Death reigns (for a time)

[0:00] Genesis 5. This is the book of generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God.

[0:13] Male and female, he created them. And he blessed them and named them man when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness.

[0:28] After his image and named him Seth. The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years and he had other sons and daughters.

[0:44] Thus, all the days that Adam lived were 930 years and he died. When Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered Enosh.

[0:58] Seth lived after he fathered Enosh 807 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Seth were 912 years and he died.

[1:14] When Enosh had lived 90 years, he fathered Kenan. Enosh lived after he fathered Kenan 815 years and had other sons and daughters.

[1:31] Thus, all the days of Enosh were 905 years and he died. When Kenan had lived 70 years and he fathered Mahalalel.

[1:44] Kenan lived after he fathered Mahalalel 840 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Mahalalel. Thus, all the days of Kenan were 910 years and he died.

[2:00] When Mahalalel had lived 65 years and had other sons and daughters.

[2:14] Thus, all the days of Mahalalel were 895 years and he died. When Jared had lived 162 years and he fathered Enoch.

[2:29] Jared lived after he fathered Enoch 800 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Jared were 962 years and he died.

[2:44] When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters.

[3:03] Thus, all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God and he was not for God took him.

[3:19] When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he fathered Lamech. Methuselah lived after he fathered Lamech 782 years and had other sons and daughters.

[3:33] Thus, all the days of Methuselah were 969 years and he died. When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son and called his name Noah, saying, Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.

[4:00] Lamech lived after he fathered Noah 595 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Lamech were 777 years and he died.

[4:18] After Noah was 500 years old, Noah fathered Shem, Ham and Japheth. When men began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive and they took as their wives any they chose.

[4:43] Then the Lord said, The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them.

[5:05] These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

[5:26] And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heaven, for I am sorry that I have made them.

[5:52] But Noah found favour in the eyes of the Lord. Good morning.

[6:07] Just testing the sound. Yep, it sounds good. We are glad that Don was able to give the kids' talk. Actually, he was quite sick last week and he didn't know that it was on for the kids' talk.

[6:21] He did well, didn't he? Until the end, I thought I need to do resuscitation on him. Isn't it great that in the church we can joke about death because we can look at death and know that he has no power over us anymore.

[6:39] And today we are going to go through this passage in Genesis and hope that that will encourage us. Let us pray first before we go. Dear God, we are so thankful that you have delivered us from being enslaved to death and that we can look at life in a different way to live it for your own glory, not for our own glory.

[7:04] Thank you, Lord. May you teach us your way today. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Hebrews 9.27 tells us that there's a point for men to die once and then comes judgment.

[7:25] And that's why everyone dies. Death is not even the end. There's judgment as well. So there's two things. There's both death and judgment that we are facing.

[7:38] We know that since the rebellion of Adam and Eve, then they were expelled from the Garden of Eden. Death is inevitable because we can't assess the tree of life and our body would die eventually, regardless of how long people would live on.

[8:01] Even then, we know that death is not natural. We have the sense that life should go on. About two weeks ago, when I looked at the Facebook posting, I was dismayed and surprised to find that a person called Mudan Takao died.

[8:24] I was following his wife's post. His wife, I mean, Leia and I knew about the wife, I knew a wife about 35 years ago when we were serving with Borneo Evangelical Mission with the literature part of it.

[8:45] And the wife of one of the board members. And so I've been friends with her and she's been posting about where they have been.

[8:57] They travel a lot, this Mudan Takao and the wife, because Mudan is a politician and he visited many places on behalf of the government.

[9:09] And he actually had a heart attack when he was overseas representing Malaysia. He didn't die straight away. He eventually came back to Malaysia and then he died a few days later.

[9:21] It was a shock to me because Mudan is a unique person. He is the Lung Bawang.

[9:31] Lung Bawang is one of the indigenous people in the state of Sarawak. And he's a very rare Christian in the parliament of Malaysia. He was recently elected as the president of the Senate.

[9:44] And he's done a lot for his people, both the whole Malaysian, and his people, the indigenous people, and the Christians as well.

[9:58] What is sad to me is that Mudan has got an older brother and the brother was also a politician. He was actually a doctor and then serving his people.

[10:09] And that brother also died 20 years ago in a helicopter accident when he was visiting a village on behalf of the government. So the father has got these two sons and both sons die in the service of the government.

[10:27] Some of you may have heard me saying about the Lung Bawang people. Lung Bawang people were considered the worst of the people in Malaysia about 100 years ago.

[10:37] The British rulers has given them up, leaving them to extinct because they were a people that is very superstitious, lazy, and they were drunk most of the time.

[10:56] Most of the children died anyway because they didn't get taken care of. And so the government was saying just let them be and let them extinct. But Borneo Evangelical Mission went in and in a few short years, the whole tribe became Christian and they became the most successful people or tribes in Malaysia.

[11:23] And Mudan and his brother Jackson, their testimony for that, they were highly educated and they became the leaders in the government and in the church as well.

[11:43] But hearing about their death, I have this sense, I think you can sense that these people shouldn't die. that there's a sense that at least good people shouldn't die and that should not be the end of these things.

[12:02] And as you look at chapter 5 of Genesis, that is what it's saying. These people in chapter 5, at least, they shouldn't die. I mean, they still die.

[12:14] in chapter 5, it's a genealogy of the descendants of Seth. And we only see the record of their birth when their father gives birth to them and then they die or who they get birth to.

[12:36] That's all. Compared to chapter 4, when we look at the descendants of Cain, you can see that they talk about the achievements like Jabba was the father of all those who have livestock or livestock farming.

[12:57] Juba was the father of musicians. Tubacan was the father of blacksmiths. And about all their achievements and their characters, a bit about Namek's anger in killing someone.

[13:14] But there's no mention about their death. Why is such a difference between these two lines? You see, the descendants of Cain, first of all, to mention that there are two Namek's in each side and then two Enoch's as well, so don't get mixed up on this.

[13:37] So descendants of Cain, the people who live for their own dreams, for their own kingdoms, that's why they are quite industrious, and they invent things, they want to improve life.

[13:57] And they are not bad things, but at the same time, they do not believe in God, and so they do their own things, they can kill people to achieve what they want, and so there is no morality in that sense to follow.

[14:16] And these are the people of the world. I suppose they will fear death themselves, and they will invent things to prolong their life, and I won't be surprised if there's no death in that tribe until the flood comes in.

[14:32] Maybe, I'm not sure, but in any case, their death is not relevant to us, and that's why it's not mentioned. But unlike in chapter 5, when they come to the descendants of Seth, their deaths are mentioned, and that's why it's sort of been precious in God's eye in that.

[14:52] Seth is born in the image of Adam, and Adam was made in the image of God. So there is a real difference. Adam has been made in the image of God, but he damaged that image in his rebellion against God, and Seth was born in the image of Adam, so he inherited whatever Adam has.

[15:18] So how did Adam, what's the relationship between Adam and God after he sinned against God? we, when we come to the New Testament, Luke chapter 4, chapter 3, verse 38, we talk about the genealogy, and it's mentioned Adam, the son of God.

[15:46] So despite the fact that Adam sinned against God, Adam was considered as the son of God. and from there, we can say that Seth is also considered as a son of God because he inherited Adam's image.

[16:06] And so that line, the firstborn son of Seth's descendants all inherited that image of Adam, and we can say that they are the sons of God, the children of God, and that is a relational term that is God relate to them as their father.

[16:30] And that's why the achievement in life is not that important. It's not recorded because what is important is how they relate to God.

[16:44] We can think about that when we do die, how would we want people to remember us. I suppose most people would want people to remember our achievements, what we have done.

[17:02] Consider the Apostle John, when the Apostle John dies, if you ask him what he would like to remember as, I don't think he would like to remember as someone who has the Apostle who had written the book of John, or the Epistles or Revelation or started whatever church, I would think from his writing he would want to remember us the disciple who was loved by Jesus because that's why he called himself.

[17:35] And that's enough. That's enough. That's more than enough. It doesn't matter what you and I have done in life if we are loved by the Lord Jesus Christ and we are relating to God as he is our father.

[17:53] But still, they die. And the fact that the death is written in there, it means that the author of Genesis is saying that no, they shouldn't die.

[18:05] They are God's people. Why should they die? And we also can go back to chapter 3, verse 15 when God sort of promised that there would be someone who would come who was born of the woman who would crush the servant's head.

[18:27] That means to reverse the curse that God has put on this world. And we see that in the line of Seth, people, they are waiting for this person.

[18:43] to come. But Adam, after living 930 years, he dies. Seth, 912 years, and he dies.

[18:56] Enosh, 905 years, and he dies. And it keeps going on until the seventh generation when Enosh came along. And that is a change in that.

[19:09] Enosh, what we've got, 300 years, then he was not. God has taken him. So was Enosh the person who was going to reverse this death?

[19:21] Was he good enough to do that? You know that, no, he wasn't. God took him, but the future generation, they also died.

[19:33] Why wasn't Enosh sufficient? I think at least there are two things. First of all, Enosh was born in the image of Adam as well.

[19:44] And so he already inherited Adam's sinful nature. And so he's not qualified to do that. And he walked with God only after his son was born at 65 years old.

[19:58] The second reason is that Enosh, paradoxically, because Enosh didn't die, so he couldn't be the person who reversed the curse. The person who can reverse the curse is the one who needs to die.

[20:16] But from the story of Enosh, this gives us hope that death is not necessarily inevitable. There's at least this person who didn't die.

[20:30] In actual fact, think about it, when we said, Enosh walked with God 300 years, what does that mean to walk with God? Actually, Enosh did die symbolically because he died to himself.

[20:45] If we want to walk with God, we need to die to ourselves. It's no longer I who live, but Christ who live in me. And Enosh in that way did die and live for God.

[21:01] But he died happily in that way because he was attracted by God and not been forced into it. He did that joyfully. So there's Enosh and then three generations later, we come to another break.

[21:14] There is Noah. Noah, when Namek fathered him, Namek said that, I'll call him Noah, hopefully, he said, out of this land that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and the painful toys of our hands.

[21:39] Namek's prediction tells us that these people, they've been waiting for this someone to come. He said, finally, this one should be the one. And also, what has been troubling them is the work of their hands, the painful toys.

[21:59] It's painful to work because it takes a lot of effort to get any return from the land. Not only that, in the world, in that time, I think there were a lot of restlessness.

[22:14] Even if you get some return from the land, somebody else will come and rob it from you. It's a lot of fighting, competition, quarrels in the world, and people have said enough of living like that.

[22:29] And they're waiting for this someone to come, and they hope that Noah was the one. Because Noah's name means rest. Would Noah bring rest to the world?

[22:41] Think about it. I think in some way he did. Not that he, I mean, his time, not that he didn't bring through by Noah. The rest came by the death of everyone.

[22:54] When there's no one, nobody fighting with anyone, so there's rest. It's not a satisfactory rest, but it's still some sort of rest to the world, at least, when everybody dies.

[23:08] There's no more pollution, there's no more fighting. And so, in a way, the prophecy came true, not in the way that people would hope it was, it would be.

[23:22] And so, the world was facing destruction in Noah's time, but there's still many years to come before this will come true because he needed to build an ark which would go there next week.

[23:41] But why was the flood necessary in terms of why we find it very hard to imagine.

[23:52] I suppose the world at that time was not as big as the world now in the case, but still a lot of people would die from it. And that will bring us to chapter 6 of Genesis.

[24:05] In chapter 6, there are three difficult verses to understand. But through these three verses, we can also understand God's heart and why this needs to be done.

[24:21] The first thing is to do with the sons of God and the sons of man. You talk about the sons of God, seeing the daughters of men being beautiful, attractive, and they marry them, and then they produce this giant.

[24:43] Who are those people? And there's a lot of interpretation in this area. Some will say that the sons of God are the angelic beings who come down to earth and marry children of man, and then produce this giant.

[25:06] I think to fit into the storyline, the sons of God, as I mentioned, would be the descendants of Seth, and the sons or daughters of man, the descendants of Cain, and their intermarriage just corrupted the whole world.

[25:26] Even the descendants of Seth would be a group that would call upon the name of God, as the end of chapter 4 tells us. But with the intermarriage, even them have been corrupted, and the whole world becomes unbearable to live.

[25:44] It's more like hell, as the people turning into. And so the destruction is necessary to cleanse the world.

[25:56] The second one is God regretting, God seems to have to regret created human beings seeing it comes to this stage. And then we will have trouble understanding could God regret what he's done?

[26:13] We need to think about our regret compared to God's regret. When we say we regret something, we can look back in the past what we have done or not done that we regret now, but we can't do anything about it because the chance to do it is over.

[26:35] We can only regret about it. But would God look back and say I've done something, a mere mistake, and I can't fix it?

[26:51] First of all, we've got there's no time. There's no looking back for God in a sense. God always is. And so even time wise, God cannot be like us.

[27:04] We look back in time and say, regret, I haven't done something. Because to God there's no time, a restriction. Secondly, if you say God has made mistake, then who is the one who judged God and said, this is the way you should do?

[27:23] Whoever, if we judge God about what is the right thing for God to do, then we will become God ourselves. And so whatever God does, it is best, regardless of what we think it is.

[27:39] And so in that way, God's regret is unlike our regret. I would think it would be more consistent for grief, God's grief about this thing come to this stage and the action that he is going to take for the world.

[27:57] If we go to Jeremiah, we might have this sense of God's grief. Jeremiah, as a prophet, has been telling the Israelites to return to God, otherwise the Babylonians would come and conquer them.

[28:18] Nobody, I suppose, almost none, maybe only two people in the book of Jeremiah, that would listen to Jeremiah. The whole nation didn't listen to him.

[28:30] And so the Babylonian came, and then Jeremiah wanted to stay, but he was forced by people to run to Egypt. So Jeremiah had a very hard time as a prophet.

[28:44] He was mistreated by his own people, even to the end. And his scribe, one of those who supported him, called Baruch, he started to complain against God in the sense that it's not fair.

[29:02] I mean, we have been serving you faithfully all this time, and now enemy came, we are forced to go to Egypt to run, run away, even though Jeremiah knew that they should stay in Jerusalem.

[29:19] And so God, in reply to Baruch in Jeremiah chapter 45, verses 4 and 5, God said, Behold, what I have built, I am breaking down, and what I have planted, I am plucking up.

[29:38] That is the whole land. Do you seek great things for yourself? Seek them not, for behold, I am bringing disaster upon all the flesh declares the Lord.

[29:53] Can you sense or feel what God was feeling? I mean, God didn't delight in destroying his people, but there's something that is necessary.

[30:08] If you ask why there's necessary, we can understand some, but we cannot understand fully. We couldn't see the whole history. we are not God.

[30:20] The third problem in this verses is 120 years. Men shall not live more than 120 years. So, we can understand that as God said, from that point of words, people would not live so long.

[30:37] The most is 120 years, and they would die, which is possible. people, but then we know that even after the flood, there are people who live a long time.

[30:50] Many generations later, Abraham lived 175 years. His grand child, Jacob, lived 147 years.

[31:04] So, it's not very consistent to say that men cannot live more than 120 years from that point of course. Possible. But I would think to be consistent with the coming of the flood, men cannot have about 120 years before the flood would come, and then they would die.

[31:24] And that also tells us that the flood didn't come suddenly. God gave people a long time to repent. And we know that from 2 Peter Noah was a preacher.

[31:41] He was preaching as well while he was building the ark. And there is plenty of time for people to repent, but nobody listened, except for the family of, except for Noah and his family.

[31:58] But still, we are thankful that Noah and the family obeyed, and that gave us another hope, that is judgment, is not inevitable.

[32:10] So, Enoch tells us that death is not inevitable, Noah tells us that judgment is not inevitable because Noah and the family escaped the judgment, though they did die later.

[32:23] And we are thankful that Noah found favor in the eyes of God, and that gives us hope for humans. And this is a new world after Noah has come by.

[32:37] and the genealogy of God continued on, and he continued on for many generations, until after 66 generations later, the Lord Jesus Christ came.

[32:52] And the Lord Jesus Christ was the last one in this genealogy. Why was he the last one? Because he was the one who everyone had been waiting for.

[33:04] Jesus was born in the image of God. And so he is qualified to reverse the curse of God.

[33:18] So in Jesus we see a better Enoch, because Jesus didn't only walk with God himself, he helped other people to walk with God. In Jesus we see a greater Noah, because Jesus didn't only save himself, he saved others.

[33:39] In Noah's time, rest came by everybody dying. In Jesus time, rest came by Jesus himself dying.

[33:51] And in Jesus, death can no longer enslave us. death. And in him, the worst that death can do is the best that it can do for us.

[34:09] Because when death take away this earthly tent, this body from us, God is going to give us a new house that will enable us to see him face to face.

[34:24] So we don't need to fear that. in Christ. And the genealogy actually goes on even after Christ, but it's a different genealogy. And it's generally with so many people that it can't be written because it's too many.

[34:40] And it wouldn't be just right to say that Wudan Takao, father, two sons and a daughter, and he dies at age 65.

[34:54] And at the end he would add, and in Christ, he lived again forevermore. And that would apply to all who are in Christ. With that knowledge, what does it, how does it make us live differently?

[35:15] In 1928, three men, Hudson Southwell, Frank Davidson, and the last one is Carly, 1928, they sell from Melbourne to Borneo.

[35:38] And they were the ones who brought the gospel to the Lung Ba Wan people. You might not be able to imagine how difficult it would be. I mean, the selling trip would be bad enough.

[35:50] if you go to the Lung Ba Wan villages at that time, there are diseases everywhere, very dirty. There's no, I'm not sure how they survive, actually.

[36:02] And there are still head hunters around the area, and they don't know the language. But they went. Why did they do that? Because death is no longer a problem for them.

[36:17] Judgment is no longer a problem for them. And they want other people to know that the Lord Jesus Christ is the life and the resurrection. And through them, that brings such a change to many people.

[36:34] And among those people, one who was born during the time was called Takao, Wudang Takao's father. Wudang, the son of Takao.

[36:47] Takao is 91 years old, and he stood up during Wudang's funeral. He wasn't actually scheduled to talk, but he wanted to talk.

[37:00] Isn't it sad? A father who had two such good sons and both died before him. But when he talked, he didn't say much about their achievements.

[37:14] He talked a lot about the Lord Jesus Christ, about their hope in the Lord Jesus Christ. And he called out asking people to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

[37:26] You may not know how difficult it is. The service was attended by many long Christians, many high power people in their miniatures.

[37:40] In ordinary times, you say that I suppose you would get jailed in Malaysia. But he didn't care because he had that hope and he wanted other people to know that too.

[38:02] If this knowledge, I hope that if you are not in this genealogy of the Lord Jesus Christ, I hope that you would want to be in John 1, John 1, verse 12 says that for those who receive him, who believe in his name, he gave the power, the right to become children of God.

[38:32] And if we are already in this genealogy of the Lord Jesus Christ, I hope that we will learn to walk with God like he not did. let us pray.

[38:44] Let us pray. Almighty God, we are thankful that we can call your Father and have this renewed relationship with you in the Lord Jesus Christ.

[39:03] Lord, may you attract us, help us to see your glory in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. That we might walk with you joyfully.

[39:15] Thank you, Lord. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.