How Not To Die

Genesis 5
Gary Wassermann | Sunday, December 26, 2021
Copyright © 2021, Gary Wassermann

Dr. Michael Greger wrote a book about plant-based eating. He entitled his book How Not to Die.  That is false advertising.  A good diet may have many benefits, but immortality is not one of them.  And even with the best of diets, you will not live 900 years or 800 years, or even 200 years.  My title is not false advertising.  The problem is that people do not understand what death is all about.

This genealogy in Genesis 5 presents the line of the godly, of those through whom God’s promises would be fulfilled.  But the author has a purpose in relating it that goes beyond simply connecting Adam to Noah.  We can see his purpose by comparing it with the genealogy that follows the line from Noah to Abraham in Genesis 11.  In Genesis 5, the stanzas follow the pattern of the record of Seth.  “When Seth had lived 105 years, he became the father of Enosh.  And after he became the father of Enosh, Seth lived 807 years and had other sons and daughters.  Altogether, Seth lived 912 years, and then he died” (Gen. 5:6–8).  In Genesis 11, the stanzas follow the pattern of the record of Arphaxad.  “When Arphaxad had lived 35 years, he became the father of Shelah. And after he became the father of Shelah, Arphaxad lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters” (Gen. 11:12–13).  There is no mention of Arphaxad’s death.  It is implied by giving the duration of his life.  But in Genesis 5, the phrase “and he died” is stated again and again, and it highlights especially the exception of Enoch, who did not die, but was translated from this life into glory.

God is telling us by this account to walk with him, to choose life, and he is strengthening our hope in the life of the world to come.  This morning I have three points: death, walking with God, and life.

Death

The universality of death, the reality that all people will die, is not something that takes a lot of divine revelation to know.  We see it in the world around us.  Most of us have friends or relatives who have died.  Many of the headlines in the news report deaths.  One recent headline reported the death toll from a tornado in the Midwest.  Another listed the names of four people who were killed in a major car accident in Colorado.  And a reliable staple of our news for some time now has been the number of people who have died or the name of some famous person who has died from COVID.  Furthermore, we all know, if we stop to think about it, that we do not see any 150-year-old people walking around because everyone who was born 150 years ago has died.

Even if it is obvious that all people die, God states the obvious, because most people push the obvious away.  “And he died.”  God repeats it eight times.  This is a statement that will be made about all people: “And he died,” or “And she died.”

If you want evidence that most people suppresses the thought of death or push it away, just look at how the wealthy are admired.  They are seen as great people. They are somebodies.  People hang on their words and stand in awe of the vast reach of their power and influence through their businesses and their foundations.  Look at the celebrity power of entertainers.  They have throngs of fans and followers.  But one day “and he died” will be said about each one of them, and if we believe it, that will change how we view them.  God says in Psalm 49:16–19, “Do not be overawed when a man grows rich, when the splendor of his house increases; for he will take nothing with him when he dies, his splendor will not descend with him. Though while he lived he counted himself blessed—and men praise you when you prosper—he will join the generation of his fathers, who will never see the light of life.”

The fact of death, the fact that all men die, means you cannot find your security in men.  Some put their hope in a particular candidate for president. If only he wins, everything will be good.  Some put their confidence for their daily bread or for their ability to navigate life, in an employer, or in a person who has had a significant role in their life.  He may be a powerful person and he may be a good person, but he too will die.  God says in Psalm 146:3–4, “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing.”

“And he died” will be true not only of those in a position to do us good, but also of those who threaten us.  Many people bend under the pressure of the fear of man to commit sin.  But even aside from any other sinful action, to be consumed with fear is a sin against God.  God says in Isaiah 51:12–13, “I, even I, am he who comforts you. Who are you that you fear mortal men, the sons of men, who are but grass, that you forget the Lord your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth, that you live in constant terror every day because of the wrath of the oppressor?”

“And he died” will be true of all people around us, but “and he died” will also be true of you and of me.  It is not just the very wealthy who cannot take it with them.  Naked we came into this world, and naked we shall depart.  It is not just the princes whose plans will come to nothing.  When we die, our projects and plans, our hopes and aspirations, will come to an end. Our influence in this world, in terms of a direct influence, will come to an end.

Death has a way of rendering life rather short.  The New International Version renders the summary statement for Seth: “Altogether, Seth lived 912 years, and then he died.” But a more literal translation is, “All the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years, and he died” (NASB).  So it is for each of them.  They lived far longer than we do, and yet their lives were summed up not as centuries but as days.  Why then spend the few days you have here in empty pursuits?  As James said, “What is your life?  You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (Jas. 4:14).  Life is moving steadily toward an end.

Do not treat life as a joke.  Mockers delight in dodging responsibility, in dodging accountability, and in dodging duty.  Have you been dodging Jesus Christ?  You can dodge and joke for a little while, but you cannot finally dodge death, and you cannot dodge what comes after.  Death will have the last word: “And he died.”  Idle procrastinators delay doing what they ought to do.  They put off serious self-examination and repentance for some time later, for some time that never comes.  But you cannot delay your way out of death.  Eventually death will come, whether you are ready or not.

Historically, the event of Adam’s death had another significance.  It showed God’s justice.  God had said to Adam in the garden that if he ate the forbidden fruit, “You will surely die” (Gen. 2:17).  When Adam sinned, God pronounced a curse: “Dust you are and to dust you will return” (Gen. 3:19).  Since the time that God had pronounced a curse, the ground was cursed.  Men were sinful.  There was strife. There was pain. But for a time, Adam lived on.  Abel was murdered—he was probably the first person to die.  But for many hundreds of years, Adam lived on after he had sinned, and probably sinful and corrupt men of that time mocked God’s decree of death.  But when Adam died, God showed that he is just, and he makes no idle threats against sin.  God hates those who sin against him, and Psalm 7:11 in the King James Version says, “God is angry with the wicked every day.”  In Romans 6:23 God repeats the curse: “The wages of sin is death.”

In a real sense, sin is not our big problem.  We may get frustrated with our bad habits and even deeply regret wrong things we have done, but that is not our big problem.  God’s wrath against us is our big problem.  It is the wrath of the holy God coming inexorably down upon us.  That is what makes death a terror.  First Corinthians 15:56 says, “The sting of death is sin,” because, in view of sin, God sends death in the pregnant sense.  Death is not just the cessation of life on earth.  For many, that would be an escape from justice.  Death means the cessation of life on earth, but it is also the cessation of all mercies from God, from his sun that he causes to rise on both the evil and the good, and from the rain that he sends on both the righteous and the unrighteous (Matt. 5:45).  God’s mercies cease, but his wrath does not.  Second Thessalonians 1:9 says, “They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power.”  Revelation 21:8 says of all sorts of sinners, “Their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”  The wages of sin is death.

God does not threaten in vain.  Galatians 6:7–8 says, “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.  The one who sows to please his [flesh], from that nature will reap destruction.”  God spoke about the destruction he was going to bring on the land of Israel because of the persistent sin of the people.  When that destruction comes, he said in Ezekiel 6:10, “They will know that I am the Lord; I did not threaten in vain to bring this calamity on them.”

God does not express the full weight of his wrath while we live, and because of that, sinners mock at his threats. They mock as though it is not coming.  “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised?” they say.  “Everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation” (2 Pet. 2:4).  But just as surely as death came for Adam after many years of delay, God’s wrath will surely come.  As Habakkuk 2:3 says, “It will certainly come and will not delay.”  And Peter makes it clear in 2 Peter 3:9 that God delays for a time because “he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”

Walking with God

Against this dark background of death, Enoch stands out because he did not die.  As I said earlier, Moses structured this passage to highlight Enoch and his unique deliverance from death.  The singular characteristic of his life that the text sets forth is that he walked with God.  Enoch is given only a short section, yet in that short section, it is says twice, “Enoch walked with God.”

In walking with God, Enoch is a model and a pattern for us.  Enoch was some things that we are not.  He was a great prophet and a great patriarch.  He was also the great-grandfather of Noah, through whom comfort came.  Yet his deliverance from death was not tied to these things, but only to his walking with God.  This is so that you and I, who may be neither prophets nor preachers nor men or women of great significance in this world, may know how not to die, and that we may know that without walking with God, no other privilege or position will help us in the least. The only way is to walk with God.

See how it is phrased: “Enoch walked with God.”  The great miracle and marvel above all else really is that God walked with Enoch.  God is the almighty, all-holy, immortal God.  Why should he walk with a sinful, mortal man?  How can there be fellowship between the eternal God and man, who is a creature of a day?  And yet God does have fellowship with men.  It is amazing grace!  The high and lofty One who lives forever, whose name is holy, lives not only in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit (Isa. 57:15).  As Paul said to the Athenians in Acts 17:27, God wants men to “seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.”

Though the great miracle is that God walked with Enoch, Enoch is the subject here: “Enoch walked with God.”  What Enoch did others could also have done.  That means there is no barrier, neither for him nor for anyone else.  With the coming of Christ, this is all the plainer, as he makes no distinction between Jew and Gentile (Acts 15:9), man or woman, slave or free, young or old.  The way is open to all.

What, then, does walking with God mean?  I will tell you nine things about walking with God.

1. Agreement in Place of Enmity

Walking with God means agreement in place of enmity.  There is no barrier, but that does not mean that walking with God is a light or trivial thing because there is a great internal opposition to walking with God.  For a person to walk with God, the prevailing power of enmity of his heart must be taken away by the Spirit of God.  This is not a popular message today to say that man is an enemy of God, but our own daily experience proves it.  The mind of the unconverted man is enmity, not just an enemy, but enmity itself against the living God.

Adam used to walk with God in the garden of Eden, but our first parents contracted this enmity in their hearts when they fell from God by eating the forbidden fruit.  Then when God came down, Adam tried to hide himself among the trees.  When he heard the voice of God, instead of running with an open heart and saying, “Here I am,” he now wanted if at all possible to avoid God.

He showed his enmity still more by, in effect, blaming God for his sin.  “This woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” “She gave me the fruit.” That enmity has spread into all Adam’s descendants, and it is directed against no less an enemy than God himself.

George Whitefield said, “Its command is like that of the Assyrians in respect to Ahab: Shoot only at the king. And it strikes against everything that has the appearance of real piety, as the Assyrians shot at Jehoshaphat in his royal clothes.” Anything that represents God is hated and opposed.

Whitefield went on,

Hence that averseness to prayer and holy duties which we find in children, and very often in grown persons, who have notwithstanding been blessed with a religious education. And all that open sin and wickedness, which like a deluge has overflowed the world, are only so many streams running from this sinful contagious fountain; I mean the enmity of man’s desperately wicked and deceitful heart. He that cannot set his seal upon it knows nothing yet, in a saving manner, of the Holy Scriptures, or of the power of God. And all that do know this, will readily acknowledge, that before a person can be said to walk with God, the prevailing power of this heart-enmity must be destroyed: for persons do not use to walk and keep company together, who entertain an irreconcilable enmity and hatred against one another.[1]

But the prevailing power of this enmity is destroyed in every soul that is truly born of God.  This is the miracle of regeneration.  The Holy Spirit imparts a new heart to love God, to think his thoughts, to love what he loves, and to choose his will.

2. Knowing God as Good

Walking with God means knowing God as good.  The man who walks with God is eager to do what pleases God.  In Micah 6, God sends the prophet to confront his ungrateful and recalcitrant people.  In verse 3 he says, “My people, what have I done to you?  How have I burdened you?  Answer me.”  They acted as though serving God was a burden, as though God was a hard master.  Getting them to take a step in the right direction was like getting a mule to walk when it has decided not to.  (GMW). God goes on to say, in effect, “Have I asked extreme and unreasonable things of you so that you are excessively burdened by me as though I were an Egyptian slave-master?” The answer is, “No.”  And in verse 8, “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”  His yoke is easy and his burden is light when we love him and when we recognize that he is good and that serving him is good.

3. Active Service to God

Walking with God means active service to God.  In all things we seek his glory.  We do not go our own way until someone comes and tells us what we should be doing instead.  Rather, we ask, we think, we consider, we pray: What does God want me to do?  We look and we understand: What are God’s priorities? What is God’s evaluation of things? We adopt those as our own and we live accordingly, striving on to do the will of God in this world.

Galatians 5:25 expresses something of the active nature of walking with God when it says, “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”  Pick up your feet and get walking. Walk in obedience to God to his glory.  And this activity is not just toward God, but also toward your neighbor.  First John 4:20–21 says, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.”

4. Humble Submission

Walking with God means humble submission.  In whatever comes to pass, we face it with God.  We receive it as from the hand of the one who will not let us be tried beyond what we can bear.  In the midst of any trial, we look to him for our strength and our reward. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me” (Ps 23:4).  When anxiety comes, we cast it on him who is fully able to bear any burden we have.  When the Lord sends the rod, we kiss the rod. We receive it humbly and cheerfully, recognizing that God has a good purpose for us in whatever he causes to come to pass.

5. Perseverance

Walking with God requires perseverance.  Some in the evangelical world say that all that is required is that you pray a sinner’s prayer.  It is a one-time prayer. It is a one-time repentance. Some like to imagine it is a one-time climbing of a mountain, so to speak, a one-time act of great denial of self and obedience to God.  It is not that. That is not what God requires.  Nor is it going back and forth between sometimes doing God’s will and sometimes living for yourself.

From the time that Enoch began to walk with God, he walked steadily and constantly.  It was the pattern of his life, and he continued in it until the end.  When we read Genesis 5, we may get the idea that Enoch lived much, much shorter than all of his contemporaries, so he did not walk with God all that long. But the text tells us that he walked with God three hundred years.  None of us is going to live anywhere near three hundred years. If Enoch walked with God three hundred years, we can walk with God eighty years or sixty years or whatever the length of our days may be, to the very end.

6. Experiencing Opposition

Walking with God means opposition.  We may imagine the days of Enoch as being close to the garden of Eden, more innocent times in a more idyllic land, so that somehow in those primeval times, it was easier and more natural to walk with God.  Not so.  The world then was just as much at war with God as the world today.  Listen to Enoch’s prophecy that we find in Jude, verses 14–15: “See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone, and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done in the ungodly way, and of all the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”  That was the world Enoch lived in.  It was no easier for Enoch to walk with God than it is for us today, and we must expect the same sort of opposition from the ungodly that Enoch faced.  But if, by the grace of God, Enoch could walk with God thoroughly and wholeheartedly in that setting, so can we in our world today.

7. Holiness

In the godless world we live in, walking with God means holiness.  The life of walking with God does not just include godliness, it also excludes sin.  It says “No” to sin.  John exposes the lie of those who say they walk with God and yet sin.  In 1 John 1:5–6 he writes, “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.”  And the great book of Psalms begins, “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked.” He who would walk with God must be holy and clean.

8. The Most Pleasant Life

Walking with God is the most pleasant life in this world.  George Whitefield said,

Has not one day in the Lord’s courts been better to you than a thousand? In keeping God’s commandments, have you not found a present, and very great reward? Has not his word been sweeter to you than the honey or the honeycomb?  O what have you felt, when, Jacob-like, you have been wrestling with your God? Has not Jesus often met you when meditating in the fields, and been made known to you over and over again in breaking of bread? Has not the Holy Ghost frequently shed the divine love abroad in your hearts abundantly, and filled you with joy unspeakable, even joy that is full of glory?[2]

This is the life of walking with God.

9. Walking as Pilgrims and Strangers in this World

We walk as pilgrims and strangers in this world.  Enoch had an additional incentive to walk with God.  It appears that he received a prophecy that God would send destruction on the world.  Enoch’s son was Methuselah.  The name Methuselah comes from the words for “death” and “sent,” so one translator renders the meaning of his name: “When he is dead, it shall be sent.”  If you do the math with the numbers given in Genesis 5, you will see that the flood came in the year that Methuselah died.  So probably God had given to Enoch a revelation like this: “Do you see this baby?  The world will last as long as he lives and no longer.  When he dies, I will send judgment.”[3]

The prophet Zephaniah called to mind the perspective before the flood, the same perspective Enoch would have had, when he said in Zephaniah 1:2–3, “‘I will sweep away everything from the face of the earth,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will sweep away both men and animals; I will sweep away the birds of the air and the fish of the sea. The wicked will have only heaps of rubble when I cut off man from the face of the earth,’ declares the Lord.”

A baby was recently born to one of the families in our congregation.  Imagine if God had revealed that when that baby died, God was going to sweep away everything from the face of the earth.  This baby may live out a full and long life and may outlive all the rest of us. But if we knew that the world would continue no longer than her life, wouldn’t all the attraction of this world fade?  Not only would we know that it is not going to last long, but we would also know that it is not going to end because of a natural disaster. It is going to end because of the outpouring of the wrath of God in destruction.

The great difference between us and Enoch is that we do not know the timing. God has told us very explicitly that we are not going to know. We do not know when.  But we do know that the same thing is going to happen by a different means. God’s wrath is now hanging over this world, and he will send destruction that will wipe away everything from the face of the world in his time. So what difference does it make whether it is in one lifetime from now or in many lifetimes or in one day? It is going to come.  That is how God views this world, and that is how godly people will view this world as well. How then can we not walk with God? We are pilgrims in this world.

Life

Enoch did not die.  That is the result of Enoch’s walking with God.  That is what stands out against the refrain: “and he died.”  It is a great miracle and it was, of course, a great blessing for Enoch.  In terms of Enoch’s experience, we can imagine that one day he was walking with God on earth, and the next step he took, he was walking with God in glory.

It was also a great blessing for Enoch’s godly friends.  Perhaps one of his relatives—his son or his father or his grandfather—was with him and saw him taken from this world, as Elisha saw Elijah being taken up in the whirlwind by the chariot and horses of fire.  But probably several of them were not with him, and when they became aware that Enoch was nowhere to be found, they got concerned.  Enoch had been preaching against the godlessness of the men of his day, so perhaps they suspected foul play, that the descendants of Cain perhaps had killed him as Cain had killed Abel.  So perhaps they searched for Enoch’s body. But if they did, they came up short, and eventually they understood, perhaps by divine revelation, that God had taken him from this world to be with himself.

Martin Luther said that God took Enoch from this life to show that death is not the end, but rather “that there has been prepared and set aside for men another and also a better life than this present life which is replete with so many misfortunes and evils.”[4]  In other words, what happened to Enoch was not just for Enoch’s benefit, or for the benefit of his friends and those who lived before the flood, but it is also for the benefit of us who are here today.

Now some of you, I suspect, may still think I am overstating the case when I say, “How not to die.”  But hear the words of our Lord from John 8:51: “I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.”  Jesus was not overstating the case.  Jesus was not exaggerating.  He does not lie. He says, “Truly, truly.”  If you keep his words, you will never see death.  Hear his words from John 11:25–26: “Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’”  Again, hear the word of the Lord from 1 John 2:17: “The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  Jesus Christ dealt with sin by taking our sin on himself and dying in our place on the cross.  He drank the cup of God’s wrath to the end, so that there is nothing left for us to drink.  Because of that, physical death is no longer death in its full sense to us.  It has been transformed, so that in the Bible physical death for believers is usually called falling asleep.

The Scripture says that Lazarus, Stephen, and David all fell asleep.  First Thessalonians 4:13 says, “Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope.”  Even physical death is not certain, because at some time, Christ will come.  In 1 Corinthians 15:51, Paul says, “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed.”  The purpose of death is to remove us from this fragile life in order to take us to heaven.

Enoch’s translation from this world into glory was not for Enoch alone; it was also for the benefit of those who knew him and for us as well as we walk in this world.  God knows what we face. God understands that we must daily battle against the sinful flesh.  We face temptations that look very attractive in the moment.  We must pass up opportunities for wealth or advancement and instead choose to be mistreated along with the people of God.  God knows that he has called us to live by faith and not by sight so that we live in conscious, constant dependence on him.  Egypt had the Nile River that rose and watered the land. But the Promised Land, the land of Israel, was the land that God watched over and watered with the spring rains and the autumn rains so that the people always depended on the provision of God. That is how we live: always depending on the provision of God. God knows that as we follow him, we will be hated and excluded, insulted and slandered. He knows the heaviness that we feel as we see ungodliness all around us in this world.  He knows that we, the saints, groan as we see God’s wrath at work in the world around us.  That is what Enoch’s grandson Lamech did, even while the ungodly were “eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage” (Matt. 24:38).

That is why God has given us the miracle of Enoch’s translation from this world.  Through Enoch, he lifts our eyes and strengthens our faith.  John Calvin preached from this passage, and here is what he said:

As Adam was a proof of God’s justice—that he would carry out his threats—so Enoch was an assurance that God would carry out everything he promises.  Every time we hear it said that he was taken from this world, let us realize our Lord has given us an infallible guarantee of the resurrection to come, and let us not live here simply as if existing for a brief period of time, for we are passing through.  Let us also bear in mind that if our lives are transitory, God has prepared for us a dwelling place elsewhere.[5]

God will carry out everything he promises.  We may see no evidence that God is going to do what he says. But let us gird up our faith and hope against hope on the ground of his word.  God said in Numbers 23:19, “God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and then not fulfill?”

Genesis 5:24 says about Enoch, “God took him away.”  Jesus Christ has promised to do the same for us.  He said in John 14:2–3, “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”  The Lord Jesus also gave his iron-clad guarantee in John 10:28–29: “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.”

There is a “world to come,” as it says in Hebrews 2:5.  Even now, there is a church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven.  Just men made perfect are worshiping God there even now, and God has promised greater glory to come.  There will be “a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness” (2 Pet. 3:13).

God will bring all things together under one head, even Christ (Eph. 1:22).  He will exalt the name of his Son, so that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:10–11).  God promised that creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God (Rom. 8:21).

God has promised glorious things to us.  In Revelation 3:4, the Lord says that those who have not soiled their clothes “will walk with me, dressed in white.”  Early I quoted from Galatians 6:8: “The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction.” But it goes on to promise life.  “The one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.”  God gave us Enoch to spur us on in walking with God.  So the next verse, Galatians 6:9, says, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”

Remember Enoch.  Choose life.  Here are death and life, so choose life.  If you have chosen life, keep on choosing life.  We may see decay and decline in our bodies, and we may pass through light and momentary trials now.  But Jesus Christ has conquered death and he rose so that we might live with him forever.  Be strengthened by that hope to walk with Christ until the faith gives way to sight.

 

[1] George Whitefield, Walking with God, https://www.biblebb.com/files/whitefield/gw002.htm

[2] George Whitefield, Walking with God, https://www.biblebb.com/files/whitefield/gw002.htm

[3] Arthur Walkington Pink, Gleanings in Genesis (Seaside, OR: Watchmaker, 2020), 78.

[4] James Montgomery Boice, Genesis: An Expositional Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 289.

[5] Jean Calvin and Rob Roy McGregor, Sermons on Genesis, Chapters 1:1–11:4 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2009), 507.