Death Has No Grip

Though it’s been more than 40 years since I held the first of my three children, I can still distinctly remember the sense of responsibility for another life that I knew I had been given by the life-giving God. There is something about holding another life in your hands that is totally dependent upon you for everything that motivates one into committing all that they have or ever hope to have to the provision and protection of that baby.

I also still remember the overwhelming sense of inadequacy I felt as I anticipated what it would take to meet the many needs that my first-born child had and would have in the future. To think that I was being given the responsibility to spiritually prepare a soul to live forever in eternity with the Lord was staggering in its implications.

What I was unprepared for however, was what gift that my first-born child (as well as the other two that would follow) was giving me. The sense of inadequacy and motivation to provide for and protect the new life (lives) that I had been given an eternal stewardship responsibility for set for the stage for me to discover how faithful and dependable the Lord actually is. This gift from my first-born child was deepened by the addition of the next two as I discovered through an increasing dependency upon the Lord new depths and dimensions of the Lord’s faithfulness.

In Genesis 4:25 Eve was given a living example of the Lord’s faithfulness when He gave her another child named Seth (whose name in Hebrew means given) as a replacement for her murdered son Abel. This child represents a new beginning for her through this precious gift of God that foreshadows the even more precious child named Jesus that would come centuries later to give new beginnings to multitudes who by faith would receive him. The human lineage of the promised Savior was reintroduced through Seth.

One could not be blamed for presuming that due to the awesome responsibility and amazing opportunity she had, Eve fulfilled her responsibility to provide for Seth’s spiritual training because at the birth of Seth’s son Enosh, people once again begin to call upon the name of the Lord. Through Enosh and his descendants, the human lineage of the promised Savior continued to be sustained through the centuries in spite of the many references of “then he died” in chapter five.

Verse twenty-two of chapter five indicates that the birth of Methuselah resulted in either the beginning or a deepening of Enoch’s 300 year long personal walk with the Lord. Enoch’s mysterious translation from this life foreshadows the mysterious event of the rapture of the Church that accompanies the second coming of Christ in righteous judgment that he prophesied about according to Jude verses 14-15.

Though taken from this life via a miraculous and mysterious work of God, the impact of Enoch’s life-long pattern of walking with God continued to reverberate through his posterity. His great grandson Noah walked with God in integrity (6:9) thus emulating the pattern of his great grandfather Enoch as well as being the progenitor of three sons who would benefit from his example by being saved in the ark along with him from the impending judgment of God upon sin via the flood.

Let us not miss the underlying lessons of chapters four and five of Genesis by having a misplaced focus upon the people involved. The appropriate focus to properly understand this and all other Scripture should be upon what is being revealed about the sovereignty and faithfulness of God. He will, despite the reality of sin and consequential death, accomplish His redemptive purpose in history. The refrain of “then he died” (Enoch being the exception) found in chapter five attests to the tragic consequences of sin in the human family, yet the persistent faithfulness of God trumps the death-dealing power of sin. This truth finds its ultimate expression in the Lord Jesus as the Sovereign God dealt a deathblow to the consequence of sin, namely death, via the overcoming power of Jesus’ resurrection.

Let us glean an increasing appreciation for and an increasing faith in the power and purpose of our God to accomplish His will in our lives as we, like Enoch, walk with God through our personal histories until that time when we will either like Enoch, meet Him in the air or leave this veil of tears we call life to forever be in His presence, NEVER to be separated again! (Genesis 4:25 ~ 5:32)