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INTRODUCTION
What can you say about Enoch? My first thought is “Not much.”
Yet actually “Plenty.”
Three Scriptures:
- Genesis 5:21-24
- Hebrews 11:5
- Jude 14-15
Hebrews 11 is the Hall of Fame of Faith, Famous Folks of the Faith. They are examples to us on how
we can believe and live by faith today.
What can we learn from Enoch’s life of faith? Point 1 is Most Important:
1. Enoch “was pleasing to God.”
- The writer of Hebrews declares that a person of faith lives a life that is
“pleasing to God”, Hebrews 11:5;
- The writer of Genesis describes faithful Enoch as the one who “walked with
God” Genesis 5:24
- Similar concepts - both speak of close relationship, deep fellowship, pure communion,
mutual joy with each other’s company, faithfulness.
- Gen. 5:21-22 Enoch began walking with God when his son Methuselah was born,
Enoch was age 65 and walked with God for 300 years.
- Interesting family history about Enoch:
(Jude 1:14) 7th generation from Adam through Seth is Enoch 5:18-24
- However, 7th generation from Adam through Cain is Lamech 4:18-24
- Bigamy, murder and arrogance
- Enoch faith life demonstrated righteousness, Lamech’s fleshly life demonstrated
evil.
- Walking is a great metaphor - pictures a whole life relationship.
ILLUS: Going for a walk is personal time alone with another, couples, parents and
kids. Holding their hand. Photos of me and Dale and Trey.
QUOTE: Uncle John: Walked in the presence of God, walked at the same pace as God,
and walked according to the precepts of God. (51)
- We are to walk very similarly: the presence of God with God in our thoughts, devotion
and interests; the pace of God by not getting ahead or lagging behind Him; the precepts
of God by walking according to His commands found in the Bible.
- The words “walk” and “please” God in same
verse 1 Thess. 4:1
- Do you live a life walking with God which is pleasing to God?
- We don’t have to be a super saint. Augustine believed we can please God in the
routines of life - doing the dishes or working in our garden.
ILLUS: Do you please God doing chores, mundane, monotonous? Do you please God at
work, in your entertainment, how you rest, raise your family?
- There is a bit more to Enoch - according to Jude 14 not only did Enoch walk
with God, but in his relationship with mankind he was a prophet, preaching righteousness
to an evil world. This is the world that was getting increasingly worse and
Enoch’s grandson Noah and family would be rescued from God’s judgment of the
flood. Sound familiar?
- In Jude 14-15 the world was clearly “ungodly” - 4 times
- “convict all the ungodly”
- “ungodly deeds”
- “ungodly way”
- “ungodly sinners”
- Enoch walked close to God but far away from the evil world.
- We must do that also in our world!
ILLUS: Increasingly more wicked - violence, wars, immorality. In fact in a
generation soon God will bring judgment upon this earth not with flood but with
tribulation - there is rescue plan for the saints illustrated by Enoch.
- Enoch so closely walked with God and so pleased God that...
2. Enoch “was taken up”
- Genesis 5:24 “Enoch walked with God; and he was not for God took him.”
- The Hebrews 11:5 text stress his translation after his walk with God
“By faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death; AND HE WAS
NOT FOUND BECAUSE GOD TOOK HIM UP; for he obtained the witness that before his
being taken up he was pleasing to God.”
- The mythology of this story is that every day Enoch and God would go for a walk, and
often Enoch would invite God to his house afterwards. One day God invited Enoch to His
house — off to heaven they went.
- “By faith Enoch...” Text stresses his translation after his walk.
- “was not found because God took him up” - disappeared, and people
understood and believed what had happened, they knew his witness.
- Happened at age 365, a young man compared to his generations.
- Only two men experienced this: Enoch and Elijah 2 Kings 2:11
- Foreshadow of the rapture 1 Thess. 4:16-17. God can do this - take us to heaven
apart from death. He can change our corruptible bodies into incorruptible bodies, change
our location from the natural world of earth to the supernatural world of heaven - God
can do that.
ILLUS: We desire the rapture some for selfish reasons - no suffering of death. In
the end times, somehow the Anti-Christ will explain it away and declare it is not an
act of God for good for those who disappeared.
- Enoch’s rapture was seen as an act of God for good, someday the church will be
raptured out of this world - it will be an act of God for our good!
CONCLUSION
What can you say about Enoch? Enoch was pleasing to God. Are you pleasing to God? Are you walking
close to God and far away from evil of this world?
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