Enoch

LIFE LESSONS
ENOCH
DR. JIM DIXON
GENESIS 5:21-24, HEBREWS 11:5-7, 1 THESSALONIANS 4:13-18
SEPTEMBER 8, 2002

Between the writing of the Old Testament and the New Testament, there is a gap of four hundred years. This gap is sometimes referred to as the Intertestamental Period. Sometimes this gap is referred to as Four Hundred Years of Silence. But they were not years of silence. Many events took place, including the events that surround the Jewish Festival of Hanukkah. Many books were written, including the Books of the Apocrypha included in the Catholic Bible but left out of the Jewish and Protestant Bibles. Also, during the Intertestamental Period, the Books of the pseudepigrapha were written. One of the books in the pseudepigrapha is a book called the Book of Enoch, sometimes called Ethiopic Enoch or 1 Enoch. It tells the story of Enoch’s alleged journey through the Seven Heavens. It speaks of Enoch’s encounters with angels and with giants. It shares the alleged prophesies of Enoch, and it describes the similitudes and the parables and the allegories of Enoch. It’s an apocalyptic book with 104 chapters, most of those chapters focusing on angelology or eschatology, things relating to the very ends of the world.

Enoch did not write the Book of Enoch. He did not write the Book of Enoch because the Book of Enoch was written two hundred years before Christ. The biblical Enoch would have lived thousands of years before that. Indeed, the biblical Enoch is so mysterious that many books are falsely attributed to him. They are pseudepigraphal, falsely attributed to Enoch. In addition to Ethiopic Enoch, there are Slavonic Enoch, sometimes called 2 Enoch, and Hebrew Enoch, sometimes called 2 Enoch. All of these books are ascribed to Enoch because his character in Genesis 5 is so mysterious. Indeed, we are told two things about him that are unusual. If we are going to enter the story of Enoch, we want to look at these two things today.

First of all, we’re told that Enoch walked with God. He walked with God. This is unusual language biblically. This is only said of Noah, who we will deal with next week, and then Enoch. It is said twice of Enoch. Twice we are told, “Enoch walked with God.” We are told that after the birth of Methuselah, he walked with God for 300 years.

Now, I do not want to get into a discussion of the length of life and the genealogical listings of Genesis 5. There are some Bible scholars who believe that they were using a different calendar; a different means of reckoning years. There are other Bible scholars who believe that these are references to the length of families rather than the length of individual lives, and there are other Bible scholars who believe that people in Prediluvian times, before the flood, simply lived longer. But what we want to focus on is the fact that Enoch, through all of his years, walked with God. He walked with God.

The Bible tells us that God wants every person to walk with Him. In Micah, chapter 6, verse 8, it is written: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”

Jesus said, “Follow Me,” because He wants us to walk with God. Jesus said, “Ego eimi he hodos,” “I am the way, I am the path,” because He wants us to understand that the Christian life is a walk with God. The early Church described the Church, referring to itself as “he Hodos,” “the Way, the path,” wanting Christians to understand that this is a walk with God.

What does it mean to walk with God? We can look at it in two ways. First of all, we can look at it in terms of destination. If you are walking with God, you are going the same direction He’s going. His goals and His purposes on the earth are your goals and your purposes in life.

You notice in the Bible that God does not offer to walk with you. He does not want to follow your goals and your purposes. He does not want to go wherever you would lead Him. He does not offer to walk with you, but He DOES invite you to walk with Him. We live in a world where everyone is going their own way, charting their own path, establishing their own goals, their own purposes. But if you are a Christian, you walk with God, and His goals and His purposes have become your goals and your purposes.

If we walk with God, we need to understand that in this generation all who walk with God must focus on Christ. In a sense this was true even in Enoch’s generation because it all pointed to Christ. Enoch was descended from Jared. He was the father of Methuselah, and from his line came the Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ. It was all pointing to Christ, and it is all about Christ. All the goals and purposes of God in this world are summed up in Christ, so if you walk with God, above all else, you are seeking to serve Christ. You are seeking, first of all, to bring people to Christ. You are seeking to tell people about Christ. If you are walking with God, you’re going to tell people about His Son.

I know most of you have heard of Jim Erwin, the astronaut. From his earliest days, he had one goal, one purpose, and that was to walk on the moon. Everything he did was directed towards this one goal of walking on the moon. This was his passion, his desire. Of course, on July 26, 1971, his dream came true and Jim Erwin, a member of the Apollo XV crew, walked on the moon. When Jim Erwin walked on the moon, an amazing thing happened. He felt the presence of God. As he looked down on earth, which he described as a blue marble, he felt the presence of God and Jim Erwin’s life would never be the same. He gave his heart to Jesus Christ, and for the remaining twenty years of his life—he died in 1991—he had one goal and one purpose. It was a new goal and a new purpose, and it was simply to tell people about Jesus. He would go everywhere and he’d say to people, “Men walking on the moon is nothing compared to God walking on earth in Jesus Christ.” It is said that thousands of people came to faith in Christ through Jim Erwin’s testimony.

Jesus said, “You shall be My witnesses,” and He wants you to testify about Him to other people. “You shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Our Jerusalem begins right here in Highlands Ranch. Are you talking to people about Christ? Are you telling people about the Son of God? If you walk with God, you must speak of the Son of God. Do you share your faith?

Perhaps you think, “Well, I can’t do anything. I could never lead anybody to Christ.” I kind of love the story of Stacey King. He was an NBA basketball player. It was March 28, 1990, when Michael Jordan scored sixty-nine points in a game between the Chicago Bulls and the Cleveland Cavaliers, the most points Michael Jordan had ever scored in an NBA basketball game. In that game Stacey King was a rookie, and he scored two points. They asked him after the game how he felt about being part of such an historic moment. Stacey King said, “I’ll never forget it. I’ll always remember this day as the day that Michael and I combined for seventy-one points.”

If you are teamed up with Michael, anything is possible on a basketball court. If you are teamed up with God, anything is possible on earth. If you are walking with God, it is not about you. It is about Him and what He can do. If you have Him as your teammate, you tell people about His Son and the power of God is going to be released in and through you. Just be willing.

If you walk with God, you must not only share your faith in Christ, but you must seek to build the church of Christ because God’s goal and God’s purpose on this earth is to bring those who believe in His Son into a community called the church. Jesus Christ said, “I’ll build My church and the powers of hell will not prevail against it.” If that is what He’s about—if He’s building His church on earth—what must you be about if you walk with God? What must I be about if I walk with God? Should we not be giving our time, our talent, and our treasure to the building of a church of Jesus Christ on earth?

Are you bringers? When you think about sharing your faith in Christ and building the church of Christ, you can do both in one fell swoop if you just become a bringer. When was the last time you brought someone to church with you? This is something that we should be seeking to do all the time. Be a bringer. Bring someone to church with you. If you are walking with God, it is all about all of His goals, all of His purposes, and they are summed up in Christ. You must tell people about Christ, seek to build the church of Christ, and then you must seek the character of Christ if you are walking with God. You must seek the character of Christ. “You shall be holy, for I am holy,” says the Lord. If you would be holy, you must seek the character of Christ.

It is not easy and there is a cost if you walk with God and you share this common destination. I think many of you know that the United States government has offered $25 million for the apprehension of or information leading to the arrest of Osama Bin Laden, a $25 million bounty. Time Magazine recently interviewed people in Afghanistan, asking them how they felt about $25 million. Clearly, most of them just did not understand what $25 million was, what it could do. One man said he thought that on $25 million, he could probably feed his family for ten years. A young man, 18 years old, a balloon salesman in Afghanistan, said, “With that kind of money I could probably buy one hundred party balloons.” Another man thought, “Well, $25 million, that might last a lifetime.” But the average person in Afghanistan makes $4 a month. $25 million would last 500,000 years. A man named Mohammed Asseuf said, “I don’t have time to look for Osama Bin Laden. I need to use all my time to search for food.”

Perhaps he was speaking truly. But it is also true that most of the people in the Arab world really do not want to look for Osama Bin Laden, and they do not want to hold hands with the United States of America, and they do not want to walk with America because the cost is just too great. Even if they got the $25 million, they know they would never live to spend it. If they were suddenly $25 million richer, they would never live to spend it. Al Qaeda, somebody from the radical fringe, would murder them surely. The cost is great.

That is how it is in this generation if you want to walk with America in certain parts of the world. But in all parts of the world, in every generation, it is dangerous to walk with God and it is costly to walk with God. There is a cost if you’re going to tell people about Christ, there is a cost if you are going to build the church of Christ, and there’s a cost if you’re going to be engaged in a quest for holiness and seek the character of Christ. But this is the call of God. “Walk with Me. No matter what the cost, walk with Me.”

We can think of this walk not only in the sense of destination and the goals and purposes of God, but also we can think of this walk simply in the sense of journey. It is not just a destination. Our walk with God is a journey.

Barb and I take a lot of walks. I love talking a walk with Barb. We took a walk up Waterton Canyon on Labor Day, last Monday. The trail goes seven miles, so it would be fourteen up and back, but we were not going to the end. It was not about a destination. We were not going anywhere in particular. We were just walking. It was not about the destination. It was about the journey, the relationship, and the intimacy that we experience through walking and the closeness that we feel to each other and the way the cares of the world just kind of dissipate when we are taking a walk. Do you ever feel like that? It is all the more so if you are walking with God.

We are entering one of the most beautiful times of the year here in Colorado—the fall, the autumn. It is just my favorite season. I love it when you have a mixture of colors. You have some of the greens remaining. The green is kind of mixed with yellow and orange and red. It is just beautiful. Scientists tell us that all of the fall colors are in the leaf all the time. All year round, those yellows, those oranges, those reds, are in the plants. It is just that they are hidden by the green chlorophyll, covered up by the green chlorophyll. But when the hours of daylight begin to diminish, the chlorophyll begins to break down in the plants, trees, and bushes. As the chlorophyll breaks down, the green begins to subside and these other colors, once hidden, suddenly are seen, and you can see the yellows and the oranges and the reds.

There’s hidden beauty in life. A lot of people just cannot see it. It is covered up. But you see when you’re walking with God, you’ve got a different view of life. If you are everyday just kind of going into that oasis with Him and you are in the Word and prayer with Him and fellowship with Him, you see the beauty that’s hidden from others. Life is more wonderful, and you are less lonely in your soul. No human being can take away that loneliness in the soul. You have to walk with God.

I was reading this past week about Michael Jackson. We all know he is fairly eccentric. His favorite movie apparently is “The Sound of Music.” The girl that played Liesl von Trapp is a gal named Charmian Carr. She is now an interior decorator, and Michael Jackson, because he loved the movie “The Sound of Music” and Liesl von Trapp’s role, hired Charmian Carr to be his interior decorator. She had to redecorate, kind of remodel the main house, the recording studio, the museum Michael Jackson has, and a candy store that he has on his property. She said the hardest thing was remodeling his bedroom. He did not want a bed. He just wanted a sofa and some chairs and seventeen mannequins—nine adults and eight children—all dressed to just look perfectly real. She said it was because he is so lonely. He does not want to go to bed and be alone at night. He needs seventeen mannequins in his bedroom, all looking real, so he does not feel alone because he’s desperately lonely.

I was thinking that there have to be a lot of people in the world like that. They are not so eccentric, not so strange, but they are lonely. And how desperately they need to walk with God. He will never fail you. He will walk with you. As you walk with Him, you will find no matter what you are going through, no matter where that walk takes you, He’s there with you. When you go astray, He’ll come after you because He is the Good Shepherd when you walk with God.

I am reminded of that story about Solomon Cohen. Solomon Cohen and his wife Esther were in a World War II concentration camp. Their two boys were in that concentration camp with them. Their names were Jacob and David. Jacob was nine years old, and he was crippled. Every day, Solomon and his wife were afraid that the Nazis would come and they would take Jacob because he was crippled and could not do any work. Therefore, he was of little help in the concentration camp. They knew that those who were sick or infirm or elderly were oftentimes sent to the gas chambers or to the ovens.

One day he came back from work, and he said to his son, David, “Where’s Jacob?” David told him that they had come for Jacob. David was crying. He said, “They came for Jacob, and they took him to the ovens.” Solomon began to cry. He said, “Where is Esther? Where is your mother?” David said, “She didn’t want Jacob to go alone and so she went with him.” David survived and he later told the story of a mother’s love and how a mother will never abandon her child no matter what that child is facing, even death. If that is true of a mother, how much more is that true of God?

No one loves you like God. Nobody. Nobody loves you like God. Even when you are at death’s door and you are in the valley of the shadow of death, God is with you. Walk with God. You will never ever be sorry.

We really come briefly to the final characteristic, that second characteristic of Enoch and that is this mysterious statement: “He was not.” “Enoch was not because God had taken him.” This phraseology is found nowhere else in the Old Testament except for 2 Kings, chapter 2, where the same statement is made of Elijah as he was taken into heaven in a fiery chariot.

Bible scholars believe that Enoch did not experience death. He was just translated into heaven. Indeed, that is exactly what the author of Hebrews tells us in the 11th chapter. “By faith, Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death. He was not found because God had taken him.” The Greek word there for “taken” is “metathesis,” which means, “to translate from one place to another.” He was simply translated into heaven. Some people think, “Well, this is a prototype of the resurrection.” But it’s not. To be resurrected, you must die, and Enoch never died. It is not a prototype of the resurrection. It is a prototype of what the church of Christ called the rapture, which we read about in 1 Thessalonians, chapter 4. “The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangels call, with the sound of the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise. Then we who are alive, who are left until His coming, shall be caught up,” (“rapturo” in the Latin, raptured), “together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And we shall always be with the Lord. So comfort one another with these words.”

Concerning the rapture, it is a great controversy today. Some evangelicals are pre-tribulation, and some are post-tribulation. The Bible says, “At the end of this age of the world, there will come a time of great tribulation.” From Daniel and Revelation, we know that time of great tribulation will last seven years. Some Christians believe they will be raptured before the tribulation. They are pre-tribulationists. This view is popularized in the “Left Behind” series that so many of you have read. We can hope that this view is true because we would all love to be raptured prior to the time of trouble.

But most Bible scholars believe that post-tribulationism is true, and the rapture will not take place until after the tribulation. That argument can continue, but it does not matter because either way, pre- or post-, we are going to be raptured, those who remain until the return of Christ. We are going to be raptured. If you do not live until Christ comes back, you’re still, in a sense, at the level of your soul and spirit, going to be translated into heaven. Really what this is about is heaven. Who is going to heaven? Enoch went to heaven. He walked with God and went to heaven. I hope you understand that all who walk with God go to heaven—those who walk with God under the Old Covenant, those who have walked with God under the Old Covenant through the ages past, and those who walk with God under the New Covenant through faith in Jesus Christ today.

According to Fox News, a young man returned to his home in Chicago last year on September 11 late in the day. He was afraid, he was confused, and he was desperate. He knew that the Twin Towers had crashed to the ground, and he was in shock like all Americans were. His shock was all the greater because he knew that his father worked in the World Trade Center, and he had not heard from his dad.

According to Fox News, this man went into his house in Chicago and checked his e-mail and was stunned to see an e-mail from his dad. According to Fox News, these were the words. “Son, our building has been hit. See you in heaven. Love, Dad.” He must have just typed those words, hit the send button, and that was it. What an amazing message.

There are going to be a lot of reunions in heaven. I hope that that father and son represents one of those reunions. But understand that heaven is for those who walk with God. It’s for those who have made a commitment to the Son of God, Jesus Christ; those who seek to let other people know about Him, seek to build His Church, seek to be like Him; those who have received Him as Savior and Lord.

I think sometimes in the aftermath of September 11 there is almost a cloud of despair you sense, at least in the lives of a lot of people. It remains to this day, doesn’t it? A lot of people just do not seem to have the spark. They do not seem to have the joy, the energy, the optimism that once they had. Do you notice that in some people? Maybe some of it has to do with the financial recession, but a lot of people just seem kind of down. Yet, wow. If you belong to Christ, there is just no time for depression. It is just so exciting because heaven is coming. We are bound for heaven, and it is going to be awesome.

I love the story of Samuel Morrison. I was reminded of it, and we will close with this. On our 31st anniversary a couple of weeks ago, Barb and I took a little trip to Glenwood Springs. We stayed there at a place in Glenwood Springs. One night we ate a dinner at the Colorado Hotel, which was built in 1893. It is an historic old hotel there in Glenwood Springs. We were eating dinner, and as I walked around the hotel, I just saw pictures everywhere of Theodore Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt’s pictures are all over the walls because he came to Glenwood Springs to go hunting a lot, and he spoke to the crowds from the balcony of the Colorado Hotel.

The thought of Theodore Roosevelt hunting reminded me of the story of Samuel Morrison that I read years ago, a true story. You see, Theodore Roosevelt went hunting in Africa for three weeks during his presidency. As he came back from Africa on a ship and they pulled into port in New York, the docks were just packed with people wanting to see the president come off the ship. The crowds were just huge. This other man on the ship was Samuel Morrison. He was a missionary. He had been in Africa for 25 years. During those 25 years, he had never come back to the States. This was his first time back after 25 years, his first time home. There was nobody there to greet him. He did not know anybody anymore.

Thousands of people were there to see the president and nobody was there to see Samuel Morrison. Samuel Morrison later told people at the mission agency, “You know, when I came into New York harbor and I saw these thousands of people waiting to see President Roosevelt, I said a little prayer to the Lord.” I said, “Lord, I feel kind of down. The president has been in Africa for three weeks killing animals, and he comes home to thousands of people. I’ve been in Africa for 25 years serving You, and l come home to nobody.” He said it was like God spoke audibly to him. He just heard the voice of God in his spirit. God said, “Samuel, you’re not home yet.” Remember that as you live life in this world, you are not home yet.

You are going to leave this place, get in your car, drive to the place where you live, but you are not home yet because if you believe in Jesus Christ and you walk with God, home is in heaven, and it’s glorious. Let us close with a word of prayer.