He was a wicked old man, a profligate and abandoned character. Why should he go to church? But he did, and at God's appointed time.
As the old man seated himself, the scripture was being read. The chapter chosen was Gen. 5. It is not, if judged by human standards, one of the most interesting portions of the Word of God; nor would one have considered it likely to be used of the Spirit of God to the blessing of this man's soul.
"This is the book of the generations of Adam," the preacher read, and continued through the genealogy down to Noah. One could well wonder, "What can be of interest in those dry names and ages?" Even an evangelist might find it difficult to preach the gospel from such a scripture. Yet from all eternity had it been ordained, in the counsels of the God of grace, that this apparently mere historical record should be the means of bringing everlasting blessing to the soul of a poor profligate.
One solemn phrase occurs eight times over in the chapter and it was used of God to effect a blessed result. This phrase consists of only three words, and three shorter words would be hard to find together anywhere in your Bible. They are these—"And he died.”
Eight old men are named in the chapter. One of them lived to be 777 years old, more than ten times as old as men of full age now. But the end came—"and he died." That was Lamech, the son of the oldest man that ever lived, and the grandson of a man who never died at all! But Lamech "died.”
Another of these old men, Mahalaleel, lived to be 895 years of age; yet we read, "and he died.”
Enos, his grandfather, lived ten years longer, but "he died.”
His son surpassed him by five years. This was Cainan, but he also "died." Cainan was a most remarkable man, for about 250 years before his death he could have said, what no man but he could ever say, that he was the great-grandson of a man who had never been born (Adam, whom God created), and that his own great-grandson had gone to heaven, but had never died (Enoch, whom God translated). But again, "he died.”
Seth, the brother of Cain and Abel, lived no less than 912 years, "and he died.”
Adam lived 930 years. Poor Adam had no childhood and no youth; and it would appear that the years of his manhood were therefore more in number than those of any man who ever lived. Yet of him also it is recorded, "and he died." Physical death had been pronounced of God to be the direct result, both to him and to his seed, of the sin he had committed. How sad that this chapter is full of the testimony which each death afforded of the truth of the divine verdict and the reality of the divine penalty upon man's transgression!
Jared, the father of Enoch, lived to be 962, "and he died." But Methuselah, Enoch's son, lived to the unprecedented age of 969, lived to be nearly a thousand years old! Why, if a man were to live to such an age now, men would say he would live forever; but God never forgets. "It is appointed unto men once to die," and even Methuselah was no exception; for we read, "and he died.”
Eight times the solemn words fell upon the ears of this poor lost man: "and he died." Although these eight old men lived on an average over 900 years each, they died, every one of them; and he who listened to the brief narrative of their lives and their death was deeply impressed that he also must die. The Spirit of God drove these three words eight times over into his soul. He could never forget them or escape them. His conscience was stirred to its depths. The plowshare penetrated his soul; and He who made those furrows did not forget to pour the oil and the wine of His richest, sweetest grace into the gaping wounds He had made.
Thus a Savior's precious love and a Savior's precious blood were apprehended by faith. The old sinner's heart melted under the discovery that God in His grace had given His Son to die, on behalf of those who were on the highway to an eternal hell; and that His Son the blessed Man Jesus Christ, agonizing under the terrible load of our sins, gave His life and His life's blood for our redemption, the Just One for the unjust to bring us to God.
This blessed discovery gave peace to his aroused and troubled conscience, the work done upon the cross was so precious and so complete. And He who did that work became thenceforth an object, a worthy, blessed object, for the present and eternal rest for his heart.