom are pregnant at the same time, they have babies at the same time, right? We can celebrate our birthdays at the same time, it's really cute. We're talking about a day, a day apart, occasionally, occasionally, in an interesting scenario. You might have an aunt or an uncle that's somewhat younger than you.

But because of the way fertility was working here, you could have an aunt or an uncle that's hundreds of years younger than you. It's just absolutely remarkable. Today, a woman's fertility under normal circumstances is about 35 years, give or take.

Here we're talking about centuries, potentially, of fertility. I mean, it's just mind-boggling, it's absolutely remarkable. The fruitfulness and the strength of these generations to be fruitful and multiplying God's designs.

And so, as you can imagine, the family trees, the family reunions, I mean, it's super complicated when you're living for that long and you're that fertile. And so just to put this in context for a moment, Adam living to 930 years means that he lived all the way to see Lamech. He lived to see all those generations down, six generations down.

It's just something that we can't even relate to in our day and age. And in fact, he only missed Noah by 126 years. So Noah was born just after that first millennium had been completed.

Adam dies just short of it. And to give you a little bit of a framework of what these lives would have looked like, that's about a sixth of world history. I mean, a little bit less than that.

But it's just astounding to think of being on the earth for a thousand years. My wife's grandmother turns 100 this year, and I was just looking up what she's witnessed in her life, the invention of penicillin or the discovery of penicillin, the creation of the TV and the jet engine and the atom bomb and the Frisbee and Velcro and scotch tape and the rocket. And she's seen presidential offices all the way back to Calvin Coolidge, lived through the Great Depression, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hitler's Third Reich, Apollo 11 landing on the moon, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, the baby boom, the invention of the personal computer and the CD and the cell phone and smartphone.

This is just beginning to get an idea of how much the world changes in 100 years. Adam, he's living essentially almost an entire millennium. And so I think we kind of picture running around in like village hot wind cloths.

I think from what we see even in Kane's line of the development and progress of humanity, it's a very wrong way of thinking. It gives us a bit of the wrong perspective. And so Adam here lives to be nearly a thousand years.

We don't have any explanation as to why the child birthing seems to be somewhat delayed. But we read in verse 8, when Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered Enosh. That's certainly later than elsewhere that we would see in scripture of fathers begetting children.

We'll talk about that more here in a bit. But the pattern that we noticed last week is very consistent in terms of the relationship to the fathers and the sons and the years that are included. And not only that, but last week we saw that very consistently there is the refrain, and he died, and he died, and he died, and he died, and he died, and it's not necessary.

If you say Adam lived for 930 years, it implies, and then at some point he died. Why does Moses keep saying, and he died, and he died, and he died, and he died? I believe it's driving on the point that we are living under the curse. This is our new reality.

And furthermore, so that he could establish a pattern so that it would be very obvious to us when he broke the pattern. When does the pattern break? Verse 21, when Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters.

Thus, all the days of Enoch were 365 years, and then instead of reading, and he died, we read, Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. What an unusual situation. What an unusual little verse.

It just kind of pops out here. As one author says, this is one of the Bible's greatest examples of living and saving faith, namely Enoch. There's not a lot of explanation given about him.

And yet this verse appears really like a shining gem in the midst of the genealogies. And in fact, we kind of talked about a couple of weeks ago that when you read a genealogy, almost contend to feel like it's time to fall asleep because it's just a genealogy. Maybe you think the person writing it was kind of feeling like they were going to fall asleep.

Here, it's very clear that there is a purpose and an intent behind this because all of a sudden the pattern breaks and we're displayed with a man who did not die, okay? A man who did not die. Now, it's worth mentioning just because we've talked about kind of how skeptics approach the scriptures that there is some views that kind of start to panic because if you'll notice, there's an Enoch here in Seth's line in chapter 5. There's also an Enoch back in Cain's line. If you remember in verse 18 of chapter 4, Cain names the city after his son Enoch.

Then if you look down in verse 28 of chapter 5, we read about Lamech. And as you remember, there was a Lamech who was a scoundrel back in Cain's line in chapter 4. And so what liberal commentators do, what they always do is state that, you know, the fact that we're seeing the same name in both lists indicates that whoever put this together is totally incompetent or they're working from different lists. They've somehow gotten the names confused.

Like kind of we need to discredit the whole entire thing because clearly they don't know what they're talking about because there's two names appearing in both lists and they appear in different places. I'll just tell you, I think that maybe the best way to go with Bible study is just, is there a simple explanation? Like is there just a really obvious simple explanation? Usually that's the best. So is it hard to believe that in two family lines you might have the same names? Well, I'll ask you just here in our congregation, which I'd say is relatively small, this small sample size, we have multiple Matthews, Talebs, Hannahs, Morgans, Susans, and Nathans.

And we even have multiple families that have the same last name and they're not related. I think it's possible that Enoch and Lamech were just popular baby names in the first millennium. So two different lists, two different guys.

It's actually recorded. It's what it was. It's what their names are.

It's not a sign of a discrepancy or an incompetency on Moses's part or anyone else's. And this Enoch is different from Cain's Enoch. And this Lamech is different from Cain's Lamech.

So we don't have a lot here in the Old Testament to tell us about Enoch. But Moses writes in verse 22, Enoch walked with God. And then he says again in verse 24, Enoch walked with God.

What a marvelous descriptor. Like there was one way to describe your life for people to say of you that they would say, so-and-so walked with God. It's just an incredible expression.

Noah in Genesis 6-9 will be said to walk with God. Okay, so both of these guys are unique in their exceptional relationship with God. It's highlighted here.

It's a dark age. It's a perverse generation. It's a crooked generation.

It's a very morally degenerate time. And yet these men walk with God. And we've been over this over and over and over.

I will not belabor the point this morning. But walking speaks of a lifestyle. And furthermore, to walk with someone is indicative of enjoying fellowship at their side.

So Abraham is going to be said later to be walking before God. What does that mean? I'm blameless. I fear you.

Face to face. I'm before you. I lifted my hands before you.

Search me. It's that kind of being before God, walking before him circumspectly. Deuteronomy in the law, God's people are going to be told to walk after him.

They're going to be told to walk after him. Deuteronomy 13, for you to walk after the Lord. You're to be a follower.

You're to be a disciple. Talk about walking in the way of our Lord or following Jesus. It's appropriate.

So we walk before God. We walk after him. We follow him.

But to walk with him, to walk with him signifies not just the lifestyle of following his commandments. That's certainly a part of it. But there's an emphasis here on relationship.

There's an emphasis here on relationship. I mean, this is a precious thing. Growing up in the 90s, that was kind of the big deal that you'd hear these statements made.

When you're thinking about interacting with God, it's about relationship, not rules. It's like kind of true. There are rules, actually.

It's part of the relationship. But I understand what you're saying. You're going to emphasize the relationship.

Or they're saying, you need to have your own personal relationship with Jesus. I mean, yes. There's a personal element to this.

Perhaps there's a corporate dynamic to it. Here, the emphasis is on the relationship. And the idea that Enoch walked with God here in the original is this durative force.

It means it was continuous. Okay. And what the text is saying is certainly after he fathered Methuselah.

So certainly after he was 65. But it doesn't actually necessitate that it didn't happen from an earlier age. So it could have been that he walked with God 365 years.

It could have been 300 years. It's indicating certainly after he fathered Methuselah. But the text does not require that it was not happening prior to that.

But let's just take 300 years. I mean, hello? He walked with God for 300 years. I mean, it's just on my heart this week.

There's people that I know that have started out with fireworks in their relationship with Christ. And then what happens? They fizzle and fade. They walk for a while and then they stumble and they don't get back up.

They walk and then they walk away. Enoch walked with God. Close relational fellowship for 300 years.

300 years. This is a man who loved God. This is a man who loved fellowshipping with God.

We know that God desires fellowship with his people astoundingly. Genesis 3, he comes walking in the garden in the cool of the day in Genesis 3.8. Why? Because he's looking for fellowship with Adam and Eve. What's Jesus' high priestly prayer in John 17? Father, I want them to be with us so that they can know the fellowship that we had from before the world was began.

I want them to enter into that. I want to be with them. And so Enoch here, fascinatingly, has a close relationship with God where he's drawing near to the Lord.

He's looking to him. He's communing with him. He's obeying him.

He's trusting him. He's loving him. And in that love for God, in that walking with God, it is causing him to now be at odds with the world around him.

I mean, John 1 could not be more clear. Jesus came to his own and what? They rejected him. They rejected him.

Why? Because the darkness hates the light. And they preferred rather their deeds because they liked the darkness where they could do them. And so Enoch here is finding that he would be able to call God his friend.

And in calling God his friend meant there's a lot of other people who now are no longer his friend. It's just the way the world works. And so he would stand somewhat in a minority.

I'm sure at times it felt like he was standing alone. I'll develop that in a minute. Even as I think back to my experience in junior high, did I feel alone that day in the classroom? I did.

But guess what? God in his kindness. I had a Christian coach. I had a Christian teacher.

I had a Christian friend from church. There were other believers, but we weren't in the majority position. We weren't in the majority accepted position.

We didn't have the predominant influence. And so I'm sure Enoch in a very similar fashion here, I mean, severely outnumbered on the face of the earth. God's going to judge the earth with a flood coming right on the heels in this next millennium, this next few hundred years.

Yet there I'm sure was, were other believers. And so Enoch here understood that living for us, what we would call the Christian life, life in Christ is not only about principles and practices, but it is about a person, an unseen God with whom you fellowship, that you're living out of that, that it's influencing all the way that you think about life. And so what that did in Enoch's heart, that relationship, that close walk he had with God was it made him a bold preacher, a bold preacher.

I want you to turn back to Jude. We'll come back to Genesis in a minute, but you can turn to Jude. We looked at this earlier in our scripture reading.

Enoch walks with God. And in addition to that, he's a preacher. Jude 14, it was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam prophesied.

So just real quick, there you go. Seventh from Adam. We have the New Testament confirming the testimony of the Old Testament, but the numbers line up.

It's the same Enoch, and it is actually seven generations. This man, this Enoch prophesied. What are prophets? Prophets are mouthpieces for God.

So he's on the earth. The earth is growing morally dark, darker and darker and darker around him. And he is one who now will speak forth revelation from God to the people.

And what is his message? God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Hey, guys, the best days are yet to come. Look at the message.

Behold, he starts with, look, listen up, pay attention. Behold, the Lord comes. The master is coming.

The one who made you is coming back. And what is his arrival going to look like? He comes with ten thousands of his holy ones. And this is where that expression, holy host, comes from.

Means that when the Lord comes in this coming that Enoch is talking about, he's going to be flanked. He's going to be flanked with myriads of angelic warriors. Point is, it's innumerable.

Elsewhere in scripture, it's called myriads and myriads. So this message that Enoch is preaching, this man who walks with God, he knows God, he loves God. Now out of the overflow of that, he's speaking on behalf of God.

He has a message for the people. He's starting soberly. I would say, pre-incarnate Christ centeredly.

He's coming and he's preaching to a dark culture powerfully to tell them that their maker is going to come back as a warrior king. And what is he going to do? Verse 15, to execute judgment on all. And to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.

He's telling them the warrior king is coming back and he's coming back to execute judgment. This is legal compensatory language. He will bring a recompense.

He will punish. He will mete out punishment. He's going to measure it out and then he's going to dole it out and he's going to execute it.

That's the plan. And what is he going to specifically convict over? Well, deeds. We could say defamation.

Verse 15, to execute judgment on all, to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness, all the things that they've committed and done. And the things that what they've spoken, the end of verse 15 against him, he's going to punish blasphemers. I mean, I just was gripped thinking about this.

I mean, I, I hope at times I hope that you're not, you're not self-righteous about the darkness in the world around you, but I hope it provokes within you something at times that offends you, that you're offended by that which offends God. I mean, at the very least, I hope that blasphemy offends you. I mean, I get offended when someone takes my Lord's name in vain, the King of Kings, and they use it as a cuss word.

It offends me. Or when you take the rainbow, the sign of God's covenant promise, and you desecrate it, I find that offensive. Or when atheists mock Christians, that offends me.

And not primarily because it offends me personally, although it does, but because you're speaking about the God that I love. And if you look at the heart of Enoch's message, I mean, this is a quote. It's a little snippet from one of his sermons.

And if he was in, in primary aged grammar school, we would correct his paper and say, you need to find more adjectives. You're overusing one word. What word is he overusing? Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His holy ones to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.

So, Enoch comes and his message is, you people are ungodly. You're an ungodly people. And God is going to come back and punish ungodliness.

And the message is ideally then a message of, so turn to Him and be saved. Avoid punishment while there's still time. Enoch would have been a preacher of the gospel.

He would have been a preacher who was coming and proclaiming that judgment was coming. It's not hard to figure out what kind of judgment he was proclaiming. Whether it was the specifics of the coming flood judgment, or it was revelation that God had given him to prepare the next generation for that day.

God is graciously, graciously bringing a preacher to tell people to repent while there's still time. Writer of Hebrews says that these are men of whom the world was not worthy. Men of whom the world was not worthy.

I read about Enoch and I think, man, I want courage like that. I mean, to be severely outnumbered in a crooked and perverse generation, and your lead-in in the message is, behold, the Lord is coming to execute judgment on your ungodliness. That is a level of boldness that I freely admit.

I just, I don't know that I possess that in the way that he did. Where did that come from? Well, Hebrews 11 makes it clear that it is by faith. Enoch simply believed that it was going to happen.

He believed God. So when we shrink back from proclaiming what we say we believe to be true, it's rooted in unbelief. Paul would say, I believed, therefore I spoke.

Enoch's ministry here is so instructive for us. I mean, I remember growing up in youth group and I'm trying to be equipped to go into the public school, right? And what's the equipping? I mean, you just live your life and it just shines so much that all the other kids say we want what he has. Occasionally, occasionally in God's kindness that happens.

Someone says, hey, I've noticed that like something about you. Can we talk about it? That's not usually how it goes. It doesn't say that Enoch just had his life together and he was just so happy and so joyful that everyone wanted what he had.

Rather, he came and he preached against ungodliness. Judgment was on his heart. It was on his mind.

And the result of that, I'm sure, was a measure of loneliness. It's interesting that even Jude is writing about those who would go the way of Cain. That seems to be the clear contrast in Genesis 5. And so part of living the Christian life is feeling lonely.

Now, you're probably not as lonely as you feel like you are, but there is a bit of loneliness, is there not? If you remember the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat in 1 Kings 22 verse 8, we need to inquire of the Lord on if we should go to battle. And so they get 400 prophets and 400 prophets come. They say, hey, yeah, we're good to go.

What does he say? You know what? There's actually one more guy. One more guy that we need to hear from. Micaiah.

The only problem is I hate him. I hate that guy. I'm good hearing from 400 prophets and there's one prophet that I hate.

I just hate that guy. Why do you hate him? He says, for he never prophesies good concerning me, but evil. You understand how dangerous the thinking is? Well, most Americans believe or most college graduates agree or most evangelicals or most, it doesn't really matter.

The goal is not to side with the majority or the popular group or what seems to be the influential thought of the day. Enoch would have felt in many ways on the earth lonely. One author writes, if we please God, we'll not be in a position of pleasing most men.

And women, at least not the ungodly. By the time Enoch died by the sheer mathematics of birth or reproduction, there were probably several million of Adam's descendants on earth. These were Enoch's relatives, mostly cousins.

It was these whom Enoch called ungodly. And we can be sure that he was not popular with them. You say, well, how do we know that? Well, just a few generations later, God's destroying the earth with a cataclysmic flood.

And so even if there were some who heard the message and repented, it certainly wasn't widespread revival. And so God takes this man, turned back to Genesis 5, who walked with him, who fellowshiped with him, who preached to sinners to repent. He preached confrontationally this message of gospel hope.

And then Moses, somewhat frustratingly so, without explanation or elaboration, just says he was not, for God took him. I mean, ponder that for a minute. Did he get to write a goodbye letter? Was he just like, he's suddenly gone, his face is on the milk carton, we don't know what happened to him.

I mean, I think it's likely that there was some probably scenario where it was apparent how Enoch departed. Writer of Hebrews says that he was taken so that he would not have to face death. Is that not incredible? I mean, the Bible says over and over that long life is a gift from God.

Length of days is a blessing from the Lord. The Lord prolongs life. There's something even better than the Lord giving you a long life on earth, you know, that is taking you early without death.

And so Enoch is taken away. And the language there is so wonderful because it has to be that God just came and snatched him away and brought him to himself. So God didn't take him out, but he took him to himself.

It's happened, of course, only one other time in history. Happened with Elijah. There were witnesses to that.

It was seen by others. And so why did God take Enoch? And like, I live a holy life. Could I get on that too? I mean, you kind of think there's that song by William Cooper, Oh, for a closer walk with God.

And you're thinking, man, if I get close enough to God, like, is that the deal? We get to avoid death? Obviously, this was incredibly exceptional. I think it was certainly a blessing in Enoch's life. Enoch would have been tormented.

I mean, righteous lot was tormented living near Sodom and Gomorrah. Enoch was in a crooked and perverse generation. He would have been somewhat tormented as a righteous man, surely.

So there was a grace in that. It was a gift to Enoch. He was 11-5, as I said, he was taken up so that he should not see death.

So there was a blessing to him personally. But I think there was something else that was happening there. I think this was an early indication to the people of the world that death is not the final story.

That death is not the ultimate end. This is, of course, not the full revelation of Jesus and the empty tomb. That will come later in the progress of revelation.

But this is a precursor toward the idea that the grave is not ultimately final. It's a ray of hope, if you will, that death is not the final answer. Death is not ultimate.

That Enoch lived and he did not die. In fact, this would be the hope of the psalmist and even Job. Job was likely somewhere in this time frame as a contemporary.

Job would say in Job 19 verse 25, For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God. I believe in resurrection.

So Job believed in resurrection. We don't know exactly what revelation was given to those people. Yet it would seem here that Enoch is a living testament to God's resurrection power.

And yet I do want to remind you that for all of Enoch's wonderful attributes, he was born with original sin just like you and me. He was born with corruption. There were times that he wasn't faithful as a saint.

Times at some point in his life he had to be regenerated by the power of the Spirit and born again. And so Enoch is certainly an example of great godliness, and yet it's also an example of what Peter would say in 2 Peter chapter 2, that God knows how to preserve His godly ones under trial. That God is the one who ultimately preserved Enoch amidst a crooked and perverse generation.

And so Enoch continues the family line. He gives birth to Methuselah. Well, he doesn't.

You know what I mean. His wife gives birth to Methuselah. He's 65 when that happens according to verse 21.

Methuselah then lives 187 years and fathers Lamech. Methuselah lives after he fathers Lamech 782 years and has other sons and daughters. Verse 27, that's all the days of Methuselah were 969 years and he died.

It's like my favorite guy in the Bible. He's a little kid. Longest living human that we have on record.

It's a good Bible trivia nugget. You can just kind of put that one in your pocket. The Bible's silent as to the reasons for long life.

So we can speculate, but we just don't know. Many people speculate that the atmosphere and the environment of the earth changed post-flood. Certainly could be possible.

Some postulate that it related to the natural genetic breakdown as the human population began to kind of degrade and the effects of sin. To what degree it was supernatural intervention or how God had designed the natural laws of the universe, we understand that it ultimately is related to God's sovereign plan and ordination to shorten human lifespans. But Methuselah makes it 969 years.

And if you're keeping track, that's going to be the year that Noah turns 600, which is also the year of the flood. So Methuselah dies according to verse 27 at 969 years old. And that is the very same year that the earth is flooded.

By all these calculations, 1656, not 1656 AD or 1656 BC, but just 1656. And on the heels of that, we read Lamech, father's a son. In verse 29, he calls his name Noah, saying, out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, out of the ground that Yahweh is cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.

Lamech right now is describing in poetic language, recognition that Adam is fashioned from dust. Eve was fashioned from Adam's rib. And every successive human being comes into existence through a fertilized egg that grows through the embryonic stages.

So it doesn't actually come from dust in one sense. You know, that's the ultimate origin of man and it's what we all return to. And so he's saying, out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, now this one has been brought who will bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.

And so you just get this idea of what he's saying there is we're cut from the same cloth. He's out of the ground, made from the same stuff. And Lamech is clearly somewhat hopeless.

He's feeling the effects of the curse and the difficulty. And so now he's hoping that this son will come and bring relief. And we're going to look at next time when we open up, whether Lamech is right in what he's saying, kind of how he's conceiving of what Noah is going to do.

I'll just say this as a little kind of foretaste of what's to come. Noah is going to be involved, obviously, in representing salvation. But Noah is not the deliverer.

He's not the type. Rather, Noah is the one who's delivered by the ark of God's salvation. And so Lamech here is clearly reeling from the effects of the fall, the difficulty under the curse.

He's hoping that his son now will come and bring relief. And in some ways, Noah will. And in some ways, Noah is actually going to bring great difficulty upon the earth.

Or that God is through Noah. Well, this morning, as you reflect on Enoch, the themes that you're encouraged by is that God has a faithful remnant. And it's generally not the majority.

It's usually the minority. And yet, even when you feel alone, there's people that span all of history, far more believers on the face of the planet than we could ever count, myriads and myriads. And that the Lord uses those who have a vital relationship with him, who walk with God.

He uses them in significant ways. And then finally, God's power to rescue and preserve the godly. That even if you look around and you say, I see what seems like the world on a downward spiral or decline, you have no need to fret or fear.

Because even a man like Enoch could be preserved in a dark generation by God's sustaining power. So we'll pick this up again after family camp. We'll be somewhere else next week, just so we don't miss a week in Genesis.

And then we'll pick this up in two weeks. Let's pray together. Lord, I am so desiring of what Enoch had with you.

I was just telling Susie last week, I think we could take this year and just as the moniker in our lives, think about growing in our walk with God. Walking with God, a relationship with you, Lord. Just being reminded even of the personal element of fellowship and drawing near to you as a person, where that's just refreshing to us.

And I pray that you would help our faith to not be reduced down to merely principles and practices, but that that would be centered on the person who's given us those principles and those practices. Lord, you gave yourself for us. There's no way we could ever pay you back.

But we do say thank you. We do say that although we do not see you, we love you. And we look forward to that day when you come with thousands of angels.

Lord Jesus, we praise you. We ask these things in your name. Amen.