Genesis 5 is oft overlooked as just another chapter on genealogy, but in reality it is a story of tragedy that should bring tears to our eyes.
In Chapters 1-2, God creates all there is and declares it to be "very good." Everything is meant to live and last forever.
In Chapter 3, Adam and Eve disobey God and open the doors for sin and death to enter the world, but death doesn't come for them at once.In Genesis 4 we have the first recorded murder of Abel by Cain. No doubt a great tragedy that shook the first communities in the ancient world. It was after these first violent deaths that people began to call upon the name of the Lord. Called upon Him to save them.
In Genesis 5, though, the real horror begins. Adam himself dies.
Can you imagine what people felt when the first of all patriarchs died? How they watched him grow older and older, more frail and sickly, until one day he breathed his last and was gone?
What sadness! What despair! Almost 1,000 years had passed and Adam had lived on and on. Now the man everyone could call father - was dead.
But it didn't stop. Adam's son died. Then his son. Then his. "And he died," repeats over and over like a hammer. Sure, they lived a long time by our standards, but then...they died. They all died. None could escape the power and fear of death.
Except one man. His name stands out on purpose. Enoch. Enoch, we are told, "walked with God." So, one day, God took him home. No death. No body. No funeral. Enoch was, and then he was not, for God snatched him into Heaven.
As the deaths continued, the tears flowed like rivers. People must've wondered, will this nightmare ever end? Will the tears ever dry?
Yes. One day, they would. Another Enoch would come, a better Enoch, a better Adam.
He would walk with God. And He would rise alive into Heaven and be found among us no more, but before He left, He would die a death He did not deserve and save us all.
Jesus is on every page. The Bible is His story. All of it."Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death (that is, the devil) and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death."(Hebrews 2:14-15)</blockquote> </div>
