It
is a joy to turn from the “seventh from Adam” in the line of Cain to “the
seventh from Adam” in Seth’s line. (Jude 14).
By-they-way, have you ever stopped to think why the Holy Spirit,
in a Book as brief as Jude, should take the trouble to point out to us the
number of generations from Adam to Enoch?
Enoch’s history is one that should bring comfort to any Christian parent
today. We read, “Enoch lived sixty and
five years, and begat Methuselah; and Enoch walked with God after he begat
Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.” (Genesis 5:21-22.)
Note
that there is no record that Enoch walked with God for the sixty-five years
before the baby Methuselah arrived on the scene. Apparently it was that little infant that drove Enoch to walk
with God.
You
may have noticed how selfish most young Christians are, no matter whether
married or unmarried. Self, good self,
or bad self, generally occupies a large place in their thoughts. “What would I like?” “I don’t want to do that!” How often we heard such expressions! How often we have used them ourselves! But when the children begin to come, we
start on a new course of lessons. The
baby is fretful, and will not sleep.
Mother has had the little one all day, and now it is the father’s
turn. Many an hour have I walked the
floor with one of you in my arms, when I would fain have been asleep in my warm
and cozy bed. Happy are the parents who can walk with God as they walk the
floor with a crying, restless infant.
They will find those dreaded night watches turned into heavenly
communing, with their best and dearest Friend.
The silent house, when everybody is asleep, will be found to be just the
place where your Lord and you can walk together undisturbed.
And
as the baby, (as each of you have done in turn), comes down to the brink of
that cold, dark river, and that little life, that had grown dearer to you than
your own, seems about to slip away, you learn one of the deepest lessons that
this life can teach, to say in very truth, “Thy will be done!”
But
a book might be written of the lessons we learn from our little darlings, with
those tender little hands, whose very touch grows to mean so much to our
hearts, or those stubborn wills that set themselves in defiance against our authority.
We
cannot speak more of such lessons, only a parent knows and understands them,
and I suppose only a parent can understand truly the story of
Enoch. It seems to have been written
specially for us parents, and may we each one find, as Enoch found, that our
little darlings lead us, or drive us, to walk with God, and in this wondrous
companionship may we find strength and comfort for the parents’ path.
That
little babe who seems to have been the means of causing his father to walk with
God must have watched that loved parent day by day in his walk. He must have heard him utter those solemn
prophecies of judgment to come, recorded for us thousands of years later by
Jude; and his own name Methuselah means, “When he is dead it shall be
sent”. All this must have given him
very different hopes and ambitions to those of his cousins, the children of
Lamech.
“What’s
in a name?” has become a proverb in our day; but how much there was wrapped up
in the name of Enoch’s son, to those who had eyes to see and ears to hear. For three hundred years he watched his
father’s consistent walk, until “he was not, for God took him:” “took him” without seeing death, as we learn
in Hebrews 11. But Methuselah lived on down here, and he knew that as long as
he lived the judgment could not fall.
His own son Lamech was born and lived 777 years (very different to the
man in the Book of the Bible whose number is 666) and he died, but Methuselah
his father lived on for another five years.
He watched his grandson Noah (meaning “Comfort”) through 600 years of
life, he heard the solemn announcement of the judgment, and saw the ark being
prepared to the saving of the lives of the whole household of his grandson,
before at last he, the oldest man who ever lived, passed from this scene and
prepared the way for the judgment to come.
The 969 years of Methuselah’s life are a mighty voice crying aloud to
those who have ears to hear, telling us of God’s patience and longsuffering;
that judgment is His strange work, but proclaiming with equal clearness and
precision the certainty of judgment to come.
Contrast
for a moment the homes of these two patriarchs; each seventh from Adam, the one
breathed the air of earth, the other the atmosphere of Heaven. The one was guilty of murder; the other
never tasted death.
We
parents may well covet for ourselves a life such as that of Enoch as an example
to set before our children. There can
be nothing that will more powerfully separate them from this world lying under
its impending doom, than such a life as this.
Though my pen has run far beyond what I had intended to say of Enoch, I should like to include the following lines that link together these three Patriarchs, Enoch, Methuselah and Noah.