A third son, Seth, came to Adam and Eve after Cain had killed his brother. We do not know very much about Seth, but God tells us that while Adam was made in His likeness, (verse 3), Seth was born in the likeness of his father, and after his image. (Chapter 3:5). Sin had come into God’s fair creation, and put its stamp on everything. Adam and Eve had become sinners, and their children were like themselves.
None of us are born good; some that we love, or think very much of, may seem to us to have no faults, or very few, but when we turn over the leaves of our Bibles to Romans 3:10-12,10As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: 11There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. 12They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. (Romans 3:10‑12) we learn what God thinks about us:
“There is none righteous. . . none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God . . . none that doeth good, no, not one.”
Indeed, as time went on, it seems certain that the generations, or families that were born, were getting worse and worse, for by and by God set a time when He would destroy man and beast from the earth with a great flood.
God told Adam and Eve that the punishment or penalty of sin was death. And while chapter 5 does not mention very many people by name, it tells of all of them except two, that they died, and the death of one of those is mentioned at the end of chapter nine. “All the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died.”
In the very last verse of the sixth chapter of Romans you will find these very important words from God Himself: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
You see, there are wages, and the cemeteries which we see everywhere remind us that the wages are paid. So many do not want to take the gift which God offers; they would rather try to get it for themselves, but, children, eternal life can be had only by trusting in Jesus. Have you trusted Him?
I notice, too, that while we can at least hope that most, perhaps all, of the ten people whose names are given in the fifth chapter of Genesis were God’s children through faith, of only two of them is anything said that lets us know that they tried to please God in their lives. It is very sad to see so many nowadays just satisfied to be saved, and seeming to forget the Lord Jesus who died for them on the cross. If they really love Him, they would be thinking about Him sometimes, don’t you think so too? And if they are thinking about Him, they would sometimes talk about Him as though they liked to.
Do you remember that verse—O, there are several of them—that tell us that God is having a record kept, of all that we each of us, saved or unsaved, think or sav or do? In Rev. 20:1212And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. (Revelation 20:12) we react of books written about the “works” done here, as well as the book of life, which contains the names of those who are saved. If you are saved, if you know the Lord Jesus as your own Saviour, I am sure you will want to please Him, and not have nothing good written down in those books that are going to be opened in heaven. We may not be able to do very much, and it is surely very, very little after all, when we think how much love we owe to God for saving us, but if we are saved, we ought to seek to please Him, shouldn’t we.?
One of the men this chapter tells us of didn’t die. You will find the short story of his life of three hundred and sixty-five years, (just as many as there are days in the year) in verses 19 and 21-24.
God just says about Enoch, that he “walked with God” for three hundred -years; and further, that he “walked with God; and he was not; for God took him.”
Let us try to imagine the day when, perhaps, Enoch’s wife, and Metbusaleh, and the rest of the family were terribly alarmed; they couldn’t find Enoch anywhere! They probably searched all around, and asked everybody, and even had the neighbors hunting for him, but all in vain. He had been taken away by God.
Do you know that this is a picture of what is going to happen to a lot of people, both old folks and young, and some boys and girls, and babes, too? Yes, the Lord Jesus is going to descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we (the saved ones, not everyone) which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we (the saved ones) ever be with the Lord.