Without faith, it is impossible to please Him, verse 6 says of Hebrews 11. In other words, without trusting Him as to your purpose in life, as to your pace in life, you can't closely commune with Him, can you?
I mean, if we're arguing about God's pace, hey, come on, you're so far ahead I can't see you. If that's our argument, we're not really enjoying communion with Him, are we? By the way, he's referring to believers when he says without faith it's impossible to please Him. This is close communion with God, which happens to be the greatest treasure in our lives. What does it mean to walk with God?
Many people claim to have faith in God, but far too few live it daily. Enoch's life was so closely aligned with God that he never experienced death. When God determined that it was time, Enoch simply vanished into eternity. His story is a powerful reminder of the importance of faith and obedience. In this message, we explore what made Enoch's faith unique, why his testimony still speaks, and what his life reveals about God's future plans. If you've ever wondered what it looks like to truly walk with God, keep listening. We're not going to start with Hebrews, we're going to go to Jude, that little letter, where we read in verse 14 that Enoch was the seventh generation from Adam.
Four or five things about his biography that I want to give you, this is the first one. The record of Scripture tells us that Enoch was the seventh generation from Adam. You might wonder, why in the world does that matter? Is that supposed to be some kind of impressive pedigree, like he's a descendant of one of the families that came over on the Mayflower, or he's a distant relative of a former president or a king, so what that he's the seventh in the line from Adam?
Well, it matters because we're given this clue. If you spend time studying the descendants of Adam, Enoch was from the godly line coming from Seth, the son of Adam, and he was the seventh patriarch descending from the line of Seth. And that particular clue kind of nudges the Bible student to notice that Enoch's counterpart then would have been the seventh generation coming from the line of Cain.
You remember the first murderer who killed Abel. And there's a world of difference between number seven in the line, between the seventh from Cain and the seventh from Seth. The seventh patriarch in the line of Cain was a man by the name of Lamech. In fact, Genesis chapter four gives us the descendants of Cain, and Genesis chapter five gives us the descendants from the line of Seth.
And if you go back some time and study those two lines, don't be confused. In fact, there are Enochs and Lamechs on both sides, so you have to be observant as to whether or not you're looking at the line of Cain or the line of Seth. Lamech, the descendant of Cain, and I'll just sort of say this, he was the epitome of ungodliness. He was a wicked man.
There's a little poem embedded in the text that we can't take time to decipher, but basically Lamech has written the poem, and in the poem, he is boasting of killing a young boy for offending him. And in that poem, he brags that he is 70 times more wicked than his forefather Cain. Cain? Oh, I'm 70 times badder than Cain.
He's nothing compared to me. Add to this the fact that Lamech is the first man to begin the practice of polygamy. To be a blight on human history, violating the God-created ideal for marriage. All that to say, the seventh in the line from Cain is a self-centered, brutal, ungodly man who defied the authority of God. So when Jude tells us that Enoch is the seventh in the line of Adam, it lets us know that his life is running parallel to Lamech, and it also tells us that Enoch was not living in an easy day to live for God. You know, we might have the impression that, oh, he walked with God. Well, how easy could it be back then?
Oh, far from it. Now, I want you to notice the second piece of Enoch's biography. It's found in Genesis 5 and verse 21 where we're told he was the father of Methuselah. We're told in verse 21 that he lived 65 years and became the father of Methuselah.
Now, there's more to this story than it first meets the eye. And don't go back if you're flipping back and forth in your Bible, but we'll put off just for a moment or two this observation, but I want to at least notice or make note of it here that Jude tells us that Enoch became a prophet. In other words, he received revelation from God.
In fact, as we'll see in a few moments, he received very specific revelation about a coming judgment. And we also know by putting the clues together that his name was more than likely given to him from God, or Enoch in his belief named his son what he named him because of that revelation. He names his son Methuselah. He didn't name his son Methuselah to embarrass him at graduation when they read your whole name, you know, and you have to come up front.
No. Methuselah means when he is dead, it will come. It's a reference to coming judgment. Enoch the prophet was given revelation from God, and he would end up, by the way, preaching it to his ungodly world.
When my son dies, it will come. And if you study the descendants of Adam and take at face value, the years were given by God, and there's no reason why not to. Adam was created in the first year of creation. We know from scripture it was on the sixth day. He lived 930 years. In these days before the flood, there was a water canopy in the atmosphere, shielding the earth from harmful rays. The earth is watered daily by a heavy dew.
Rain has never fallen on the planet yet, according to scripture. If you look further on your list, you'll notice the patriarch Jared was born 460 years after Adam, and you can see Adam still alive. These men would have known of each other.
They probably knew each other. They have a compounding interest of revelation that God is delivering, and they would have learned from Adam, of course, the principles of atonement and the gospel promise. Then Enoch's born, you notice, and compared to the rest of the patriarchs, he dies at the age of 365. He dies a very young man, comparatively.
This was young. In fact, at the age of 65, he has his first child with his wife, a son. Although we're not given the details, God visits Enoch in some fashion and informs him of coming judgment. He also informs him that his son's life will be the measurement of God's final years of patience, for when this boy dies, God promises to judge the human race. So name your son, Methuselah. When he dies, judgment will come.
Is that what happened? Well, if you look further on your chart, you'll notice that Noah is the last patriarch listed, according to Genesis 5, and the clues of this chronology place his birth in the year 1056. We're also told that he lived 950 years.
Now, if you'll bear with me one moment, we're given another piece of information. In fact, according to Genesis 9, verse 28, you might want to even flip over there if you're in the book of Genesis. In chapter 9 and verse 28, we're told that Noah lived 600 years before the flood, and 350 years after the flood. And that is a wonderfully helpful verse, because it allows us to date the actual event of the flood to the very year it happened. And that year was 1656, which just so happened to be the exact year Methuselah dies. Now, it took 969 years for the prophecy to come true, but it came true, just as God said.
But can you imagine? I mean, you're Enoch. You're in the delivery room, and there's a squalling boy, and God informs you that you're holding in your arms the length of his fuse, and it just got lit. And you don't know how long it will take before the explosion, and as long as that boy lives, judgment tarries. Keep in mind we have no record or hint of Enoch being told how long his son would live. In fact, the implication is he thought it wouldn't be very long, as far as he knew his son might die in infancy. I think Enoch would have been shocked to find out that Methuselah would not only outlive him, but he'd live to be 969 years of age.
Surely he wouldn't live long. I mean, already the human race is involved in demonic worship. You study these times, astral worship. They're worshiping at the Zodiac. They're living in utter rebellion and depravity. This is a human race now marked by murder and brutality. Men are boasting of killing children.
Polygamy has now become a new standard with all of its abuses of women now in vogue. I mean, Enoch must have been thinking, okay, if that's true, my son is not going to live for very long. But he begins to preach this truth. I think he's surprised, but he will keep at it, and he will preach for some 300 years. 300 years that judgment's coming. And he doesn't know if his son will live two years, 20 years, 200 years, or two minutes. So then follows this biographical observation.
This comes into play now. Number three, Enoch walked with God. This is the event that changes everything.
I mean, this is like sliding down the interstate on your backside, right? Or maybe surviving a gunshot or a cancer report or bankruptcy or something. The birth of Methuselah dramatically altered the life of Enoch forever. The moment he held that little boy in his arms, he was a different man.
In fact, I think that God wants to make sure we don't miss the crossroads experience in Enoch's life because in Genesis 5 and verse 21, he makes it very clear, then Enoch walked with God 300 years after he became the father of Methuselah. Then and only after then. His entire outlook on life radically changed. Frankly, I've heard the testimony before of a man, men, who in that delivery room holding a child, knew, wow, oh my, wait a second. I am responsible for the next generation. I'm going to be watched. I'm going to be modeled after. I am going to need to walk with God like never before.
That's a good thing. Now, I want to make a point here that I think is important because I believe this hero is for believers. You need to understand that Enoch was from the godly land of Seth.
Everything I've said back there, I now want it to bear weight here. Enoch already followed God. We would call him a believer in our vernacular. He wasn't an idolater. In fact, no one would have been surprised to hear, hey, guess what? God chose Enoch to be a prophet. Well, of course, I mean, that figures.
No one would have been surprised that he would be a prophetic voice in the land. Now, let me stop here for a moment. What does it take to walk with God? Well, let me suggest that it takes the same thing for you and me to walk together. For one thing, we have to all agree, we have to both agree on the destination. We're going to walk together, right? I mean, if you want to walk around the block five times, and I want to walk the Bojangles for a biscuit and sweet tea, we've got to go our separate ways, and I feel sorry for you because of what you're going to miss. We can't walk together unless we are walking in the same direction.
So we have to have the same purpose, the same goal in mind, don't we? Secondly, we can't walk together unless we keep the same speed or pace. I can't ring your doorbell and say, hey, look, how would you like to walk around the block with me? And you say, well, sure. And I say, well, look, why don't you go get on your shoes and I'll go and get started without you?
It wouldn't work, would it? If I walked around the block 10 paces ahead of you or 10 paces behind you, we might be out on the street together at the same time, but we're not in conversation. We're not enjoying each other's fellowship.
We're just in the same neighborhood. To walk with someone, you have to have the same purpose in your spirit and the same pace in your step. Something happened to Enoch's purpose and pace. We don't know all the details.
Something happened. Hebrews 11 gives us a little bit of a clue. It tells us that he began to exercise living, passionate faith in two distinct perspectives. He becomes an illustration of what kind of faith pleases God.
First, Enoch began to trust by faith that God exists. Without faith, it is impossible to please him, verse 6 says of Hebrews 11. In other words, without trusting him as to your purpose in life, as to your pace in life, you can't closely commune with him, can you?
I mean, if we're arguing about God's pace, hey, come on, you're behind, or you're so far ahead I can't see you. If that's our argument, we're not really enjoying communion with him, are we? By the way, he's referring to believers when he says without faith it's impossible to please him. He's not talking about saving faith. I believe he's talking here about sanctifying faith. This is close communion with God, which happens to be the greatest treasure in our lives. How do you work up your walk of faith? I mean, what can you do in practical terms to strengthen your walk of faith?
Well, if I have enough time in my week to add to my research and study, and if I have a little extra time, I'll pull out a book by Thomas Manton. He's a Puritan who pastored in the 1800s. He has a commentary on Hebrews 11. Well, in one section he provoked my thinking, and I really wanted to share it with you, so let me quickly give you what he said to his congregation on how to work up your walk of faith.
He's a very practical pastor, five ways. Number one, you work up your walk of faith by way of meditation. He wrote, there is nothing you prize that you do not allow your mind to run upon. That's his way of saying daydream about. So daydream, he said, run upon the truth of heaven and its glory and the presence of Christ. Secondly, work up your walk of faith by way of argumentation.
I love this point. He doesn't mean go out and pick a fight. He's actually talking about arguing with yourself. Argue with yourself when you have some doubt arise. Go into the word and commit your mind to the truth of his promises and argue with anything that rises up against the hope you have within you. When's the last time you've had a good argument with yourself? Stephen, you should not be thinking that's doubt. Get rid of it, okay?
That's what he's talking about. Third, work up your walk of faith by way of supplication. Cry out with David, he wrote, oh, Lord, guide me with thy counsel. Let thy truth and thy light lead me.
Fourth, work up your walk of faith by way of dedication. He writes, do not men strive to step higher in the world? You know, get a leg up. Do they not rise early and go to bed late only to maintain their frail lives that are crumbling the dust? I mean, are working their heads off for stuff, he says. Shall we do nothing for God? Should we not be more industrious?
I love that language. I mean, if people are sweating it out for temporary things, shouldn't we be industrious for eternal things? So if we want to work up our walk of faith, we do it by meditation and argumentation and supplication and dedication.
And finally, number five, we work it up by means of expectation. We look for him. Like Paul wrote in Titus chapter two, we are looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.
That's how you work up your walk. Jude's little letter informs us that Enoch prophesied, verse 14 tells us, that the Lord is going to come with 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 ungodliness or in an ungodly way. And you get the idea that a sermon is calling everybody ungodly.
How popular would that be? He's prophesying that God is going to judge ungodliness. Now we know from our fuller record of Revelation, all the way through the Epistles and Revelation, that this event he's prophesying about is going to take place at the end of the Tribulation, when the church and Christ return to judge the world as Christ sets up his kingdom. What Enoch doesn't know is that God is actually going to apply this aspect of judgment to an earlier event that will take place as soon as his son, Methuselah, dies. It's the worldwide judgment of the flood. And we have every reason to believe Enoch doesn't know how far away that coming judgment is. He just knows it's coming.
So just imagine for a moment. By the time Methuselah turns 850 years old, around that time, Enoch's already dead, God comes to Noah and says, build an ark. And we'll deal with that in our next lesson together, so I don't want to spend too much time there, but he says to Noah, start building an ark. Methuselah becomes a picture of God's patience. Isn't it interesting that the man whose death will bring judgment is the man God determines to live longer than any other human being has ever lived?
That's the patience of God. Methuselah is 875 years old. Noah lays the keel and the ribbing, fits the sides, the crowd gathers and mocks. What's the rain, Noah?
I don't know, I've never seen it, but it's coming. Methuselah is 940 years old. Noah and his family are working on the inside, the interior of the ark.
Methuselah is 965, 966, 967. Noah hangs the door on the hinges. 968, Noah and his family pack the ark with food.
969 dons and pairs of animals begin appearing. The ark is finished. The family's getting on board and they get the news that Grandpa Methuselah has just died.
Now he never reserved a seat on the ark because he knew he didn't need to. His death would signal the judgment of God. Every patriarch by that point in time from the line of Seth has now passed away, except for Noah. And the judgment of God promised nearly a thousand years earlier now comes, the first time in human history, the sound of thunder is heard and rain begins to fall. More on that next time, but let's back up and go back to Enoch years before this event.
Let me give you the fifth piece of his biographical puzzle falls into place. He's not only the seventh generation from Adam, not only the father of Methuselah, not only walked with God, not only warned his world of coming judgment, but finally Enoch was the first human being to vanish from sight. Hebrews 11 and verse five, we finally get to that verse, tells us that Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death. He was not found because God took him. The Greek word for took him up has the same idea of being raptured, literally being snatched away.
He just vanishes. We're not told how God did it. We're just told he did it. And the text says he couldn't be found. That means they tried. They sent out search parties. They probably assumed somebody from that line, a cane, did him harm. Who saw him last?
Where was he? Let's go search. They tried.
They looked. I mean, come on, this doesn't just happen. What do you mean? He just disappeared. It doesn't just happen. Oh, maybe today the same thing could happen, only this time every person who's placed their faith in Jesus Christ will suddenly vanish, disappear. Enoch becomes not only a prophet of the coming judgment of God who comes from heaven to earth in judgment. He becomes the first to experience God's ability to move someone from earth to heaven.
Just like that. He vanishes. Warren Wiersbe writes that Enoch had been walking with God for so many years that his transfer to heaven wasn't really an interruption. He had been walking with God and he could not see him, but he believed he existed and he believed he was personally involved. His legacy is that he walked with God, but his legacy is also that he walked away with God. And I close with this in G. Campbell Morgan's biography that I'm reading through these days.
This expositor wrote in the early 1900s and I close with his quote. He writes, A little girl came home from Sunday school after hearing the story of Enoch and she said, Mother, we heard about a wonderful man today in Sunday school and the mother let her child tell her what she had learned. Well, his name was Enoch. And you know, Mother, he used to go for walks with God. The mother responded, That's wonderful, but how does the story end? She said, Well, one day they walked on and on and on and got so far away that God said to Enoch, Mother, you're such a long way from home, you might as well come on to my house and live with me.
Isn't that great? Which happens, by the way, to be his plan for you and for me as well. Every one of us who belong to him one day will end our walk of faith like Enoch by an invitation already printed by the Lord with the exact moment, either by means of the rapture or death, to just come on to his house and live with him forever. Unless the Lord returns for us while we're still living, we won't go to heaven the way Enoch did.
For Enoch, he simply vanished from this earth and God took him up to heaven. But the invitation to enter heaven and live forever with God is open to everyone. God invites all people to respond in faith to the gospel and join him in heaven upon death or upon the return of Christ.
I hope you've responded to that invitation. But if you'd like to know more about the gospel, we have a little pamphlet entitled God's Wisdom for Your Heart. It explains the message of the gospel and how you can respond to it. It might be that you're a Christian, but you'd like to have this pamphlet to share with people in your life who are not. We'd be happy to get you information on how you can get a supply of the brochure, God's Wisdom for Your Heart. Give us a call today at 866-48-BIBLE. The content of that brochure is also available on our app. Install the Wisdom International app to your phone and click on the button that says The Gospel. Be back next time for more Wisdom for the Heart. .
