A Tale of Two Enochs: Faith versus Faithlessness

Let's read together from Genesis chapter 4, verses 17 through chapter 5, verse 3.

Genesis 4:17

And then we'll have a little bit more in Genesis chapter 5.

Genesis 5 · chapter mention

! And then we'll flip over to Hebrews 11, which is what our sermon series is based on right now.

So there's Bibles at the back.

If you'd like one, feel free anytime to get up and grab one.

That's no problem at all.

If you'd like a hard copy of a Bible, they're just on the back table.

And if you're here tonight and you're exploring Christianity and you don't have a Bible,

please take one of those with you.

We want you to take that.

And we'll read together now from God's Word.

It's also printed in the bulletin and will be on the screen as well.

Cain knew his wife and she conceived and bore Enoch.

When he built a city, he called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch.

Enoch was born Erod, and Erod fathered Mahu-jael, and Mahu-jael fathered Methushael, and Methushael fathered Lamech.

And Lamech took two wives.

The name of the one was Adah and the name of the other, Zillah.

Adab were Jabal.

He was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock.

His brother's name was Jubal.

He was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe.

Zillah also bore Tubal-Cain.

He was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron.

The sister of Tubal-Cain was Na'amah.

And Lamech said to his wives,

Ada and Zillah, hear my voice.

You wives of Lamech, listen to what I say.

I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me.

If Cain's revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech's is seventy-sevenfold.

And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth.

For she said, God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.

To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh.

And at that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord.

Chapter 5 says,

This is the book of the generations of Adam.

When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God.

Male and female, he created them, and he blessed them, and he named them man when they were created.

And when Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.

And then down to verse 18 to 24 of this chapter.

When Jared had lived 162 years, he fathered Enoch.

Jared lived, after he fathered Enoch, 800 years, and had other sons and daughters.

Thus all the days of Jared were 962 years, and he died.

When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah, and Enoch walked with God.

And after he fathered Methuselah, 300 years, and had other sons and daughters.

Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years.

Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.

And from our sermon series text, Hebrews 11, we read,

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

For by it the people of old received their commendation.

By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God,

so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.

By faith, Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain,

through which he was commended as righteous.

God commending him by accepting his gifts.

And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.

By faith, Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death.

And he was not found, because God had taken him.

Now, before he was taken, he was commended as having pleased God.

And without faith, it is impossible to please him.

For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists,

and that he rewards those who seek him.

This is God's word.

Thank you, Corey.

It's great to be back with you in St. Columbus,

and to get to share with you on Enoch.

Now, as Corey said, we're doing a series of sermons at the moment,

going through Hebrews 11,

which is one of the most important chapters in the whole Bible,

in making sense of what it means to be a Christian,

because the chapter begins with the definition of faith that Corey just read.

Faith is something that gives you assurance of what you hope for.

So your hope is not just wishful thinking.

It's not cognitive dissonance.

It's actually something somehow that assures you in life.

And that assurance then shapes a deep conviction in this life,

based on things that you can't see or that you haven't seen,

and yet it grounds you, that conviction grounds you

in how you live in this world of things that you can see.

And then not just that, but it gives you that definition,

and then after that it gives you example after example after example

of that definition lived out in the lives of people from the Bible,

in the Old Testament.

So last week David preached on the first of those people, on Abel.

Abel, the brother of Cain, who offered God a better sacrifice by faith,

who was murdered by his brother Cain,

and yet being dead by faith he still speaks.

But tonight we're looking at Enoch.

And we just read the verses there about Enoch who did not die,

who was taken by God.

And what we're presented with there is a really strange story.

And it's different to Abel's story in obvious ways.

Abel is the story of someone who died,

and Enoch is the story of someone who did not.

Abel is the story of someone who by faith did something.

By faith he offered a better sacrifice than Cain.

But Enoch is the story of someone to whom something was done by faith.

By faith he was taken.

By faith he did not see death.

And that God took him from this life,

and he bypassed death entirely.

Now if you hear that and wonder,

is that a metaphor?

Or are you saying God really transported Enoch from earth straight to heaven?

Well, so the word that Hebrews 11 uses here,

which we have as something like taken in our English translation,

comes up in a couple of other important places in the New Testament.

Just to give you a sense of what this is really saying.

In the book of Acts,

when it's talking about Joseph,

the prince of Egypt who died there,

his bones being transported from Egypt to Canaan,

it's this word.

The bones began in one place and ended somewhere else.

Paul uses the same word in Galatians,

when he's talking about people who started off saying they believed the Christian message,

and then who ended up saying that they didn't.

They started in one place,

and they ended up in another.

And what Hebrews 11 is really saying,

is that there was a man called Enoch who started off in one place,

in this world,

in this life where we are,

and ended up somewhere else,

taken directly into the bosom of God,

bypassing death entirely.

And, of course,

Enoch isn't the first person in Hebrews 11 to make that journey.

Abel did the same thing.

Abel went from this life to the next.

Abel went from this world of sin and suffering and sorrow

into the presence of God.

But Abel made that journey through death,

and Enoch didn't.

And God simply took him.

And after telling us that,

the next verse then looks back on Enoch's life,

on the kind of character of life that he had.

And that tells us about what faith looked like in his life.

Enoch's life pleased God.

He believed that God exists,

and he believed that God rewards those who seek him.

In our culture,

when you hear,

he believed that God exists,

maybe you hear that,

and you think,

okay,

so he accepted an idea,

and a dry idea,

like something you would maybe accept

because you've been to a philosophy lecture,

an intellectual proposition,

just like saying,

I believe in gravity,

or I believe in human rights,

or I believe that white wine goes better

than red wine with chicken.

But that's,

when he says,

when it's talking about you must believe that God exists,

it's talking about something completely different.

Now,

if you read some other English translations of Hebrews 11,

maybe you'll see a translation that says,

whoever comes to God must believe that God is.

Okay?

It's a different way to translate the verse.

It's a hard verse to translate into English.

So that God is.

That's the thing that you must believe.

And it's not talking about the existence of God

simply as an idea,

as a proposition.

Instead,

what it's saying is what you find throughout the whole of the Bible

in how God reveals himself to people.

Okay?

Think back to when God reveals himself to Moses.

Moses,

the burning bush.

And Moses asks God,

who are you?

What is your name?

And God reveals his name by saying,

I am who I am.

Okay?

And Jesus identifies himself with this as well.

You know,

at one point when he's debating with the Pharisees about Abraham,

and he said something that can sound really strange

until you get that he's identifying himself

as the God who spoke to Moses

when Jesus said,

before Abraham was,

I am.

That he is who he is.

That he is God who comes to you on his own terms.

That he is not just an idea,

that he is reality.

That he is the living God.

And that is how Enoch came to God.

Wanting God on God's own terms.

Wanting the God who is.

Wanting the living God.

Wanting God.

So Enoch is someone whose life

is a life of desire for God.

And Enoch wanted God as God really is.

Knowing that everything that God showed Enoch about himself

was so good.

And so true.

And so beautiful.

That God was what Enoch wanted.

More than anything else.

And God was happy to give Enoch the one thing that he wanted.

And that is why God took Enoch directly to himself.

You see, who was Enoch?

Well, Enoch is the man in the Bible

whose wildest dream came true.

Enoch is the man in the Bible

who got everything he ever wanted.

Because the thing that he wanted was God.

As God really is.

And maybe at this point though you're wondering,

well how do you know all that about Enoch

just from this verse in Hebrews 11?

Because it doesn't say that much about him.

How does, what was his actual life like?

How does whoever wrote Hebrews 11

know what Enoch's life was like?

And the answer to that is way back early on

in the book of Genesis.

And it's why we read those verses

from Genesis 4 and Genesis 5.

So the Enoch that we're talking about,

and you may have noticed that there were two Enochs

in those readings.

Two separate people, same name,

they're actually cousins.

But the Enoch that we're talking about

in Hebrews 11 is the Enoch from Genesis 5,

from the family tree of Seth.

And where we find him in a really strange genealogy.

And the story of Enoch there in Genesis 5

is a hard one for people to make sense of

in our culture because the details that we get about him

come to us in a genealogy.

And it's a strange one for us to read

because the genealogy focuses on people's ages.

And the ages seem almost impossible for us to imagine.

People living to be 900 years old.

And the details of his life in the midst of all of that

aren't obvious.

Genesis 5 does not tell us

what did Enoch do as a job.

It doesn't tell us who he was married to.

It doesn't give us any stories

of things he did in his life.

So for people from our culture,

it'd be really easy to read Genesis 5

and think, well, we don't really know anything about Enoch

or what his life was actually like.

Because we find him in a genealogy

where all we see is names and numbers.

But if that's what you do,

the good news for you is you're doing it wrong.

And what I want to show you

is that if you want to make,

that we can make a lot of sense of Enoch

as we find him in Genesis 5.

But the way that you have to do that

is by reading Genesis 4 and Genesis 5 together,

side by side, the tale of the two Enoch's.

One who lived by faith and one who didn't.

And when you do that and you see them there,

you see that the stories are family trees,

each with an Enoch, as I said, these cousins.

And you see the shape of a life defined by faith,

a life of walking with God,

and you see a life that is the opposite.

And it's in that contrast that you start to see

what the Enoch who lived by faith was really like.

So let's start off in Genesis 4 though,

with the faithless Enoch.

So Genesis 4,

Corey read from the part where Cain has a son.

But Genesis 4 before that,

just to give you a really short summary,

it starts off in the background with Adam and Eve.

They begin in the Garden of Eden.

They're there in paradise.

They walk with God.

And they're led astray by a lying serpent.

They try to replace God.

And they sin against him.

And they're cast out of the garden.

But as God does that,

he gives Eve a promise

that one day,

one of her descendants will come

and will undo the fall.

And the paradise will be restored.

The paradise that has been lost.

But the promise also has a key detail,

which is that from now on,

the descendants who come from them,

the human race, the world,

is going to be divided into two groups.

And one group will believe the promise

that has been given to Eve.

And the other group will side with the serpents.

And they will live by his lies.

And then what happens at the beginning of Genesis 4,

as you'll know if you were here last week,

is that this is immediately the case

with their first two sons, Cain and Abel.

And that Cain believes that the serpent's lies

and Abel lives by the promise given to Eve.

And then Cain kills Abel.

And then God sends Cain out into the world

to be someone who walks,

but who walks as a loner.

He's a wanderer and a vagabond.

And he's someone whose own parents walked with God,

but he's the ultimate loner in the world.

And that then is where we pick up the story

in Genesis 4 where we read,

because what comes from there on

into the rest of Genesis 4 is a family tree.

It's what happens next with Cain and his family.

Because Cain then,

and it's a much easier family story,

genealogy for us to make sense of,

to read than what comes in Genesis 5.

So Cain has a son,

and he names his son Enoch.

And Cain is a rootless person

who's wandering away from God,

wandering away from humanity's true home,

but he doesn't want his son Enoch to feel like that.

So look at what he does

to try and make his son Enoch feel rooted somewhere,

like he belongs somewhere,

like he has a paradise to call his own.

He finds a city,

and he names the city Enoch.

And that the message that this Enoch hears

from his own father is,

this world is yours.

It has your name on it.

Most of you will know who the artist Banksy is.

He paints things on walls that just appear.

For a while, Banksy had a rival artist

who would turn up whenever Banksy

had just finished a painting,

and the rival artist would add his own name to it

to take credit for it.

Team Robo, apparently.

I'm not sure if Team Robo is still doing this,

but this is what Cain does for his son Enoch

by stamping his son's name on this world.

Ownership.

This is yours.

This is the place that will satisfy your desires.

So Enoch, this Enoch grows up there

in a city named after himself,

and he has a family,

and in the chapter is his family tree,

and in that family he has a descendant called Lamech.

And by this point,

the unbelief that their family is based on

really grows into its final boss form.

It's really fully arbed at this point.

Because Lamech was a complicated man.

He has three sons,

and they are exceptionally talented in different areas,

in music, technology, agriculture.

Enoch Lamech, this guy,

is the first man in the Bible to take two wives,

Ada and Zillah,

against the will of God.

He confesses to being a murderer,

like his ancestor Cain.

He controls his wives through fear and intimidation.

He's talented with words.

So when Corey read the chapter there,

and Lamech starts saying,

hear my voice,

wives of Lamech, Ada and Zillah.

And he boasts about having killed a man.

It's a piece of poetry.

It's a song.

It's a lyric.

And he uses that gift to control people

through the power of fear.

And above all that,

what you can see from his poem

is that this Lamech,

this descendant of the faithless Enoch,

he does not believe or live by

the promise of forgiveness

that was given to Eve.

And you can see that because he said,

if Cain's revenge is sevenfold,

and maybe, incidentally,

when Corey read that,

you just glossed over it.

Cain's revenge.

But actually what you see here

is the lie that they live by.

Because this is the family's origin story,

as Cain has told it to his own descendants.

That Cain wasn't the aggressor.

That Cain did the right thing.

That he was just taking revenge.

That it was actually Abel who started it.

That Abel had it coming.

That Abel was really the one

who was in the wrong.

So they live by this lie.

And then if that revenge for Cain

was sevenfold,

Lamech's will be 77fold.

He does not believe in forgiveness.

He believes in exponential vengeance

and violence.

You see, he believes in revenge

rather than forgiveness.

And he lives by a cycle of retribution,

not grace.

And his life is all about

clinging to power

in this worldly city

by whatever means necessary.

And the family's values

are actually so opposite the gospel

that this is what Jesus was referring to

when he taught in forgiveness.

And he said to his disciples,

if someone wrongs you,

forgive them 77fold.

Jesus is saying,

we must be the opposite

of the family of Cain and Lamech

and that other Enoch.

So you see,

there is an Enoch in the Bible

before the Enoch that we meet

in Hebrews 11.

And this is the world

that that Enoch creates

and the family that comes after him.

And it's a world where desire

is disordered left, right, and center.

And you don't have to spend too long

looking at Genesis 4

to see that we're still in that world.

And that the world of Cain

and his son Enoch

and his descendant Lamech

is still the world that we live in.

Is it hard for you to imagine

a world of petty egos,

of power being worshipped,

or women being treated as objects,

or good things like art

and music being misused

for terrible purposes,

where human beings stamp their own names

in their tiny patches of this world

as though they own the whole thing,

and where we all expect

something in this world

to satisfy our ultimate desires?

So that Enoch is really relatable.

But showing you the other Enoch

is harder work.

That's what we're going to try and do.

See, when Genesis 4 comes to an end

and that first Enoch's family tree ends,

we find another new character

being introduced,

and that is Seth.

So this is another brother

to Cain and Abel.

So Adam and Eve have this third son, Seth.

And Seth, like Abel,

believed in the promise

that had been given to Eve.

He's someone who looks for God.

He prays.

He calls on the name of the Lord.

And those who come after him

and his family do the same.

And that then takes us into Genesis 5,

which is another family tree.

And that's where we find the Enoch

who comes up in Hebrews 11.

Now Genesis 5

is one of the hardest chapters

in the Bible

for people from our culture

to make sense of.

And that makes it hard

for us to understand Enoch.

Like I said before,

it's a list of names.

And we didn't read the whole chapter,

but if you remember what Corey read

or if you have the Bible

in front of you,

it's a list of names.

There are 10 generations,

10 names.

So 10 names,

each with three dates.

So the age that this patriarch was

when he became a father,

and then the number of years

that he lives for afterwards,

and then the third number

is the total number of years

of his life.

So it's a really different way

to tell a family story

than what you find in Genesis 4,

which is, you know,

narrative and gritty details

and songs.

But it's a really important difference

to grasp.

And there are some things

that are a strange parallel

to Cain's family,

because Cain's family

is centered on Cain,

an Enoch,

and a Lamech.

And Seth's family

also has a Seth,

well, it begins with a Seth

instead of Cain,

but then also another Enoch

and another Lamech.

But they're completely

different people,

because the thing

that they live by

is completely different.

So the resemblances

are really superficial.

But when you get into,

try to read Genesis 5,

it's really hard to make sense of,

because we're talking

about such huge numbers.

You know,

it's where Methuselah

is 969 and so on.

And I think

in our kind of culture,

we don't really know

how to read a text like this.

Because in our culture,

numbers are things

we use to talk about quantity.

So if I tell you I'm 43,

that is entirely

a description of quantity.

It's just the number of years

that I've been alive for.

But,

and it's an exact number,

I can prove it to you,

I can give you

my birth certificate,

we can do all kinds

of measurements,

we can track the age

by the second

as my life goes on.

But,

it tells you nothing

about the quality of my life,

because we don't use numbers

in that way.

We use numbers for

quantity instead of quality.

And in our culture,

what do we say?

Age is just a number.

Right?

But in the world

of the ancient Near East,

the early chapters of Genesis,

age isn't just a number.

And numbers have

distinct significance

in terms of the qualities

that they convey.

So we're immediately

getting into a very

different culture

of thinking about

ages,

numbers,

and how numbers

tell a story

to the kind of culture

that we're in.

But in a way,

that shouldn't really

surprise us

when we get into

an ancient text like this.

It's only really

in the 17th century

that it became normal

to expect that everyone

would think about their age

is something that everyone

should know in an exact sense.

So if you go back

to your own medieval ancestors,

if you're from European descent,

very few of them

would be able to tell you

exactly how old they were

because they just didn't

think in those categories.

That wasn't their experience.

If someone was from

a really privileged background,

maybe someone would have

written down somewhere

the year of their birth.

Most people would just

wouldn't know

how old they were.

I was born the spring

after the river flooded.

I was born,

or they would explain

their age in life stages.

I'm obviously a child

or I'm a man

or I'm elderly.

But if you go back

much further

into a very different culture again,

to the world

of the early chapters

of Genesis,

people had a very different

way of thinking

about numbers

where numbers

can denote quality

rather than just quantity

like in our culture.

So what do I mean by that?

Think about it like this.

In our culture,

some numbers

can denote something

like a quality.

They have a symbolic meaning.

Lots of hotels

don't have a 13th floor

because some people

think that the number 13

symbolizes bad luck.

But we have very few

numbers like that.

You know,

212 is just quantity.

Nobody is probably thinking,

oh, 212,

that symbolizes something.

Right?

It's just that they're

212 of something.

And in our culture,

if we want to get

to those symbolic meanings,

we tend to use words

rather than numbers.

But if you're an ancient Hebrew,

you're from a different

kind of culture.

And for you,

every letter of your alphabet

has a numerical value.

It's not really the case for us.

And numbers

have a symbolic meaning to you.

And you actually see this

throughout the Bible.

You'll realize this

retrospectively

if you know the Bible a bit.

The number 7

symbolizes perfection,

completion,

seven days of creation,

and so on.

12 symbolizes

a different kind of completeness,

12 tribes,

12 apostles.

40 symbolizes trials,

40 days of reign

on the ark,

40 years in the wilderness,

40 days in the wilderness.

And 500 symbolizes

completion

in a different kind of way

as well.

And the numerical value

of the last letter

of the Hebrew alphabet

is 500.

Think of the temple.

How wide is it?

500.

How tall is it?

500.

So numbers,

if you're an ancient Hebrew,

you live in a world

where numbers

convey something to you

that numbers

don't really convey to us.

But if you know

the Bible a bit,

you'll recognize

at least some

of these numbers.

numbers.

And here's the thing.

If you were a native

in that culture,

you would simply

look at and see numbers

and see things in them

that we don't.

Significances

and symbols.

And when you start

to see Genesis 5

like that,

this genealogy

where Enoch appears,

you start to see

some hints of this.

The Enoch

in this family tree

is the seventh person

in his genealogy.

This place of

significant symbolic

perfection.

The Lamech

in this family tree

when he died

was 777.

Okay?

Threefold perfection

and completeness.

And you know

who's number seven

in the other family tree

in Genesis 4?

It's the

other Lamech.

Okay?

And there's a 777

there as well,

but it's the opposite

symbolically.

What did he say?

It's the seventh person

in his family tree.

If Cain's revenge

is sevenfold,

Lamech's will be

77 folds.

Okay?

And in the Genesis 5

family tree,

when Noah has

his three sons,

he is 500.

Again,

a different kind

of completion

like the temple.

So even for us

at such huge

cultural distance

with how we think

about numbers

and what they can tell us,

some of the numbers

in this family tree

stand out even to us

from our really

foreign culture,

although the meaning

of most of the numbers

is lost on us.

I'm trying to think

of the best illustration

for this from our culture,

and I think it's like this,

that it's a bit

like computer code.

If you're coding,

you can write code

with letters,

and you can have words

that if you know

nothing about coding,

you can look in

and make a little bit

of sense of.

But behind all of those,

you can write code

always in numbers,

and that's really

what it comes down to,

all ones and zeros.

I know almost nothing

about coding,

and I've told you

pretty much everything

that I know about it already.

So if I'm looking at code

and it's all numbers,

it's all lost on me

because I don't know

what I'm looking at.

But if you have

an expert coder

who's looking at

all these ones and zeros

in their order,

someone who knows the code

can look at it,

and then they see,

oh, this is doing something.

These things have meaning.

This is all put together

in a really complex,

beautiful, meaningful way,

and they see things

that I can't see.

So here's what

I'm trying to say,

that people from our culture

look at Genesis 5,

at this genealogy,

and think,

what a stupid chapter.

What kind of idiots

would read this stuff?

Who would care about Enoch

in the middle of that?

But do you know what?

If you knew how to code,

you'd look at it

and you would take

a deep breath

and you would say,

wow.

Compared to the people

in Genesis 4,

the people in Genesis 5

have the most

numerically beautiful lives.

For all of these numbers

and these symbols

speak to us about

how in a world

that is broken

and ruined by the fall,

somehow these people,

person after person,

are symbolized

by completion,

by repair,

by perfection

perfection in the middle.

And place number seven

in the middle,

they have Enoch.

Somehow they are restored

and that theme

recurs in their lives

generation after generation.

And like I said,

in the middle of it all,

there is this uniquely

beautiful person

in Enoch

whose life is so pleasing

to God

that God takes him

from life

straight into his presence

without death.

Enoch in this chapter

who in every way

is the polar opposite

of the Enoch

in the chapter before.

You know,

if you want to compare

these two Enoch's,

the thing that makes them

different is desire.

Cain's son Enoch

is the son of a wanderer

who is alienated

from God.

But Seth's son Enoch

is someone who walks

with God

in this life

and who walks

straight out of this life

without even

going through the gates

of death.

He walks with God

in this world

as though he was

still in Eden.

Cain's Enoch

directed all of his desire

into what he could find

in this world.

Seth's son Enoch's desire

was too big for this world

to satisfy.

And God gratified

that desire

by giving him himself.

And the big question

that comes to you then

when we look at

Genesis 4

and Genesis 5 together

and faithless Enoch

and the Enoch

who lived by faith,

the question that comes

to you is

which family tree

do you want to be yours?

Which Enoch

do you want to be

the one that you belong to,

the one that you line up with?

Like I said,

in Cain's family,

the seventh person

in the row

is Lamech.

And his life

is the perfect expression

of the lie of unbelief

that the family

starts off with.

Do you know what?

The generation,

in his family tree

it stops at generation

number seven.

It's not life going on

and flourishing

exponentially forever.

It hits rock bottom.

And do you know

who number,

and I said number seven

in Seth's family tree

is Enoch.

But he's not the end.

It goes on

down to a tenth generation

and that's also

a symbolic number.

And Enoch's descendants

go on and on.

And the symbolic things

we're told about them

are that their lives

are marked by integrity

and wholeness

even in this broken world

living side by side

with the family

from Genesis 4.

But the thing

that is so striking

is this.

That if you

are descended

from that Enoch

in Genesis 5

by coming after him

and his family

what you get

is life in abundance.

Okay,

you get all these

numbers of perfection

and completion

generation

after generation

after generation.

But in the midst

of that all

of life in abundance

for the descendants

of Enoch

in the midst of it all

the exceptional person

in the middle

is someone

whose life

in this world

is cut short

as a young man

in comparison

to all of the others.

Enoch in Genesis 5

is taken from this world

at the age of

three, six, five.

And in that way

don't you see

that Enoch

in Genesis 5

is a type

of Christ

that he is

that everything

about him

points forward

to Jesus

as the truly

perfect person

who at the age

of 33

and the prime

of life

the one

who lived

a perfect life

who desired God

perfectly

with everything

in him

for every second

of his earthly life

someone who

truly deserved

to bypass

death entirely

and to have

all of his wishes

granted

and to be received

victorious

before his father

that this Jesus

dies

that he does

the thing

that Enoch

doesn't do

and that this Jesus

does that

for you

so that if you

have faith in him

that you will

not perish

but have eternal

life

and that you'll

be like the people

who come after

Enoch in Genesis 5

that you receive

life in abundance

life everlasting

so you see

when I'm asking you

which Enoch

do you want

to belong to

really what I'm

asking you is

do you believe

the promise

that was given

to Eve

or do you live

by the lie

that was given

by the serpents

the most compelling

reason to want

to belong to

the family

of Enoch

from Genesis 5

and not the other

Enoch

of course it's not

Enoch himself

it is the Lord

Jesus Christ

whose life

is prefigured

let's pray

our father in heaven

we praise you

for the gospel

for this glorious

hope that we have

that the promise

that you gave

to Eve

has come true

in Jesus Christ

we thank you

for all those

heroes of the faith

who came before

him

whose remarkable

lives in different

ways were fulfilled

in Jesus

and we thank you

that Jesus

is the true

and the better

Enoch

more perfect

still in every

way

the true

777

for us

and the one

who

although he

deserved

to be taken

from one place

to another

from this world

of darkness

that he came

into his light

deserved to be

taken

into light

and glory

with you

that he nonetheless

did what Enoch

didn't do

and that he

endured the

ultimate

darkness of the

cross

the ultimate

forsakenness

and that he

endured that

for the joy

that was set

before him

so Lord

please

convince us

afresh

to belong

to Enoch

from Genesis 5

from Hebrews 11

but not to

Enoch alone

but to be

those who are

united to

the Christ

who fulfilled

everything that

we see in him

in Jesus name

Amen