Walking with God

One of the not-so-minor hurdles that faces new Christians when they make up their minds to read the Bible is the problem of contending with these genealogies, these ancestral family lines that confront us all over the place. It just seems like the Bible is filled with texts like the one we've just read. If you began your walk with the Lord, reading in Genesis, well you then come up against it in chapter four where you read of the genealogical descent from the line of pain and then chapter five if you're still going strong then you get to read all this stuff that we just read this morning. That usually stops all but the most ardent, but there are some who press on and sure enough when they get the chapter 10 then they got 70 names to contend with and then chapter 11 and other 10 generations and by that time they quit. They figure out I'll think I'll try the New Testament and so they begin in the chapters of Matthew, the gospel, that begins the New Testament. I can see there are a few folks here who've read Matthew in chapter one you have to deal with 42 names of people you've never heard of in three sequences of 14 generations and you think this is about as exciting as reading the telephone book. I don't get anything out of it. You know what are all these Christian brothers and sisters talking about how the Lord spoke to them through this or that passage. It is tedious and boring. The first problem of our text is that it comes across as boring. You may have already tuned out halfway through the reading of the text. It's so tough to hang in there. You're not the kind of person that stays for the credits at the end of movies. You know it's just not thrilling to see who did the hair or the makeup. Well the New Testament tells us if possible. All scripture is God breathed. All scripture. Not just the juicy parts where there seems to be a lot of action. All scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching. That's why we're not permitted to skip over Genesis 5 from the pulpit. Useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness so that the person of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. In other words it's not just here even for our intellectual curiosity. It's here for the practical good. It will do you in training and righteousness to enable you to obey God more adequately. Well how is this possible? It just comes across as so devoid of practicality. So useless. Well let me just begin with. Now I'll take more to unpack this for you, but to begin with point out a couple of things that might be useful as you think of this chapter. And the first point is just to notice the most obvious point and that is how important, imprecious individuals are to God. That God should see fit to fill his scripture with the names of human beings whose accomplishments were not of such note that they're necessarily meriting a chapter or to each. You know just the name and entry as far as we're concerned but nevertheless precious to God. Individuals in the economy of God were critical for his purposes. The fact is you know we might like a passage that has more miracles associated with it or whatever or even our own experience. Jesus once said to the disciples, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. You see this book is but a pale admiration of another book. The Lamb's book of life where the genealogy of the line of promise of the people of God is extended continuously and is all compassing in order to include even your name. Indeed Isaiah chapter 49 says God writes our names on the palms of his hands are engraved where they cannot be forgotten. We are that precious to the Lord. It's a reminder later on in our service and connection with communion we confess our faith using the words of the Apostles Creed and say we believe in the holy Catholic church. The word Catholic there is with a small see it means universal not just Roman Catholic and certainly not just congregational but the universal church of the people of God in all ages the church militant you and I who are now still alive and fighting the good fight with God's help and the church triumphant those who have now passed to glory including our older brothers in the face such as Muthuzola. You and I believe in the communion of saints not just here in this little sanctuary but across the world and through the ages and so this chapter is a window into that you know how some folks get all excited to tell you their family tree and you know when you get your turn it is exciting when you hear their story you know you try to not look to glassy eye pretend to be interested in finding out about that third cousin twice removed or whatever but you see folks these these names are names in your adopted family tree this is our family at one time we had no connection to this text the Apostle Paul and Ephesians chapter 2 says remember that that time you were separate from Christ excluded from citizenship in Israel foreigner to the covenant of promise without hope and without God in the world but now in Christ you who are once far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ constantly you are no longer foreigners and aliens but hello citizens with the people of God members of God's household Ephesians chapter 2 heirs of the promise children of Abraham my ancestors are no longer just horse thieves and draft Dodgers their folks like Enoch walked with God and was not because the Lord took him folks like Noah who was righteous in his generation and Abraham the father of our faith so you got to be a little more interested right this is your family tree a second late connected with I think an even more important point you may have noticed that this is not a complete genealogy as we started reading it says this is the written account of Adam's line when God made man he made him the likeness of God and so on and then when Adam had lived 130 years he had a son in his own likeness in his own image and he named him Seth you may know enough about the events recorded in Genesis to know that Seth in spite of the appearance of this genealogy Seth is not the first born son of Adam and Eve he's not even a second other sons and daughters are mentioned in the text just by way of passing and you know the names of them able for example could have been included he's not why well he was murdered before he could live to have any issue another person is excluded as well omitted as well pain the first born son why well because pain spiritually does not continue in the likeness of God this is a genealogy of the line of promise of the seed of the woman you have to back up and kind of look at Genesis with a wide angle lens and what she will see is that there's this central unifying purpose of the entire book of Genesis and it starts with a promise God made in Genesis 315 concerning two seeds God said I will put enmity between you speaking to Satan and the woman speaking of Eve and between your seed and hers he will crush your head and you will strike his heel Genesis 315 in that text we have this word seed or progeny or descendants this word seed which is characteristic of the book of Genesis in fact it appears 59 times in this book one-third of its occurrences and the entire Bible are packed into Genesis it's a major theme in the book and the reason is here is the promise of a spiritual progeny of Eve as well counter to it a spiritual progeny of Satan the enemy of our souls and now then is set out this expectation of two humanity and the point is made more vivid as you read through these opening chapters where the genealogies are juxtaposed and alternating you start in chapter 4 with the line of pain pain who was the murderer in first John we read this is how we know who the children of God are the children of promise and who are the children of the devil anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God nor is anyone who does not love his brother it's you can tell who the children of the promise are because they just love each other indeed this is the message you heard from the beginning we should love one another do not be like pain who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother so you see there are two humanities set out irrevocably decreed by God and his sovereignty two humanities as you see unfold in the book of Genesis with one of them issuing in a seed of promise an ultimate champion and the line of promise then starts in Genesis 5 it begins with Adam continues on with his son Seth continues on right down to Noah the line of promise continues and is picked up in chapter 11 from Noah Shem all the way down to Abraham and then the promise is given greater focus when Abraham is told that through his seed all the nations of the world will be blessed and the rest of Genesis unpacks that in a kind of typical way helps us to see what it might be to be a blessing to the nation but the promise is not fulfilled until at last we come to Jesus Christ who is the ultimate seed that was promised the seed of the woman well anyway so this chapter you see contributes to this driving thrust of the Old Testament the promise of the Messiah the line of promise set out and traced out for us the second problem that confronts us in the chapter is not only that it's tedious and boring hopefully now no wander soul you seen it here's a critical component to the fulfillment of God's promise of a seed the promise seed of the woman who will defeat Satan the enemy of our soul in addition I think a second problem is it seems like well almost the opposite it's too short Genesis 5 is long and boring as it seemed to some to others who read more carefully recognize it's too short you don't have to be a PhD mathematician to add up the intervals that are listed here and work out what seems to be the chronology of time the span between Adam and the flood and the number works out to be 1656 years and then in Genesis 11 you can continue the chronology and get it from the flood to Abraham and if you add up those intervals it's 422 years put the two together and you get about 2,000 years scholars are all agreed and there's no real much argument about it that Abraham is to be dated about 2,000 years before Christ and so if it's 2,000 years from Christ back to Abraham and 2,000 years from Abraham back to Adam then we know that it seems the creation of the human race was about 4,000 years BC some of you may have some five oaths that you inherited from your grandparents that have in the King James Version in the margins a little note even giving a date for the creation of Adam 4,000 and 4 BC in fact Archbishop James Usher worked it out to October 24 at 9.30 a.m. Usher was a graduate of Cambridge University and William Brewster of Maple Hour fame said that Usher and his other friends from Cambridge University being university men didn't want to be too specific you know they were more careful than not to nail it down to the exact second anyway obviously there's some serious problems with this this is a clearly case it's difficult from a scientific perspective or archaeological perspective archaeologists tell us digging over in Jericho that you have continuous levels of occupation that you can work back 7,000 years that's just in one site if you want to look into early revidences of Neolithic man at Altamira Spain or in southern France you see exquisite paintings of more than 300 species of animals that date at least back to 20,000 BC and including animals that are now extinct because they are so anatomically precise you can identify the Rx for example that's way to early if Adam is just to be dated about 4,000 BC and then that's not even including evidence of earlier burials going at least back to 50,000 BC that would seem to indicate religious sensibility of human beings at that point forget the science problems you got problems right in the Bible problems for example the fact that in spite of our penchant for adding these figures together you'll notice the Bible never does so you would think it would have if it wanted you to you see you're already going beyond the Bible by adding now I know it looks like an obvious thing to do and the Bible does add other intervals it adds the intervals between Moses and the building oh well the giving of the law the promise and Abraham and Moses it adds the intervals between Moses and the building of the temple those intervals are continuous because we have a continuous history from Abraham right down to Jesus but we do not find that kind of addition going on here why well I think the Bible is a reticent to do that because this is not meant to be understood as a continuous genealogy there are gaps deliberately in the text the fact is even a naïve reading just you reading it until it I'm sure that there were gaps because if you assume there are no gaps you have Adam well you have Noah being the very first human being to be born after Adam's death there's way too much overlap if you work out the arithmetic you have Methuselah this man who's in the line of promise dying in the flood that that just doesn't seem right in fact what's worse is if you read it in the Septuagint the Greek translation made 200 years before Christ the numbers are just a little bit different for birth ages and so on but almost the same and in the Septuagint though the numbers work out so that Methuselah survives the flood by 14 years now if that's true then Methuselah not only holds the world's record for longevity at 969 years he also holds the world's record for treading water because he wasn't in the ark now clearly the translators of the Septuagint weren't bothered by that problem because they knew you're not supposed to add the numbers you're not supposed to add them genealogies in the Bible normally have gaps you assume you you must assume gap unless you have reason to think otherwise Matthew chapter one verse one tells us that Jesus was the son of David the son of Abraham a naive reader might think that's 40 years from Abraham to Jesus we know it's 2000 notice the tremendous compression that's involved telescoping that's involved in that kind of genealogy that subsequent 42 names involve similar compression we can show omissions of at least four generations in the very second sequence for instance it's easy to do whenever you have a conventional number in Matthew it's three or 14 generations here in Genesis 10 is especially stereotypical I they're all kinds of genealogies that have just 10 names at the end of route it's just 10 names from I think it's jabas to our paris to David when you have 10 names if selective here in Matt in Genesis 5 it's just 10 generations in Genesis 11 just 10 generations when you have that kind of number symbolism assume compression selectivity and so even though it says it's so and so with a certain number of years when he had so and so as a son that doesn't mean that it is the very first son in terms of offspring in the first generation following that man the language elsewhere in Genesis of the getting as it says in the King James or becoming the father of is used for grandchildren and more remote descendants you can prove this looking in Genesis 46 of Zilpa in Bilha where we have examples so though it might seem to us to become the father of Ottoman we're referring out of the Sun it could be grandson great grandson there could be a thousand generations in fact my own preference rather than 1600 years I'd say I but there's a hundred thousand years between Adam and the flood that's just my hunch but in any case you can't say otherwise based on Genesis 5 or 11 thirdly not only boring not only too short but the lifespans are way too long that's the third problem you know this last week on Friday we are all celebrated or many of us did those of us who are Anglophiles the birthday of the Queen Mum she hit a hundred a hundred years old but don't you see by comparison the Methuselah she's just a young whipper snapper and if you check the Guinness book of world records the present holder who actually died in December is a Sarah Knouse who died at age a hundred and nineteen that's fabulous but it's still nothing compared to the average 900 year life expectancy in our text how can we how can we self-respecting modern Christians believe this stuff isn't this just legendary exaggeration of the most extreme kind well there are many Bible believing fine Christians who worked on this problem and come up with about six different opposing theories and if we had time we could go through them all and talk about their merits and the merits that maybe just one of them I'll mention in passing that you may have heard to try to explain this and make it more acceptable is the thought that perhaps their years aren't the same as our years maybe the earth used to spin a lot more rapidly well we in fact know it did but not in such a recent past but maybe it's fun so quickly that in one of our years they they had ten years you know just because so they had 360 days that they just arbitrarily counted as years that maybe the days went by quicker or something people have made such suggestions and a comment by hitting the earth or a meteorite or whatever and not a comment but a meteorite might have slowed things up well I think that's ridiculous but even for the sake of argument say it's so you work out the arithmetic and fine you can scale down the age of Methusel and say okay one year's ten years okay he hit 96 that's pretty old that's wonderful but if you continue to operate on that assumption then what does that make up enoc when the Bible tells us that he was 65 well now you work out the calculus six and a half years old when he had his first son you just can't make it work and so then what are we to do with it well I think the first thing I want to say is that you ought not fall into the trap of assuming that everyone in the good old days used to live long in Genesis chapter 6 verse 3 there's a verse that has often been misunderstood to this effect it says the Lord said my spirit will not contend with man forever for he is mortal his days will be 120 years some people have fought this means that from now on the maximum life span will be 120 years you may have heard that I don't know how many of you have heard that before that is clearly not what is meant what is meant and as it is understood in the New Testament is this is the countdown to the flood 120 years from now that's it this is the last moment for repentance because we know for a fact that after this after Genesis 6 verse 3 there are many folks who are living as indicated in Genesis 11 for example for life spans of 500 or 400 years and so on so clearly the life span had not contracted to 125 at this point what are we to say then what we are to say it seems to me is to notice this that the only remarkable life span the only notices extraordinary age when a man was blessed with a son or daughter the only notices are in the line of promise it is not said of the line of pain of anybody in the line of pain in Genesis 4 everybody else millions upon millions of people all died normal death and had normal life spans and normal fertility there are only a very few whose experience was so remarkable it was remembered and recorded for us here at least that's the impression the Bible intends to give us and I think it's the correct understanding in fact you could say the line of pain they not only had normal spans most of them were dying young because they're killing each other a cane murderous his brother Abel lame at the end of the line of pain in Genesis 4 says that hey someone bumps into him he bumps them off in Genesis 6 we read that this infection of spirits of violence now became characteristic Genesis 6 11 now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and full of violence in Genesis 6 13 God said to no I'm going to put an end to all people for the earth is filled with violence because of them so the point of the Bible is that all outside the line of promise folks are just killing each other off life lies it's only here that their life has been preserved in this line of promise by God's special providence moreover for most of these folks we don't know a thing about them I couldn't really tell you much about Methusel other than how old he was when he died and how old he was when he had a son but the few cases where we have more details the little windows into the lives of folks these lines in Genesis 5 and in Genesis 11 the line of promise the few windows we have I think are tremendously revealing in Genesis 5 we know more about Enoch in the seventh generation and we know more about Noah in the tenth generation and in Genesis 11 we know a whole lot about Abraham in the last generation just consider the example of their lives where their experiences typical of everybody's for instance in Enoch's case we read in verse 22 then Enoch walked with God 300 years after he became the father Methuselah and he had other sons and daughters and Enoch walked with God and he was not for God took him don't you see that blatant supernaturalism you can't say that oh yeah back and the times before the flood folks just regularly were assumed into heaven no no with Enoch experienced this this amazing translation of his being into the eternal state without passing through death all right what he had was utterly unparalleled elsewhere in the Old Testament the only example we know of is Elijah who the prophet Elijah who also was just taken up into heaven now you can't say you can't generalize and extrapolate and say that's good for everybody no in fact that's unique I'd say he's typical of the line of promise God supernaturally intervening to make a point with respect to the promise of eternal life how about Noah did Noah just live out an ordinary life span no all the ordinary folks drown God supernaturally intervened with revelation and encouraged him to build a arc and then put him in it and so on and preserved his life so his life expecting to see was as long as it was because of God how about Abraham in Genesis chapter 11 we have another genealogy just like this one it starts out with an individual named Shem two years after the flood when Shem was 100 years old he became the father of our poxod you say well I wonder if that was the ordinary thing that folks just had babies at 100 no it's mentioned here and it's mentioned in this line but it isn't mentioned normally how old folks were because everybody else had their babies at the usual rate but at the last person in the line in Genesis 11 is Abraham he also had a son at 100 and don't you see how the more detailed revelation concerning Abraham shed light on the more elliptical reference concerning Shem Abraham lets us in on what's going on when he was told you're going to have a child you're a hundred Sarah's 99 Abraham fell face down and laughed and said to himself will a son be born to a man a hundred years old it's impossible you see it's latent supernaturalism the God of heaven and earth wanting to make a point and what does point why have children born to such old people and such an impossible circumstance with a wife who is well beyond childbearing age well because you see Genesis begins with a promise of a supernatural seed a seed of the woman who will be a champion and will overcome the enemy of our souls and to make the point that this ultimate offspring will be a supernatural origin all along the line punctuated through the genealogy our supernatural births a supernatural birth to Abraham and Sarah of the child to promise the line of promise and Isaac Isaac had the same issue with with respect to Rebecca she was Baron God opened her womb supernaturally she gave birth to Jacob who was again in the line of promise and ultimately all the way down to the Virgin Mary her conception and birth of Jesus was not ordinary it's supernatural again to point to the specialness of this ultimate seed that was promised back in Genesis 3 and why the prolongation of lifespan to make the point that death does not have the last word it's the message of eternal life that Genesis opens up with the tree of life has not been cut down and thrown into the scrap heap the dump burned up there is still access to it God still has a plan that will not be thwarted a plan of eternal life and way back at the beginning of human history to show that death doesn't have the last word long before there was an Easter before they had the promise made sure in the resurrection of Christ that's the basis of our hope already in typological fashion God allowed people to see their life beyond the grave with the example of Enoch and to see the lives of these other patriarchs as little walking visual aids who astounded their contemporaries folks when they met Muthusla and he'd say well hey I hear you having a birthday yeah what is this going to be well hey 969 wow did you hear that long before there were newspapers or CNN or all the rest of it how is it possible that you lived so long how's it possible for you Enoch well they walked with God and we'll talk about that in a moment but the word got out you say what evidence is there that the word got out that the pagans heard this actually some of you may be aware that there are all kinds of evidence outside the bible of the same understanding of the in terms of the history of ancient men a barosis Babylonian priest writing in 300 BC wrote a history of Babylon unaware of the bible writes about how there were 10 kings 10 kings hear it before the flood who ruled 432 thousand years their average lifespan with 43 thousand years hasseid the Greek poet in the 9th century BC writes a similar claims for the early history of mankind the Sumerian kingless from the end of the third millennium tell us about eight kings ruling first fan where each of their life spans is recorded about 30 thousand years and then the flood swept over the earth say well wait about 30 thousand years that's that's even more ridiculous than what we got here the problem is these records were coming out of Sumerian Sumerian uses that base 60 number system sex against the decimal system where we ultimately get well 60 minutes and in an hour and so on I'll go back to the Sumerian so you divide these numbers by 60 and you get virtually the same numbers in our text average life spans around 800 so that even the pagans have a memory of this it works of course it's distorted of course they don't give honor to the real god of heaven and earth but actually the words did get out to a remarkable degree just how can we believe it still did you happen to see in time magazine this last year that work that article and series of articles on longevity I was most intrigued Jonathan Jonathan Winer writes in time magazine records the experimental work of Benzer and Kanopka at Caltech who claimed to have isolated the so-called well they call it the Musuzullah Musuzullah gene which in fruit flies when altered the mutant form of the fruit flies fruit flies live at least a third longer than their peers and they speculate based on this that perhaps they're similar genes in the human genome they're working on it speculate that won't be long before humans have a 200 year life span then the article goes on Winer writes he says this if we died an old age at the same rate we die between the ages of 10 and 15 then most of us in the United States would live 1,200 years I read in time magazine the following the letter is the editor I want to see if anyone wrote back and said oh ridiculous that's stupid and isn't it an astonishing fact that in our day people are ready to believe and entertain the possibility that scientists may someday work out a way to alter the human genome and extend our lives to over a thousand years and yet they stagger at the thought that the god of the universe who spoke it into existence could cause a Musuzullah to live 969 years I don't get it I don't get it of course God is the God of the impossible yeah that which would be totally mind boggling trust he does for his own good purpose and what is his good purpose well it's to teach of course this lesson of eternal life altogether Adam lived nine hundred and thirty years and Denny died Seth lived nine hundred and twelve years then he died Enoch lived nine hundred and five then he died and you go on until you get the Enoch he need Enoch lived 365 years and then it says Enoch walked with God and then he was no more because God took him away God takes him away to make a point in his generation by faith Enoch was taken from this life so he did not experience death he could not be found because God had taken him away for before he was taken he was commended as one who pleased God Hebrews chapter 11 says long before they had the privilege of the fullness of revelation in Christ God gave his people a hope and what is the preparation for that hope well it's walking with God Enoch walked with God we use that sometimes to refer to checking in with God you know in a five minute devotional there's a little booklet you can buy called daily walk how many use it daily walk I mean our circles we have a little reductionistic view I want to ask you are you walking with God you walk with God the way Enoch walked with God how is walk with God used in the Bible well I think normally we would expect you know yes back in Eden people walk with God God walk with them that's what Genesis 2 says God came walking in the garden in Genesis 3 and the revelation closes with the promise you're gonna walk with Christ now Jesus said to this believers at Sardis you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes they will walk with me dressed in white for they're worthy one day if you're in Christ you're gonna walk with Christ but the lesson of Enoch is it already intruded into this life you can have a taste of heaven now you can walk with God Enoch walked with God Noah walked with God the scripture tells us you say well that it must be just way too spiritual for me Jews later on speculated all about Enoch in his life and made up a lot of fictions about it but no the Bible as brief as it is makes it clear he had a very ordinary life he was married in fact had kids when he had Methuselah for whatever reason it was the trigger in his life for starting to walk with God that's critical for the first 65 years he didn't walk with God the Bible goes out of its way to say then he had Methuselah then he walked with God for 300 years out of the 365 what does that mean well you see when you have the kingdom of darkness pitted against the kingdom of the light you've got this seed of those serpent and the seed of the woman the canite line and the Sethite line juxtapose you might think that it's an either or you might think that well you either are born lucky or you're not but you see the line of promise runs right not between men and women but right through the heart of a man or a woman there's a point in Enoch's life when he would not have been in the kingdom of God when he wasn't walking with God now he is now you can be even if you weren't before even if you've got 65 years of baggage behind you walking it alone you can walk with God maybe it'll be well some life change some wonderful blessing that causes you to fall in love with God because you owe him everything he gave you a child or a grandchild or answered your prayer or whatever maybe instead it's a catastrophe maybe having a child is a catastrophe I don't know perhaps having a child made Enoch realize how insufficient he was for this awesome responsibility of bringing up this little one and so he turned to God in daily dependence upon him I don't know all I know is the text said he walked with God we can understand that language as characterizing his life that's the way it's used in terms of the parallelism in Genesis 5 and we can find it used later on in the Bible or at least the analogous expression walking in the presence of God used the Abraham in Genesis 17 Abraham was 99 years old the Lord appeared to him and said I'm God Almighty walk in my presence and be blameless and I will confirm my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your number at the end of Abraham's life he spoke to his servant and he said the Lord be in whose presence I have walked is that's your testimony you walk with God all your life forever since he called you the Lord in whose presence I have walked will send his angel with you and make your journey success a success so you can get a wife from my son from my own clan and from my father's family Abraham uses his life experience as an example for the servant Abraham walk with God and was led by God you'll be as well Jacob at his death bed expands yet further our understanding in Genesis 48 he said as he blessed Joseph he says made the God in whose presence my father's Abraham and Isaac walked the God who's been my shepherd all my life through this day that's in parallel you know what it is to walk with God it's like having him your shepherd and you're the sheep guiding you day in day out the angel who has delivered me from all harm you walk with God when he protects you you see his handy work in that may he bless these boys are you walking with God you say well I'm trying to live an upright life and it's true if you're not living an upright life you can hardly say you're walking with God if you're not walking in the same direction as God is going so living an upright life is not walking with God it's a necessary but not a sufficient condition say I believe the right things I know who God is I was brought up in the church and all right that doesn't mean you're walking with God you may in fact be a missionary well perhaps you're walking for God your life is doing things for him but that's not doing things with him it's not walking with him you're only walking for him you're like the disciples had they not waited in Jerusalem but instead took the message of the good news of Christ's death to the ends of the earth before the spirit came upon them are you walking with God is your faith not just a religion but a relationship yes it was time once that you were separate from Christ without hope and without God in the world God's everywhere but you can be without him Paul says in Ephesians 2 where you without him are you without him now or are you with him he is with you when you are with him the prophet says is he with you but God and his great mercy has brought us into this close intimate relationship with the Savior I pray that out of his glorious riches he will strengthen you with power through the spirit so that Christ made well in your heart through faith he's the living in your heart how you'll walk in with him he said never will I leave you or forsake you low I'm with you always to the end of the age may we walk with him even as our older brother in the face Enoch did let us pray Father in heaven we ask that you would review us for going it alone as we so often do and cause us Lord to repent acknowledge even as Jacob reminds us that if we walk with you you are our shepherd you have shepherd us throughout all of life yeah even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death when it might seem more than in any other time we would have to walk alone no thou art with me thy rod and thy staff they comfort me may we walk with God in the name of the Savior come in