TEXT: Genesis 4:25-5:5
MESSAGE: A Lasting Legacy
“So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.”
Psalm 90:12
“He talked about his experiences in India almost four decades earlier, his study of Buddhism, and his views on reincarnation & spiritual transcendence. “I’m about fifty-fifty on believing in God,” he said. “For most of my life, I’ve felt that there must be more to our existence than meets the eye. I like to think something survives after you die…” — Walter Isaacson (on Steve Jobs)
We learn three truths: The importance of…(1. Knowing God; 2. Prioritizing Relationships 3. The Last Day)
- 1. Knowing God (v. 1)
“This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God.”
“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” — Revelation 22:13
- “In June 2002 a conference was held at Dartmouth Medical School, in which the leading scientists and medical professionals were brought together to try to determine, “what was it that was causing the explosion of mental illness in America?” And what these scientists discovered was the following in their study “Hardwired to connect.” Human Beings are fundamentally wired for relationship and that the youth in America are experiencing a breakdown in two primary areas in relationships, one of those was other people…and the second primary relationship is with God himself. Secular scientists saying that a breakdown in those two relationships are contributing to mental illness.” — Brian Fikkert
“Knowing about God is crucially important for the living of our lives…Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfold, as it were, with no sense of direction, and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul.” ― J.I. Packer, Knowing God
- Prioritizing Relationships (v. 2-3)
“Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. 3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.”
“…it is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” — Genesis 2:18
Look at v. 2 — “Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created.”
In 2011, Linda and Charlie Bloom wrote an article in Psychology Today entitled “Who comes first, the kids or the marriage?” and here’s what they said…Making your kids the centerpiece of your lives may seem like a good idea, but generally it’s not…When one or both partners make their children’s happiness a higher priority than the health of their marriage, they run the risk of neglecting the needs of the marriage, and in doing so, fostering feelings of resentment, neglect, resignation, and alienation in themselves and/or each other.”
- The Last Day (v. 4-5)
“The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died.”
“Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”— James 4:13-17
“And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth, for she said, “God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.” 26 To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh.” — Genesis 4:25-26
“Preach the Gospel, die, and be forgotten.” ― Count of Zinzendorf
TAKEAWAYS: How does knowing God transform your life and legacy?
- It Reorients
“As I lay out in my new book, “Alienated America,” in middle-class and working-class America, the more religious counties do better, and the least religious counties do worse. There are piles of data on this. Men who go to church regularly are, according to various studies, more likely to get married, and less likely to cheat on their wives or girlfriends, to abuse them, or to get divorced. It’s the same for kids. Churchgoing kids abuse drugs less and have better relationships with their parents, according to Robert Putnam, author of “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.” — Tim Carney
- It Humbles
- It Redefines
“There is no peace like the peace of those whose minds are possessed with full assurance that they have known God, and God has known them, and that this relationship guarantees God’s favor to them in life, through death and on for ever.” ― J.I. Packer, Knowing God
“…the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.” — Luke 3:38