FBC Eternal Issues Bible Conference

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Guest Speaker: Aaron Hoak Pastor, Grace Baptist Church Warsaw, Indiana

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Alright, good evening. I apologize for locking you out tonight.
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I got distracted coming in and then just forgot to unlock the door. So somebody suggested we could add service outside.
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Hear any takers on that? Yeah, one. Okay. Alright, well welcome this evening.
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Let's take our supplement book, turn to number 56. Number 56, now that you've gotten yourself situated, we'll get you standing again.
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If you would do that. We'll stand and sing to him, our great God. Number 56.
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Well, about a month or so ago, I had the privilege of attending a pastor's fraternal or conference up in Grand Rapids, and I had to go to Grand Rapids to meet a pastor who's just about 25 miles from here.
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Steve Rios is pastoring at the Zion Church up in Freeport, and I come to find out he's got some connections here in Sterling, and kind of grew up here.
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Is that right? Okay, so good. Well, I heard his testimony and heard how the Lord has led him to the ministry there in Freeport, and I've asked him if he would come and lead us in prayer tonight.
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Steve, come on ahead. Please bow with me in prayer.
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Heavenly Father, it is so good to be in your house, and it is so good to be with your people, Lord. We thank you for your word that you have preserved for us,
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Father, and you communicate through us to a book, and you intend that book to be read,
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Father, and as we gather around to hear your word open up and preached, we're reminded of the words of Peter, we have no place else to turn.
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You are the Christ, and Lord, we just want to thank you for the love that you've shown to us, undeserved, unmerited, but by way of your sovereign grace,
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Father, you've reached down to us, you've enabled us to understand who you are, that you are a holy, sovereign
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God. Your word, in a sense, is a mirror, and it reflects to us how unholy and how unworthy we are,
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Father, but in your kindness and your goodness, you've helped us to see these things in your word and your spirit, you've drawn us into a redemptive relationship with you, and we're so thankful for that,
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Father. Lord, we pray that any portions of your word that are opened up here tonight, that they would command our full attention, that we be not merely hearers of your word, but that we would be doers,
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Father, and that we never leave the same when we hear you speak through your word, but that we continue to be changed, conformed to the image of Christ, to be salt and light, to be saints who are equipped for the work of ministry, to advance your church, to advance your kingdom, to continue to grow and conform to the image of your son,
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Christ, and to do good things for you, Father. We love you tonight. We thank you again for allowing us to be here.
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For it's in Christ's name that we pray, and all the people of God said, amen. Thank you, and you may be seated.
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I appreciate that, Steve. We'll turn to Genesis chapter five.
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We'll read this passage tonight. Pastor Hoke is going to speak to us from this genealogy.
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Genesis chapter five. I encourage you to follow as I read.
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This is the book of the genealogy of Adam. In the day that God created man, he made him in the likeness of God.
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He created them male and female and blessed them and called them mankind in the day they were created.
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And Adam lived 130 years and begot a son in his own likeness after his image and named him
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Seth. After he begot Seth, the days of Adam were 800 years and he had sons and daughters.
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So all the days that Adam lived were 930 years and he died.
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Seth lived 105 years and he begot Enosh. After he begot Enosh, Seth lived 807 years and had sons and daughters.
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So all the days of Seth were 912 years and he died. Enosh lived 90 years and begot
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Canaan. After he begot Canaan, Enosh lived 815 years and had sons and daughters.
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So all the days of Enosh were 905 years and he died. Canaan lived 70 years and begot
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Mehalelel. After he begot Mehalelel, Canaan lived 840 years and had sons and daughters.
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So all the days of Canaan were 910 years and he died. Mehalelel lived 65 years and begot
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Jared. After he begot Jared, Mehalelel lived 830 years and had sons and daughters.
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So all the days of Mehalelel were 895 years and he died.
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Jared lived 162 years and begot Enoch. After he begot
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Enoch, Jared lived 800 years and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Jared were 962 years and he died.
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Enoch lived 65 years and begot Methuselah. After he begot Methuselah, Enoch walked with God 300 years and had sons and daughters.
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So all the days of Enoch were 365 years and Enoch walked with God and he was not for God took him.
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Methuselah lived 187 years and begot Lamech. After he begot Lamech, Methuselah lived 782 years and had sons and daughters.
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So all the days of Methuselah were 969 years and he died.
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Lamech lived 182 years and had a son and he called his name
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Noah saying, this one will comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands because of the ground which the
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Lord has cursed. After he begot Noah, Lamech lived 595 years and had sons and daughters.
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So all the days of Lamech were 777 years and he died.
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Noah was 500 years old and Noah begot Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
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The Lord add his blessing to the reading of his word and the message to follow. Just a note of encouraging you to continue to pray for Priscilla.
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Tom could come tonight with Clyde but we want to pray for Priscilla. She had a tough day today and a lot more pain.
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She had a good day yesterday, a lot of family visiting and she was pretty cheerful and glad to see all the family but today was in much more pain and they had to increase the pain medication and just pray for her in these waning days of life.
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Pray for Tom and Jean and their family in these difficult, difficult days.
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But that does give some poignancy to the next song we want to sing in our supplement, number 68.
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Number 68 we'll sing before Pastor Hoke comes to speak to us from Genesis 5.
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There is a hope. It burns within our hearts. There is a hope that stands the test of time.
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It lifts my eyes beyond the beckoning grave.
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Our Father and our God, we thank you for the hope that we have in Christ Jesus. The hope for that eternal home, that hope that gets us through our days, the hope that helps us endure the hardest heartache and deepest suffering.
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Thank you for that hope. Bless now your word to our hearts we pray in Jesus' name.
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Hoke, if you've got a copy of your
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Bible with you, please turn with me to the passage that Pastor Weiss read a few moments ago in Genesis chapter 5.
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Again, thankful for the opportunity to be with you and to get to open God's word together with you tonight.
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This evening we are jumping from Genesis 3 where we were last night considering the serpent and the serpent crusher, the seed of the woman, tonight to look at a genealogy together in chapter 5.
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Believe it or not, I'm excited about it. You might not share my enthusiasm.
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I understand that. Yesterday we had a cursed snake. Today we have a genealogy and you are perhaps beginning to question the wisdom of your pastor who invited this guy to preach about a genealogy.
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Be honest. You don't have to answer this out loud or raise your hand or anything like that. What do you do when you come to a genealogy in your
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Bible? You're reading along in your Bible, there's a genealogy. What do you do? Skip it?
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You know you shouldn't do that because you know all of Scripture is inspired by God and it's profitable.
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So maybe skim it really fast because what are all these names anyway? Who are they?
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I don't know who they are. I can't even pronounce most of them. Well done, Pastor Brian, by the way, for reading that.
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I gave him a challenge when I asked him to read that. Yeah, maybe skim over it and just kind of hope for the best and maybe you'll recognize a name in there, but probably not.
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We're just going to get on to whatever's in the next chapter. Anybody ever do that? Again, don't raise your hand.
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You can answer that in your heart. Have you ever taken a little time to dig through a genealogy?
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Let's see if I recognize any of the names. Oh, I do recognize that name. Is that the same guy that's mentioned over here in that passage?
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Maybe try to work some of that out and see whose dad and mother.
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Matthew 1 has a fascinating genealogy. There's five women in the genealogy in Matthew 1.
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I got a sermon about that genealogy too and I better not start preaching it. We don't have time for sermons on two genealogies tonight, but there really are some interesting things in some genealogies and I hope that you'll see that tonight, that they can actually be really interesting and profitable.
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And so if you're reading your Bible and you come to a genealogy, I want to encourage you today to not just skip it or skim over it really fast because I believe that God wants us to learn from and benefit from records of descendants in the
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Bible. That's what a genealogy is. It's a record of descendants. Who came after who came after who.
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Sometimes they go like the one here in Genesis does. It starts with the oldest and works down to the most recent.
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Some of the genealogies in the New Testament, Genealogy of Jesus and Luke 3 works the other direction.
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It starts with Jesus, the most recent and works all the way back. So just pay attention to stuff like that.
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There's some neat things that you can observe and learn as you work your way through. And I trust you'll see tonight there are some lessons, some things that we can draw from a genealogy as well.
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So in this conference on eternal issues, we're doing some snapshots from Genesis to see some eternal truths like the fact that God is and that he created and that he promised to send his son to crush the head of the serpent and that he did do that.
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Those are eternal realities that matter for our eternity, for where we will spend eternity.
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And we want to consider some more of those eternal issues and truths tonight. So a few snapshots from Genesis.
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We've looked at Genesis 1 -1, Genesis 3 -14 -15, and now we're coming to Genesis 5 tonight.
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Genesis is really a book of generations. It's a book of genealogies. I think maybe
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I mentioned that yesterday. And that interest in generations goes right back to what we saw last night, the promise of one who would be descended from the woman who would come and crush the serpent's head.
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And so right away there's this interest in descent. It's the seed of, the offspring of, the woman that we're watching for.
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And Genesis is interested in tracing out those generations, especially that family line, that genealogy which will lead to that seed of the woman, the one that we know is the
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Christ, the Son of God. We'll find some of that here in Genesis 5, some of that line that leads to the
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Christ here. So tonight we're just going to do some observations. I'm going to walk you through the genealogy a little bit, make some notes about it, some things that I think are interesting that come to us from this genealogy, and then draw some lessons from it.
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Alright, so we're just going to observe some things, and then we're going to try to learn some things from what we've observed.
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So some observations. What is this genealogy about? Well, you look at verse 1. This is the book of the generations of Adam.
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I think the New King James reads the genealogy of Adam, as Pastor read it there.
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I'm using the ESV here, so it says generations, and I'll just make a note of this as well. This uses the language of fathered instead of the language of begot.
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So as I read along, you'll hear some of those differences if you're working with a different translation. But this is the book of the generations of the genealogy of Adam, and this is just for free tonight.
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You don't need to know this to understand Genesis 5, but as you're reading through Genesis and you want to watch for something, that expression, this is the genealogy of, or these are the generations of, that occurs about ten times in Genesis.
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It's almost like a headache. All these different times. These are the generations of, and here it's a little different.
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This is the book of the generations, and then it gives a name. Actually, in Genesis 2, it gives something different a name.
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It's not a person. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth. Here it's the generations of Adam, and then usually follows something that comes after that person, and here it's this genealogy of Adam.
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So watch for that expression. These are the generations of, or this is the genealogy of, and you'll find that about ten times in the book of Genesis.
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Sort of a divider marker that you can watch for as you read. Here it's the generations of Adam.
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So who is it that comes after Adam? Well, this genealogy covers the time span from creation to the flood.
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We saw creation back in Genesis 1 on Sunday morning, and now we are going to see that the time span covered here goes from that point, from creation, all the way down to the flood.
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And if you want to hear more about the flood, come back tomorrow night, Lord willing, and we will talk about, a little bit about Noah and the flood and the ark.
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But this covers the period between creation and that flood.
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It starts with a quick recap of creation in verses 1 and 2. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God.
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Male and female, he created them, and he blessed them and named them man when they were created.
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And so, a reminder that creatures are made in the likeness of God, the creator.
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Don't confuse the creator and the creature. We talked about that yesterday. That's really important to not get those mixed up.
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And God reminds us of that here through a servant, Moses, who is recording this for us, that God made man in his image, but he didn't make him to be
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God. He made him to be a creature. And so there's a distinction there. Moses is just reminding us of that.
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That's where it begins. It And then the flood account follows. And did you notice, as we read, that man, people before the flood lived a really long time.
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What in the world? People lived, most of them, over 900 years. When you read something like that, don't just read over that and keep going, 900 years, people were old before the flood.
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Think about it for a second. If you were Methuselah, the oldest man that ever lived, 969 years old.
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If you go back 969 years from today, do you know where you land? Anybody good at math in your head?
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1054. Do you know what happened in 1054? Great schism of the church between east and west.
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So, let's say you're born in 1054. You're born in the day that there's this great schism in the church.
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You know what you're going to experience in your 969 -year life?
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You probably know a little history. Great schism. And then you're going to live through the
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Middle or the Dark Ages into the time of the Renaissance, and you're going to get to experience the Reformation that we only read about in our history books.
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And then the age after the Reformation, with Puritans, you're going to read about the settling of the
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New World, the American Revolution, you're not going to read about it, you're going to live through it, the American Revolution, the
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Civil War, World War II, World War III, all the way down through today. And those are just a few of the kind of big things that happen.
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I've left out huge swaths of history. You're going to live through all of that if you're 969 years old today.
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So think about stuff like that as you read. Don't just let 900 -year lifespans roll off without thinking about what that might look like.
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That really happened, and this is not just like fantasy or fiction or somebody didn't do their math very well.
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This happened. And I'm not going to get into explanations for why people lived longer back then than they do today.
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Gradually that lifespan after the Flood would start to shorten and shorten and shorten down to where Moses can say in Psalm 90, our years are 80 or maybe 90, kind of to the lifespans that we see typically today.
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You want to have a conversation about why that was or whatever, we can do that afterwards. But 900 -year lifespans, pretty remarkable.
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Assuming there's no gaps in this genealogy, occasionally in Bible genealogies, and don't be troubled by this, it will go from one generation and skip a generation or two and name a further descendant as a son.
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That's common language, common usage in the Bible. I don't think this one skips any generations just because of how precisely the years are counted out for us here.
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So assuming that there's no gaps in the genealogy, Adam would still have been alive when most of the people in this genealogy were born.
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Again, do some of the math. Have a little fun with this as you're reading through a genealogy. Read through it, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
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Hang on, Adam was still living when Lamech was born, one generation before Noah.
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Methuselah would have died in the year of the flood. Whether before the flood or in the flood, we don't know.
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Some interesting things you can learn if you take a little time in some of these genealogies.
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And then as this genealogy goes from creation to flood, it follows a very consistent pattern. And there's things that you can learn from the pattern, and there's things that you can learn from the variations in the pattern.
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Notice the pattern, first of all. We'll use Seth as an example in verses six through eight. I didn't want to use mahelele because it's too many syllables to say.
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Seth is easier. So all right, so we're going to go with Seth, and he's in verses six through eight.
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The pattern is this. So and so, in this instance it's Seth, lived for X number of years, 105 for Seth, and fathered, begot a son,
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Enosh. All right, that's the first part of the pattern. This person lived this many years,
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X number of years, and he fathered a son. Then you'll find this. So and so, Seth, lived after he fathered a son, in this case
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Enosh, Y number of years, here it's 807 years, and fathered sons and daughters.
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They're being fruitful and multiplying and filling the earth, fulfilling God's creation mandate that he gave. And all the days of so and so,
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Seth, were X plus Y years. So 105 plus 107, and you get 912 years and he died.
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Don't forget that. All right, so that's the pattern. And there's ten entries in the genealogy.
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Six of them follow that pattern more or less exactly. Others have some variation to them.
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So let's think about some of these variations. Why do that? Why draw our attention to some of the variations?
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Well, the variations are kind of like signs flashing and drawing our attention. This one is not like the other ones.
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And when scripture does that, sit up and take notice. Now the pattern is important.
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We see the steady march of history in the pattern. We see God fulfilling his promise to bring the deliverer from the seed of the woman in the pattern.
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This one was born, and then this one was born, and then this one was born. We see the inevitability of death in the pattern, and he died, and he died.
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We see the line down to the Christ, the serpent crusher, the seed of the woman will be unbroken.
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There's a comfort in the rhythm and the pattern. God kept giving people the capacity to be fruitful and multiply, and they kept doing that very thing for his purpose to bring his son.
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But the variations give us a little jolt. It's like a little, hey, wake up. And maybe you've been like starting to drift off to sleep, and something snaps you out of it.
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The variations in the pattern should do that. So for me, that's a little bit like driving through northern Indiana.
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I live in northern Indiana, and northern Indiana is about as flat as it gets.
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I mean, this is how flat northern Indiana is. I live in Warsaw now.
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Before that, I lived in Bremen, Indiana, and it's so flat that they had to build a sledding hill in our town so that kids could go sledding, literally.
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They built a sledding hill in one of the parks so kids could go sledding. That's how flat it is, and that makes for great farmland, and so you drive through Indiana and flat, and I mean, you can drive in a straight line for a long way in Indiana, and what you're going to see is corn field, soybean field.
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So you're going to go to corn, soybeans, corn, soybeans. That's the pattern.
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Corn, soybeans, corn, soybeans. Are you sleepy yet? Starting to fall asleep a little bit?
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And then boom, there's a small town, and all of a sudden, it's not corn and soybeans, and that small town is your variation.
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There's something different. There's probably a gas station, probably a Dollar General. There's an ice cream store maybe, a bank, some homes, maybe a flashing light, maybe a traffic light.
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It's a big town, like Bremen was a two traffic light town. That was exciting. And then all of a sudden, you're back in the rhythm.
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Corn, soybeans, corn, soybeans. That's what this genealogy is like.
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Pattern, pattern, pattern, and then every now and then, boom, there's a little town.
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There's something different. And when you see something different, you should sit up and pay attention.
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When the Old Testament authors give you something like that, take notice. So let's look at some of these variations. The first one is with Adam, and that's before the pattern is established, so you might not notice it on the first read, but you're not one of those people that skims a genealogy.
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You've read it carefully, and so by the time you get to the end, you go, that first entry, Adam, that one was different than the other one.
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So you go back and take a look, and this is what you find. Adam fathered a son, begot a son in his own likeness after his image.
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None of the other ones say that. This one does. Adam, remember, was created in the image and likeness of God, and that image was not lost as Adam passed it on to his son, but that image has been marred.
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It's been messed up, and so the likeness and image inherited by Seth. Do you see that?
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Make sure you see it there. In verse 3, when Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness after his image.
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Just like he's made in the image of God, he fathers a son in his image, but that image and likeness inherited by Seth are not the same as when
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Adam was created by God. It's now a fallen and corrupted humanity, born in sin.
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The image of God is still there, but it's been defaced, and so Seth bears the image of God and the image of fallen
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Adam, and that continues through every generation down through today.
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You are made in the image of God. No other part of creation can say that, only man.
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Mankind, man and woman. He made them male and female. You're made in the image of God, and you're born in the image of Adam, too, fallen and dead in your sin.
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Now, Moses doesn't spell that out for each generation, but this first entry in the genealogy shows the normal process of being fruitful and multiplying, passes on the likeness and image of the parent to the offspring.
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Thousands of years later, here we are, still born in the image of God and in the sin of Adam.
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It is inescapable. That's true for everyone that's born. You're made in the image of God, and you're born in the image and likeness of your father
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Adam. And so you're born in sin. That's one of the variations.
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Another one comes with Enoch in verses 21 -24. It starts out like the other ones.
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When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. And then verse 22,
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Enoch walked with God. Even if you're skimming a genealogy, this one should make you sit up. None of the other people in this genealogy are we told walked with God.
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We are told that about Enoch. And then it's repeated in verse 24. But also, did you notice that the concluding refrain with each one, and he died, and he died, and he died, that steady drumbeat, the rhythm of inescapability of death is interrupted by this for Enoch, and he was not, for God took him.
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What? That should catch your attention. And he died, and he died, and he was not, for God took him.
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That's different. Paying attention? Enoch didn't die.
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Hebrews 11 -5, by faith, Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found because God had taken him.
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Now before he was taken, he was commended as having pleased God. You'll find a similar account of Elijah the prophet in 2
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Kings 2. Don't read it right now, but if you want to read something similar, the only other guy that never died was
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Elijah. So Enoch walked with God and was taken by God. It seems
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Enoch was a godly man who God, in mercy, removed from the wicked earth to be with him in glory before he reached the end of what would have been a much longer life in a deeply wicked world.
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And he was not, for God took him. There's another variation when you get to Lamech down in verses 28 -31.
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Lamech called the name of his son Noah. Now that's a little bit different.
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The other ones don't say he called the name of his son, or he named him. We are told
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Lamech called the name of his son Noah. We're told that about Adam. He called the name of his son
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Seth, and God did that. He named them, he called the name, called his name man in verse 2.
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The other ones don't say that, it just gives the name, it doesn't say who named them. Three instances, God, Adam, and Lamech it tells who named them.
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There's another variation, something else you can watch for as you read through it. But he names his son
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Noah, and he says something about his son Noah. He talks about his son. None of these other guys, their words about their sons aren't recorded, but Lamech's are.
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He called his name Noah, verse 29, saying, Out of the ground that the Lord is cursed, this one shall bring relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.
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He acknowledges the curse God pronounced on the ground. Maybe, remember Lamech, Adam is still around when
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Lamech is born it looks like, and so maybe Adam had reminded subsequent generations of the curse.
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Look back with me for a moment, Genesis chapter 3. We saw last night
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God cursed the serpent. He had a word of judgment for the woman and a word of judgment for the man, and here it is for the man in Genesis 3 .17.
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And to Adam he said, Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded, you shall not eat of it.
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Cursed is the ground because of you. That's what Lamech's talking about. Cursed is the ground because of you, and pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life.
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Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field by the sweat of your face.
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You shall eat bread till you return to the ground. Remember this, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for you were dust, and to dust you shall return.
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Lamech. Lamech says, I'm going to call my son Noah, and that name
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Noah sounds like the Hebrew word for rest, and he's going to give us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.
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Lamech sounds weary to me. He's weary of the cursed ground. He's weary of the labor, the painful toil, and he's looking for rest, and he's hopeful that his son
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Noah will be the one that provides it. And did you notice when we read the cursed ground and the judgment pronounced on Adam there in Genesis 3 just a moment ago, that death is going to be part of this.
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You were taken from the ground, and you're going to return to the ground, and what do we see in Genesis 5? They live a really long time, but they still die, and they return to the dust.
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That rhythm of death is a reminder of the truth of the judgment God pronounced. The pain of working the ground is a reminder of its truth.
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Lamech hopes that Noah will give them rest. And so the words of Lamech accompanying his son
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Noah's birth set this entry apart. One other variation is the last entry,
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Noah, in verse 32. After Noah was 500 years old, Noah fathered
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Shem, Ham, and Japheth. This one is different because it's so short, and there's three sons that are named instead of just one.
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There's another variation. Now, this one does get finished later. Moses just inserts the flood narrative.
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If you want to see the end of this entry, you can look over just for a second at Genesis 9. This is after the flood, after some other things after the flood, and we read this
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Genesis 9, 28 and 29. After the flood, Noah lived 350 years.
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All the days of Noah were 950 years, and he died. So the genealogy gets wrapped up after the flood narrative.
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So this last entry is really different. It's got this huge flood narrative stuck in the middle of it.
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So there are some observations about the genealogy. And let me just encourage you, next time you come across a genealogy, spend a little time with it.
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Hang out with it. Don't be afraid of the names. You can look up some Bible software online that will read the text for you and maybe pronounce some of those names for you and get an idea of what they sound like.
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And do it. Spend a little time with it. Now, every genealogy does not have this much information. And if you try to do what we've just done with some of the other genealogy, you'll be like, you can't do that.
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It's just names. Name, name, name, name, name, name. You can. Grab those names and see where else they occur in Scripture.
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You won't be able to do everything that we've just done with every genealogy, but some have more information than you might think.
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And give it a go next time you come across a genealogy. See if you don't observe some of those things. Now, this is not all me and my smart brain looking at this stuff.
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I've read all sorts of commentaries and they point out all sorts of things. And I'm sharing some of what I've learned with you tonight.
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But what can we learn from it? What are some lessons we can draw from it? And I want to see three lessons from the genealogy.
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The first one is walking with God. This is a lesson from one of the variations, from one of the differences in the genealogy.
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The one about Enoch. We don't know exactly what walking with God looked like for Enoch.
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Men called on the name of the Lord back in that day. They worshipped in some way. We expect Enoch did those things.
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There's a clue in the New Testament when Hebrews 11 verse 5, we read it earlier, speaks of Enoch as having pleased
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God. He was well -pleasing to God. And if we trace walking with God and being well -pleasing to God, that's what
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Enoch was. He walked with God. He was well -pleasing to God. You trace those ideas through the Old Testament and the
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New Testament, we begin to get an idea of what the life of Enoch might have been like. What it might have looked like and how we ought to walk before God.
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Again, you're reading along in the genealogy thing, Enoch walked with God. I wonder what would that look like? And then you can chase down what walking with God looked like in your body.
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And here's some of the things that you'll find. In the Old Testament, you'll find that those who walk with God are blameless.
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Like Noah, we find in the next chapter. We find God covenants with those who walk with Him.
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God walks with them. God delivers those who walk with Him.
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And I've got a bunch of references here. I've got a pile of references on walking with God and being well -pleasing to God from the Old and the
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New Testament. If you'd like to do any more work on any of that, we just don't have time tonight. So in the
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Old Testament, those who walk with God are blameless. God covenants them. God walks with them. He delivers them.
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In the New Testament, walking is a metaphor for the Christian life. Colossians 1 in verse 10. So as to walk in a manner worthy of the
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Lord, fully pleasing to Him. Both of them are together there. Walking and fully pleasing to God.
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That's what walking with God is. It's pleasing to Him. Bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.
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We're walking with God. We're pleasing to Him. We are bearing fruit. We are increasing in the knowledge of God.
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In Hebrews 11 .5 also tells us that Enoch was commended as having pleased God by faith.
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By faith. Whatever God revealed to Himself of Enoch, Enoch believed.
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He trusted Him. Let me ask you tonight, are you walking by faith pleasing
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God? You can't do that in your own strength. It has to be by faith. Which is looking away from yourself to the
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One who is enabled to, who can enable you to walk with Him. It has to be by faith.
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Because right after the verse about Enoch in Hebrews 11 .5, we read this. And without faith it is impossible to please
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Him. Enoch was well pleasing to Him by faith. Without faith it's impossible to please Him. Or we could say to walk with Him.
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For whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek
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Him. You can't walk with God without faith. You must believe.
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The question is for us, are we living that kind of life? Some of you here tonight profess faith.
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You profess to be a believer in God. One who trusts in the Lord. You're trusting in Christ.
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Does your walk show, does it demonstrate that you are a believer?
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Are you walking with Him? Are you listening to God? Are you talking to Him?
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Are you telling others about Him? Do you believe that He exists and rewards those who seek
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Him? Are you seeking Him? Are you following Him? Walking according to the truth of His Word?
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Are you reveling in the reality of His love and His sovereign care for you?
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Is your every thought and word indeed oriented toward and around and for Him?
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Is He the central theme and goal and hope of your life? That is what it is to walk with God.
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But does your walk or my walk look like that? Somebody was going to say a few words about us.
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Tell us about so -and -so. Would there be anything in this, or one of your classmates, or one of your neighbors, and they were going to talk about you, would there be anything in what they say about your walk with God?
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Would that be a defining characteristic that they identify you by? Or me?
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I hope so. It should be the case for all of us people all of the time. Listen, and you we can't compartmentalize this.
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Like, okay, I took a few minutes this morning, I read my Bible, and I prayed for a second, and then
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I went to church on Sunday, so I've done the walk with God things. All right, so I've done those, and I've got to do everything else.
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I've walked with God. That's not a walk with God. We must walk with God at home, and at work, and at school, and at play, and everywhere in between.
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In fact, all of those places and things are part of our walk with God. Walking with God is not something we add to the different parts of our life.
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It is our life. Everything that you do is part of your walk with God.
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And friends, it ought not be drudgery and difficulty. Is it joy? It is joy.
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It should be. Now, it's hard. Make no mistake, it is hard to do. But it's a deeply wonderful, peace -giving, joy -filling, contentment -producing life.
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God rewards those who seek him. It's a blessing to be able to walk with him. It's what you ought to be doing every moment of every day, not just one of the parts of your day.
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If you're not living a life of walking with God, why not? I imagine that some of you here are not walking with God.
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If that's you, it should be very troubling to you. If you are walking with God, praise him for that reality.
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It's him. It's not you. That's why it has to be by faith. So praise him for that, and that you would have grace to walk with him all the way home to glory.
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Why should it be troubling to you if you're not walking with God? What's the second lesson I want us to think about?
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That first lesson is about walking with God. It comes from one of the variations in the pattern. The second lesson comes from the pattern.
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Remember the pattern, so -and -so lived this many years, begot so -and -so, had sons and daughters, lived this many more years, and he died, and he died, and he died.
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That's the inevitability of our mortality. That's what you see in the pattern of this genealogy.
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You are going to die. It is the end of every man.
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I'm going to give you one little exception up front here. If Jesus comes back first, you're not going to die, but you're still going to stand before him as judge.
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And we don't know when Jesus is coming back, so we're going to assume that you're not going to escape death. No exceptions.
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Everybody dies, right? So I've given you a little qualifier up front. I'm just going to go with you're going to die, because that's what the
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Bible teaches us. Uncomfortable as that may be to think about it. And you may not like to think about it, but this passage calls you to think about it.
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And he died, and he died, and he died. Hebrews 9 .27.
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And just as it is appointed for a man to die once, and after that comes judgment.
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The day of your death. If you don't want to hear this, I'm going to ask you to do me a favor and just say, the day of your death is going to die.
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That's what Genesis 5 teaches us. Psalm 139 .16. Your eyes saw my unformed substance.
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In your book were written every one of them the days that were formed for me.
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When as yet there was none of them. Every one of your days written in God's book. And it's a finite number of days.
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The time of your death is known to God, but not to you. Except you do know that it's inevitably coming.
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Man is mortal, and the rhythm of death in this passage goes to show that God's warning about death in Genesis 2.
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You eat from the tree. You're going to die. Adam died. Everybody after that. From ground you were taken to the dust.
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The ground you're going to return. And he died, and he died, and he died. Back to the dust they go.
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God's warning about death. Entering the world with sin was not an idle threat. Death did end of the world.
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His promised judgment to Adam came true. Adam died. Chapter 5 and verse 5.
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Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died.
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God promised it would be so for him, and it was. He's promised it will be so for you, and it will.
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It will be. Romans 5 .12. Therefore just as sin came into the world through one man,
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Adam, and death through sin, so death spread to all men, because all sinned.
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And you can worry about it all you want, and it won't add one second to your appointed lifespan. Matthew 6 .27.
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And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to a span of life? The implied answer is none.
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You're going to die, and so am I. But you say, well hold on. Enoch didn't die.
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Neither did Elijah. But those exceptions are no comfort to the unbeliever who fears death.
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These were two men who walked with God. Enoch and Elijah. Not against God.
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And if you, walking against God, are trying to find comfort somehow in the fact that there have been a couple of guys out of the billions that have lived on the earth that have not died, you're looking for comfort in the wrong place.
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I mean, just do the math. You take two guys out of all the billions that have lived on the earth.
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If you take your calculator and you plug in two and you divide it by one billion, your calculator will go haywire.
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It doesn't have enough zeros after the decimal place, and so it will say two times ten to the negative ninth.
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And that's just with one billion people. So that's, those two, we would say that's statistically insignificant.
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That's one billion. Right now on the planet, there are about seven billion people living. So that that percentage of people that have not died just got smaller.
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And then all the billions that have been before. I have no idea how many that is.
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Two guys who walked with God are no comfort to you if you're hoping to somehow avoid death or not think about it.
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They provide no comfort in your unbelieving futile hope against death. Don't pretend like it's not coming.
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Don't pretend that you can find life somehow on your own terms. Don't drown out those thoughts of mortality.
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So many people do this. I know someone that does this. They fill every waking moment with input.
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They got music going in their ears. They've got something going on the TV. Something that they do not want one moment of silence to think about the reality that their life is going to come to an end.
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They just can't think about it. They can't deal with it because this is all they know, and that's going to come to an end.
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That is inevitable. The last thing, and he died.
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You cannot think about it all you want. It doesn't make it any less inevitable, and I'm begging you tonight to think about it.
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Don't drown it out. Get the headphones out. Put the phone away. Turn the
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TV off for a minute. Think about the reality that your life is going to come to an end.
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Period. Instead of drowning it out, pray with the psalmist.
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Psalm 39, 4 and 5. Oh Lord, make me know my end, and what is the measure of my days.
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Let me know how fleeting I am. Behold, you have made my days a few hand breaths, and my life is as nothing before you.
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Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath. Moses wrote this for us here in Genesis 5.
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You know what else he said in Psalm 90? Moses wrote Psalm 90. So teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom.
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You know what Moses is doing in this genealogy? He's numbering all these guys days, and they all came to an end.
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Except for Enoch. Live your life in the light of death.
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Your own death. It is certainly coming. How do you do that? Well, Enoch, you walk with God by faith, trusting him alone.
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You will die. It's inescapable. Genesis 5 testifies to it. The health care industry that passes you from the hospital, to the nursing home, to the funeral home, says that it's coming.
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The full cemeteries in every town, and city, and village say that it is true.
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Are you ready? There's only one way you can be ready.
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And that brings us to the third lesson I want us to see from the genealogy, and that is the rest that is our hope.
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Remember what Lamech said about Noah, his son? Verse 29. Called his name
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Noah, saying, out of the ground that the Lord cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work, and from the painful toil of our hands.
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It looks like maybe Noah was hopeful that this was the seed of the woman. The one who was promised.
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I think Eve was hopeful that Seth would be that son. Just look at the end of chapter 4, verse 25.
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And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son, and called his name Seth. For she said, God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel.
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For Cain killed them. So she's thinking of God's appointment. Maybe he's the seed of the woman.
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Maybe my son Seth is. He wasn't it. It feels similar for Lamech here.
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Noah's going to give us rest. He's going to give us relief from the curse. Maybe he's hopeful.
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This is the seed of the woman. The name Noah sounds like rest, and he was a righteous man.
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He was a preacher of righteousness. He was blameless before God. He walked with God. He was preserved by God's salvation in the ark.
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Again, come tomorrow, we'll get to talk more about Noah, and how God preserved him, and in a sense gave him rest.
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He was the prominent figure in a time when there was great wickedness on the earth. When God brought judgment on that wickedness.
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But it wasn't lasting relief that he provided in the ark, and the rest that Noah brought. It was one who would come from Noah's descendants, who had ultimately accomplished that rest.
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Didn't come fully and finally with Noah. It came from one of his descendants. And this is the book of the generations of Adam.
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From him would eventually come Noah at the end of this genealogy. And then if you jump over to Luke 3, you don't have to turn there, but eventually from Noah would come
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Jesus. The Savior. The seed of the woman. The serpent crusher that we talked about last night.
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He's descended from Noah. And you know what he brings? What Jesus brings?
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The seed of the woman. The serpent crusher. You know what he gives? He brings rest.
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He offers it freely. Freely to all who will come. He gives salvation and rest.
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He earns forgiveness of sins. He saves from sin's power and penalty. Instead of eternal death.
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And if you are not walking with God, and you die, you are going to a future of an eternal death.
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Eternal suffering. That's the penalty of a holy God. For those who rebel against him.
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For those who sin against him. But Jesus took that penalty in our place.
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He saves his people from that penalty. And the power of sin. Instead of eternal death, he brings eternal life.
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We still physically die, but we will live with him forever. Like Enoch.
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And so it's Jesus alone who can ultimately say, Matthew 11, 28 to 30, come.
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Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
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Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
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For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Noah gives us a beautiful anticipation of rest and deliverance in the ark.
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Jesus doesn't give us just a picture. He gives us the reality. The real thing. Rest and deliverance.
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He is our hope of rest and life. Look to him, and if he saves you from your sin, then you will want to walk with him like Enoch.
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Don't get that order confused. If I walk with him, then he'll give me rest. No. If he gives you rest, then you'll walk with him.
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And you won't find that rest anywhere other than in Christ, which is why if you're going to walk with God, it must be by faith.
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Looking to him and not to yourself. Don't trust your walk for your rest.
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Trust the one that you walk with. It's only by faith in Christ that you can be saved and pleasing to him as you walk with him through this world.
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Praise God that he has made that way for us. Death is coming.
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The only way to be ready is resting in Christ. Are you? You're a rebel sinner against God.
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You deserve his eternal wrath. Jesus took that at the cross for all who believe in him.
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You ask him to save you from your sin and its penalty, and he will. He will give you rest. True rest.
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May you find it in him. Let's pray together. Father, we pray that you would help us to rest in our
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Savior Christ, to walk with you, and to be ready to die, and to spend eternity with you.
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Make that so for each one here, we pray in Jesus' name. Would you take your supplement book again and turn to number 45.
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Him in Christ alone. There it is. There's where the rest is found. He's my light, my strength, my song, my solid ground, and then that last stanza, no guilt in life, no fear in death, in Christ alone.
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Let's stand together and sing that first and last stanzas. I trust you're resting in him tonight, and you have found rest from him.
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If not, turn to him, turn to him, even tonight. In Christ alone, he is my life, firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
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What heights of love, what depths of peace, when fears are stilled, when strivings cease,
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I must,
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I stand, in the last, no guilt in death, in Christ alone, he is my life, firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
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What heights of love, what depths of peace, when fears are stilled, when strivings cease, I must, I stand, in the last, no guilt in death, in Christ alone, he is my life, firm through the fiercest drought and storm. Christ in me, from life's first cry to final breath,
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Jesus commands my destiny, no power or scheme of man can stand, till he returns or calls me home, here in the
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Christ I'll stand. And I trust you shall, that we shall.
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Come back tomorrow night, forward to hearing about the flood and all that's involved in that, so let's pray.
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Our Father and our God, we thank you for this sober chapter, and it can be rattling, it can be fearful, cause fear and anxiety, but then again, we come to the end of it, and we find hope, we find rest, we find comfort for the soul, in the face of the reality of death, there is the hope of life in Christ, in whom alone we stand.
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Dismiss us now with your blessing, oh Lord, we pray, bring us together again tomorrow night, in your will, in your providence, we pray it in Jesus' name, amen.