Enoch
In the last article, we started looking at the historical figures of faith listed in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. The writer begins, literally, at the beginning with Cain and Abel and assures us that Abel’s faith speaks to us even today.
The next person mentioned is Enoch. Enoch is a man about whom we know very little. He is listed in the generations from Adam to Noah in Genesis 5 and again in Luke 3 in the genealogy of Jesus. The son of Jared, the father of Methusalah, and the great-grandfather of Noah, Enoch is unique in the list of the others because in Genesis he is noted as having pleased God. The Bible says that he “...walked faithfully with God for 300 years…” (22) We also know that he was a prophet. He is noted as such in Jude 14. He prophesied about the second coming of Christ as He returns to exact judgment on the ungodly. Enoch lived his life in confidence that there would be a day of reckoning and that God would call all men to a final judgment.
That Enoch was a prophet should hardly surprise us. Enoch didn’t simply have faith. He wasn’t just a good man. He walked with God.
I sometimes walk with a friend after school. To walk together, there is a constant awareness of the other’s presence - of our friend’s position at our side. There’s the opportunity to talk, to touch - my son says that I crab-walk, so if you’re walking with me, I may bump into you! There may be an easy conversation or a comfortable silence, sometimes one of us is a little ahead, sometimes a little behind, both intent on the rhythm of the steps, often in unison.
Enoch walked with God. This is a man who knew that he was always in the presence of God. He was conscious of God’s presence and felt God with him wherever he went. God was before him as his standard of righteousness, and God was behind Enoch, observing his manner of walk. Certainly, those things must be true for Enoch to have been pleasing. However, what is said about Enoch is that he is focused on his walk with God, beside God.
It begs the question: do I walk with God?
Do I think through my day and its details and think about how I can be pleasing to God? Am I careful in all the moments of the day that I don’t sin against God? Do I consider how my actions, my work ethic, my words bring glory to God? Do I long for God’s company? Do I feel His presence at my side? Am I always aware of Him? In step with Him? In conversation with Him? Or quiet knowing He is near?
We can, and probably should, keep going with the questions - this ought to make us think!
Enoch didn’t simply live a Godly life; he walked with God. While others were living their lives, not necessarily doing bad things, Enoch’s life was centered around his relationship with God. Enoch lived during a time when people were growing increasingly wicked. Within just two generations, God will destroy the earth in the flood. Granted, that’s still almost 1,000 years away, but with men’s lifespans averaging about 900 years, Enoch would have been witness to the wickedness of the generations leading up to Noah. In the midst of the evil around him, he obviously made a conscious decision to draw near to God. Enoch must have understood his role as the worshiper and God’s place as the Lord of his life. Being pleasing to God has never been accidental; it’s always intentional. He wanted to know God, to walk with Him. He set himself apart from the world around him. We have a tendency to think that the world in which we live is more challenging and problematic for Godly living than for any previous generation, and that is just not so. Enoch may not have had social media or smutty television to distract him, but his culture had pitfalls that we know nothing about. He decided to be different, and that is exactly what we have to do.
He didn’t live like other men, and so he didn’t die like other men. God took him.
Enoch was taken at 365 years of age, which would have been young by the standard of the pre-flood earth. He was middle-aged, at best, and because of his closeness with God and his relationship with Him, God spared him another 365 years and took Enoch to be with Him.
Enoch and Elijah are the only two people ever recorded who didn’t face physical death. The account in Genesis simply says that Enoch “was not” (24). It is in Hebrews 11 that it is confirmed for us that Enoch “did not see death” (5). He was not. He was not dead; he was also not in the earthly realm of the living. He was not found because God took him.
I wonder if this is the same process that will be used for those who are still alive when Christ returns. Of course, we have no way of knowing that, but being reminded of Enoch is to be reminded that there is life in God’s presence - in both the physical and the spiritual realms. Eventually, all the faithful will be taken by God - into His presence.
This is the desire of all Christians who strive to live daily walking with God. Whether our walks are long or short, it’s all relative. None of us will walk with God for 365 years! But whatever time we have, let us be encouraged by Enoch. He was no different from the other people in that list of names except in his faith, which isn’t directly mentioned in Genesis. Yet, the Hebrews writer wants us to know that Enoch’s great faith is evidenced in his life.
For one cannot walk with God without faith. Enoch’s testimony is that “he pleased God” (Heb. 11:5). Verse 6 clarifies that without faith, we can’t please God. Our faith tells us first that God exists - that He created all we see, that He sent His son to die in our place, that He is the great I AM. We have to believe that He is everything that He has revealed Himself to be.
And finally, like Enoch, we have to know that He will reward those who look to walk with Him (6). We just have to come to Him - “diligently seeking” Him. If we didn’t believe that God would keep His promises and listen to our prayers, there would be no reason for us to seek Him out. In reality, He seeks us out; we just have to want to know Him, to walk with Him…not as many in the world do, on their own terms. We have to know that we are the ones in need of God, not the other way around. God is unchanging, stable, and sure…He will not adapt His standards to ours. If we want to walk with Him, we have to do what Enoch did - we decide that we are going to be different from the world. In order to walk with God, we must seek out His laws, His precepts, His ways.