Faith, Hope, Love - Enoch a Faith that Pleases God

Good morning, church.

How are you this morning?

Hope to uh bring God's word to you in uh in a clear way today, and we're gonna continue on in our series, uh, Faith, Hope, and Love.

And it's a great series.

It's really, if you think about it, it's foundational.

Paul said uh these three remain uh faith, hope, and love.

And and uh really they remain, and what happens is when they remain, all the things that go on outside that are crazy and it's disrupting of your life, it's a provide a solid foundation for your life.

And so today we're gonna talk about faith as we begin a couple of weeks ago.

And uh, to do that, let's gonna take off from uh Hebrews chapter 11.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

So if you have your Bibles, or you can look at it on the screen.

And uh just sort of to keep this in context, uh, we should know that the writer of Hebrews, what he's doing here, he's trying to make one thing crystal clear.

That is that you cannot do enough to make your way and earn your way to heaven.

And uh to be in God's good graces.

Uh you can uh you can try to be a moral person, you can try to go through uh routines and rituals and things like that, but it's it's faith that gets us to where we need to be.

Faith from first to last, always and only faith.

And uh I think we can all, you know, remember he's talking to the Hebrews.

Hebrews were Christians, and so we can fall into this same kind of thinking that we've got to earn our way sometimes.

And what what what I'm talking about is that sometimes we fall into sin and then we feel like we have to do something to make up for it because we feel bad about it, and so we have to kind of help God out, and it's sort of like a self-rescue.

We've got to self-rescue ourselves.

Well, that's not the gospel of grace, and so we need to remember that.

Hebrews 10 38 says it like this but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.

And so this is kind of in the mind of the writer as we're reading through this today.

And if you recall a couple weeks ago, Neil brought us the first message in verses 1 through 3, and how faith is defined, how faith is defined.

Let me just kind of refresh your memory with a verse there, and it's just really about its faith's essential character.

And uh the word there says, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Now, I know there's a story about this three-year-year-old little boy who went to the grocery store with his mother, and uh before they they got to the parking lot and pulled in, and and before they went in, the mom said, Now, don't ask for any chocolate chip cookies, you're not gonna get any.

And so she found a cart and she picked the little boy up and set him down in the kids' seat, one of those kids' seat carts.

And uh they were doing going through the aisles, they were kind of going through, and they got to the to the cookie aisle.

And he said, Um, Mom, can I have some chocolate chip cookies?

As you would imagine.

He sees the chip cookies and he says, Can I have chocolate chip cookies?

He said, I told you not to ask.

Sit back down, don't ask again.

And so they continue on out through the aisles, this and that, up and down the various aisles, and she couldn't find what she needed, and she ended up back on the cookie aisle.

And uh so again, as you can imagine, Mom, can I have some chocolate chip cookies?

I told you, don't ask.

Please ask, please stop asking me to sit back down.

You're not going to get any.

And they uh they finally wound up back at the checkout lane, and uh, right before they got up to the line, the little boy stands up in his seat.

He's thinking this is his last chance, I guess.

And he at the top of his lungs, he souts as he stands up, in the name of Jesus, can I have some chocolate chip cookies, please?

And everybody thought it was pretty funny, and and uh some people even even uh laughed and applauded.

And you know, and in that day, that very day, the little boy and his mom came home with 23 boxes of chocolate chip cookies.

Yeah.

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

That's faith defined.

Uh, but we've been looking beyond that.

Last week, Scott brought us the idea of uh of what we're gonna look at next, and that's the faith is described, chapter four, or verse four, through the rest of chapter 11, faith described.

And the writer of Hebrews has given us really just this example after example after example of what faith looks like so that we can adopt that kind of faith as well.

These are the heroes of the faith.

And last week we looked at the faith of Abel.

Abel is given here as the example of what we might call the worship of faith.

And if you remember, faith was expressed by Abel in his offering to God, what he gave to God.

He's an illustration of that.

And today we'll be looking at the man named Enoch, the second example.

His is the uh, if Abel is the worship of faith, Enoch is about the walk of faith.

And that's what we're going to talk about today.

And by the way, these men follow sort of one after each other, sort of as a progression.

And I think it's intended by the writer.

He's doing this, so uh Abel is basically telling us how do we enter this life of faith?

How do we get there?

Recognizing that all of us are sinners, all of us are in need of grace, and this is the way we enter the Christian life.

And then Enoch shows us how we can walk by faith, and that's what we're going to talk about today.

You know, there's not a lot of uh of information about Enoch, um, but there's really a few things.

I think we can say that one thing is true.

We can learn some things about the life of faith through looking at his example.

And there are three references that I found that are in the scriptures, three references about Enoch, and we just kind of want to look through these briefly.

The first one is in Hebrews, which we just are looking at today.

And uh, then we're in also in Genesis and one in the little book of Jude, that little book tucked in right before uh Revelation.

So each of these bring us some insight concerning the life of faith.

So let's begin this morning with the first of these, Hebrews, Hebrews 11, and then we're looking at verses 5 and 6.

If you'll read along with me, it uh is found those in those verses, Hebrews 11, 5, and 6.

It says, 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.

Now let's pray.

Uh Father, we're so grateful for your word today.

And as we look at this uh this man's example, this man named Enoch, we just asking you, asking you, Holy Spirit, that you would reveal to us the truths you want us to know, that we would live a life that's pleasing to you.

And uh, Lord, we just pray by your spirit you'd show us what that means.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

So, why is Enoch's example of faith so significant in the biblical record?

I want to talk about that just a minute.

And and basically his example consists of three things we're gonna go through through this morning.

The first of these is Enoch's uh his extraordinary privilege.

His extraordinary privilege.

Now we'll look at this in verse 5.

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

Focus on those he should not see death, and he was not found because God had taken him.

You can think about this.

This, you know, this is a remarkable privilege to not see death.

He didn't have a funeral.

How many people you know that never have a funeral?

There's only one other person in the Bible that actually act actually got to experience the same thing, and his name was Elijah.

Elijah was taken up, if you remember, in the whirlwind.

Well, here's the man, Enoch, the first one, who didn't see death.

And uh, to get the real context, though, I think, of this story, I think we need to look at the second thing, which is in Genesis chapter 5.

Genesis 5 · chapter mention

So if you want to look there, we're gonna go through a couple of verses here.

Enoch chapter 5, I mean uh Genesis chapter 5, and and what you find in this Genesis 5 story is just really fascinating.

Genesis 5 · chapter mention

I mean, it's really fascinating.

And I've I just learned a whole lot as I went through this.

And but right at the beginning of chapter 5, it has the verse in verse 1, we're told really what the chapter, the whole chapter is about.

Uh this is the document, chapter 5, verse 1.

This is the document containing the family records of Adam.

The document containing the family records of Adam.

This is this is Adam's family tree.

And so what's listed here is after Adam, there's nine men who are called the patriarchs that are listed right along here, surveying really 1,500 years of biblical history, and it's all compressed into a very brief set of passages, of verses.

So, in the way it's laid out, let me just kind of give this kind of way for each generation how this is laid out.

First, the age of the individual patriarch when he fathers his firstborn son, then the remaining years of his life, that they had other sons and daughters, the total years of their life, and finally the notice of their death.

And what's extraordinary about these men is that they had extremely long lives.

Uh we'll find out one had a really, really long life, and you know probably who that is.

Someone has called this God's obituary column.

God's obituary column.

Because over and over again, what you find at the end of every one of these records of these men is this hammering refrain.

And he died.

And he died.

And he died.

And he died.

And he died.

All the way through the end, except there's one interruption in verse 21.

All of a sudden we have something different.

Verse 21 When Enoch had lived 65 years, his father Methuselah, had fathered Methuselah, Enoch walked with God 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.

The same record we have in Hebrews.

Enoch was really, if you count those generations, Enoch was the seventh from Adam.

That's what Jude actually says, that exact phrase, seventh from Adam.

And uh, you know, if you know anything about biblical numerology, numbers in the Bible sometimes are really important.

And seven is one of those.

And it references metaphorically something about completeness or fullness.

And so here we have this man's name.

He is the seventh from Adam, and I don't think it's an accident that he's there in that place.

And what's subtly being communicated is Enoch was living a significantly, notably righteous life.

Out of all these others, he's the only one who it's said of said of that he walked with God.

And that's significant.

When you have something like that, you need to pay attention to what's going on.

TJ Cole writes this.

He said, the finality of death caused by sin, and so powerfully demonstrated in the genealogy of Genesis, is thus not so final.

He's talking about Enoch.

Man was not born to die, he was born to live, and that life comes by walking with God.

Walking with God is the key to the chains of the curse.

I love that quote, and it's so true.

So Enoch shows us extraordinary privilege that he didn't die.

And because, for that reason, it's because of the second thing, which is Enoch's singular focus.

Enoch's singular focus.

It says in Hebrews 11, verse 6, back there again, now before he was taken, he was commended as having pleased God.

Hebrews 11:6

I looked up that little word commended, and it has this idea of uh of staying under something and being and having a story.

A testimony.

So all these guys had testimonies.

And you have a testimony when you walk by faith, too.

You just may not realize it until maybe a little later.

But Enoch lived for one reason, and that was to please God, and that's why he was taken.

And the expression of faith proved it.

And I want us to see this.

His desire to please God showed up in several ways.

And this is just kind of like the the the um the proof that he did have faith.

These are the outward expressions of it.

You know, we're all supposed to show our faith, and Enoch certainly did that.

Let me show you these five things.

Number one, Enoch held an unbelief, an unwavering belief in the goodness of God.

So, how do you know that?

Well, we go back to Hebrews 11 and read this again.

And without faith, it is impossible to please him.

There's that word, please.

For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

Let's reflect on that just a minute.

See, over time, what happened to Enoch?

Enoch just got closer and closer and closer and closer to God until he disappeared.

So that doesn't mean when we're talking about you, we think about these things, there's really two beliefs that are expressed in these verses.

Two beliefs that are essential for us as well.

And I think they apply to Enoch.

First, you have to believe that God exists.

You say, Well, I believe that God exists.

I don't think this is just means that we're sort of aware that he's out there somewhere and he's he's a reality.

What this I think is saying is that we don't just give some kind of mental assent to the existence of God.

Rather, it means that that you know we do think he's gonna do something.

Otherwise, we're just practical atheists.

He's out there somewhere, but we don't we don't really act on it.

It means he is a blue God who we believe is really there and he's gonna do something in our lives.

We believe he's willing and ready to reveal his great love to us.

And for our part, we just respond to that invitation to him based on this, not his imagined, but his real character.

See, some of some of us have an uh the idea, an idea of God that's not accurate.

But if we know God and who he is, we can count on the God who's always faithful.

That's so important.

I mean, that's really everything that you know what God is like.

And so, some people, you know, you some people because they don't know who God is, they live under this dark cloud, thinking God, God, he's always disappointed in me.

He doesn't really like me all that much.

And you know what I think?

He's ready to whack-a-mole me every time he gets a chance when I get out of line.

You ever think that sometimes?

Well, that could just do in our faith.

But I think, I think Enoch learned over time that God is good all the time.

He's good all the time.

Because every time that Enoch needed him, I think God was there.

God just showed up and he proved himself to Enoch over many years, many, many years.

So he held this unwavering belief in the goodness of God.

Second thing we must believe to get closer to God is that God rewards our seeking him.

That's a second thing he says.

You know, the Bible says in James 4, verse 8, that God rewards those.

James 4:8

If we draw near to him, he draws near to us.

He rewards us with that promise.

When we draw near to God, he will draw near to us.

Think about that.

Take a step toward God, and God will take a step toward you.

And the reward is is what?

It's a deeper intimacy and fellowship with God, maybe than we've ever known, simply by moving closer.

And I was thinking about this, it just like there's a there's a light switch in our hallway that uh, you know, when all the kids were there, it uh if you flip the light switch, the inner the internet would go off.

You know, and it's right by beside the other light switch.

And uh, you know, I'd find out the internet would, I'd be working at the computer and the and the thing would go down.

I was like, who turned that off?

You turned off the wrong light.

It's the internet that's that's off, not the light.

Anyway, it's like that's how can how we can really think of uh it's like a light, so we can either turn that pursuit of a God and that belief of God on and off and make that connection with God, and everything will change.

It's our choice.

It's our choice.

You see that?

So seeking him is an expression of faith, and it's pleasing to God.

I think God, I think it just warms the heart of God when our goal is to seek him and to please him in everything.

So believe in him, seeking him.

And not only did Enoch hold this unwavering belief in the goodness of God, second thing, God had a heart.

I mean, Enoch had a heart for the next generation.

Enoch had a heart for the next generation.

You say, how do you know that?

Well, let's go back to Genesis 5, verses 21 and 22.

Genesis 5:21

It says, When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah.

Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters.

Notice Enoch didn't start his journey with God until when?

After he became a dad.

After he became a father.

Sixty-five years, and then he started walking with God.

And at that point, he must have realized like all dads do typically is I need to make some changes here.

Because I can't pass on me to this next generation as I am.

He he had this uh this sense, and every dad I think has this.

He had a responsibility now that he didn't have before.

I remember when we had kids, I thought things are gonna change.

And I knew it.

And it's sobering.

And I think this is what Enoch experienced.

You know, I just say a word to dads and granddads here, and even for those who are moms that don't have dads in the home, uh, there's no greater task for you than to to teach and train your kids in the things of God, like your kids and your grandkids.

What a privilege that is.

And I I I just wish I had seen that sooner than I did.

You know, and maybe maybe Enoch did too.

65 years is a long time before you start walking with him.

And whether you're you realize it or not, you are the prophet, priest, and king in your own home for the good purpose of God.

Don't leave that job up to anyone else.

Just exhort you.

Don't leave it to anyone else.

Be the man, be the spiritual leader in your home while there's time, because time goes by so fast.

And and for your older dads, don't don't retire at 65.

You know, that's when that's when Enoch started, right?

And for the next 300 years, he influenced his family.

300 years.

And uh Enoch didn't always walk with God, did he?

But he he changed.

This changed.

And I don't think we we often consider the importance of our own spiritual say influence.

We think we don't matter that much.

We don't see maybe until it's too late, we be we need to change.

We're not just helping them change, we're we're needing to change as well.

And you think of this, Enoch had a lot shorter time to do that than any of these other patriarchs because uh really the average lifespan of these patriarchs is 912 years.

And uh Enoch's influence amounted to less than half of that, but yet he made the greatest impact because he was walking with God.

You see how that that works?

We can we can we can kind of catch up if we pursue God like that.

Interesting note about Enoch, his son Methuselah.

Does anybody have any anyone that's named their kids Methuselah?

That would probably not be good.

What do we know him for?

The the oldest man who ever lived, what how old did he live?

969.

969 years.

969 years.

So here's the thing.

When you look at the meaning of Methuselah's name, it's kind of like a combo name.

There's a first half and the second half of it.

Uh but it's prophetic.

It's prophetic, not pathetic, prophetic.

Prophetic if you pathetic if you name your kid that, but it's it's a it's a combo name.

The first part of his name, it means when he is dead, it will come.

Or it will be sent.

What will be sent?

The flood.

A lot of commentators think it was during that time when.

When uh Methuselah's birth was happening, going on God revealed to Enoch that uh that was the reality of a coming flood.

And then the second half of his name means man of a javelin and refers to some kind of weapon and a dart or a javelin, sort of like a missile.

And uh so taken together these two components of his name, maybe something like parting gift.

This is a parting gift.

So let's let's do a little math here, and we'll get a little closer to this.

If you add up the length of uh time between Methuselah's birth and Noah entering the ark, it is 969 years.

So, what does it tell you?

Enoch, I mean the Methuselah died in the year of the flood.

And so, in some senses, the flood was sent like a javelin to the earth.

And Enoch was Methuselah was a sign for that, the prophetic sign for that.

You know, it's amazing to think about what we uh think about when considering the long lifespans, as I say, of these patriarchs.

And I think, you know, if you think of how these years overlapped, I did this this past week, and I was kind of like, wow, I'd never thought about that before.

But Methuselah was probably able to talk to his grandson Noah.

So they discussed these things.

Noah and his family, even, his great-grandkids.

So by faith, Enoch is passing his faith on to the next generation.

That's what I'm getting at.

So we see that thing as an outcome of his faith.

The third way we see Enoch playing out his faith, living out his faith, and pleasing God was that Enoch made a defining choice to live above his dark culture.

And it was a dark culture.

We think our culture was dark.

It was dark enough for God to destroy the earth over it.

Enoch lived about 400 years before Noah, and uh his great-grandson was Noah.

And the Bible describes it like this it describes the the world as being exceptionally violent and wicked, time when no one, virtually no one, paid any attention to God.

And uh that was probably the same in the days of Enoch, too.

I mean, it was getting to be a dark, dark world.

And the reason Enoch is singled out here is simply one reason.

His godly example, it stood out like a striking contrast in a dark world, kind of light in a in a dark place.

And so he didn't, what I want you to see is he didn't succumb to the darkness, which is really amazing.

So, so we often we get discouraged, we get just just like what does it matter?

We get uh apathetic, um, cynical about the things that are going on around us.

That wasn't Enoch.

His faith kept him living a holy life.

We can say it like that, he lived a holy life, and everybody saw it.

Well, what a testimony to live a holy life in a dark world, to live a holy life in your workplace, to live a holy life in your in your family or in in relationships you have.

Well, it makes an impact.

You know, some of the most impactful examples are people who live by faith in dark places.

And maybe, maybe this morning you're you're someone who's walking through one of those, or maybe you're you're helping someone walk through a dark place.

Maybe it's a it's a physical problem or a financial issue.

We live and we go through difficult things, dark places.

But Enoch reminds us is that God will be with you through it.

And number four, what do we see?

Enoch displayed an extraordinary boldness to speak truth in a godless age.

And although he lived in this corrupt pre-flood world, he didn't, what did he not do?

He didn't remain silent.

He instead he prophesied.

And uh in fact, he became a preacher of righteousness in this dark age.

And that in fact, that prophecy is given to us in the book called Jude.

Jude's recording his prophecy in Jude 1, 14, and 15.

Let me just read it.

It says it was about these, he's talking about these, these, these uh in in Jude's circumstance, it was false teachers who were bringing untruth into the church.

But it was about these, it says, Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment on all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way.

You hear that?

Ungodly, ungodly, ungodly.

And all of them, the harsh things that the ungodly sinners have spoken against him.

You know, uh, Jude probably would not have been invited to any kind of uh church to preach, because he's telling them the truth.

There's judgment coming.

Not only for Enoch's day, it was the flood, but Jude is talking about the coming of Christ.

Yes, judgment day.

So it's not only a message for them, it's a message for us.

It was a far-reaching prophecy that even speaks today.

I want to say a brief word about this book of Enoch.

I don't want to spend too much time on it because it's really, but it's it's a popular thing.

There's even a movie, I think, called The Book of Enoch.

It's actually not just one book, it's several books that are compiled together, and uh they're, as I say, pretty popular right now.

And it and it was the case in the early church.

Um, some things in it are true, as what we read in Jude.

His prophecy is true, and some things are pretty questionable.

And uh, you know, I just think it's okay to read it, uh, but it's not scripture.

Don't put it on a par of the scriptures.

In fact, even the uh the early Jewish saints, nor the the early church, thought it was scripture, but they read it.

And um you say, well, Jude quotes from it, doesn't he?

He quotes from it in the book of Enoch.

That it's in the scriptures, and that doesn't mean it's scripture.

He uses it really as an example to illustrate that the God's judgment is gonna come on and fall on the ungodly, these ungodly teachers he's talking about.

So it's almost like we would take and read a book or watch a movie and use that thing in the book as an example for trying to prove our point.

You see?

So, anyway, just that's enough about the book of Enoch, but I wanted to mention that.

Number five, let's look at this.

Watch the outcome of Enoch's faith.

Enoch focused his whole life simply on pleasing God, simply on pleasing God.

Twice we see that in Genesis 5.24, it says, Enoch walk with God.

Enoch walk with God.

And that's there because um, you know, he wants us to see that this is what Enoch's life was like.

You know, the the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, it changes the way that Genesis writes it.

It says there in Genesis, Enoch walk with God, but they translate it in the Septuagint as Enoch pleased God.

So what does that say?

It says, walking with God, what does it mean?

It's a metaphor for pleasing God.

That's that's kind of the idea.

Walking is a metaphor for a lifestyle that pleases God.

And so that's what we're talking about.

And it's repeated there, as I say, twice.

Here's the thing Enoch had a really simple faith.

I just think he had a simple faith.

If if all you focuses on, or focuses on is that I get up every day and here's my agenda.

Please God.

In fact, you know, if you think about it, you you get the the impression Enoch's pleasing God was his one item on the the to-do list.

I mean, if if if pleasing God was the thing of the day, everything else on his to-do list was about how to please God.

What if we live like that?

Transform our lives.

Everything focused on that goal.

Did you know that this was Jesus' primary motivation?

In John 8, 29, he declared, The one who sent me is with me, he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him.

Under the principle that God pleasing him is the greatest and the single most important thing we could do in life.

So Paul exhorts us to that in 2 Corinthians 5.

He says, make it your aim to please him, whether at home in the body or away from him.

In other words, regardless of the conditions, make it your goal to please God.

So now we've seen Enoch's extraordinary privilege.

He doesn't die.

He's taken before he dies by God.

We've seen Enoch's singular focus.

He lived to please God above everything else.

We see that how it's played out because of his faith.

Now, what does all this mean to us?

How can we exercise our faith and walk with God like Enoch did in a dark place?

And to answer that, let's look at the third thing Enoch's consistent walk.

And I think there's just four principles I want to give you that are uh that we can adopt from Enoch's life.

And they're true always.

These are just consistent, they're basic, but they're true all the time.

Number one is that Enoch acted on his beliefs.

Enoch acted on his beliefs.

It says, and without faith, it is impossible to please him.

You can't please him unless you act in faith.

Faith, really, the essence of faith is this acting on your beliefs for something you can't see.

Something out there that you can't see, you still act on it.

Sometimes we don't see it and we don't do anything because we don't see anything.

That's not what faith is.

Faith is God-given vision.

Somebody said, I think you said in our media one time, Mark, vision that God puts in your heart that you act on by faith.

So think about that.

Enough Enoch walked with God acting consistently on his beliefs for three centuries.

That's amazing.

Most of us can't even do that for 30 days.

I can't do that for 30 days.

But faith is not faith.

It's all if it's all up here.

That's what I'm saying.

Sometimes we give mental assent to agreement with beliefs that we say, we hold, we profess, but you just can't sit there.

Else it's not faith.

Yeah, it has to be acted on for for it to work for you.

There's a story of a man who needed to cut some firewood, and uh he didn't have any tools, and so he went over to his neighbor and he said, Can I borrow your chainsaw?

He said, I don't have a chainsaw, but I've got an axe.

And so, well, he said, I'll take that.

He said, I've got to cut some firewood.

And so the man went off to cut the firewood.

And uh pretty soon his neighbor he decided, well, I'm gonna go check on and see how he's doing.

He's going out to the woods, I'll go out and see how he's doing.

He finds the man, he's sitting there leaning up against a tree.

And uh he said, What are you doing down there?

He's not the guy had not taken a single swing at the tree with his axe.

What are you doing down there?

He said, I'm just waiting to start sweat.

Start waiting to start sweating, is what he said.

And sometimes that's the way we can be.

We think we have to have something happen, but nothing happens until we act.

Right?

James reminds us of this faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

But someone, he says in his argument, will say, You have faith and I have works.

Show me your faith apart from your works, James says, and I will show you my faith by my works.

So it's a two-sided coin here.

You can't have one without the other.

Belief and action.

Belief and action.

First principle in walking with God, then is take action on what you say you believe.

Second principle, when we can use and adopt from Enoch's life, is this Enoch was in agreement with God.

He was in agreement with God.

To walk with God, we have to be in agreement with God.

Would you would you agree?

So here's what Amos 3 says.

He says, Do two walk together unless they have agreed to meet?

Can two walk together unless they have agreed to meet?

And it's really just a rhetorical question that illustrates that agreement is prerequisite for shared fellowship.

You can't walk together when you're at odds with God.

Because what happens?

You're moving in opposite directions.

We're talking about moving in the same direction God is moving in.

Sometimes it's just so subtle we don't get it.

And God sort of has to, are you home?

I need to talk to you.

That's what you know.

We can't walk together in fellowship when we cling to sin.

That's an idea.

And some of us hold on to sins that we think, ah, no big deal.

It's just a small thing.

When our natures and our wills are fundamentally opposed to his.

It changes everything.

And you know, sometimes we live with this attitude, I know like we know everything.

Or no one can tell us anything.

We operate like, well, we're we're always right, and no one can confuse us with the facts.

Um we have stubborn hearts.

God needs to change our hearts.

And you know what that's called in the Bible?

Unbelief.

Just the opposite of faith.

But here's the positive: God is willing to meet with us.

What does it say?

How can they walk together unless they have agreed to meet?

He wants to sit down with us and work through these inconsistencies in our walk with him.

And as Isaiah says, He invites us, God does, come now, let us reason together, says the Lord.

Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.

Though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.

Since it's a divine invitation to resolve our differences.

So there's no controversy between us and God.

That we're we're we're in agreement with Him.

You know what the key is to that?

Humility.

Humility.

Being willing to listen to what God says, and the result is, as he says, he will wash you clean.

What a precious, precious word that is.

Whiter than snow.

Act on your beliefs, be in agreement with God.

And then there's the third principle to walk with God, and we see that in number three is that Enoch aligned his life.

Enoch aligned his life with God's purposes.

And you think about this.

At 65 years old, Enoch decided to make a change.

That's big.

And his change, his decision made, it changed his spiritual trajectory for the rest of his life.

What we saw, we saw in his in his story, we saw what prompted that was his having children.

But really, this was about Enoch personally.

More personal than that.

I believe that Enoch, as God revealed to him that there was a coming judgment coming upon the world, it literally put the fear of God in Enoch.

He said, Well, that's not good.

Yes, it is.

We need that now, maybe more than we've ever seen in our life.

The Bible says the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

So I just said, God, bring it.

I wanted to put the fear of God in me.

That helps us, that helps us walk with God and be in agreement with God.

And I think what it did, it just put Enoch on a new path.

Because he thought, oh no.

I see what's coming.

I've got to align my life with what's most important to God instead of what's been important to me.

So we can live independently of God instead of dependent on God.

And I think that was the switch.

Everything being dependent on God.

He was desperately dependent.

And I think he just simply wanted to be on the same path that God was on.

So God put him on this new path.

And so he began to align his life with what was important to God.

And we see this exhortation to us in both the Old and New Testaments.

This in uh Isaiah 48.

This is what the Lord says, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.

I am the Lord your God who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go.

That's a different path.

That's being on the path with God.

And God will show us if we pursue him.

Or in the New Testament, you have this chapter 5 in Ephesians.

We went through the study of the book of Ephesians.

But chapter 5 is like a roadmap to walking with God.

And we don't really have time to go through all of it, but I want to give you a couple things about aligning our life to His.

The first one is in Ephesians 5, 8 through 10.

It says, At one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.

Walk as children of light, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true.

And get this phrase, and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.

Try to discern.

That word discern means to test something and prove it until you can approve it.

See, all the time we don't know exactly whether this is pleasing to God or not.

So we have to test it.

And guess what?

The Holy Spirit will let you know.

If you're listening, He will convict you to make an adjustment.

Try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.

There's that idea of pleasing God.

And then the verse 15 in chapter 5 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time because the days are evil.

Boy, are they.

And this was written back in the first century.

Therefore, do not be foolish.

And then Soline, understand what the will of the Lord is.

You can be in his permissive or his perfect will.

I think there's a difference there.

We can get right in the center of God's will, and it really pleases God.

And then lastly, we see this fourth principle for walking with God, and that is Enoch kept in step with God.

He kept in step with God.

We get that from Galatians 5.25.

And uh for us as New Testament believers, it says, if we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

And so how do you do that?

Well, by paying attention to the Word, being in your Bible daily.

It means praying and consulting Him, listening to Him, and not just talking to Him all the time in your prayer life, just listening.

It means being in community with one another.

This is so important.

We think it's not important to uh to be here, but we give something to each other.

We give each other the things that uh that are helpful to one another by being together.

You see, here's the thing I know the Spirit of God is always on the move.

He's moving, He's going places.

And if you want to please God, you have to learn to move when He moves.

You ever seen this?

Uh you ever watched the video?

I saw videos of seeing them before, maybe you have two, where you have this uh group of soldiers and they're walking, they're marching, and you see this one little fella, he's trying, he's having trouble, and he gets out of step.

And it's noticeable.

And so we have to pay attention, be careful how you live.

So when you think about a walk, what a walk is, think about this.

It's just it's just a series of steps.

Just a series of steps, and you have to take them one at a time.

You can't take one today and then one six months from now and then one six months after that.

That's not a walk, it's a step.

You know, when our kids were little, um I remember when they were about a year old, we were so excited.

Parents do this.

I remember this.

And uh it's like, you know, somebody landing on the moon or something.

But it's like, oh, they stood up, they stood up, they're standing.

Did you see that?

They're standing.

And they sit back down.

And then a few weeks later, maybe a few months later, they, oh, he stood up, he's he took his step.

Look, did you see it?

We can't even hardly talk.

He's took his taking his first step, and he plops down again.

That's not a walk.

But one day, that little kid, and it's the most thrilling thing for us as parents, they walk, they put one step in front of another, and they walk to the other side of the room.

Yay! And everybody's like thrilled, and Jimmy's like, okay, if you've not had that experience, you're like, well, big deal.

He walked across the room, but it's a big deal for parents, yeah.

Um A walk is a series of steps one after another.

That's all.

And a walk is a series of steps we take one day after another as we walk with God, too.

We have to keep taking the steps until we make it to the other side.

And these are these are the unchanging principles of the walk of faith.

Consistently, number one, acting on your beliefs, agreeing with God about your sin, aligning your life with his plan and purposes, and keeping in step with the Spirit.

Those are unchanging.

I love the story about this little girl who came home from kids' church and uh she says, Mommy, Mommy, I have to tell you the story about Enoch.

And she said, This little girl, she said, Enoch used to take these really long walks with God.

And one day he walked so far, God said, It's too far for you to go back.

Why don't you just come on home with me?

Yeah.

What a picture of us and our walk with God.

So we see here is Enoch's example of a faith that pleases God.

And we could say a life of intimate fellowship with God results in divine approval.

A life of intimate fellowship with God results in divine approval.

So what was the outcome then of Enoch's faith?

Well, we know he was taken up.

Taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found because God had taken him.

And I can just imagine maybe when dinner time came that day, and and they sit down and they say, Where is Enoch?

I don't know, I hadn't seen him.

Well, go look for him.

They go look for him and they can't find him.

They do a his fa family and then his friends start looking.

Where's Enoch?

We can't find he's missing, he's gone missing.

And somebody says, Oh.

And they hold up his cloak and his staff.

He said, This is all we got.

Enoch just left this earth.

Some people say that Enoch did die because it says in Hebrews it is appointed once for a man to die, and then the judgment.

But the scripture right here says he did not die.

Enoch just missed his appointment with death.

He ever missed an appointment?

It's like we didn't, he didn't show up.

Yeah, he went somewhere else.

He went somewhere else.

Ray Seban asked this.

He says, Why was this man taken without seeing death?

Of all the long line of humanity, why is he the great exception?

Genesis says, Enoch walked with God.

Is this a promise that if we walk with God, we shall never die?

And he says, yes, in a sense it is.

And I would agree with him.

Enoch is a model for us as the promise of the promise of heaven.

And see, the ultimate outcome of your faith and my faith is simply this is that we place our faith in Jesus Christ, and by doing so, we will be taken out of death.

Not physical, but spiritual death.

And Jesus talks about Himself.

He said in Matthew 24, 41, like this: two women will be grinding at the mill, one will be taken, and one will be left.

The one that knows the Lord will be taken, the one who doesn't will be left.

And then Jesus Himself, he said, I am the resurrection and the life.

Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.

And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.

Do you believe this?

And so one day Christ will come for all of us, and those who trust him will be with him forever.

In the moment, in a twinkling of an eye, 1 Corinthians says, We'll hear the voice of the Lord and the trump of God, and you know what?

There will be millions of enich.

And they'll disappear from the face of the earth.

And then the judgment will come.

My question is, will you be ready when he does?

Are you living a life today that pleases God?

Are you?

Am I?

There's only one way, and that's that's to place your faith in the person of Jesus Christ.

Let's pray.

Father, we're thankful today for your servant Enoch and the lesson he teaches us about pleasing you.

That we want to be all in, that we surrender our life to you and everything so that we can walk with you.

Lord, help us to do that in the days ahead.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.