Did you hear about the man who returned home from the grocery store, having bought everything on the list his wife gave him? She began removing items from the bags: one dozen eggs, two bags of flour, three gallons of milk, four bags of sugar, and five cans of cake frosting. His wife said, “I never should have numbered the grocery list.” Ever make a list of things to do and then wonder which to do first? Numbering the list doesn’t always help because the order in which you thought of the items is not necessarily the order of their importance. You might start to do the first thing only to realize you should be working on number three, since it is far more important. It is easy to fill your days with activities. They may even be essential activities. Life often comes at us at a frantic pace and we hardly have time to stop and think about what’s important. Instead, we do what is urgent. After all, the clock is ticking, the days are passing, and we only have so much time. All the more reason why we need to stop and think about what’s important. Suppose we did all the urgent things and met all the deadlines only to discover we left the most important things undone? Or suppose we did all the fun things, all the exciting things, and left the mundane things undone, only to realize that life is unraveling because we neglected the important things. Tim Redmond once said, “There are many things that will catch my eye, but there are only a few things that will catch my heart, it is those I consider to pursue.” C. S. Lewis said, “Put first things first and we get second things thrown in; put second things first and we lose both first and second things.” Is it no wonder Jesus, after mentioning several things people are tempted to pursue, pointed out how we can succeed at getting our priorities straight: “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” MT 6:33. Ron McClung
THE FIRST MAN TO MISS DEATH—ENOCH
This man’s blood flowed in Christ’s veins, and when Christ comes we look at his life and say, “More than Enoch is here, because through Jesus’ walk with God we and Enoch, yes, and all the Lord’s elect out of all nations in all ages are enabled to find God and walk with him.”Those who choose to walk with god enjoy a relationship that others know little or nothing about. The world’s opinions of these people are that they are lonely and unpopular. There are only a few verses written about his man but they are loaded with information for us in our walk with God. He is the first man in the Bible of which it is said, “He walked with God.” He made a decision and his life is even given in pagan myths. "Is not this written in the Book of Jasher?" Josh. 10:13. "Behold it is written in the Book of Jasher." II Sam 1:18. This book has a couple of chapters in it about the life of Enoch. He was an ordinary man. We are not told that He wrote any books, led an army, was a great singer, or that he brought many to follow the Lord. We are given hope that God uses ordinary people for His work whether they ever are great in the eyes of men. There was a lady that we do not have the name of who as she was dying told her husband, “In the past ten years there has not been a cloud between me and my Savior.” A great preacher from the past, Spurgeon, said, “In many years he had not known more than a quarter of an hour out of fellowship with God.” We do have record that when he was 65 he had a son named Methuselah and then he walked with God for 300 years after that. He lived in a godless and wicked world. He lived in a day when walking with God would have been difficult because the world was on the verge of judgment from God.
Gen 5:17, 21-24, HB. 11:5-6, Jude 14, 15.
We learn from these verses we learn 1. He Walked God, 2. He pleased God, and 3. He gave a witness for God.
I. He walked with God.
A. He made a habit of walking with God. From what I have read this habit started when a baby was born. It seems that his son brought God into his life. Can you point to an event in your life when you turned to God and seeking Him became a habit?
1. Enoch walked with God outside of Paradise. Adam and Eve had walked with God in the Garden in the cool of the day. That is what made Paradise really Paradise, continual loving communion with his Maker? This is what they lost when they defied this loving Father. They had had every encouragement to show their affection for God and yet they turned away. The walk with God came to an end and out of Paradise they were sent so quickly, after first being made, but Enoch went on walking with God outside Paradise. God dealt with him personally. In a world where sin reigned and death prevailed Enoch walked with God. Here is the prophet Enoch showing to us the true future of man, blessed fellowship with God. Here is the Lord at work in our groaning world, and he is bringing back to man Paradise, the place of blessed fellowship with God. With eternal Paradise already in Enoch’s heart, we see him on his way to Paradise eternal.
Let us see what applies to us here today in four ways:
1. A walk with God is possible in the middle of unholy surroundings. Jude puts the word “ungodly” four times in two verses. From these two verses we find:
a. God told Enoch about a Second Coming of Christ before there was ever a first coming.
b. We don't know what else God revealed to Enoch (maybe the flood coming 900 years later?), but we can presume that Enoch himself was prepared for judgment.
c. Enoch was probably not very popular. When he preached, he used the word "ungodly" four times in the same sentence. Suppose we sent Enoch out to preach this message today in America. He'd be called a lunatic or an extremist by the world, and well over 1/2 of the people who profess to be Christians would reject him because he was "judging" others. So presuming that pre-flood people were of our outlook, Enoch was not in the business of pleasing men.
2. A walk with God is the result of a definite choice. Enoch was not pressured into walking with God. It was not God who walked in Enoch’s way. It was Enoch who walked in God’s way. Not one of us is forced to walk in God’s way but it is a privilege to enjoy.
3. A walk with God is to make a break with ungodly associations and develop a fellowship with God. Enoch accepted God’s way for his walk or the walk would have been a short one. Enoch did not try to hide from God like Adam did. Enoch to be a friend of God had to choose to walk in the way of holy living with a hatred to sin and being in a war against evil. His walk was a walk in progress. One cannot stand still if you choose to walk with God. Enoch was always making adjustments to keep in step with God. Have you made any adjustments this week to be more like Jesus? He walked with in this way for 300 years.
4. His walk was one of true trust and unbroken communion. Have you been able to get along with all you have had contact with since we met last Sunday? Enoch got along with God for 300 years. He kept open to God’s plan and counsel. He like us belonged to a family and experienced all the care and concern for helping and loving his wife and children. His walk was tested with his duties of family life and his occupation. He lived as a witness to the evilness of his day. You can be sure the devil was there making attacks on his life.
II. He pleased God.
A. He was a man of faith. HB 11:6. God does not lower His standards to meet with human imperfection but empowers man to raise his standard of living. Every day Enoch drew strength from God to walk uprightly. His fellowship with God his desires for sinful pleasures withered and holy living aspired. The fact is we cannot have a walk with God without aiming for it. It is not in the natural but the spiritual mind that we keep as our aim, “Will this please God?” This intention takes away our desires and passions that block our pleasing God. Enoch is showing that what God promises in the Old Testament will most certainly be fulfilled. The life of Enoch is the deposit and the guarantee of out eternal walk with God in the new heavens and the new earth. Lev. 26.11-12: “I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you shall be my people.” You see this in final chapters of the last book of the Bible; we realize that the climax of God’s covenant communion with his people has arrived. “And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband; and I heard a great voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them.” Rev. 21:2-3.
When Enoch, the seventh from Adam, walked with God, he walked with him in agreeing communion. His walk became a prophecy of the climactic covenant communion between God and his people. When Enoch walked with God, he walked with him in faith. It’s striking that when the letter to the Hebrews speaks of Enoch in its long eleventh chapter it is of his faith the writer writes about, not his walk with God HB 11.5-6. There’s no contradiction in the matter, of course. Enoch’s walk with God was in daily trust, and his trusting relationship manifested itself in walking with God. That is how Enoch was pleasing to God. Without trust it is impossible to please God.
Enoch walked with God and so he spoke to God for himself and also for the people. George Whitefield preached a powerful sermon on this text. He was the means God used of restoring New Testament Christianity, godliness and prayerfulness, in our nation. He is exhorts the crowds who gathered to hear him to be men and women of prayer. If there is going to be any future for the church and it having any influence in our land then it is going to be through our being praying people. Jesus has said that he wants us always to pray and not to faint, and so it is impossible to over emphasize prayer in the life of the people of God. Prayer rises in the heart of God; its wellsprings are in the very being of God.
Is any congregation greater than the sum of the prayer life of its individual members? The pastor who is not praying is playing. Leonard Ravenhill’s said, “The church has many organizers but few agonizers, many singers, few clingers, many fears, few tears. Can any deny that in the modern church setup, the main cause of anxiety is money? Yet that which tries modern churches, troubled the New Testament church the least. Our emphasis is on paying; theirs was on praying. When we have paid, the place is taken; when they have prayed the place was shaken.” We all need to be stirred about praying and if those exhortations help you then that is all to the good.
Enoch walked with God in prayer. He was in the habit of prayer, and lived in the spirit of prayer. Is this perhaps one of the reasons why the description of this great man’s life is so brief? As someone has said, ‘A totally true biography has never been nor can be written. The very best things about a character and career are unknown, except to God, and they can’t be revealed because they are among his secret things. The best men hide themselves with God before they show themselves to men
What is extraordinary about Enoch is how many years he walked with God. We walk with God for hours and towards the end perhaps for days, but Enoch for decades. IN Gen. 5.22 we read: ‘After he became the father of Methuselah Enoch walked with God 300 years . . . .’ The amazing fact is clear that once Enoch started to walk with God, he did so for 300 years, until the end of his earthly life. Tom Swanston once said these words: “We are living in an age of instant custard, instant puddings, instant soups, instant cake mixes, etc., and this kind of thing has infected and poisoned the Christian church; and Christians now have come to expect the quick sale, the sudden gimmick, the short-cut road to sanctification. But there are no such things. Sanctification is a process; holiness is a way of life, and it is a long, hard struggle. It is an uphill journey with devils in every bush and evil eyes peering at you through the darkness, and in your face, a cold, frosty wind with hail and snow. On the road there are few houses, and it is a long, long road. This is the meaning of sanctification and holiness, and so I think that really, in order to benefit from the Word, one need to sit under it Sunday by Sunday, year by year, for a long, long time until our personalities and characters and psychologies have been changed by its gracious influence under the power of the Holy Spirit.”
III. He testified for God.
A. He was the first to denounce sin and wickedness in a startling way. “The Lord comes… to execute judgment upon all.
Enoch walked with God faithfully, and he did so with all his heart. The Hebrew verb for ‘walk’ is a kind of demanding form with the additional idea of enjoying what you are doing. By the way, don’t we after all really enjoy only that which we do with all our heart? As Matthew Henry said, ‘A life spent in communion with God, is the pleasantest life in the world.’ That is the most difficult thing to persuade sinners to believe. They think that walking with God means deficit and restraints and morals. But Enoch was the happiest man in the world for 300 years. The Lord was to him the God of his exceeding joy. We are reminded of the first answer of the Catechism: ‘Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.’
Think of our Savior’s walk, how he set his face steadfastly towards Jerusalem. He kept walking with God to Golgotha even though at one time it meant knowing the abandonment of God, ‘My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?’ He has left us an example that we should walk in his steps. He has become the perfect Savior. He is the perfecter of our walk with God; he is our exceeding joy. In his sermon on the life of Enoch George Whitefield exhorted the people, ‘Walking with God implies making progress in the divine life. ’
In closing listen to the story about The Chair.
A man's daughter had asked the local pastor to come and pray with her father. When the pastor arrived, he found the man lying in bed with his head propped up on two pillows and an empty chair beside his bed. The pastor assumed that the old fellow had been informed of his visit. "I guess you were expecting me," he said. "No, who are you?" asked the man. "I'm the new associate at your local church," the pastor replied. "When I saw the empty chair, I figured you knew I was going to show up." "Oh yeah, the chair," said the bedridden man. "Would you mind closing the door?" Puzzled, the pastor shut the door. "I've never told anyone this, not even my daughter," said the man. "But all of my life I have never known how to pray. At church I used to hear the pastor talk about prayer, but it always went right over my head. "I abandoned any attempt at prayer," the old man continued, "until one day about four years ago my best friend said, 'Joe, prayer is just a simple matter of having a conversation with Jesus. Here's what I suggest. Sit down on a chair; place an empty chair in front of you, and in faith see Jesus on the chair. It's not spooky because He promised, "I'll be with you always." Then just speak to him and listen in the same way you're doing with me right now.' "So, I tried it and I've liked it so much that I do it a couple of hours every day. I'm careful, though. If my daughter saw me talking to an empty chair, she'd either have a nervous breakdown or send me off to the funny farm." The pastor was deeply moved by the story and encouraged the old guy to continue on the journey. Then he prayed with him, and returned to the church. Two nights later the daughter called to tell the pastor that her daddy had died that afternoon. "Did he seem to die in peace?" he asked. "Yes, when I left the house around two o'clock, he called me over to his bedside, told me one of his corny jokes, and kissed me on the cheek."When I got back from the store an hour later, I found him dead. But there was something strange, in fact, beyond strange, kind of weird. Apparently, just before Daddy died, he leaned over and rested his head on a chair beside the bed."
