We are in a series. This is only week two.
So, if you missed last week, I encourage you to go back. I did a little bit of a deeper dive of an introduction on just what faith is because we are in Hebrews 11, which is what many people refer to as the hall of faith. Faith, the Hall of Faith. In fact, that's what we've titled the series. And we're slowly kind of working through Hebrews chapter number 11.
And we are going to be in this for the next several months.
So just understand, buckle up, you know where we're going. And each week we are going to look at a different character of Hebrews chapter number 11. And we're going to look at these characters and we're going to look at their life from what we know of their life and what we can learn from them. about faith.
Well, we can learn from them about faith. And as we dive in, there's a big idea that I'll mention about the series that I want you to understand because as you look at this, it's easy to kind of become infatuated with the individuals in the stories. It's easy to kind of look at them, and that's the epitome of who we want to be like, and different things like that. And there's some good things about them, and we are going to learn a lot about them.
So I definitely don't want to downplay that. But Hebrews 11. It it isn't about how great these people were. I want you to understand it. They weren't super Christians.
They weren't like these superhero type of Christians that we think of or whatever. They're normal people.
So each character of Hebrews 11, it isn't about how great these individuals, these characters, are. It is about how great the God they trusted in is. And each week of this series, I want you to come away, not with just, man, you know, Abel and Enoch and Noah and all these guys, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. These guys were just these super Christians that we could never be like, we can never become, we can never, because they're just amazing superhero Christians, and we are not. I don't want you to, they're normal people just like you and me.
They doubted, they struggled, they sinned, they made mistakes. I mean, there were all sorts of things that they did as we look at their lives. And I want you to know that for each of them, they're normal people just like you and I. And so Hebrews 11 is not about them, it's about how great the God they trusted in is. And that can be true of your life as well.
And so last week we looked at Abel in week one of the series. And this week we are going to look at. Enoch. Enoch. We're going to look at Enoch.
In fact, I'll read this to you: Hebrews 11, verse 5. Here's what it says: By faith, Enoch was translated. That he should not see death. and was not found. because God hath translated him.
For before his translation He had this testimony. That he pleased God. And here's what I'll take. Let's just be honest. We're going to talk about Enoch for the time that we have here today.
And let's be honest about something up front. We don't know a whole lot about Enoch. And I'm not just saying that because you haven't studied his life. The scripture doesn't say a whole lot about it. He's not a guy.
Many of you are probably thinking, I've never heard a sermon. Of Enoch, right? I've never heard a whole sermon dedicated to this man because the scripture doesn't say a whole lot about him. Enoch, a little bit about him, in scripture, he's mentioned in three books of the Bible. He's mentioned in the book of Genesis.
He's mentioned here in Hebrews. And he's also mentioned in the book of Jude. He's mentioned three times in the three books of the Bible that he is mentioned in. It encompasses about seven or eight, I believe, verses about him. And most of the verses about him are about two specific things.
Who his relatives were. And how long he lived. It doesn't say a whole lot about his life. And so today I want to show you a few things about his life that we do know and that we learn from scripture. But I want you to understand we don't know a whole lot about him, just seven or eight verses in the entire Bible dedicated to him.
And that's who we're going to look at today. A little bit of background about him. The name Enoch in Hebrew. It means dedicated. Or consecrated.
That's what his name means in Hebrew. He lived about 400 years. Before Noah. He lived about 400 years before Noah. And so Enoch is actually the great.
Grandfather. to Noah. Enoch had Methuselah, which is the oldest man that ever lived. Anyone know how old Methuselah was? 969 years old.
That's pretty old, right? Nobody in here is even close to that.
Some of you may feel close to that, but you're not, all right? But Enoch had Methuselah, and Methuselah had Lamech, and Lamech had Noah.
So Enoch is his great-grandfather, and he appears, like I said, in three times in three books of the Bible. And what we know about Enoch is a couple of things, and we're going to kind of dive deeper into this. This is just kind of an introduction to his life. Uh in the three times uh that he's mentioned It's typically mentioned that he walked with God.
Okay. It specifically stated that he walked with God. There's two people in the Bible that specifically said they walked with God. Enoch was one of them, Noah was the other. Enoch also was taken to heaven.
He was translated. That's what it mentions here in Hebrews 11. He was translated. You say, what does that mean? He was taken.
He did not experience physical death.
So he was taken to God. There's two people in the Bible that this had happened to. Enoch is one of them, the other is. anybody know who it was? Elijah.
Both of them were taken to God and they were just like it's almost like God just said, Hey, listen, I want you to be with me, so here you are. And they almost had this rapture type of experience. My question about that is: did God tell their families? Could you imagine being one of their family members? Like where in the world did where is Aina?
Where did Enoch go? Have you seen your dad? He left today and now he's not like, and they never found him. I'm just curious what the Lord told them, you know, because it's just fascinating to me that they were there. Could you imagine having a conversation with Enoch as he was being translated?
Would that freak anybody out but me? All right, I'd be a little nervous. And there's all this stuff, but that's really about all that we know about Enoch. It's the fact that he walked with God. We know that he was the great-grandfather of Noah.
He was translated. And that's about. about it. And so with this, with as little as we know about Enoch, What's amazing to me Is he's still listed here in Hebrews chapter 11 in the Hall of Faith. Isn't that fascinating?
It's fascinating that somebody that we know very little about, that the Bible doesn't really expound upon, there's no heroic moment to his life. That warrants him being listed here in Hebrews chapter 11, the great hall of faith, but yet God includes him here in Hebrews chapter 11. I believe as we look at this and give you a little context, we learn three things. About faith. From the life of Enoch.
We learn three things about his life and about faith that you can apply to your life and you walking by faith here about what faith really looks like from his life. Number one is this. True faith, it walks with God. True faith, genuine faith. It is a walking with God.
You see this about his life. He had a testimony, if you would, that he walked with the Lord. It's mentioned several times in Genesis 5, which we'll go to here in just a moment. It's mentioned that he walked with the Lord.
Now, when you think about walking, walking implies. Movement. Walking implies direction. Walking implies Consistency. And what's amazing about this is Hebrews 11.
And I know we're brand new to the series, but most of you have grown up in church and you've probably heard a lot of the stories that are listed in Hebrews 11. Most of them are about these characters who did something incredible for the Lord, right? They accomplished something amazing, whether it be Noah building an ark, whether it be Abraham leaving, whether it be any of these guys, Moses standing before Pharaoh, and all this. It's like, man, they accomplished something amazing. But what's interesting about Enoch's life, we know nothing about his accomplishments.
We know nothing about what he did. All we know is that he walked with God. All we know is that he walked with the Lord and he had a testimony that pleased the Lord. You see, faith walks with God. True, genuine faith.
If you want to walk with faith, you can't say you walk with faith without walking with God. They come together. They go hand in hand. It implies, when it says that he walked with God, it implies relationship. It implies a relationship.
It's not asking God to walk with you where you're going. It's choosing to trust in where God is leading and saying, I'm willing to walk with you. Right? There's a difference. For some of us, when we think about our life, we think about our agenda, we think about our plans, what does it look like?
We're asking God to kind of, hey, come join me as I go do what I want to do. That's not the life that Enoch Lived. Enoch trusted in God, placed his faith in God, and said, God, wherever you're going, that's where I want to go. I want to walk with you. I want to walk in your plans.
I want to walk in your agenda. I want to walk with you. If you have a moment, and it'll be up on the screen as well, but if you have your Bible, go to Genesis 5 for just a moment. Genesis chapter number five, we see the first mention of Enoch here in Genesis 5, verses 21 through 24. And here's what it says.
And Enoch. Lived 65 years. And he begot Methuselah.
Okay. And then specifically, I thought this was fascinating as well. In verse 22, Enoch then walked with God after he begot Methuselah 300 years. You almost get the picture that before Methuselah came along, before he had Methuselah, that, you know, it doesn't mention in verse 21 that he walked with God for the 65 years. No, he, you know, lived his life for 65 years, had Methuselah, and then after Methuselah came about, then he walked with God for the next 300 years.
Few things will make you want to walk with God than having children, right? And it changes things. Let's just be honest. When you had kids, it refocuses you, doesn't it? It makes you think about the future.
It makes you think about your legacy. It makes you think about your testimony. It makes you think about your life on a much deeper scale than when you were single. When you have kids, you realize that you are entrusted with a responsibility and that you have to model something for them to see. And what you see here is he, after he begot Methuselah, or had Methuselah, then he started walking with God for 300 years, and then he begot sons and daughters.
Verse 23, and all the days of Enoch were 365 years. And Enoch walked with God. and he was not. For God. Took him.
Listen, here, once again, you see in these verses, the longest text that he's mentioned here in Genesis 5. And like I said before, most of when he was mentioned, it's all about his family, you know, his children. It's all about that, and it's all about how long he lived. You don't see anything about his accomplishments. Right?
What you see is that he walked with God. What does that tell us? Here's what it is. I believe that God is more concerned with who you are walking with than what you're accomplishing. Isn't that true?
I think that God is more concerned with who you're walking with. And what you're accomplishing. For some of us, we think that success in life has to be something that we're doing. We believe that success in our spiritual life has to be an accomplishment that we're making. Or something that we're endeavoring to accomplish, something we're endeavoring to do.
And what we learn about Enoch's life is we learn he enters into the great hall of faith. And we know very little about his life, but he enters it not because of what he did. But because he daily walked with God, it's about who he walked with.
So the question is: who are you walking with today? Who are you walking with each and every day? Are you leaving here trying to do more for God? Or are you leaving here each and every week saying, God, I want to walk with you? I want to know you.
I want to have a relationship with you, not just something that we do on Sunday. Not just like, hey, let's pick up our Bible because we're going to church on Sunday. No, it's like, this is something that God wants with you every single day. Walking with God was not just a one day a week thing for Enoch. It was a daily, consistent movement, moment by moment, day after day decision.
to walk with the Lord. That's what we learn about genuine faith. It's walking with God. And you learn a couple of things about his life and context if you know about his story here. Faith walks with God.
And here's a few things about his walk with the Lord. First, I think Enoch's walk with God was strong. Enoch's walk with God was strong, and here's why. You know, Enoch lived. Just a couple generations before Noah.
And this is back, you know, when people lived a lot longer than they do today. And so, you know, even though there was a gap of several hundred years between him and Noah, he still lived around Noah's Noah's lifetime. And here's what we know about Noah's lifetime: the world was in a bad place. It was in a dark place. You know, in Noah's story, God says, because the entire world was wicked at that time, the entire world was sinful, everybody walked away from God, everyone had forsaken God, no one was obeying God, no one was listening to God, nobody was even remembering God.
And so, in that generation, it was just a bad place. You know, I get it, that our world is in a bad place today, and I understand that, but it was really, really bad. I think something like we've never experienced in that day. God was done. There was no one righteous, no one holy, no one living for the Lord, no one walking for the Lord.
There was just Noah's family about it. And that's why we'll look at Noah's story next week. And that's why we see in Noah's story about, you know, God he saved them and he wiped everybody else out. But here's what we learn about Enoch's life: because of the generation, we learn that his faith and his walk with God had to be strong in a world that had forsaken God. You see, it would have been easy.
For Enoch. to walk away from God. Right. Everybody else is doing it. Everybody else had forsaken God.
It would have been easy for him to follow the crowd and for him to, you know, say, hey, everybody else is walking away from God. Everybody else is forsaking God. Everybody else is living this way. Why not? You know, I just kind of follow the crowd.
But what we learn about his faith is his faith and his walk, how to be strong. It had to be strong. And for you, as you're walking with God, what you're going to see is that as you walk with Him day by day, moment by moment, He strengthens your faith so that when the world around you forsakes God, you can remain steady and stable like Enoch in a generation that has forsaken God. Their creator. We see that his life, it was strong.
Faith doesn't follow the crowd. Faith does not follow those around us and what they're doing. Faith says, I'm going to follow my Creator. I'm going to follow God. I'm going to live by the foundation of the Bible, no matter what people around me are doing, no matter what decisions they're making around me, no matter how they change their foundation for how they live and by which they live.
I'm not changing anything. I'm staying true to the biblical principles of scripture, and I'm going to live for him no matter what. You see, Enoch had a strong faith. Faith is saying that if everyone else walks away from God, I am still going to walk with him. That's what faith is.
That's what true faith is. That's what genuine faith is. His faith or his walk was strong, but not only that, Enoch's walk, I think we can see that his walk was personal. Notice the intentional wording. Enoch walked.
With God. The word with is so important. It's so important because it implies relationship. It it's something that was deeper than just one day a week. I've grown up around church my entire life.
And I'm afraid there's a lot of Christians that the only time that they truly walk with God, talk with God, pray to God, have a conversation with Him, I really think a lot of people in our church's Sunday is that experience. There's a lot of people that only touch their Bible on Sunday morning. They don't fill our churches every week and we dust it off for next week, right? We throw it down or whatever. There's a lot of people that only pray on Sunday.
There's a lot of people that only read the Bible on Sunday. There's a lot of people that only serve on Sunday. There's a lot of people that only testify and speak about God one day a week. And here's what I want you to know. That is not what Enoch did.
Enoch walked with God, and this walk with implies a relationship. I mean, think about it. You know, if you're married in here, what would your marriage be like if you talk to your spouse one day a week? No, no guys need to say amen there, okay? But what would it be like?
It would It would not be going in the right direction. No marriage will be successful and healthy. If you only spoke to your spouse one day a week. If you're not married, you might be thinking, okay, that doesn't apply to me.
Well, think about it with your family, with your parents.
Okay. What if you only spoke to your family one day a week? Like, it can't be as strong. It can't be as healthy. You know, communication is important to a healthy relationship.
Whether it be a parent to a child, a child to a parent, spouses, whatever, you have to communicate. And what you see here is walking with, it implies relationship, it implies communication. And so, what I want you to know is that Enoch's walk with God, it was personal. It wasn't just what he knew about God. It was who he was walking with.
Listen, the most important question you need to be asking yourself is: am I walking with God? Not do I attend church every single week?
Now listen, I think if you walk with God, you're going to want to be a part of the church. I think that's a natural byproduct of it. But if your church attendance is the only time that you walk with God, then you've probably missed a relationship altogether. Because what God wants from you is not just one hour of your Sunday. Or if you're an overachieving Christian and you go to a Bible fellowship class, He wants more than just two hours of your week.
What God wants from you is to walk with you every single day of the week. He wants what you experience on Sunday to be something you experience in your own personal time with God on Tuesday and on Wednesday and Thursday and Friday and Saturday leading into Sunday. Listen, you want to know something when I truly believe?
Some of you come to church, and you might think, like, man, Like, why can't I get as much out of church and out of the worship and out of the sermon and out of everything? Like the guy over there or the lady over there, why can't we? Perhaps it could be that they've been worshiping all week long and you've just walked into Sunday and not thought about God or talked to God all week long. You know what would drastically change your church experience? If you were walking with God, praying to Him, spending time in His Word, daily talking about Him, testifying about Him, praying to Him, walking with Him, asking Him what you want to do, and have a whole conversation with Him and praying all week long leading into your Sunday, it would drastically change your Sunday experience.
You see, Enoch, his walk with God was personal. It was strong. But then, also, I think his walk with God, we can learn, was consistent. It was consistent. Back in Genesis 5, he walked with God for 300 years.
A long time. This was deeper. than just a small short season of his life. You get the sense he walked with God day by day. Moment by moment.
Season After See you soon. And here's what I will tell you. is that faith The kind of fate that we see in Hebrews 11. It is built. With consistency.
It is built by consistency. For some of us, here's what I'm just going to tell you. If you want a strong relationship with God, which I believe you're here on a Sunday, I believe every one of you do. If that's what you're craving and that's what you're looking for, it's not built in one church service. It's not built.
in one devotional time with the Lord. It's built in consistency. And that's why I, as a pastor, I get nervous when people tell me stuff like, hey, I'm going to take a break.
Now, listen, I think everybody needs breaks in their life and routines and stuff like that. But here's what I want you to know: we don't ever take a break from our relationship with the Lord. Because what happens is true, genuine faith, living by faith, it's built on consistency. It's built on day by day, we're spending time with God. Moment by moment, we're spending time with Him.
You know, that's what it's built on.
So, listen, if you want steady faith and you want a faith similar to what we see here in Hebrews chapter 11, like Enoch, it's built on consistency.
So, faith walks with God, number one, very simple outline, but number two, faith testifies about God. Faith testifies about God. If you have your Bible as well, it'll be up on the screen, but go to Jude. And there's only one chapter in Jude, so it's easy to miss. Jude is right before Revelation.
It's the book of the Bible that everybody skips and that your pastor has never preached on one day in his life. All right. And so, which is a shame. We'll get there eventually. But in Jude, there's one chapter.
And here's what's interesting in the book of Jude: Jude, verses 14 and 15 of chapter 1 is. It mentions Enoch.
So we see in Hebrews 11, we saw in Genesis 5, and then here in Jude 14 and 15, it's mentioned again. And if you're still struggling to find it and you can't get there, it'll be up on the screen, okay? And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints to execute judgment upon all. This is Enoch, his message from God, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds, which they have ungodly committed. and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners Have spoken against him.
Listen, here's what I want you to understand about faith, true faith, walking by faith. Here's what it is. What we learned from Enix Life. True walking by faith, it walks with the Lord every day.
So that's what we just looked at. But number two, it's not afraid to testify about God. When you're deep And your relationship with God. It's not afraid to testify about him. He's not afraid to talk about it.
What we learn from Enoch's life is this: we don't know a whole lot. But what we learn is that he was like a prophet in that day. He prophesied with a message of God to such an ungodly. I mean, listen, ungodly is mentioned like four times in that passage, right? To an ungodly group of sinners who were doing ungodly acts.
And he goes on and on. He's laying it on really clear that these guys did not walk with God and that they were ungodly. They did not please God. They were not righteous. That was the era.
That was the world that Enoch lived in. And so God sent a message in his heart. And he was willing, because of his faith in God, that he was willing to testify about. Yeah. Here's what that tells me.
Sometimes And if you're like me, I'm a pastor, so my... Faith, a lot of times, or my ministry can be very public because I'm standing in front of people a lot. And so I'm sharing about faith, whether it be here or in other places. And so my faith can appear to be very public or whatever. But here's what I know about the majority of people because before I got this position where my faith became really public in front of a lot of people, here's what I think a lot of Christians struggle with.
Is we struggle between the balance of our faith being private. And when does it become public? Would you agree? We think that our faith It's just about us and God, and it's a private thing because we see, like, you know, Matthew 6, Jesus himself commands us to go into the closet and pray. Don't be like the hypocrites.
Don't be like the Pharisees. Don't go in front of people and, you know, try to impress people.
So what we do is we flip the switch to where now it's like, okay, everything about our faith, it's just about us and God. We're going to keep it quiet. We're going to keep it hush-hush. I don't need to talk to God at work because of, you know, the tension that that brings. I don't need to talk about God to my community.
I don't need to talk about God to anybody else other than just me and God. And we keep it so personal. What we learn about Enoch's faith. Is that It wasn't just personal You see, God's, you know, him and his fit with you. When you place your faith in him.
It is a private relationship. But it was never intended to stay private. It's it's a group assignment. Our faith. That's why we say here that faith, you know, that walking with God, we do that easier and better in community and relationships.
That's why we would say circles are better than rows. We think that, listen, what God does in this place is awesome, but the way that you can really grow deeper in a relationship with Him is stepping out of a row and into a smaller group of people in a class or in a Bible study where you can get to know one another and you can sharpen one another because we believe that it's a group project, that our growing in Christ is a group project. And what happens is when you do that and you walk with God daily, when you go out into the world into the ungodly world that we live in, what you find is that you want to testify, you want to witness, you want to talk about the Lord. You want to reach people. You see, what you learn from Enoch is that his personal private faith became a public witness.
And for some of you, you're in the private faith stage. And what I'm telling you is, stay consistent there because if you stay consistent long enough in your private faith, it's going to burst out of you to where when you get out into the world, you can do nothing but talk about God. You can do nothing. You want to know why somebody is a great soul winner and they go out of here and they talk about God and they remember to leave the gospel track when they go places and they're inviting people to church. You're like, man, how do I have that?
Stay consistent in your private faith. And if you do that long enough, what happens is it will become a public witness to the world around you.
So, what we learn from Enoch is that his faith walked with God, but his faith also testified about God. And number three, faith. What we learn is it pleases God. Back in Hebrews 11, we learned that his testimony Was that he pleased God? How is his testimony?
We don't know a whole lot about what he did. We just know that he pleased God. Could you imagine being at his funeral? We don't know a whole lot about Enoch. But he pleased God.
He walked with God. Not that. We don't know if he was rich. We don't know if he was Famous in his generation. We don't know if he built.
Something, or if he led something, we don't know a whole lot. We just know that he pleased God. We know that he walked. With God. And what we learn in Hebrews 11:6 is that without faith, it is impossible to please him.
What we learn from Enoch's life is this: the reason that Enoch in verse 5 could please God. was because his faith was in God. You say, what does that look like? Here's what I truly, I wrote this down. I thought this would help you to understand.
What does that look like pleasing God every day? It means this, God. It means praying to him and talking to him in your daily time with him. God, I trust you even when I don't understand what's going on. God, I trust your word.
even when things in my life are not adding up. God, I trust your direction even when the road in front of me is unclear. God, I trust your promises even when I feel forgotten. And because of all of those things, whether you're in any of those where you feel forgotten, you feel things aren't adding up, you feel that you don't understand what's going on, you feel like has He forsaken you, has He forgotten you? It's looking at everything around you and saying, Because of all of this, I will never stop walking with you.
That's what pleasing God is. It's trusting and making a decision that you are not going to stop walking with God no matter how hard things are around me, no matter how things don't add up around me, no matter what life and circumstances look like around me, I will never stop walking with Him. If I'm frustrated and I feel forsaken, I'm still going to open my Bible and I'm going to read and I'm going to talk with Him. If I feel forgotten or I feel like he's not listening to me, I'm still going to be praying. I'm going to stay consistent and I'm going to remain faithful in my relationship with God.
You will experience what Enoch did, where he lived a life and he had a testimony of pleasing him.
So the question that I want you to to uh answers this. And you don't have to answer this hello. But I want you to reflect upon it as we kind of wrap it up here. It's this question. What?
Will your testimony be? What were your legacy? B Imagine. You're at your funeral.
Well, I mean, you won't be there. I guess you will. Your body will. And so. But when your life is finished.
Could you imagine You know, your kids, your grandkids, what would they say about you? Are they going to say, while my granddad was rich? My granddad traveled the world. My granddad gave me anything and everything. My granddad, you know, and those things, there's nothing wrong with that.
There's nothing wrong with traveling the world. There's nothing wrong with having money. There's nothing wrong with that. But could you imagine for just a moment? If we lived now.
Hoping for the legacy like Enoch had that man, I don't know a whole lot about my granddad, but here's what I know. My grandfather walked with God. My grandfather lived a life to please him. What are your kids going to say about you? Like, the point is, what are you living for?
Because we're living now, what our legacy will be then. You're endeavoring now to determine what your legacy is going to be then. And why don't you determine now to say, hey, listen, I might not have a whole lot. I might can't, you know, do all the accomplishments and all the fancy things that we hope will matter and we'll hope will make a difference and all that kind of stuff. Those things are good.
And if you can, and God's given you the means and the margin to do all those things, great. But listen, the thing that you need to remember more than anything else, the legacy that we need to leave more than anything else is this. You walked with God. You lived your life to please God. Like Enoch.
We don't know anything about what he did, but we know who he walked with.
