Enoch, The Man who Pleased God - Part 2, Enoch walked with God
2004 : Week 13  |  Website Version  

This week’s message is Part 2 in the series submitted by Pastor Ralph E. Wingate, Jr. We pray that the Lord would use it to speak to you…

Enoch was one of only two people who went to heaven different from anyone else. He and Elijah never saw death. Hebrews 11:5 tells us that before God took him to heaven, Enoch had this testimony, that he pleased God. Just exactly what was it about Enoch’s life that was pleasing to the Lord? If we can delve deep enough to unearth those truths about his life, perhaps we can understand why God chose to include him in the honor roll of faith. I’d like to focus on three things that I believe pleased the Lord about Enoch’s life, and we’ll look at the first item this week:

Genesis 5:22 and 5:24 summarize Enoch’s life with some of the deepest words in the Bible: “Enoch walked with God.” What amazing three words! "Walked with God.” In fact, the same passage says that he walked with God for three hundred years. And he did so in the midst of a wicked world with a penetrating aim that could not be extinguished by the darkness around him. How fitting the name for Enoch means ‘dedicated one’.

Enoch walked in agreement with God. Amos 3:3 says, “How can two walk together unless they be agreed?” (KJV) When we walk with God, we’re agreeing with God about everything about our sin, about God’s position in our lives, and about the manner in which He handles circumstances in our lives. Those who truly walk with God continue to agree with Him even when they come to the end of the road of all that they humanly know and understand. It is then that their walk becomes most precious when they rest their entire weight upon Him in purified trust.
  • Walking involves consistency
Every day for three hundred years Enoch walked beside God in close communion, cultivating a deep, intimate relationship. He did not just walk with God during certain times of the day or the week. He did not just get up in the morning and have his devotions and then maybe have more devotions again before he retired in the evening. No, Enoch kept pace with God every moment of every day. It is the idea of being in continuous motion alongside God, of being so aware of His presence that it takes no time at all to re-establish a relationship, no time to reconnect, no time to redial. Your mind is already tuned to the central channel God. The rest of the channels are peripheral. When compared to the central channel, they are mere diversions. When tuned to the central channel, you are in unbroken communication with the Creator, in full fellowship and agreement. This was how Enoch walked.

Is there not a one of us who wouldn’t like to do that, too? But instead of attempting it, we tend to look from afar at this type of relationship, craving it, thinking it is unattainable, thinking it is something of books and of bygone times but not Enoch. Though Enoch was human just like we are, he dared to believe in attaining the unattainable. He walked boldly forward towards the unattainable, skirting all the obstacles the world, money, business, self-indulgence, self-pleasure, and even the good idols that often come in the form of family and friends. Enoch allowed nothing to come between him and God. He viewed God as if some indescribable treasure of everything he had ever desired in all of his life was before him, and he saw Him and grasped Him and he refused to let go. In this extraordinary manner, he walked with God for more than three of our lifetimes until one day, he and God walked into Heaven together.
  • Walking involves change
Enoch’s walk was not just something that drew him closer to the God of heaven, but it put distance between him and the world. As he walked with God, his desires changed with each step that he took. Matthew 6:21 says: “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” (KJV) As Enoch became more and more molded into the image of God, he became more and more weaned from the world.

Until we learn to make God our treasure, we mistakenly cling to the passing things of this world, afraid that if we don’t, we’ll miss out. Most of the time, we’re not even cognizant of how much our behavior and our mindset is shaped by the world. However, the closer we walk with God, the more clearly we can see the true nature of the thinking of the world. And the thinking of the world is death.

Our bodies wear out, they sag, they expand, they wrinkle, the joints get creaky, the arteries harden, the heart slows down, the eyes grow dim, the teeth fall out, the back is stooped, the arms grow weary, our bones break, our muscles weaken, the body bulges in all the wrong places, and it happens to all of us sooner or later.

Yet, in God’s eyes, this gradual wearing out of our bodies is a weaning process. He is slowly but surely weaning us away from putting our hope in things of this world, so that our hope will be in Him alone. The only way He can wean us away from the things of this world is through suffering and difficulty. He brings us to a place where we must say: “Lord it is you and you alone.” He’s teaching us to wait on Him. The great beauty in all of this is that it’s only temporary. There’s coming a day when our bodies won’t need changing, we won’t grow old, and we won’t get cancer. Jesus Christ will give us a brand new body which we will keep for eternity. Until then, we live in hope, waiting patiently for that day to come.

Do you want to walk with God, yet still have some time for yourself? Do you indulge yourself in the things of the world and its thinking, just to hold onto a few things? It may work temporarily, but all of those things will be taken by the grave. One of the reasons Enoch is recorded in Hebrews 11 is that he possessed uncommon foresight. Early on, he recognized the futility of seeking after earthly treasures, and he walked with the greatest treasure of all for three hundred years.
  • Walking involves making a choice
Scripture says that Enoch walked with God not that God walked with Enoch. It was a choice on the part of Enoch. It’s up to us to make the commitment to walk with Him. That type of commitment needs to be made not just in a summer camp when we are teenagers and not just occasionally when we have special meetings, or not just once in a while when we sit in our pew and the Holy Spirit convicts our heart. That commitment needs to be made every day of this world. When we lift our head off the pillow in the morning, one of our very first thoughts before we face the day should be: God, today I make a commitment that I’m going to walk with you. Then throughout the day we need to be tuned to His channel and aware of His presence. If we slip off channel, we need to quickly recommit: God, I’m going to walk with you.

The book of Exodus gives us an example of this principle. God provided the children of Israel manna in the wilderness. Every day they went out, and every day the manna sustained them through that day. But the next day they had to make the effort to go out again. The only time they could pick double was on Fridays because they couldn’t go out on the Sabbath day. Every day, for forty years, they went out. Because they made the effort, they were not only sustained, but they grew from the nourishment. God help us to see that we need to get into the manna of the Word of God every day of this world.

God’s faith and grace is real. Let us walk by faith as Enoch did.

Pastor Ralph E. Wingate, Jr.

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Genesis 5:21-24

21  And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah:
22  And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters:
23  And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years:
24  And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.

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