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sermonette: Methuselah

When He Dies, It Will Come
Mike Ford
Given 10-Dec-05; Sermon #750s; 17 minutes

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Uh, good afternoon, everybody. I heard an interview done one time with Ron Howard. You might know Ron Howard when he was Opie on Andy Griffith or Richie Cunningham on Happy Days, but he's a big time Hollywood director, and he mentioned in this interview that he and his wife. Had named 3 of their 4 kids, 3 girls actually. They named their three girls after the places where they had been conceived. Now, I thought at the time that was kind of cute, but then as I thought about it further, I realized this is not going to work for a lot of people. I'm not going to go into the reasons why. And it also can be a lifelong embarrassment for the kids. Well, we all know that God names things after what they are. Humans do not always do that. In the Bible, many personalities were named for what they had done and what they had accomplished, but not always. In other words, it's not a rule of thumb that you can use all the way through the Bible for every name. In Genesis 27:36, when Esau finds out what Jacob had done, that Jacob had stolen his blessing yet another time, he says, Is he not rightly named Jacob, which means supplanter or deceiver. But then you look at the meanings of the names that Tira, Abraham's father, gave his boys. Now, tira means slowly born, so it probably describes the circumstances of his birth. But then his three boys he named Abraham. Which means father of elevation. I'm not sure where that applies. Nehor means breathing hard. Haran means very high or mountaineer. And I thought maybe Tiro was a mountain climber. I do not know why I would name the boys Father of Elevation and Breathing hard and mountaineer, but It did not exactly, they did not have a lot of meaning, so that's why I say it's not a rule of thumb that you can use across the board. My daughter, Terry, you probably know, is expecting in February, and one of the names she would like to consider if it's a boy, is Jackson, which means son of Jack. But since my son-in-law is Argus, I thought maybe Argason. Arguson would, but it's kind of Japanesey sounding maybe. But Jackson is means son of Jack. Jack is a form of John and John means God is merciful, and that is the SBS of this sermonet, God is merciful. And I want to prove this point by continuing with the subject of names and their meanings. So let's go back to the genealogy of Noah in Genesis 5. Genesis 5, pretty much the whole chapter. Starts with Adam, takes us all the way through to Noah. We're probably fairly familiar with this. We've all read it at one time or another. I'm not going to read each detail, but essentially, Adam had Seth, that is in verse 3. Seth had Eni. You go down to verse 6. Enish had Canaan, who had Mahalliel. Who had Jared, who had Enoch, who had Methuselah, who had Lamech, who fathered Noah. This runs through the whole chapter, and it gives the age of each of the, the men when they had their, their son and when they died. Now due to the length of life in those pre-flood days. If you think about it, Noah had quite the collection of forefathers from which he could learn. Quite a few of them were still alive during his time. At the time Noah was born, only Adam, Seth, and Enoch had died. All the rest were still alive. Now we do not know in what proximity they live to each other, but I look at my household, I have 4 generations living in my house. There is no, it's not unreasonable to think that families would stay clustered in the same areas. And if that's the case. And if Noah was so inclined, and I have no reason to think otherwise, he would have had 84 years to spend with his great, great, great, great, great grandfather Eno. He would have had 179 years with his great, great, great, great grandfather, Canaan. He would have had 234 years with his great, great, great grandfather, Mahalal. 366 years with his great great grandfather Jared. Now his great grandfather Enoch had unfortunately been dead about 69 years when Noah was born, but he did have 595 years with Lamec, his father. But what I'm getting to. Is his grandfather Methuselah. Noah shared an amazing 600 years in common with his great grandfather, Methuselah. I'm sorry, his grandfather. Now, I think back to my maternal grandfather, who was a favorite of mine. And he had a zillion other grandkids and he lived in another state and he died when I was in my teens, but I still have nothing but very fond memories of him. And what I wouldn't have given to have a few more years with him, much less 600. So why did Methuselah live 969 years, which is what he lived? Methuselah lived. Now, you've heard people say you're as old as Methuselah or he's as old as Methuselah. I'm getting to the point where people are saying it to me, you look as old as Methuselah. He lived 969 years. And he died in the year of the flood. So why did he live so long? And why did he die? In the year of the flood, well, I think the answers are found in the meaning of his name. Let's go back first of all to Enoch. Let's talk about Enoch for a second. He died at the relatively young age of 365. The name Enoch means, according to Herbert Lockyer, teacher or initiated or dedicated. Young's Analytical Concordance has it simply as teacher. Other sources. And I left that book. Where did I leave that book? In the truck. Well, I'll talk about a book I was going to show you and bring you, but I picked, I had a book I ordered called out, it's by Alfred Jones and it's the dictionary of Old Testament Proper names. He wrote this book in 1850 and it's recently been reprinted and I've really enjoyed that book. It's helped me a lot to understand the meanings of these names. What Alfred Jones does is he breaks the names down into their, into their roots. And for Enoch, He, um, he doesn't go with teacher necessarily. He says it means to dedicate or to I'm sorry, one of the roots of Enoch means to dedicate or to train up. So there is a thrust of teaching in Enoch's name as well as initiate or initiating. So what did Enoch initiate? What did he train up? Who did he train up? Well, for one, of course, it would be his son, Methuselah. Now, it's still in Genesis 5, let's go to verses 21 through 24. Genesis 5, Versus 21 and 24. Enoch lived 65 years and begot Methuselah. After he begot Methuselah, Enoch walked with God 300 years and begot sons and daughters. So all the days of Enoch were 365 years, and Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. Now, Hebrews 11:5 says Enoch pleased God. Jude calls Enoch a prophet, so that would make him actually the first prophet named in the Bible. Let's just go ahead and go quickly over to Jude 14 and 15, all the way to the other end of the Bible, right up against Revelation. Jude, 14 and 15. Jude says that Enoch was a prophet. He prophesized of judgment, and that judgment turned out to be the flood. Now in Jude 14 it says, now Enoch the 7th from Adam prophesized about these men also, saying, Behold, the Lord comes with 10,000 of His saints to execute judgment on all, to convict all who are ungodly among them all of their ungodly deeds which they have committed in an ungodly way and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him. Enoch was a man of God. He was living in an evil world back before the flood. And at the time of Methuselah's birth, God evidently began to work with Enoch because it said at the time Eunuch had Methuselah, he began to walk with God. So as a father, he was probably, as any father would be dedicated in training his kids, of which Methuselah was one. But, did he also teach others? Did he initiate, as his name implies, did he initiate discussions with those in the world, telling them about the coming flood? To me it seems very likely he is, he was a prophet. That is what a prophet does. Tradition has it that he was killed by Lamech, not the son of Methuselah, but a descendant of Cain. Because he was a righteous man in a righteous world, in an unrighteous world. But we are told he walked with God, that he was a prophet. And those things have never been popular. Yet before his death he had 300 years to spend with his son Methuselah. Now how many years did we have with our individual physical fathers? Didn't take but 10 years for some of us, or 20, and we had learned quite a bit from these fathers, but Methuselah had 300 years to spend. With Enoch. Plenty of time to, to have Enoch initiate or to teach or to train up the things that he needed him to, to pursue. Now the margin of my King James Version gives the meaning of Methuselah as man of the javelin. Strong's concordant says man of the dart. Herbert Lockyer has man of the javelin, but this is interesting. Herbert Lockyer also says it can mean. It shall be sent So, you run with that a little bit and check other sources. Uh, I do not use this very often, but Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia defined 22 ways. You had Methuselah as man of the DART as well as when he dies, it shall be sent. Now, that's interesting. Christian Answers.net. When he dies, judgment, or when he is dead, it shall be sent. Now the it in this case is the flood. So, There is a, obviously a, um, bit of confusion as to what does Methuselah's name mean. So go back to that book I spoke of earlier, Alfred Jones's Dictionary of Proper Old Testament Names. And he breaks it down into two roots. Methuselah comes from two roots. One is Uh a word M U T H, which means death. No one seems to disagree over that. It's the other root that I would pronounce shellac, S H A L A C H, and it means to bring or to send forth. But if you replace an A with an E. Shellac change the a to an e, it then means Um, a missile or a spear. So, the confusion comes over one letter. Now, the best I can tell that this error was first noticed by a man named Samuel Bocart. I'd never heard of him, French scholar, Protestant minister. Lived from 1599 to 1667, so I looked him up on the internet. The internet can be beautiful for looking things up. It's so quick. This man was very well known in his day. The thing that I was impressed with most, he spoke 18 languages. Uh, I'm still working on one. He spoke 18 languages. But Alfred Jones used him as a source in his work from 1850. And actually defers to Mr. Bocart in the interpretation of Methuselah's name. So, let me quote from this book that I did not bring you. Under the entry of Methuselah, and here is what it says, When he is dead, it shall be sent. That's the meaning for his thing, i.e., the deluge of waters. End of quote. He then goes on and gives the roots and their meanings. And he uses the information from this Samuel Bockart. So continuing with the quote, the ingenious conjecture of Bocart given above is worthy of consideration, for as Enoch was a prophet, he might foresee that a deluge of waters would come upon the earth after the death of his son and name him accordingly. End of quote. And in fact, that's precisely what happened. In the year that Methuselah died. The flood came, and that's very easy to prove, every, very easy to figure out, if you will. Methuselah, it says in Genesis 5:25, was 187 when he had Lame. In verse 28 of Genesis 5, Lamech was 182 when he had Noah. And then Genesis 7:6 says the flood came in Noah's 600th year. So, you do the math. 187 plus 182 plus 600 is 969. It's the age of Methuselah when he died. Now you might wonder, did Methuselah did not, did not he maybe just die in the flood with maybe billions of others? I can't sit here and say unequivocally he did not. But the evidence indicates he did not because at the risk of repeating myself, God names things what they are, and Methuselah means. When he is dead, it shall be sent. Therefore, no floodwaters until Methuselah died. I do not think God would even have had Noah enter the ark until Methuselah died. I do not think he would even had him load the animals. Until Methuselah died. Now, as evil as the world was then and of course it is now, God is merciful. So as long as Methuselah was alive, there was the chance for repentance. Now I grant you that I'm using some conjecture here, but even if my opinions are correct, the odds of the world repenting were probably nil. But the point is, The opportunity was there. God is merciful. 969 years. is what he allowed for this world to, to repent in that particular situation. So Methuselah living 969 years, symbolizes God's mercy. But even the patience of God has an end. Methuselah died. The flood came. Only 8 people survived. Now we've always pictured, I have anyway, that Noah was, was in the years leading up to the flood, not only building the ark but doing a lot of preaching. Letting the people know what was coming, asking them to repent so that they could save themselves. I found a nice quote from Josephus, the Jewish historian, in his book Antiquities of the Jews. And book 1, chapter 3, Quoting here, Noah was very uneasy at what the people did. And being displeased at their conduct persuaded them to change their dispositions and their acts for the better. But seeing they did not yield to him but were slaves to their wicked pleasures, he was afraid they might kill him together with his wife and children and those they'd married, so he departed out of the land. End of quote. So, if Josephus is correct, Noah's preaching was strong enough to cause threats on his life. Now, it seems reasonable, To picture Methuselah alongside Noah in this effort. Now Methuselah by this time was a very old man. But maybe he did not do much public preaching in those days. He maybe left that to Noah, but certainly I think he had to be there lending some support. I can't see Methuselah through 969 years of his life hiding in embarrassment from his name. I believe he had to be a participant, especially since he had 600 years in common with Noah, a very righteous man. So Noah fled his home country to avoid being killed. So at what point in his life did this happen? It had to be before he started construction of the ark. And did Methuselah go with him? I do not know. I rather think that he did. Methuse Methuselah was kind of like the thermometer of God's mercy. When he achieved room temperature. The God's patience was at an end. 969 years. That's how long Methuselah lived. That's how long, start to finish, that Enoch, Methuselah, and Noah preached. That judgment was coming. Let's turn over to I Peter 3. If you would, First Peter 3 and verse 20, because there is a just one line out of that verse that I want to pull. First Peter 3 and verse 20 talks of the long suffering of God in those days and it's breaking into the middle of a thought. It says in I Peter 3:20, which sometimes we are disobedient, that's finishing up another thought. And here is what I want. When once, when once the long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing. God is merciful. Go forward a page or 2 to II Peter 3. II Peter 3 and verse 9, that's a very well known verse here. One more page. And I think this sums up things very nicely. The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but His long suffering toward us. In this case, very merciful 969 years' worth. Not willing that any should perish. But that all should come to repentance.