Text: Genesis 5:24: "And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him."
How would you like to have lived in the Garden of Eden and to have had God Himself to come down and walk with you and fellowship with you in the cool of the day as He apparently did with Adam and Eve before they disobeyed Him and were cast out of the Garden?
As a boy when I would read the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden and think about what a wonderful place it was, the thought would come to me that it is still somewhere here on earth - right in the place it always has been - and how wonderful it would be to search for it and find it and, perhaps, somehow get to enter it! The thought of just locating the Garden of Eden has always been a fascinating thought to me, even though, after locating it, one might not get to enter into it because of the Cherubims and the flaming sword which keep the way of the tree of life, lest any unauthorized person might try to get some of its fruit.
Well, Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden at one time and God did come down to walk with them in the cool of the day, according to the Scripture story. But they disobeyed God, were put out of the Garden, and, because of their disobedience, lost their fellowship with Him.
I have on occasion wondered if, after Adam and Eve were put out of the Garden of Eden, God still came down and walked in the Garden in the cool of the day. If so, and one could somehow find the Garden of Eden and be privileged to enter it, how wonderful it would be to do so and once again be able to walk with God there as Adam and Eve did in the long ago!
Two of the greatest subjects the mind of man has ever wrestled with are the fall of man, how man lost his fellowship and walk with God; and the redemption of man, how the fellowship and walk with God can be restored.
John Milton, one of the greatest poets the world has ever known, dealt with these two great themes in his two tremendous epic poems, PARADISE LOST and PARADISE REGAINED.
Against the background of the disobedience of Adam and Eve, their loss of fellowship with God and their walk with God, and their being put out of the Garden of Eden, in the fifth chapter of Genesis, we find one of the most encouraging verses in the entire Bible. Some of us may have had the idea that because man was put out of the Garden of Eden, he could no longer walk with God as Adam and Eve once had done; or, perhaps, we may have gotten the idea that if only we could get back into the Garden, we could fellowship with God and walk with Him in a closer, more intimate way than is possible outside the Garden.
In the fifth chapter of Genesis, as we read of the descendants of Adam and Eve, of how one person was born, lived so many years, begat sons and daughters, and died, we come down to Enoch, the son of Jared and the father of Methuselah. There we read, "And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him."
Enoch walked with God! Enoch wasn't in the Garden of Eden, but he still walked with God! Enoch did not live in the days before the fall of man, but he still walked with God! Just think about it: here is a man who was born after the fall of Adam and Eve, outside the Garden of Eden, a man with the same human nature that we have, living right here on earth as we are, who walked with God!
I say this is one of the most encouraging verses in the entire Bible because God is no respecter of persons, and if Enoch walked with God, then you and I and all the rest of the human race also have at least the possibility of doing the same thing! And how it ought to thrill the soul and inspire us to realize that we, too, as we travel the pathway of life, can have God as our travelling Companion! Do you know of any epitaph you would rather be able to have placed truthfully on your tombstone than the words: "He (or she) walked with God"?
Notice some things about Enoch and his life that ought to encourage us.
First, look at the world in which Enoch lived. We sometimes get the idea that we could live closer to God if we lived in a more Christian environment, if we lived among people who were more Christian, if we lived in more pleasant surroundings, if we lived and worked where there was not so much selfishness and lust and profanity and drinking and sinful attractions, if we lived in a world where we were not faced with so many temptations and trials and where we did not have so many pressures upon us to go along with the ways of the world.
We think, perhaps, that if only we could get back into the Garden of Eden, or if only we could live in Palestine in the days when Jesus walked its dusty roads, or if only we could have been a member of one of the New Testament churches, if only we could live in some quiet little mountain cove where all of the people around us were neighborly, where all of the people went to church, and where we were away from the rush and bustle of modern-day life; if only we could live and work in a more religious atmosphere; if only we had a more Christian environment to live in, how much easier it would be to walk with God and to live the Christian life!
Some of the Hebrew people of Old Testament days thought sort of like that, too. Their land had been invaded and conquered and they had been taken into captivity in Babylonia, far from their native land, far from Jerusalem, and the temple and the places where their forefathers had erected altars and worshipped God. The Psalmist tells of how they sat down and wept by the rivers of Babylon, and hung their harps on the willows that grew along the river bank. When their captors said to them, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion," the Psalmist raises the question, "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" The Hebrews there in Babylon seemed to have the idea that it would have been much easier to have worshipped God, to sing the songs of Zion and to have walked with God if they had only been back at Jerusalem.
Well, Enoch lived in what was one of the most wicked and ungodly ages this world has ever known. Wickedness and evil were so widespread that the world was fast hastening on to that time when God would sweep the people away with the great flood, saving only Noah, the great-grandson of Enoch, and his family from the destruction of the great deluge of water. Looking down upon the world, God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually.
In that day there was no Bible. The commandments of God had not yet been given on Mount Sinai. The Gospel message had not yet been proclaimed. There were no churches. There was no midweek study of the Word of God. The earth was filled with corruption and violence and the world was fast moving towards destruction.
Yet, in that kind of a world, Enoch still walked with God! We need to write that fact deep within our minds and upon the tablets of our hearts! Walking with God is not determined by the kind of world in which we live! Sometimes we might like to think that we would walk with God more than we do if only the world around us were better and more friendly to the Christian religion.
There are perhaps many of us who, at one time or another, have had the idea that while we may not be walking with God very much here in this present world, yet when we leave this world and hopefully find ourselves in Heaven, there we will find it easy to walk with God and do what's right and be obedient unto His will!
Sam Jones, the famous evangelist, used to say that a good many people are going to be good when they get to Heaven. His comment on that was, "Well, you'd better be good down here or you won't get in."
If we are waiting for the world to straighten out so that we can walk with God, we are wasting our time and our opportunity to walk with God. The world is not going to straighten out in our day nor in our children's day nor in our grandchildren's day. The fact of the matter is that the world won't be straightened out when Jesus comes again! We don't have to wait for the world to straighten out before we can walk with God. Enoch walked with God in the midst of a sinful wicked world in his day; and, if we will, you and I can walk with God and live a Christian life in our day no matter what the rest of the world may do! We don't have to find the Garden of Eden to walk with God! We don't have to go to Jerusalem to worship God! We don't have to go to Mount Sinai to keep the Ten Commandments! We don't have to walk the dusty roads of Galilee to follow Jesus! We don't have to go to Lake Junaluska to get on a spiritual mountaintop!
Enoch walked with God in the world of his day, and we can walk with God in the world of our day if we will.
A second thought that may come to our minds as we think about walking with God is the thought that we might do more walking with God if only other people would treat us with more kindness and consideration.
I suppose only the Lord Himself knows how many people there are in this world who have gotten miffed and quit the church and given up on the Christian life because some people who professed to be Christians didn't treat them just the way they think they ought to have been treated.
Did you ever get discouraged and think about dropping out of the place that the Lord had assigned you because you felt that you weren't being treated right? If so, you are one of a great number, some of whom are or were preachers. I don't know how many preachers I have known across the years who have gotten out of the ministry or who have switched to another denomination because they felt they weren't being treated right.
Well, I have an idea that a lot of people didn't treat Enoch right either, but he didn't let that keep him from walking right on with God.
The people didn't treat Jeremiah right, but he kept right on being faithful to God.
King Ahab and Queen Jezebel didn't treat Elijah right, but he kept right on being faithful to God.
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego weren't treated right, but they kept right on living in obedience to what they knew to be the will of God.
Daniel wasn't treated right, but he didn't let it keep him from continuing to keep his times of daily prayer and his fellowship with God.
Jesus wasn't treated right, but He kept right on being obedient to God and doing the will of God, and, when he was crucified, He died praying for those who put Him on the cross.
Stephen wasn't treated right, but he continued faithful to the Lord and died praying for those who stoned him to death.
Read the New Testament and you will find that the Apostle Paul and a lot of those early disciples and New Testament church members weren't treated right by a lot of folks and some of those folks professed to be on God's side, too, but still Paul and Barnabas and Silas and Peter and Timothy and Titus and Mark and so many others of whom we don't even have a record all kept right on preaching the Word and living the life and trying to build up the church and do whatever the Lord laid on their hearts that He wanted them to do.
Along this line, I like the story Dr. John R. Church tells of an experience he had in a little mountain church way back up in a little mountain cove a good many years ago.
There were in the little church three brothers, Mark, Hezekiah and John. Hezekiah had married a girl from Buncombe County, and some twenty years or so before Dr. Church went to the little church, he had gone with his wife to Buncombe County to visit her kinfolks, and Reverend Jim Green - whom some of you perhaps knew - was holding a big tent meeting there and preaching second-blessing holiness. Dr. Church said that Hezekiah went to the altar and got sanctified and went back home on fire for God. He started a Wednesday night prayer service in the little country church, but his brothers, John and Mark, were so opposed to second-blessing holiness that they locked the church doors in his face and said, "You can't hold prayer-meetings in this church and profess to be sanctified." They had the idea that when people professed to being sanctified, they were dangerous people and not to be trusted.
Hezekiah, ever since he was fourteen or fifteen years of age, had led the singing in the Sunday School and in the church. He had a beautiful voice. But the next Sunday morning when he got up to lead the singing, his brother, Mark, walked up and snatched the song-book out of his hand, and said, "You can't lead singing in this church and profess to be sanctified. We won't have it!"
Hezekiah didn't get mad and pout and stay at home. He didn't go off and start another church. He kept right on going to church and being faithful. They wouldn't call on him to lead in prayer, but if they called for voluntary prayers, he would join in. They wouldn't let him lead singing, but he would sit back in the congregation and sing like a bird.
His brother, Mark, took typhoid fever and was sick for weeks. Hezekiah had some children. He said, "Boys, the weeds are about to take Mark's corn crop. We'd better go up there and work it out for him." And so they did. They worked out Mark's corn and cut his hay and milked his cows and took care of his hogs and took care of things until Mark got well.
Then, John's wife died. Hezekiah and his wife went up to John's house. His wife took a bunch of food and took over in the house, seeing that food was prepared, meeting people at the door and looking out after the housework. Hezekiah went up in the loft of John's barn and got down the walnut lumber kept there for coffins. He dressed it and made the coffin for John's wife, and then his wife made a shroud and prepared John's wife for the coffin.
Hezekiah took his boys and they went to the cemetery and dug the grave for John's wife. Then he got his team of horses and wagon and took the body to the cemetery and buried it and filled the grave. After the funeral service in the church and after the grave had been filled and everything placed in order, Hezekiah put his arm around John and walked down the hill from the cemetery with him. "John," he said, "there is a balm in Gilead! There is a Physician there."
Dr. Church said that when he went to that little church and began to preach second-blessing holiness, the first man to come to the altar was Uncle Mark West and the second was Uncle John West. Mark hadn't been there but a little bit until he jumped up and tore out down the aisle of the church shouting and clapping his hands and rejoicing. Dr. Church said he stood in the pulpit watching him, laughing and rejoicing with him, when Mark stopped, and said to him, "You needn't stand there looking so smug and complacent about this thing. You didn't have a thing to do with it. Hezekiah has had this experience for twenty years and has lived it in spite of the devil and John and me and everybody else, and we were convinced that it was real before you ever got here. We were just waiting for a chance to get it."
Praise God for the facts that we can walk with Him and live the Christian life no matter what kind of a world we live in and no matter how other folks treat us; no matter how many trials and difficulties may be put upon us; and no matter how many other responsibilities we may have to deal with!
Enoch walked with God! In that dark and sinful and wicked world, where the wickedness of man was great in the earth, where every imagination of the thoughts of the hearts of people was only evil continually, and where corruption and violence filled the land, Enoch still walked with God! Though the Garden of Eden was closed and guarded, though the Scriptures had not yet been written, though Jesus had not yet come, though Pentecost was still in the future, still Enoch walked with God - walked with God right on down the pathway of life until God finally led him around the cemetery, bypassing the grave, and took him home with Him.
Now we have the Holy Scriptures to give us light upon the pathway of time. Now we have the holy and just law of God telling us what we ought to do and what we ought not to do. Now we have the revelation of God in His Son, Jesus Christ. Now we have a wonderful Saviour Who has made atonement for our sins. Now we have a great host of witnesses surrounding us testifying to the power of God unto salvation. Now we have the Holy Spirit as our Comforter, as our Teacher, as our Guide and as an indwelling Presence. Now we have the church and the fellowship of the believers. Now we have the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Now we have means of grace that Enoch did not even know of in his day.
And if Enoch could and did walk with God in his day and generation until God took him to his eternal home, how much more ought we to be able to walk with God in our day and generation! That brings us to the tremendously important question as to how a person walks with God. Much could be said along this line.
The Psalmist tells us that the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.
James tells us that if we humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord, He will lift us up; and that if we draw nigh to God, He will draw nigh to us.
Jesus tells us that if we keep His words, God will not only love us but will come unto us and make His abode with us.
When we are willing to walk with the Lord in the light of His Word, humbly submitting ourselves to His will, we find ourselves in His Presence and we find that He is with us along the pathway of life.
Some years ago there walked across the campus of Yale University a young man who was troubled about his religious faith. He felt that from a scientific viewpoint the Bible could no longer be accepted as true and his faith was shaken.
He was on his way to the chemical laboratory to perform some experiments. There he took his textbook and performed some experiments exactly according to the formulas and directions given in the book. He secured the predicted results. That night in his room he said to himself, "I'll do the very same thing with religion. I'll take the formulas and directions given in the Bible, and will follow them exactly and see what happens."
He took the Bible for his textbook and opened it. It condemned sin. He put all known sins of every kind out of his life. It commended prayer. He began to develop a regular prayer life. It commended the public worship of God. He went to church. It commended service. He offered his services in Christian work. Whatever the Bible directed him to do, he tried to do exactly as directed.
The results came. He found a vital Christian faith. The experience of God became real in his life. He went out from Yale, not to become a lawyer as he had planned, but to become one of the most outstanding preachers of his generation. His name was Horace Bushnell.
We don't have to go back to the Garden of Eden to walk with God. We don't have to wait until we enter eternity to walk with God. Enoch walked with God in his day and generation, and we, too, can walk with God in our day and generation. Those who have humble hearts and who walk the pathway of obedience to God's will soon find that God is walking with them. Let us pray...