So the walk of faith begins with believing that God is who He is, and that He is a personal Savior who will reward those who seek Him. He was pleased with Enoch not because of his works, but because of his what? Faith in who God is. Welcome to Grace to You with the Bible Teaching Ministry of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson.
It's a statistic that is nearly absolute. Ten of every ten people will die. I say nearly absolute because there have been two exceptions: the prophet Elijah, and an Old Testament saint named Enoch, who, because he walked with God, skipped death and went directly to heaven.
Now you're obviously not going to avoid death like Enoch did, but you can follow Enoch's example. And have a faith that prepares you for heaven. See how today, as John Macarthur continues his series from Hebrews 11, titled "A Faith That Pleases God." So, turn in your Bible to the book of Hebrews, if you're able. As John begins the lesson, Hebrews chapter 11, verses 5 and 6. 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. And without faith, it is impossible to please him. For he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him.
So the first example of faith is Abel, the son of a son of Adam and Eve, who demonstrated that he would come to God by faith, not by works, by confessing his own sin and realizing that he was unworthy and needed a sacrifice before he could approach God. The second example then is Enoch. If Abel tells us about how you enter the life of faith. Enoch tells us how you live the life of faith, or how you walk by faith, and he is identified as having walked with God.
Now, what you have in the story of Enoch is a kind of a primeval, pre-flood spirituality lesson. And I would remind you that it's not harsh legalism, as some people would assume the Old Testament would propound. That you know, in the Old Testament, it was all about legalism. No, it wasn't. God was not a distant, sort of demanding deity, which you appeased by sacrifices and and ceremonies and morality, spirituality.
In the very earliest years, was a matter of walking with God. God was a companion. God was not a distant deity. And this man was in daily, intimate communion. With God, we remember others who had that, namely Adam and Eve.
Right before the fall in the garden, they walked and talked with God. Right in the cool of the day, they had that intimate communion. Then came the fall, thrown out of the garden, and now all of a sudden, finally, we find somebody who's been reconciled and who's now walking in communion with God. A communion restored. Another way to view this—that he walked with God—is to say that he was a saved man.
He was a saved man, and this, dear friends, is what God has always desired and what God has always provided. God has never been a distant God. God has never been a demanding, transcendent God. He is also an imminent, personal God. Eunuch is a major teacher to us here.
When one comes to God in the way that Abel came, recognizing sin and realizing the need for a sacrifice, which anticipates the very death of Christ, when one comes realizing that he deserves death, and the substitute is killed in his place, when one comes realizing he can't earn his way in like Cain tried to do, he then enters into that relationship with God and is a very personal, personal relationship. Enoch must have understood sacrifice for sin. He must have understood repentance, but he also understands personal communion with God. He entered through the sacrifice, the means of sacrifice pointing to Christ, and he is a classic, timeless illustration of the walk of faith that one day ends in entrance into glory.
Now let's look at our text in Hebrews chapter eleven and just kind of pick a few things out of here that will give us an insight into what it means to walk with God. First of all, and we'll find this as you noticed when I read it in verse six, verse five, saying he was not found; nobody could find him. Imagine that. Where's Enoch? He didn't come home for dinner.
All the kids are saying, "Where's dad?" The wife is saying, "Where is he?" He wasn't found because God took him up, for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God, which is the same as saying he was walking with God. And then comes the lesson as to what it means to walk with God or what it means to please God. Verse six: Without faith, it is impossible to please Him. There's the first and dramatic, dynamic lesson of the entire chapter. The only way to walk with God, the only way to please God, is by faith.
And it all starts with that. You you can't please God. You can't be reconciled to God. You can't walk with God. You will not enter into the glories of eternal life apart from faith.
That is a statement that ought to be underlined in everybody's mind. Without faith, it is impossible to please Him.
So corrupt.
So polluted is man's fallen nature, even in the first generation after the fall, that he cannot of himself do anything that is pleasing to God. Those who are in the flesh—it's Romans eight eight. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Cannot please God. Faith alone pleases God.
Enoch believed God. Enoch put his trust in God as his Savior, his God, and thus he was reconciled to God and received by God.
Now let's break it down a little bit. What does it mean to put your faith in Him?
Well, first, he who comes to God must believe that He is. That is a great statement. It's a simple statement. But it's profound. He who comes to God must believe that He is.
What do you mean by that?
Well, if I could just extend that, if I have, if I had translated this verse and this context, I might have added some things in italics. Occasionally, you see a couple of things there, even in that verse. I would have added this little phrase: "He who comes to God must believe that He is who He is." You get the same thing if you just put the emphasis on He. He who comes to God must believe that He is. That is not just saying, "Oh, I believe there's a God.
Oh, I believe in God. I'm very spiritual." But that He is who He is, the only true God. Not just any God will do. Not just some God will do. Not just the notion of God will do.
That's not sufficient. You must believe that he is the God, whom he is. And how do you know the God who is God by virtue of his revelation? He has revealed himself, even this early in human history, in that first millennium of human history. God had revealed himself again and again and again.
People knew who he claimed to be, and Enoch believed that. It is not enough for anyone to believe in the concept of God, the idea of God, the notion of God, the reality of God. You must believe in the God who is God. And for us, that even is further defined. You must believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the One who is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
You must believe in the true and living God who has revealed Himself incarnate in Christ. That is why you can't be saved apart from Jesus Christ, because that's an incomplete view of God. It's very popular today to say, "Well, if you just believe in the God of the Old Testament, if that's all the information you have, that's enough." No, because that's not all that God has revealed Himself to be. He is a Trinitarian God in the fullness of His revelation, who manifests Himself in Jesus Christ. The New Testament writers say He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
That's where the testimony, the witness, as verse five puts it, of Enoch's reconciliation with God begins. He believed in the true God as He had revealed Himself—a God of holiness and righteousness, a God who hated sin. That would have been eminently clear. A God who required a sacrifice, death for sin. A God who had made it clear that men can't earn their way in.
He believed all of that. He believed God to be the God that God is.
Now you cannot come to God if you do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who is God in human flesh, and whose deity was manifest and validated by the resurrection from the dead.
So the first thing that marks Enoch is that he believed in the true God as He had revealed Himself, and again the revelation is progressive. There's more of it after him through the Old Testament, and the full revelation comes in Christ in the New Testament. We saw that in the beginning of Hebrews chapter one, verse one: God spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets, in many. Portions and in many ways, in these last days, has spoken to us in His Son. That's the completion of the full revelation.
So Enoch believed what God had revealed to be true about Himself. He believed in the God who is who He is. Secondly, he believed that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. That is to say, that he is the redeemer, that he is the savior. He believed that God rewards those who pursue Him.
I mean, what critical truth that is! He believed that God was a personal, forgiving, loving, gracious God. Who would provide salvation to those who sought him? That's what being a rewarder means. Enoch knew that he did not believe in some distant cosmic cause.
He believed in a personal, caring God who wanted to be reconciled to him in a personal way—a loving God with whom he could fellowship and to whom he could be restored. It wasn't the God that Einstein talked about—the cosmic force, impersonal and unknowable. He said that kind of thing doesn't please God at all. Einak believed in the God who is God, as He revealed Himself, and he believed that that very God was a Savior of sinners, who would embrace a penitent who came by faith. And sought him.
I mean, this is the wonderful, wonderful truth that sets Christianity apart from every other religion in the world. No other religion has a God who is a rewarder. All other religions have a God who is a punisher, who is indifferent, who is diffident, who is distant, who is to be appeased. Whose primary attitude is one of anger. But the true and living God is a rewarder of those who seek Him, even though they are sinners, and even though they cannot commend themselves, they cannot do anything to achieve reconciliation with Him.
They cannot, on their own, please Him. Still, as Psalm fifty-eight, eleven put it, there is a reward for the righteous. Or Proverbs eleven, eighteen: "To him that seeks righteousness shall be a sure reward." In other words, this is to say that God is a savior.
So the walk of faith begins with believing that God is who He is, and that He is a personal Savior who will reward those who seek Him. He was pleased with Enoch not because of his works, but because of his what faith in who God is. He was pleasing to God. And this was the mark of his whole life. Wow, his whole life.
As I said, when we started out, he lived in a very corrupt time. Maybe a kind of corruption that would be inconceivable to us. You know, it's bad enough to live seventy years as a fallen being. How would you like to live three hundred? What kind of a record of sin would you accumulate?
What kind of an exposure level would you have to corruption? I don't know about you, but the older I get, the sweeter heaven appears to be, and I really am not. You know, it's okay. I am not into gold streets and jeweled hinges and pearl gates. I mean, that's kind of neat to see, but the appeal of heaven is the absence of sin.
That's the appeal. I can't imagine what it would be like to live 300 plus years exposed to an increasingly corrupt world. As we break up his walk a little bit and just talk about the elements of his walk, if I can do that, there are some components of what it means to walk with God. First, it assumes reconciliation. It assumes reconciliation.
Amos three three. How can two walk together unless they're agreed? Which is picked up, isn't it, by Paul in his letter to the Corinthians, where he says that how can two walk together unless they're agreed? How can you know God have fellowship with Satan? That's that's not possible.
So two walking together presupposes agreement, presupposes harmony, presupposes reconciliation. Therefore, presupposes salvation. Enoch is a is a saved man. I think that's the way to say it. He's been saved from his sin.
He's been given salvation. The second thing that comes to mind when you talk about walking with someone is not only reconciliation, but corresponding nature. Corresponding nature. I can't walk with God unless I possess some faculty which we share in common, and that's the marvelous reality of what salvation does. It not only reconciles us to God, but in that reconciliation, God disposes to us His own nature.
We become new. Light has no communion with darkness. To go back to Paul's language, no sinner can walk with God. They have no common life. I can't be pals with a goldfish.
It's impossible. There's a difference in nature. It eliminates that possibility. And perhaps you need to go back and read Second Corinthians six fourteen to sixteen, where all these things are laid out. Thirdly, walking with God not only presupposes reconciliation and a corresponding nature, but it also presupposes.
Moral fitness, moral fitness. God doesn't just walk with anybody. And again, that's Second Corinthians six. Maybe I should read it to you because I'm referring to it enough times. And it's it's crystal clear.
Don't be bound together with unbelievers. What partnership has righteousness and lawlessness?
Well, God is absolutely righteous, and sinners are absolutely unrighteous or lawless.
So I can't imagine that a lawless person or an unrighteous person is going to walk with God unless there's something dramatically that's happened to change his moral character. And by the way, God doesn't ever deviate out of the path of holiness. He doesn't take a side trip over to you living in unholiness. God always stays on the path of holiness. In him is light, First John, and in him is no darkness at all.
He never does evil; he's too pure to look on evil. The prophet said, "He never deviates out of the way of holiness." So, if we're going to walk with God, guess what? We got to get on the way of holiness.
So, before we can walk with God, we have to be then before God viewed as what? Righteous. You may think of the idea of imputed righteousness as a New Testament concept, but it would have to be an Old Testament concept, because Enoch or anybody else who walked with God, Noah or Abraham or any of the others, would have to be covered with righteousness, or God wouldn't commune with them. God demands that all who are in His company surrender to that righteousness. Enoch walked with God for three hundred years.
He was a believer for three hundred years of his life, and the implication is that he was walking in communion with God. That would be true since salvation is permanent. But I think it's more than that because he pleased God. I think that's something that has to be a desire in your heart. You don't roll out of bed and end up pleasing God.
It's intentional. It's something you pursue. It's a passion. It's where you get now into the disciplines of grace. The New Testament often calls it walking in the Spirit.
And if you break down how we walk in the New Testament, we're told to walk in the Spirit. Third John four, we're told to walk in truth. Romans thirteen thirteen is told to walk in honesty. Ephesians five two walk in love. Ephesians five eight walk in light.
Ephesians five fifteen walk in wisdom. Ephesians two ten walk in holiness.
Now there's something else to be said about Enoc as we kind of wrap up our thoughts. When you're living in a corrupt society that's declining, that's heading toward a devastating judgment in which the whole world is obliterated except for eight people. And you're a godly person. You're going to be concerned about what's happening around you, no question. Truly godly person doesn't just take that.
And so we find out something about Enoch that's really important for us to know, and it's in Jude. It's in Jude. That little letter tucked under the shadow of the Book of Revelation. And it's a most interesting statement about Enoch because it tells us that he was a preacher. He was a preacher.
It's a good thing if he was the best man of his age. He he would be well served by being the preacher, and God would be well served as well. Verse fourteen of Jude, and Jude has been writing about false teachers, false prophets. And he says in verse fourteen, it was also about these men, meaning false prophets, who were already around in Enoch's day. Already, Satan had his operation going full blast.
False teachers were all over the place. False prophets were everywhere. And Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, he is the seventh generation from Adam, according to the genealogy, prophesied. Or preached, saying, "Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him." Wow, he was a classic prophet, wasn't he? I mean, in one sentence, he used ungodly four times.
By the way, this quote does not appear in the Old Testament. It is something Enoch prophesied. Clearly, he prophesied this because the Holy Spirit led Jude to write it down as a legitimate prophecy that came from Enoch. If it's not in the Old Testament, how did they know about it?
Well, there was a lot of oral tradition. There was lots of oral tradition passed down and passed down and passed down. And Enoch was a hero to the Jews. He was a man who walked with God. He was a man who walked right into heaven.
They knew that. He was a man who should have been at the pinnacle of godliness in their their annals. They greatly revered him, and so they protected the the statement that he made, which defined his prophecy. And eventually, through the centuries, it was passed on orally, and then it was written down. And it was written down in what we call a pseudo-pigraphal book called First Enoch.
The Jews were familiar with it. The affirmation here indicates that it was inaccurate. Not everything recorded was accurate, but this was. And what was his message to his generation? What did he say for 300 years?
He said, "The Lord is coming, and He's coming with many thousands of His holy ones, and He's going to execute judgment, and it's going to fall on all the ungodly." With all their ungodly deeds done in an ungodly way, and all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him, he was a judgment preacher. I think that's where the the best of the godly ultimately end up. I suppose if Enoch were alive today, he'd be a problem not only for the world but the church. He'd irritate the seeker-sensitive group. But here was a man whose character and walk with God showed up in the power of his preaching, and his preaching was judgment.
Why? Because judgment was coming. It was bound up in his own son's name, Methuselah. It came to pass in the flood. But the truth of the matter is, that's not a prophecy of the flood.
That's not a prophecy of the flood. That's a prophecy of the final judgment, when the Lord comes with many thousands of His angels. That's a prophecy of the return of Christ. That's a prophecy of the end of human history. Wow.
He was looking long, long down the road, wasn't he? You're listening to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. Thanks for being here as we continue John's study of faith that pleases God.
Well, friend, it's easy to hear a message like today's and assume that Enoch's faith, his obedient walk with God, is something Christians today could never have.
Some years ago, we asked John, "Why was that an unbiblical idea? Why Enoch's faith is no different from the faith God promises believers today?" Here's what John said: "No, faith is faith, and faith is a gift of God, and God gives." Same saving faith to anyone who puts trust in Him.
So yeah, when you think about the faith of the heroes in Hebrews chapter eleven, you might think, well, that's some kind of other faith. That's some kind of transcendent faith. That's certainly not the kind of faith that I could have in my life. There's only one kind of faith. There's only one kind of believing in God, and God grants that faith.
Remember what Paul said: It's not of yourselves; it's the gift of God. God, when He gives saving faith, gives essentially the same kind of faith—a faith that overcomes doubt, overcomes fear, overcomes unbelief, overcomes sin, and reaches out for salvation through faith in Christ. This is the kind of faith God gives. Then you look at the heroes of the faith, and you say, "Well, wait a minute! It wasn't just faith to believe in God; it was faith in the face of all kinds of difficulties." And that again is the same faith that we as believers have.
And the difficulties are are the best things in life. You say, "What are you talking about?" We are made strong through our trials. Embrace your trials. Do you remember the scripture says? That when you are weak, you are strong.
Second Corinthians twelve, Paul says, his strength is perfected in our weakness. Weakness becomes a strength. It's when you come to the end of your own resources, when you have come to the point where you don't trust yourself anymore, that all your trust is put in the Lord, and that unleashes His full power in your life. Yes, friend, and to help you grow stronger in faith from the hardships you endure, let me remind you about the book Twelve Unlikely Heroes. You're going to be encouraged as you see how these everyday men and women trusted God even in horrible circumstances, and how you can do the same.
Order your copy of Twelve Unlikely Heroes when you contact us today. The number to call is eight hundred fifty-five Grace, or you can order from our website gty dot org. Twelve Unlikely Heroes costs ten dollars, and shipping is free. Again, to pick up twelve unlikely heroes, call eight hundred fifty-five Grace, or go to gty.org. And keep in mind that the message you just heard on the heroes in Hebrews eleven and the other lessons from John's current study, titled "A Faith That Pleases God," all of these are available free of charge at our website.
You can download the MP3 audio as well as the written transcripts, and in fact, all of John's Sermons over 3,600 messages are free in both formats. We also have free apps for your mobile devices, so you can take John's Bible study resources wherever you go. Find the links for downloading the apps at gty.org. And now for the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Watch Grace to You television this weekend.
Check your local listings for station and times, and then be here Monday when John MacArthur looks at the faith of Noah and what you can learn from his example. It's another thirty minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.
