Before class
Three short passages carry this lesson: Genesis 5:18–27, Hebrews 11:5–6 and Jude 14–15. Read them after you have gone through pp. 28–31 with the spread open. If Stretch 2 is still on the wall, hang Big-Print Stretch 3 (sheets A–D) beside it, since the ribbons carry on across the join. Then copy the tree on p. 30 onto a large sheet or the board, names only, Cain’s line on the left and Seth’s on the right. Last week’s yarn comes back today.
Opening · 5 minutes
Every ribbon on the wall stops somewhere, and that is your way in. Ask, “What do all these ribbons have in common at their right end?” Someone will say that they stop. “Right. When a ribbon stops, the man has died. Adams even writes it down here at the bottom: Death of Adam.” Read the words together. Then point to Enoch’s ribbon, and wait a moment before you speak. “This one stops too. Look at what Adams wrote beside it. Can you find the word death?” Let them hunt. When they find Genesis 5:24 instead, the whole class reads the verse aloud.
At the chart · 15 minutes
1Enoch’s short ribbon. Have a student find ENOCH 365 yrs. on the brown ribbon near the top (pin 2 on p. 28) and read Adams’ note: the godliness and translation of Enoch, and Jude calling him a prophet. Ask the class to work out his years from the two ends of the ribbon, 622 A.M. and 987 A.M. (p. 29). The answer is 365, exactly what Genesis 5:23 says. Then read Hebrews 11:5 and ask what the word “translated” means in that verse.
2The column of Adam’s death. Hold the yarn straight down from the end of Adam’s ribbon, “3074 B.C. 930 A.M.” (pin 8 on p. 29), and ask whom else it crosses. The class should find Enoch, Methuselah, and Lamech, who is already fifty-six. That is Key 6 · Same column, same moment once again. Read Adams’ note that Methuselah “talked with Adam 243 years,” and show that he has two ribbons; the lower one, marked “son of Enoch,” carries his whole life (p. 29).
3Two Lamechs. Turn to the tree you copied from p. 30. Let the class find the two names both families share, Enoch and Lamech, and notice that Seth’s Enoch and Cain’s Lamech sit in the same seventh row. Read Genesis 4:23–24 and then Genesis 5:28–29, one straight after the other. Ask what each Lamech’s words show about his heart: one boasts of vengeance, the other names a son for comfort. Add the note Adams prints about Cain’s family, distinguished “for music, and agriculture, and as workers in brass, iron, etc.”
4Scripture or tradition?. Read three notes aloud without saying where they come from: Josephus on Seth’s family studying “the heavenly bodies” (pin 5), the tradition that Adam had 33 sons and 23 daughters (p. 29), and Genesis 5:24. Ask the class to sort them. Which is Scripture, and which did Adams find in another book? Then show how he labels each one on the chart. Close with the note on p. 31: Jude’s words about Enoch are Scripture, and the book under Enoch’s name is not.
Talk it over · 15 minutes
Enoch walked with God while raising sons and daughters in the same centuries as Cain’s family. What does walking with God look like when the world around you is going another way?
Listen for: Listen for answers that keep Enoch in the world rather than above it. If the class turns him into a hermit, point back to Genesis 5:22: he walked with God after Methuselah was born, as a father.
Jude remembers Enoch as a prophet who warned of judgment. How do walking with God and warning others fit together in one life?
Listen for: A good answer sees that the warning grew out of nearness to God, not out of anger at people. Read Jude 14–15 if the class needs the words in front of them.
Why does it help you trust the chart that Adams labels the traditions instead of leaving them out?
Listen for: Listen for the idea of honesty: he shows what he found and tells you what kind of thing it is. If someone says he should have cut them, ask how we would know which notes to believe without the labels.
To close
“But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”Hebrews 11:6 · KJV
Give us, Lord, a faith like Enoch’s, to walk with you through an ordinary week in the world as it is.
With younger children (6–10)
A walking game teaches Enoch better than a talk. One child leads and the others follow right behind; then sit down together and ask what it means to walk with someone all day long. Tell his story in a few plain sentences and let them find his ribbon: it is short, and it ends without the word death. Lay a long paper strip for Adam beside a short one for Enoch and ask which man God took. Then learn Genesis 5:24 by heart together.