FBC Daily Devotional – January 5, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good Tuesday to you. I hope you had a good first day of the first full week of the new year yesterday, and charging forward into the week so far today.

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We've been doing a reading plan. It's a two -year, through the Bible, a two -year reading plan.

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Did you get a hold of that? Did you get a copy of that reading plan yet? If you didn't, just a couple of reminders about how you can get it.

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You can go on the Faith Baptist Church website homepage, hover over the

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Articles and Devotions tab, and that'll show you the Bible reading plan tab.

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Click on that, and you can print it off. You could also, if you're watching this on the

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Faith Baptist homepage, the Daily Devotional, to the right of the box that shows the video is the

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Bible reading plan, and you can download it from there. Or you could just email me, Facebook message me, and I'll send you one.

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But today's reading took us to Genesis chapter 5, 6, and into chapter 7, and I wanted to focus on two huge ideas that are emphasized in Genesis 5.

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See if you caught them as you were reading that. Genesis 5 is primarily just a genealogy.

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It seems to be just a genealogy, but it's not just a genealogy. They have a list of names of individuals, men, fathers, from Adam down through Noah.

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The chapter begins with Adam and then his sons, his descendants, and it takes you down through Noah, and the last verse in chapter 5 tells you that Noah had these three sons,

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Shem, Ham, and Japheth. But one of the things, of course, that strikes us as you read through that is simply the age of these individuals.

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Adam lived 930 years. His son Seth lived 912 years.

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Enos, Seth's son Enos, lived 905 years. And then there's later on in the genealogy, there's

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Methuselah, 969 years. Boy, could you imagine what that would do to the

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Social Security Administration if people retired at age 65 or 70 and then lived to be 900?

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Yeah, well, anyway. So yeah, those ages, they really strike us as we read through that.

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But that's not the point, and that's not what the emphasis that we want to walk away from that chapter with.

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The emphasis that we want to catch is the little three -line statement that ends the entry for each of those individuals.

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Adam lived this many years. He had these sons, and after he had these sons, he lived this many years, and he died.

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Seth, his son, lived so many years, and he had these sons, and he lived after he had these sons so many years, and he died.

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And that same phrase, and he died, is repeated over and over and over again.

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The point of the passage isn't that these people lived long lives, but that they died at the end of those lives.

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It's a very powerful reminder that what God had warned about in Genesis 2, 17, the wages of sin is death, is actually true.

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And then when you continue reading in our reading for today, you're introduced to the problem of sin being rampant in the earth and so wide -scale, so total, so complete.

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Every imagination of a thought of man's heart is only evil continually. That brings about the global flood.

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Again, a further fulfillment of God's sober warning that death has come upon all of creation as the result of Adam's sin.

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So one of the emphases of chapter 5 is the fact that man's sin has brought about man's death.

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But there's also another startling emphasis in chapter 5, and it's basically repeated in chapter 6 and 7, and that is a startling exception in chapter 5 to the somber repetition of, and he died.

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There's one man in chapter 5 that didn't die, Enoch. So unlike his contemporaries, it seems that he walked with God, and God in His grace took

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Enoch out of this world so that Enoch did not have to go through that valley of the shadow of death as everybody else did.

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And again, as you continue reading in our text for today, you read on into chapter 6 and 7,

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God in His grace singles out another man to be the exception. Every other man, woman, and child on the planet, however many there were at the time, they all perished in that flood except for Noah.

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While all humanity perished, Noah found favor. That is, he experienced grace.

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And he and his family were graciously spared so that God's ultimate plan of man's redemption would be fulfilled through Noah's descendants.

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God had promised in Genesis 2 that there would be a seed of a woman that would crush the head of the serpent, and God in His grace ensured that that plan would be fulfilled by sparing

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Noah and his family. So let's give thanks to the Lord for His amazing grace.

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One of the old Puritans, Ralph Venning, said this, mercies are never so savory as when they savor of a

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Savior. So let's savor of Him today as we reflect on these mercies to Enoch and to Noah.

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Our Father and our God, we are grateful for your mercies. They're new each day, but they are intended to drive us to the

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Savior. And so Father, we thank you for those savory mercies that are reflective of and pointing to our wonderful Savior, the

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Lord Jesus Christ. So Father, thank you for these blessings today. And we ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.

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All right, well, may God give you a good rest of your Tuesday and bless you richly in it.