Methuselah
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If someone calls you ‘Methuselah’ it’s probably not a compliment. He was 969 years old when he died – the oldest man in the bible.
In the midst of the avalanche of deaths in Genesis 5, Methuselah weathers the storm better than most. But actually someone else in the family tree does better than Methuselah – his dad in fact. When Methuselah was a spritely 300 years old, this happened:
“Enoch was not; for God took him.” (Genesis 5:24)
And the explanation?
“Enoch walked with God.”
Methuselah’s grandson is described similarly – Noah too “walked with God.” And both Enoch in Genesis 5 and Noah in Genesis 6 escaped the death sentence that swept the others away. They walked with God and found grace and salvation. They found an answer to death.
Most people today, if they want to escape the ravages of age, do so through diet and excercise. Some go to more drastic lengths. Perhaps surgery and injections. Some even want their corpses frozen to be defrosted when we’ve found death’s cure. And transhumanism hopes to eliminate ageing and death altogether.
The bible gives us an answer to death that is older than Methuselah. Walk with God. The same God who walked with Adam and Eve in the garden. The same God who walked among us as Man and defeated death on our behalf.
The grave is too powerful for us. It will swallow us. But Christ is more powerful still. He swallows up death:
Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:54-57)
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