Word of Salvation – September 2014

 

Genesis 5: – Two Humanities – Seth to Enoch

By Rev. John Westendorp

 

Scripture Reading: Genesis 4:25-5:24 & Hebrews 11:1-6. 

Suggested songs: Book of Worship 203 / 450 / 452 / 470

Theme: The life of Enoch as an example of a life of faith and a testimony to God’s grace.

 

Introd: How much of your life is spent walking with God?

How often did you talk to Him yesterday? Did you stop to listen to His voice in His Word?

A little while ago we sang: O for a closer walk with God.
But is that really what you want in your life? Or did you just mouth the words?
Is walking with God your priority during the week… in the office… on the factory floor… at school?

Okke Jager, a Dutch poet, tells of a little six year old girl.
She has just been told the story of Enoch at the local Christian school.
Later she lets her imagination run away as she retells the story to her mum.
God and Enoch were very close as friends.
So God often came to Enoch to make a call.
And after they’d prayed for the wicked
God would often read a little from His book.
The Lord said to Enoch one fine day,
“Say, Enoch, how about we walk a bit?
Your wife’s still cooking dinner anyway”.
And Enoch said, “That’s fine, dear Lord, I’m coming.”
He didn’t mind to leave his kids behind.
And called out, “See you soon!”, then shut the gate.
Together they had such a lot to talk about;
So Enoch kept right on walking with God that day.
The birds knew well for whom they sang,
The flowers looked extra bright along the way;
And even the deer came near with her little fawn
And Enoch kept right on walking with God that day
Till suddenly, “O Lord!” he said in fright
“We’ve gone far too far… that’s your house over there.
We walked so long… ’twas such a great delight.
But how will I ever find my way back home… alone?
“Well, Enoch”, said the Lord, “To save some time…
(You’ll come to live with me later anyway) …say,
Why not just come on into this house of mine?”
And Enoch was no more. God took him away.

A] WALKING WITH GOD BY FAITH;

1. Sometimes it’s refreshing to look at something thru the eyes of a child.

And it’s beautiful to think of a person walking with God like that.

It’s as if we’re back in Eden where God and Adam walked together in the cool of the day.
And now God is showing us in the life of Enoch… that it is still possible to walk with God.
It is not an impossible dream for you and me to have that kind of relationship with God.
That is possible even after Eden… in an abnormal world, torn apart by sin.
You can walk with God in a fallen world where mankind has become alienated from God.
For Enoch it was possible – even before Jesus came to restore our relationship with God.

As we look at Enoch walking with God we see the blossoming of a relationship.
A relationship that is close and intimate. Just Enoch and his God… God and Enoch.
God talked to Enoch and Enoch talked to God. Enoch walked with God. That means:
Enoch wasn’t the kind of fellow who keeps his religion just for Sunday and for worship.
And who, for the rest of the week, lives like all the others who take no interest in God.

No… for Enoch God was important for every part of his life.

That is why it is recorded that Enoch walked with God all those years.
In fact, there is that glaring contrast between Enoch and all those other people in Genesis 5.
About all the others in this chapter it is written that they LIVED.
Of Enoch not only that he lived but also especially that he walked with God.

IOW for Enoch that’s what life was all about: walking with God.
And walking with God… that was what living was all about.
So in this list of generations from Adam to Noah one man is singled out for his piety.
Not that the others were not religious… they were.
We noticed that at the beginning of our reading – at the end of Gen.4.
  That in the days of Seth’s son, people already began to publicly worship God.
  At that time men began to call on the name of the Lord.

And yet Enoch is different. He didn’t just worship God, he walked with God.
There is a big difference between attending a worship service and walking with God.
You go to church once on a Sunday and you tick it off. Done your duty…!
No! Our text means that for Enoch the whole of his life is lived in fellowship with God.

2. Most of us here are practical, down-to-earth people caught up in the hustle and bustle of life.

And especially in this season of the year; it’s Spring and the days are getting longer.
We still have a million and one things to do. The pace of life becomes increasingly hectic.
The pressure is on at work. And before we know it we’ll be into Christmas shopping..
In that kind of rat-race it’s easy to feel that people like Enoch aren’t quite for real.

Maybe your vision is of Enoch sitting there all day meditating and praying.
Enoch the monastic! Enoch who always has his nose in the Bible!
He’s the sort of fellow who belongs with the monks in a monastery.
But when you’ve got three little ankle-bitters around the house all day…
and you’ve got a load of washing to do and meals to cook… it’s different.
Then it’s darn tough to find ten minutes alone with God during the day…
let alone to walk with God the way Enoch did.

Today you might even suggest that we send Enoch to Geelong to study at the RTC for the ministry.
Because it just wouldn’t work to try walking with God in the machine shop where you work.
And in your office and your business Enoch wouldn’t last a day.
Enoch may be very pious but he’s too heavenly minded to be of any earthly use.

And yet, apart from his walk with God, Enoch was not essentially different from all the others in Gen.5.
What is written about the others is also recorded of him.
He married and had a son and heir… and then had other sons and daughters.
He was at least a family man… not a monastic for whom that was too worldly.
He was a husband… and a father… and that meant being a breadwinner.
He knew what it was work hard and to have worries.
We’ll see a little later from the book of Jude that Enoch knew the raw side of life.
This is no religious hermit devoting himself to a life of meditation and prayer.

So we have here a man walking with God while doing all that’s needed as a husband and as a father.
Busy as a man who has his work to do in the world.
But… he does it all with God as his friend and partner.
He is involved in all those normal, everyday things as he walks with his God.

3. So how do you walk with God at Uni when the Christian faith is undermined by your lecturer?

How do you walk with God when your workmates rubbish you for being a Christian?

How on earth you can walk with God in a business where company ethics are questionable?

In those situations doesn’t our survival depend on doing the same thing as others around us?

How do we walk with God in today’s world?
In today’s market places and factories… on university campuses and on sports fields?
How do you walk with God when the hassles of daily living make life a battle?
How do you walk with God when you’ve just got bad news from the doctor?
How do you do that when you’ve got some big problems in your marriage? How do you do it?

Heb.11 answers those questions by telling us how Enoch walked with God thru life. By faith Enoch…!
  “…before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God.
   And without faith it is impossible to please God.”
Hebrews is saying that for Enoch walking with God was living by faith.
And are those two things not precisely the same thing? What is faith?
Faith is putting your little hand in God’s big hand. What is that, if it isn’t walking with God?

Enoch trusted in the God who already in Eden promised a Saviour.
And He trusted in God and in that promise.
That’s how he lived his life as a father and a husband and as a worker.
That’s how he went about his labours as a bread-winner and as a man in the world.
Trusting God in everything and for everything… in all the practicalities of life.

The 11th chapter of Hebrews is full of examples of people like that.
Enoch was not the only one who walked with God… who lived by faith.
Of Noah too it is said that he walked with God. Check it out in Gen.6:9.
Abraham is called the friend of God… because he and Sarah walked with God.
Moses… he walked with God all those years in the desert.
By faith they handled all the various practical difficulties of their lives.
Their walk with God was not some kind of other-worldly affair.
As if that made them unsuitable for the struggles of ordinary everyday life.
No… their walk with God made them able to handle life in a God-honouring way.

Are you prepared to put your small hand in the big hands of God?
Are you prepared not only to worship God today… but to live with Him by faith tomorrow?
Live by faith in the totality of your life. Then you walk with God… you walk with Jesus…!
And Genesis 5 already shows us it is possible to do that in a sinful, fallen world.

B] THE CONTEXT OF TWO HUMANITIES.

1. Now I can imagine you saying: This must still have been much easier for Enoch than it is for us today.

Enoch didn’t live in the 21st century with all its problems.
Life wasn’t so complicated then and there weren’t so many people around.
And he wasn’t faced with the godlessness and the evil we’re faced with today.

But that is precisely why we began our Scripture reading in Gen.4.
In that chapter that deals with the descendants of Cain who killed his brother Abel.
The age of Enoch was a terrible time. Flick back a moment to that man Lamech in Gen.4:23.
There you see a man who married two wives and introduced bigamy…!
There you see a man who killed someone for merely wounding him.
And who then defies God to do something about it.

Lamech, the seventh generation in the line of Cain, is portrayed as a godless criminal
as well as someone undermining the institution of marriage and the home.
Turn to the book of Jude – at the end of the N.T. where we have a brief reference to Enoch.
Jude reminds us that Enoch was also the seventh generation from Adam but in the line of Seth.
We read in Jude vss.14 and 15 of Enoch’s outcry against his society.
(And please note how the word ungodly keeps repeating in these verses.)
“See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones, to judge everyone
and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done in the ungodly way,
and all the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”

2. Did you get the picture? Enoch lived in troubled times of great godlessness.

Genesis symbolically brings that home to us.

Genesis 4 and Genesis 5 picture two different but parallel streams of the human race…
OTOH those who basically go against God – Cain’s line… – in Genesis 4
and in the 7th generation there is a climax of evil in the life of Lamech.
OTOH there are those who worship God and call on His name – Seth’s line… – in Genesis 5
and in the 7th generation there is climax of God’s grace in the life of Enoch.

In this way Genesis is showing us that Enoch and Lamech were contemporaries.
Here is an age that has come to an utter defiance of God.
But there stands Enoch as a testimony to the grace and love of God.
A reminder that in a tough and evil world it is still possible to walk with God.

It is possible. I didn’t say it’s easy… I said: it’s possible… by God’s grace.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that walking with God was easy for Enoch.
It wasn’t. It was a struggle… fighting against the abuses of his day.
Jude gives us just a glimpse of what Enoch was up against.
Enoch had to swim against the current… and that has never has been easy.

Please don’t ever think that Enoch’s walk with God was a nice Sunday afternoon stroll in the park.
That’s where that little girl in that poem got it wrong.
It was more like a walking together with God thru a battlefield.
Walking with God involves the difficult task of separating oneself…
not from this world and not from one’s task and calling…
but from the evil and the arrogance of the Lamechs of this world.
Because when we walk with God then we cannot walk with the enemies of God.

3. Again Enoch is not unique in this.

Some of those others who walked with God also found themselves in troubled times.

They too walked by faith in situations of great difficulty.
Noah walked with God at a time when God in judgment
was about to destroy the world with a great flood.
Abraham… at a time when Sodom and Gomorrah were wiped off the map.
Moses…. in a situation where he was opposed by Pharaoh and his military might.

The point is that there are now… and there always have been two streams of humanity.
The children of God and the children of the evil one.
Those who side with the kingdom of darkness and those belonging to the Kingdom of light..
And that makes it a struggle to walk with God.
Because the Enemy will do anything he can to stop you walking with God like Enoch did.

And yet… if that was already possible for Enoch then how much more is that not so for us?
Because we have received the Spirit of Jesus Christ in our lives.
So we can be people who not only worship God through Jesus Christ on Sundays
but we can be people who walk with Him in intimate fellowship every day of the week.
To have Him with us, in and thru all our daily affairs… in all our ups and downs.

C] THE GOSPEL OF A WAY BEYOND DEATH.

1. However the story of Enoch not only shows us how God’s people face life.

This story is in the Bible also to teach us how God’s people can face death.
It shows us not only how faith affects all we do in this life.
It also shows us how that faith affects us in the life hereafter.
We read that Enoch was taken away and that he was no more.

God had told Adam and Eve that they would die.
That was the consequence and the reward for their sin… death!
But we have no record of God telling them what would happen after death.
Would there be another kind of life beyond death?
If God did tell them, we have no record of it.
And even if the Lord had said something about it…
then they had no experience of it… no one had ever come back from death.

Keep in mind that death became a harsh reality for Adam and Eve very early in the piece.
The lifeless corpse of Abel had been committed to the earth.
Death was very real for them… and it became very real for their descendants.
We see that very clearly in this chapter.
Right thru this chapter runs that sad refrain: “And he died… and he died…!”
Dr. Francis Schaeffer comments:
“As we read this we are reminded over and over that we live in an abnormal world…
things are not the way God made them originally:”

For these ancient people death was a reality
and there was barely a glimmer of hope for anything beyond the grave.

2. But now suddenly the routine is broken.

And there is one who walks right on into life beyond this life… right into heaven, just like that.
Of him there is not that sad refrain… “…and he died.”
Instead we read: Then he was no more… because God took him away.

IOW God is saying to these people in a very clear way:
Death is not all that there is… there is more… there is another life beyond this one.
And now I’m going to prove that to you by taking Enoch there.
Death is not the inevitable and unalterable thing you suppose.
It isn’t even the only way to enter the world of the life to come.
There is also Enoch’s way… a way apart from death.

So Enoch becomes a witness to the grace and love of God also in another sense.
Lesson number one is that in a sinful world
where God and man are no longer at peace with each other
in that sort of world it is still possible to walk with God.
But now also lesson number two:
that in a world in which the wages of sin is death
God has also provided a way for life after death…
and He takes there all those who walk with God by faith.

3. Of course this is really only a very small glimmer of hope that we are given in Enoch.

Enoch did not come back from wherever he had been taken by God.

Enoch did not show us that it is possible for us after this life
to have a wonderful resurrection body in a perfectly restored creation.

All of that had to wait until Jesus came, the one who perfectly walked with God…
The one who came back from the dead to give us life.
And it is only because of His death and resurrection
that the sad refrain of human life: “…and he died… and he died…and he died…”
was interrupted with the words: He lives…! He lives…!

The good news this morning is that if you walk with Jesus then you will also live with Him… forever.
Do you want to walk with God? Do you want to be like Enoch?
Then embrace the living Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour and King.
Don’t just sing His praises this Sunday morning… walk with Him in all that you do. Amen.