“It’s a Miracle: Methuselah”
Genesis 5:27
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Born February 21, 1875, Jeanne Louise Calment is the oldest woman who has ever lived. And through her 122 years of life, she’s endured two World Wars, as well as the advent of television, modern medicine, airplanes, the automobile, the computer, and the internet, not to mention a host of other things that we take so much for granted today.
No matter how old she was, she was always active. She took up fencing when she was 85 and still rode a bicycle at 100. She played herself in a movie at the age of 114, becoming the oldest actress to ever appear in a film.
And through it all, she never lost her sense of humor. She said: “I had to wait 110 years to become famous. I want to enjoy it as long as possible.” When visitors stopped by, they said, “Goodbye and until next year perhaps?” And each time, she would answer, “I don’t see why not! You don’t look so bad to me.” And when someone asked her on her 120th birthday what she expected of the future, she replied, “a very short one.”
Finally, in August of 1997, she died in southern France, in a nursing home, at the ripe old age of 122 years, 164 days old.
Old age is a blessing, but sometimes it’s not so easy. As someone once put it in a poem: “Thought I’d let my doctor check me ‘cause I didn’t feel quite right. All those aches and pains annoyed me and I couldn’t get to sleep at night. He could find no real disorder, but he couldn’t let me rest; what with Medicare and Blue Cross it wouldn’t hurt to do some tests. To the hospital he sent me, though I didn’t feel that bad. He arranged for them to give me every test that could be had. I was flouroscoped and cystoscoped; my aging frame displayed, laid flat upon an ice-cold table while my gizzards were X-rayed. I was checked for worms and parasites, for fungus and the crud, while they pierced me with long needles, taking samples of my blood. Doctors came to check me over, prodded, pushed and poked around. And to make sure that I was living, they wired me up for sound. At last they have concluded (their results have filled a page), what I have will someday kill me. My affliction is…Old Age.”
In the words of George Burns, “Tennis is a game for young people. Until age 25, you can play singles. From there until age 35, you should play doubles. I won’t tell you my age, but the last time I played, there were 28 people just on my side of the net.”
And a little boy once asked a woman sitting in a wheelchair in a nursing home how old she was. She smiled and answered, “Thirty-nine and holding.”
He looked at her and said, “How old would you be if you let go?”
Of all those who have ever lived or will ever live, there’s no one older than a man whose name was Methuselah.
Listen to the words of Genesis chapter 5: “When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters…when Methuselah had lived 187 years, he fathered Lamech. Methuselah lived after he fathered Lamech 782 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Methuselah were 969 years, and he died.”
Nine hundred and sixty-nine years! Older than anyone, ever! Thirty-one years short, not of a century, but of a millennium!
Now Adam lived a long time—930 years. Seth, one of Adam’s sons, made it to 912. Noah lived to be 950. But no one can ever beat Methuselah, Mr. Geriatric himself, a walking Ripley’s Believe it or not!
Can you imagine? He met all of the Bible’s main characters, from the very beginning of time. And we wonder—what was it like to meet Cain and to ask why he killed his brother? Did he ask Eve why she took the fruit from the tree in the center of the Garden? Did he ask Adam what it was like to walk with God?
And through it all, as one century turned into another, he knew full well that man was growing worse and worse, as their hearts strayed farther and farther away from God. That’s what it says in Genesis chapter 6: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of his heart was only evil all the time. And the Lord regretted that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him to His heart.”
And that’s when Methuselah came to realize the full meaning of his name: “When he dies, it shall come.”
What shall come? Judgment. Destruction. Death by flood.
And sure enough, just as soon as he died, the rain came down and the flood came up and took the life of nearly every living thing on earth.
How it broke his heart to see what God must do, what man had done.
It’s been said that America is now the oldest society in the history of the world. There’s never been a society with so high a percentage of older people. Material comfort, medical care and a low birth rate have led America to what is called “the graying of America” with an aging population.
Today in America, there are fewer than ever teenagers, holding at some twenty-five million. But the number of those who are over the age of 65 is growing—some forty million and counting, more than at any other time in U.S. history. And with the aging of America comes great challenges as well as great opportunities.
Solomon, in the book of Ecclesiastes, had something to say about old age. He wrote: “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them.’”
And he went on to describe those days. He wrote: “The day that the watchmen of the house tremble and the mighty men stoop, the grinding ones stand idle because they are few, and those who look through windows grow dim…and one will arise at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song will sing softly.”
What’s he talking about? The picture is a house, but it’s a symbol of the human body. The watchmen are the arms and hands that start to shake as you grow old. “The watchmen of the house tremble,” he said. The mighty men are the legs that stoop and bend. The grinding ones, the teeth, are idle, because they’re few. You can’t see so well because your eyes, the windows, are dim. A bird wakes you, because you sleep so lightly. And since you can’t hear, the daughters of song sing softly.
And he said, your hair turns white as, “the almond tree blossoms,” and your strength fails, as “the grasshopper drags itself along.”
But did you know that, even though you’re not quite what you used to be, you’re a great, great blessing both to your family and to your church?
You know what many youth do not yet know. You’ve seen too much and you’ve felt too much to know that life isn’t easy. You know that sometimes it’s hard and bitter, cold and lonely.
You’ve buried your parents. You’ve buried sisters and brothers. You’ve heard a surgeon explain what he did to try to save your life partner. You’ve sat at a bedside while a loved one died.
You’ve watched a child rebel from everything they once believed in. You’ve lost a child from cancer. You’ve sent a son or daughter off to war. You’ve seen it all. You’ve felt it all.
You know what it is to love and to not be loved in return and to forgive when there seems to be no reason at all.
And you know that in spite of all the hospitals, all the funerals, and all the losses and disappointments of life, God is faithful, and He will never, ever, ever let you go.
Think of the words of Isaiah chapter 46: “Even to your old age, I will be the same. And even to your graying years I will bear you! I have done it, and I will carry you; I will bear you and I will deliver you.” Or Proverbs chapter 20: “The glory of the young is their strength; the gray hair of experience is the splendor of the old.” Or Psalm 71: “And even when I am old and gray, O God, do not forsake me, until I declare Your strength to this generation, Your power to all who are to come.”
You know the story of John Newton, as he once captained his own slave ship, and brought them, bound and chained, from Africa to England. You know that, one day, in a dark and dangerous storm, when he was afraid for his very life, he gave his heart to God. And you know that, eventually, he gave up the slave trade and became a pastor. He even wrote the words of the hymn, “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.”
But what you may not know is that when he came to the end of his life, at the age of 82, he said to a friend, “My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things very clearly: that I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Savior.”
And that’s the good news for the old, for the middle-aged and for those who are newly born. We are great sinners, but Christ is a great Savior.
Methuselah lived 969 years. That’s a long time! But we, by God’s grace, will live forever.
As Paul once wrote to the Corinthians: “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
We thank You, dear Father, for the story of Methuselah and the witness of the aged. Grant that each of us, both young and old, may live a life wholly dedicated to You, by grace, for Jesus’ sake. Amen