...the 11th chapter, and I want to turn
to the 5th chapter of Genesis, and note
that it says in the 22nd chapter, verses
23 and 4, "...and all the days of
Enoch, the 365 years.
And Enoch walked with God, and he was
not, for God took him.
Now thus saith the Holy Ghost several hundred
years before Christ."
Now, a little while after Christ's coming, dying
and rising again, and his ascension to the
right hand of the Father, the Spirit speaks
again and comments on what he had said
so many hundreds of years before.
In the 11th chapter of Hebrews, "...by faith
Enoch was translated, that he should not see
death, and was not found, because God had
translated him.
For before his translation he had this testimony,
that he pleased God.
And without faith it is impossible to please
God.
For he that cometh to God must believe
that he is, and that he is pleased
with God."
"...and that he is a rewarder of them
that diligently seek him."
Many of you wonder why I'm not preaching
on Abel, since he came next after the
3rd verse.
The answer is that I dealt with Abel
in an evangelistic sermon some months ago, and
don't want to repeat.
Now, we're learning about Enoch this morning, and
God here takes us back to what they
call Antediluvian times, which is a nice, smooth
way of saying before Noah's flood.
And in doing this, in quoting the telling
of a man who lived before Noah's flood,
and then many hundreds of years later, when
the race had been prolonged and things renewed,
and Israel called out, and Christ come, and
his death and resurrection having been accomplished, now
the Holy Ghost speaks again of this man,
Enoch.
And I say, in doing so, he binds
in one bundle of life all the yesterdays
of the race, with the todays and the
tomorrows of the race, and shows the organic
oneness of all human beings.
Now, I believe in the brotherhood of man.
By that I believe that all men born
of Adam are of one blood on the
face of the earth.
But I do not by any means believe
that that saves all of them, for there
is another brotherhood and a new brotherhood which
is the result of the regeneration.
And I believe in the brotherhood of the
redeemed man, as well as the brotherhood of
man.
I believe that human beings are the same
the world over, and that they are bound
up in a natural brotherhood.
And that brotherhood is a lost brotherhood.
It is the brotherhood of the universally lost.
Then there is the new brotherhood of the
redeemed, which we know as the church of
our Lord Jesus Christ.
And this that God does here, in taking
us back to the days before the flood,
to talk about a man and to point
to him and say, here is a man
that is to be an example to you,
he does something here that we feel is
very important, particularly in this day, and that
is he makes our yesterdays lecture to our
todays.
He makes the past speak to the present.
And he lets the person who knows talk
to the one who doesn't yet know.
He lets the one of experience talk to
the one who hasn't had the experience.
But we have reversed that in the time
in which we live.
This is the age of youth, you know,
and we old greybeards are having to sit
respectfully with our hands folded in our laps
and listen to youth.
And that creates the ludicrous situation of inexperienced
setting out to teach inexperienced, men who haven't
been there showing other people how to get
there, and men who haven't done it trying
to teach other people to do it.
No, yesterday has a lot to say to
us yet, and age has a lot to
say to youth, and Enoch has a lot
to say to our day.
Let's notice what he's saying.
Enoch lived in a period we might well
call the Dark Ages, when the sons of
God saw the daughters of men, and they
took whomsoever they would, and giants were born
to them, and were in the earth.
And the wickedness of man was great in
the earth, and every imagination and thought of
their hearts were only corrupt continually.
And yet in the middle of all that,
Enoch found God and walked with him.
He found God without a Bible, without an
evangelist, without anybody with a tract, without anybody
with a book on five ways to win
souls, and without anyone at all to win
them.
He found God in the Dark Ages before
the flood, without a Bible to read, and
without a church to attend, and without a
book of any kind, and without any help
at all.
He found God, and he lived by faith,
and found faith in God in a rotting,
fast-decaying world.
Now that says to me, boy, how much
you'll have to answer for, that with surrounded
by Bibles, and hymn books, and churches, and
with evangelists roaming the world, and pastors everywhere,
and Sunday school teachers, and tracts, and radio,
and all other means of communication, carrying the
gospel, what I've got to answer for, when
in this period of the world's light, when
this man of God found God in the
period of the world's darkness without any help
at all.
Now, it couldn't have been easy.
It's never easy to be clean in a
dirty world, and it's never easy to be
good in a bad world.
It's never easy to be godly in a
godless world, but somehow or other, Enoch managed
it and did it, and so is it
any wonder that God says, go to Enoch
and learn from the expert how to walk
with me.
Now, I want you to note five things
here that this story says, that this story
of Enoch, this very brief little story, not
500 pages, but just two or three verses
from in the scriptures.
But we can learn from Enoch, and one
thing we can learn is told us here.
It's interpreted for us.
We are told that without faith it's impossible
to please God.
An expert tells us here, this is not
a theorist who has read a book by
another man who read a book, written by
another man who read a book, but this
is an expert telling us here, without faith
it's impossible to please God.
Here is a man who found water in
the desert where nobody else could find it.
Here was a man who made the long
journey through the desert safely.
This was the man, and so this man
is telling us, without faith it's impossible to
please God.
He's telling us that we must put all
unbelief under our feet.
He's telling us that we must rest our
faith on the holy character of God, not
on the promises only, but on the holy
character of God.
I've said, I suppose, 20 times since I've
been here, that properly faith does not rest
upon promises.
Properly faith rests upon character, and a promise
is only worth the character of the one
who made it.
So we've got to get past the promises
to God himself and see that in the
character of God we have our hope.
It's the character of God that matters and
that counts, and if God's character is right,
and it is right, then everything that God
says is true.
Enoch had no promises that I know of,
or if they were, they were not written
promises, but he had faith.
Somewhere in some mysterious way there came to
him the visitation of faith, and he knew
that he must believe, and he did believe,
and so he walked with God, and walked
with God so successfully that he was not
for God took him.
Secondly, we notice also that we learn from
Enoch that it's possible to walk with God.
Now, that's taken for granted.
Even in an age of complete corruption, it's
possible to walk with God.
We needn't wait for a revival.
Some would say, I wish that there might
be a revival such as was in the
days of Fini or Edwards or some of
the other great revivalists.
Well, it would certainly be worthy of our
praying for earnestly, and we could all wish
that it might be so.
But Enoch tells us out of the past,
rising up, being dead and yet speaking, he
tells us that there isn't any reason why
we should wait for a revival before we
individually and personally get right with God.
We can walk with God in this hour
of universal worldliness and fleshliness and arrogance and
religious pride and religious insincerity.
We can walk with God.
Anybody can that wants to.
If Enoch could do it without a Bible,
without a church, without a prayer meeting, without
an evangelist or a pastor to help him,
without a book to read about God, if
Enoch could do it, then it can be
done.
Enoch was no superman.
Enoch was no genius.
Enoch was no superior person with an I
.Q. that blew the roof.
Enoch was simply another man, but he was
a man to whom faith had come, and
God had given him the gift of faith,
and so with the gift of faith he
lived a pure life in a putrid and
corrupt age.
He lived a holy life in the midst
of universal unholiness, and he walked with God
when other men were walking with Satan.
So that's what he's telling us.
It's possible to walk with God, and you
don't have to wait for more favorable circumstances.
This is one of the devil's most useful
tricks, to say, we'll wait until the situation
eases, then you become a Christian.
You can say, I'm not ready to be
saved yet because I feel things are not
ready.
If you put things off until they're ready,
you will never come, because those who are
converted and who walk with God are not
those who find a favorable moment, they're those
who come to God right now and let
the favorable moment take care of itself, because
now is the accepted time.
But you say, if you knew my husband,
he's a brute and he wouldn't allow me
to go to church.
You get your heart right with God, receive
Christ Jesus into your heart, and he that
will be in you is more than all
that can be outside of you, and he
that will be with you is more than
all that can be against you.
And you know what a brutal husband will
do for a wife?
A brutal husband will drive that wife to
the bosom of Jesus, and she's likely to
become a better Christian.
Now, I don't recommend that any of you
men decide thus to make your wives better
Christians by being brutal to them.
I only say that you wives who may
be so unfortunate as to be married to
a gorilla, don't you worry about the gorilla.
You look to Jesus Christ, your Lord, and
God will make every growl from that man
a hymn and a benediction.
I have known it to be so, I
have known it.
You say, you don't know my husband, and
the way you're describing him, I don't want
to.
But the point is, my brother and sister,
that there isn't any situation where you can't
live for the Lord, because there isn't any
place where the Lord can't help you.
If he could help in up back there,
he can help you out here.
Some say, I want a better job and
then I'll accept Christ.
It never works out that way.
Somebody says, I want a better, more conducive
circumstances.
Circumstances never conduce.
This world is not a friend of God,
a friend of grace to lead us unto
God.
Never.
Third, it is better to walk with God
than to walk with our own generation.
When a flock of sheep is going over
a cliff, they always have people or other
sheep who say, come along, don't be a
dissenter, don't be an oddball, come along with
the rest of us, all going over the
cliff together.
But this man Enoch knew that if they
were all going over the cliff, there was
one man who wouldn't go.
So he detached himself from his generation and
he lived above all generations, and the result
is, he's been a benediction to all generations.
If you settle down and become a weak,
victim of your generation, you will die with
your generation.
But if you rise above your generation, you
will be the benediction to the next generation.
So with all the men of God who
walk with God back there, it's better to
walk with God than to have the favor
of men, far and away better.
It is an unconscious tribute, or proof at
least, of our love for humanity, that we
want them to love us so much.
It is a proof that we respect human
beings because we want them to respect us.
And so we fall into the trap of
wanting to be popular.
I want people to like me and I
want people to respect me and look up
to me.
I tell you, it is better to walk
with God than to have the favor of
men.
And if for a little time you must
detach yourself from your generation and lose their
favor, go ahead and do it.
Lose it, because God will give it back
to you, filled up to the brim, pressed
down, shaken together and running over.
The first part of John Wesley's ministry was
carried on amid a constant barrage of rocks,
sticks, stones, ripe tomatoes and rotten eggs.
And the last part of his ministry was
carried on amid band parades and crowds and
honors of every kind.
If he had fled from the rotten eggs
and the tomatoes and had said, I can't
take this, I want them to love me,
and had tempered his message in order to
get the approval of his generation, he would
have gone down with his generation.
But he chose rather to walk with God
and let his generation go the way it
would, though he sought every minute of the
time to try to win them all he
could to the Lord and won thousands.
But when his generation saw finally that he
was triumphing and that God was on his
side, they came to him as they came
to Israel back in olden days.
And they said, Let's go along with you,
because we perceive that God is with you.
And then we notice this also, that it
is better to walk alone and walk with
God than to go with a crowd and
find you haven't got God with you.
There isn't anything quite so hollow as a
crowd.
There isn't anything quite so meaningless as the
shout of a crowd.
Nothing so meaningless.
Because nobody knows quite why they're shouting.
Nobody.
And they'll be shouting for Franklin Delano Roosevelt
today, and John Diefenbaker tomorrow, and Castro the
next day, and Hitler the next, and Godstone
the next, and whether they're good or bad,
whether they're mighty and good men, as some
of these men are that I've named, or
whether they are bad men, as some are
that I've named, the foolish crowd shouts after
them.
Brother, it is better to walk alone and
walk with God than to walk with the
crowd and find that God isn't with you
after all.
Undoubtedly, Enoch's life must have been a lonely
life.
I wrote for Eternity Magazine once an article
called, The Saint Must Walk Alone.
I still believe it.
I still believe that there is a detachment
from all my generation, even at the same
time that I am serving my generation by
the will of God.
There must be a lonely detachment from them
if I am going to help them.
The physician must be well, or he can't
help the sick man.
The man, the leader, must see, or he
can't help the blind man.
And the physician who gives up and gets
as sick as the patients cannot help any
of them.
So the Christian must be, in a sense,
morally detached from the generation that he is
serving.
He must be separated from the very people
that he is winning.
Just as Dr. Viette, who has now been
captured by the Communists out of Danmatut, just
as she, the Christian doctor, served the lepers
but was detached from them, and her service
could be powerful because it was a detached
service.
Her attachment was to God and her service
was to people, but she never allowed and
couldn't allow the psychology of the leper to
enter her mind.
She was healthy and she had to stay
healthy, and so it is with all Christian
leaders everywhere.
And again and lastly, if we walk with
the conqueror of death, we shall never be
conquered by death.
Enoch went for a walk with God, somebody
said, and every night he went for a
walk with God, and then one night God
said to him, Enoch, we're nearer to my
house than we are to yours, why don't
you just come with me?
And so Enoch went with God, and when
his friends looked for him, what few friends
he might have had, his family, he had
a family all right, because he was begetting
a lot of people here, it tells us,
he'd beget this and he'd beget that, and
so I suppose they were around, wondering what
had happened to Grandpa or Grandfather, and he
didn't come back, and it just says he
was not, he was not.
That odd, quaint, little, vivid way of saying
it, he was not.
He said, where's your grandfather?
He is not.
Where's your husband?
He is not.
They didn't know where he was, because he
was with God, and he'd walked with God
so long that he was familiar with God,
he was at home with God.
Some of us hope to accept Christ and
go zooming off to heaven like a rocket,
but if you did that, we'd be embarrassed
when we got there.
You've got to walk with the King of
heaven if you're going to be at peace
when you get to heaven.
You've got to know the one who runs
heaven, the High King of heaven, as the
hymn has it, if you are going to
be at peace and at home with the
King.
Enoch walked with God, so when he got
there, wherever he went, I am not at
all sure about my eschatology, but somewhere God
took him to be with him.
And when he got there, he wasn't ashamed,
and he wasn't embarrassed, because he knew the
God who made heaven and earth.
So it isn't only getting saved from hell
that matters, my brother and sister.
It is getting to know and walk with
the God who made heaven and made you
for heaven.
Now, is Enoch a type?
I don't know.
Teachers say he is, but I am shy
of types as a rule.
But Jesus did say, as it was in
the days of Noah, Enoch lived just before
the judgment of Noah and was translated to
escape death.
I wonder if Enoch doesn't stand for the
overcoming saints who shall be in the earth
just before that last great calamity, and who
shall be translated.
We shall not all sleep, but we shall
all rise.
And they that are alive shall be changed
by the twinkling of an eye, and they
that sleep shall rise and join them glorified.
I wonder if Enoch doesn't stand.
Enoch just went away suddenly.
He was gone.
Friends said, Where is he?
He's gone.
He is not.
There was one man they never had a
funeral for.
Nobody ever brought flowers and with crocodile tears
tossed them at grandpa's feet.
Nobody did it here for the one-man
funeral.
He just went.
I know the second coming of Christ isn't
as popular as it used to be, and
the doctrine of the Lord's coming isn't preached
very much scarcely anymore.
But I've had no reason to change my
mind about it.
I still believe that Jesus Christ is coming
for his people, and he's going to translate
the living and resurrect the dead and change
them and transform them all into his image
and lead them to the Father's right hand
and present them without spot.
I wonder if the story of Enoch might
not be trying to tell us in a
sort of story form that it's possible to
live right just before judgment falls upon people
who don't live right.
There's no reason in the wide world why
you couldn't be among those who, like Enoch,
walked with God.
For it couldn't be any worse than it
was then.
And even if it is, it's still possible
for God to do everything for you that
he did for Enoch.
Everything.
So let's keep this good man in focus
this morning.
But let's not look exclusively upon him, but
let's look upon the one with whom he
walked, the one who took him, and the
one who's coming back to take us.
All this is a part of our thinking
and meditating during the communion service.