One other thing to say to you, tonight we're
going to begin a series on what we'll called "Twelve Unlikely Heroes." It was a couple of years ago that I thought
it might be interesting to do a book, since people love character studies, they enjoy
The Twelve Ordinary Men, The Twelve Extraordinary Women, so why not take a look at some other
of the amazing biographies of the Bible under the kind of the title of Extraordinary...or
rather Unlikely Heroes. This book will be available by the end of
summer. It's finished and it's on its way and you'll
be able to take a look at it at the end of summer. You will thoroughly enjoy it. It is...it is a rich and wonderful study. So, I'm going to kind of go along the pathway
of those Twelve Unlikely Heroes, and they follow a flow scripturally. So we're going to start in the Old Testament
with Enoch and Joseph and then we're going to work our way through all the main eras
of biblical history on in to the New Testament, we're going to have a great time doing so. But in order to justify titling this series
of Twelve Unlikely Heroes, we probably ought to talk about the word "hero" a little bit
and at least get the definition that we're going to be able to work with because it might
be quite different from the contemporary definition of hero. In fact, I would say that the word "hero"
is slowly losing its significance. We use and abuse words and consequently we
have a way of diluting their impact and hero is one of the those words that once was a
word isolated for people of very, very unique accomplishment, and very unique achievement. Not everybody could fall into the category
of hero, not everybody could be called a hero. Now, just about everybody is labeled a hero,
that is partly the legacy of the self-esteem movement. If you're...your six-year-old manages to push
the soccer ball past a prone goalie, as he leads the little flock ball group chasing
the ball, he all of a sudden becomes a hero. Your ten-year-old is a hero if he gains you
a bumper sticker that you can put on the car that says, "My child was student of the week,"
only because he gave the teacher less grief than all the other kids that week, I think...so. Now we have adult versions of that same kind
of heroism, don't we? We have...we have those adult people who push
the ball past the goalie or hit ball over the fence or score the touchdown and slam
the ball on the ground, the adult version of that in sports and entertainment. Nowadays just about anybody with celebrity
status can become heroic. And you hear people refer to "my favorite
person" as "my hero." I was thinking about that and I went back
and looked up the words to a very popular song called "The Wind Beneath My Wings." It's kind of the...it's kind of the anthem
of contemporary heroism. I know you've heard the song, I don't know
if you've listened to the words. Here's the main verse. "Did you ever know that you're my hero? Because you were content to let me shine,
that's your way. You always walked a step behind so I was the
one with all the glory. You're my hero because you made sure I got
all the glory." What kind of heroism is that? But it sounds right for our society. As bad as pop culture's relentless, sentimentalizing
and overuse and cheapening of the word hero, our ideas of heroism are even more tarnished
by another ridiculous obsession with imaginary heroes, super heroes whose fantasy exploits
fill everything from comics and cartoons to television and movies, and this is the legacy
in large part, at least to the level it's at now of the improvement in special effects,
and digital animation and all of that that has now created bizarre kinds of fantasies,
superheroes beyond all imagination. So on one hand you have these who trivialize
heroism and you have the others who mythologize heroism. Our heroes are made up of people who aren't
really heroic, in another case, they're made up of people who don't even exist. What is true heroism? There are heroes, there are people who maybe
deserve that title, people in the face of war or in the face of disaster, or treachery,
or danger, put their life on the line to rescue other people. There are people who have been heroic in discoveries
that have helped people recover from diseases. There are people who have done heroic things
in society for the benefit of society. We all know that, they advance other's well-being
in some world changing way, some significant way that is epoch. The world is different, the world is better,
and somebody is alive because of someone's sacrificial action. But even at best, those heroes who do that
in the world can only make impacts that are temporal, that is their heroism only makes
life better here and now, not beyond. In my judgment, the greatest heroes are those
who are the human means that God uses to change people forever. Those are the real heroes. They're the ones that are the instruments
that God uses to bring people to Him, into His Kingdom to give Him glory and to serve
Him forever. And these true heroes, to be honest, these
people who have an eternal impact are invariably the most unexpected and they are the most
ordinary. We know that God is in the business of using
unlikely heroes. Listen to what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians
1:26 and 27. "See your calling, brethren, that not many
wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called, but God has chosen
the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise and God has chosen the weak
things of the world to put the shame the things that are mighty." In other words, God works through people whom
the world regards as weak and foolish and unqualified. They're not self-reliant, they're not self-sufficient. They are very unlikely and yet when given
unique opportunities for eternal impact, become useful to God to accomplish His eternal ends. Now we can establish just some sort of simple
criteria by which these people can be classified. The pages of Scripture are actually filled
with a lot more than twelve, that's a very limited sampling, to be honest. But there would be three things that mark
these people. One would be faith, faith in God. And the other would be faithfulness, that
is to say they had an enduring commitment to God and it survived every imaginable and
unimaginable difficulty. And then, thirdly, fruitfulness. That would be the impact that they had. Providentially these...these people of faith
who were faithful, whose faith endured are providentially used by God in remarkable,
remarkable ways, in ways that stretch even beyond their own life and their own time. The first such person we meet in the Bible
is a man named Enoch...Enoch. And for us to get into the story of this man
named Enoch, I want you to look at the eleventh chapter of Hebrews where he is mentioned. As we will see in a moment, he is mentioned
also in Genesis 5 and referred to in the epistle of Jude and a very passing reference of his
name two other places in the Old Testament. And by the way, the Enoch that we're going
to be looking at in Hebrews 11:5 and 6 is not the only Enoch in the Bible. In fact, in the book of Genesis, there are
actually two men named Enoch. The first Enoch appears in the fourth chapter
of Genesis and he is the son of Cain. Cain had relations with his wife, she conceived
and gave birth to Enoch. He built a city called the name of the city
Enoch after the name of his son. So it was a very common name. It actually became the name of a city . The word seems to mean beginning, or initiation. So, when Cain had a son, he named him initiation
or beginning. But the son that we're looking at is not a
son of Cain but a son of Seth...son of Seth, the righteous line, the good people. Let's look at Hebrews 11, the subject here,
we'll start in verse 1, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things
not seen, for by it the men of old gained approval. By faith, we understand the worlds were prepared
by the Word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice
than Cain through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous. God testifying about his gifts and through
faith though he is dead, he still speaks. He speaks, and what does he say? Abel speaks to us of the necessity of sacrifice...of
sacrifice." He offered a sacrifice that God accepted,
an animal blood sacrifice as a picture of the coming sacrifice of Christ. He demonstrated his faith by obedience. Cain was disobedient. He was told what to do, he brought the fruit
of his own hands. He illustrates the illusion of salvation by
works, by accomplishment, by achievement. Abel illustrates the reality of salvation
by sacrifice and though he is dead, he still communicates that message. Well after him came a man who had a far-reaching
influence. His name is Enoch. And it says of him in verses 5 and 6, "By
faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death and he was not found because
God took him up, for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up, he was pleasing
to God. And without faith it is impossible to please
Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those
who seek him." So now we move to the second man in the list
in Hebrews chapter 11 that is often referred to as the heroes of faith. And Enoch's influence is specifically identifiable. Abel obviously is a demonstration of what
is necessary for salvation, sacrifice, obedience, faith, and subsequent righteousness. He is the example of faith, the first example. But Enoch, this remarkable individual, had
a basically revealed impact in future generations, as we will see. So here we see him listed in Hebrews 11 as
one of those people that we can look at as having heroic faith. And to tell you the story of Enoch, we have
to go back to the fifth chapter of Genesis, Genesis chapter 5. And in Genesis chapter 5, we have the descendants
of Adam given to us. This is the genealogy that stretches from
Adam onward down to Noah and then his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth. And the genealogy ends there. The genealogy ends there for obvious reasons,
the Flood comes after that and the world is destroyed. This is the descendants of Adam through Seth. And down in verse 21 we read about Enoch,
he lived 65 years and became the father of Methuselah. Then Enoch walked with God three hundred years
after he became the father of Methuselah. And he had other sons and daughters. "So all the days of Enoch were three hundred
and sixty-five years. Enoch walked with God and he was not for God
took him." Now there's a very definite break in the flow
here...very definite. If you read through the genealogy, you will
see a phrase repeated again and again. If you go back to verse 5, Adam lived nine-hundred
and thirty years and he died. Verse 6, Seth lived one hundred and five years
and became the father of Enosh and then it goes on, verse 8, the days of Seth were nine
hundred and twelve years and he died. Enosh, verse 10, lived 815 years, had other
sons, verse 11, nine hundred and five years total, and he died. And then verse 14, "Kenan, 910 years, and
he died. And Mahalalel, verse 17, 895 years and he
died. And Jared, 962 years and he died. And then it says about Enoch, "He walked with
God and he was not for God took him." Here's somebody who didn't die. He didn't die. The "and he died" shows the effect of the
Fall. The brief history of Enoch breaks the pattern...that
breaks the pattern. And he becomes the father of Methuselah. Methuselah is a word that means, or a name
that means the man of sending forth, or the man of the spear, or the man of the javelin. Something shot out, he was a God-named prophecy. His name means that he would not die until
the judgment was sent forth, until judgment came, he would not die. He is the man that is linked with the judgment. Divine judgment would not come until Methuselah
died. So the demonstration of God's mercy is, he
lived longer than any other person, 969 years. So, for 969 years, until Methuselah died,
the world of people was being warned the judgment was coming. The year Methuselah died, down in verse 27,
says, "And he died," the Flood shot forth and drowned the world. God let him live longer than anybody else,
grace was extended in the face of judgment, and when he died, the Flood came. Now his father is Enoch. Twice it is said of Enoch that he walked with
God. That is the definitive description. Verse 22, "Enoch walked with God three hundred
years," verse 24, "Enoch walked with God." It's so amazing that it's repeated twice. It is so unique, that's why it's repeated. It stands out from all the rest. And we are told he walked with God for three
hundred years. You know, it's a struggle to make it for 70
or 80, to walk with God faithfully, 300 years he walked with God. Three hundred years in the midst of a horribly
corrupt world. This is the remarkable characteristic about
Enoch. He lived against the grain of his society. Now remember, the entire world, Enoch's entire
world was drowned and catapulted into eternal hell. This is a profoundly distinct life. In looking at the Old Testament and looking
at Pre-Flood sort of antediluvian culture, pre-Flood spirituality, it is a very bleak
picture. There were some godly in the line of Seth,
of course. And Seth himself was godly. This is called the godly line. But by the time it moves all the way down
to Enoch, judgment is coming and judgment at Enoch's age of 65 is only 969 years away
when his son, Methuselah, dies. And so the warning goes on for all that time. When it says that Enoch walked with God, how
are we to understand that? How are we to understand the remarkable significance
of that? And not just the significance of him walking
with God, but the consequence of that, the impact of that? He just walked into heaven, verse 24 says. He was not for God took him. One day during this 365 th year, while walking
with God, they just walked together into heaven. There's only one other person recorded in
Scripture who didn't die. And that one other person is Elijah, and that's
recorded in 2 Kings chapter 2 and Elijah one day was taken into heaven in a chariot of
fire. Enoch is a remarkable, remarkable person. He comes into the world, 57 years after the
death of Adam. He goes out of the world, 69 years before
the birth of Noah. Noah is Enoch's great grandson. And in the year of the world, 987, he's taken
to heaven, some six hundred years later, six hundred and sixty-nine, the Flood comes. His disappearance is shocking, sudden, inexplicable. People were people and people were used to
normal explanations, it wasn't a time of miracles. How in the world did they come to understand
that nobody could find Enoch and nobody was there to explain where he went? Let's go back to Hebrews 11 and I want to
show you the lessons that can be learned about his spiritual impact...his spiritual influence. And there are just a number of things that
are very simple that shape our understanding of this man. Let me just give you the list then we'll work
our way through it simply. His life is an epoch life, it is a stand-out
life, it is an influential life. In that sense he's a spiritual hero because
he has such a profound spiritual effect on those around him and even on us, because of
his example and his testimony. But here are the components, or the features
that made up that impact. Number one, he believed in the true God. He believed in the true God. Number two, he sought God's reward. He believed in the true God, he sought God's
reward. Number three, he walked with God. Number four, he set an example. Number five, he preached the Word of God,
and as a result, he entered into the presence of God. That was the consequence. So five things to say about him. He believed in the true God. He sought God's reward. He walked with God. He set an example and he preached the Word
of God. And as a result, God elevated him into His
presence. Now let's start where that little outline
starts by looking at verse 6, "Without faith it is impossible to please Him. For he who comes to God," and that would certainly
be true of Enoch, because God walked with him right into heaven. He had entered into fellowship with God. "But he who comes to God must believe that
He is." Well we'll stop there for a minute. Believing that God is the God He is. That's the basis of pleasing God. It says in the Old Testament twice that he
walked with God, that he walked with God. Here it says at the end of verse 5, he was
pleasing to God. Really that's one and the same. And in the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament,
in Genesis 5 where it says in Hebrew he walked with God, the Septuagint, the Greek says,
he was pleasing to God. So walking with God is simply an indication
that God accepts one. He was acceptable to God. He was pleasing to God. God was satisfied to be in his company, in
his presence, in fellowship with him. And what establishes that is faith. Without faith it is impossible to please Him,
to walk with Him, to be in His company. You don't come to God by works, you come by
faith. And we know that, and that's emphasized here. He who comes to God then must believe that
He is. You have to believe in the God who is God. That is such a profound statement that He
is. And what is the name when God is asked His
name back in the book of Exodus? And what is your name? What does God say? "I AM that I AM" and He gives the verb to
be. And that's right here again. That He is I AM who I AM, the eternal I AM,
the eternal living One. You must believe in the God who is God, the
uncreated one, the eternal one. Not in a God who is a creature, not in a God
who is made with hands, or concocted out of the human mind, an invented God, not the God
of Islam, not the God of Mormonism who is not only a God of demonic origin but a God
who is created from another God. You must believe in the God who is God, identified
in Scripture as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ. Only faith pleases God and only when faith
is placed in the true God...the true God. There is no other way to walk with God. There is no other way to please God than to
identify yourself as a believer in the God who is the true and living and one and only
God. That is why the commandments of Exodus 20
start out with, "You shall have no other Gods before Me." And the sum of all the Law is to love the
Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Which is to say there is no affection remaining
for any other deity, for none other deity exists. Enoch believed in the true God. And that pleased the true God. And God then gave Himself in companionship
and fellowship and company to this man Enoch. In a sense, Enoch recovers what Adam and Eve
lost. Adam and Eve walked in the Garden with God
in the cool of the evening, and communed with God and fellowshipped with God. And then, of course, when they sinned and
disobeyed God, they were thrown out of the Garden to be kept from the Tree of Life and
also to be shut out from the communion they once knew. Enoch is an illustration of that communion
being restored and so intimate and so complete and so acceptable did this man become to God
that he bypassed death and God just walked with him right into heaven. He is an illustration of the fact that the
only way to walk with God, the only way to please God is by putting your trust in Him,
believing in the God who is God. And for us in the New Testament, there's no
salvation in any other name than Jesus Christ. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life, no
man comes to the Father but by Him. You cannot believe in the true God unless
you believe in the true God who is a Trinity, who is revealed in the Father, in the Son
and in the Holy Spirit. And all that is true about the Father and
all that is true about the Son, and all that is true about the Spirit is true about God
and this is the god in whom you must believe. So that's the first thing to say about Enoch,
he believed in God. He was a man who had put his faith in the
true God. Secondly, he sought God's reward. He sought God's reward. Now notice back in this verse, verse 6, he
believed that God is the God He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. He believed that God would reward him for
his pursuit. That is to say this, he believed that God
is and that God is moral, that is that God rewards the people who seek Him, that God
rewards the people who follow Him. and measuring that out or defining that a little more, that
God rewards the people who pursue holiness and righteousness because to seek a relationship
with God is to seek holiness, to seek righteousness, to seek purity. Enoch did not believe in the deists God, some
distant cosmic cause. He would not have been caught up in what we
call today intelligent design, that somewhere up there there's some kind of a vast mind
that's behind it all. But he believed in a personal God, a caring
God, a God with whom he could fellowship and a God who would reward his pursuit. Many people believe in some kind of deity,
some kind of God, some kind of power, some kind of divine mind, some kind of heavenly
source and originator. But Enoch believed in a God who was moral,
who rewarded righteous behavior and pursuing that God and believing in that God was a righteous
act. David said to his Son, Solomon, in 1 Chronicles
28:9, "If you seek Him, He will be found by you. But if you forsake Him, He will cast you off
forever." He is a moral God. He is a righteous God. He is a holy God. And He will reward those who seek Him. Psalm 119:10, "With my whole heart have I
sought You." Proverbs 8:17, "I love those who love Me and
those who seek Me early will find Me." Jeremiah 29:13, "You shall seek Me and find
Me when you shall search for Me with all your heart." The most righteous thing that a human being
can do is to seek salvation and reward from holy God. Psalm 58:11 says, "There is a reward for the
righteous." Proverbs 11:18, "To him that seeks righteousness
shall be a sure reward." So what we have here is a man who understands
that you must believe in the true God. He would understand what Abel gave as his
life lesson, that the way you come to that God you believe in is through obedient sacrifice. He would also understand that this God responds
and rewards to righteous seekers, those who come desiring a relationship with Him. This is what our Lord was saying in the Sermon
on the Mount when He said, "Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all
these things shall be added." You know, when a person seeks salvation, they're
seeking righteousness. They're seeking to be delivered from their
sin. They're seeking holiness. They're seeking purity. They're seeking to be washed, to be cleansed,
to be forgiven. And God does that and much more blessing,
mercy, grace, peace, joy, love, heaven, inheritance, you name it. So here we see a man who understood that the
way to God was through faith and he would have understood what the great lesson of Abel's
life was and the lesson of Abel's life would have been passed down to him in just a few
generations. He is the seventh generation from Adam, so
the lessons of Abel would have been well known and well established and passed down. He knows that God must be approached by faith
and obedient faith. And he also knows that he needs to have a
relationship with God because God will reward that pursuit with righteousness and holiness
and he needs that to escape judgment. And that leads to the third feature of his
life, he walked with God. It says it twice. Because he believed in the true God, because
he sought the reward of righteousness and forgiveness and holiness that God gives, he
ended up walking with God...walking by faith. Now what does it mean to walk with God? What does it mean to please God? Well we could talk a lot about it. First, it indicates reconciliation cause sinners
are by nature alienated from God. And Amos 3:3 says, "How could two walk together
unless they be agreed?" And Paul affirms that to the Corinthians when
he says, "Light and darkness can't get together, they can't correspond. You can' put Christ and Belial together." So the first thing you can conclude is that
if this man is walking with God, there is a reconciliation that has taken place. He's no longer, to borrow the words of Paul
in Ephesians 4, alienated from the life of God. He's now reconciled to God. I would say a second thing is implied in this
union, this communion, this fellowship. To walk with God implies corresponding nature...corresponding
nature. That is, light has no communion with darkness. Therefore no sinner left in his sin can walk
with God. Abraham believed God and it was counted to
him as righteousness, and that would be true of Enoch. Because of his faith, God imputed righteousness
to Enoch and therefore he was acceptable to God. He had a corresponding nature. God is righteous and in order for a man to
walk with God, he must be then determined to be righteous. He must be given a righteousness not his own,
it must be credited to him, applied to him, imputed to him, and that makes that walking
together possible. And I think also we could add that there is
a corresponding surrendered will. To walk with God implies that we desire His
company, we desire His holy company. We desire the demands of that holy company
and we surrender to that. We give ourselves up to that. We want that communion, we want that intimacy
with God, we want that closeness, we want that presence. We want that spiritual fellowship. That's Enoch. And this went on for three hundred years. Think of it. Think of how much...how much influence that
man had to the people around him. You know, as we walk with the Lord, ten years,
twenty years, thirty, forty, our influence increases for good and for God, as people
look at our lives and see the evidences of the work of God in our life. Just imagine a man who had walked in intimate
communion with the living God for three hundred years. In every sense, that would be a life to follow,
wouldn't it? Steady progress, unbroken fellowship, sweet
communion, and the spiritual progress of that communion evident as he goes from one level
of spiritual maturity to another, to another, to another, to another, to another, beyond
anything we would ever see in our life because no one lives that long. You might meet a person who has walked with
the Lord for sixty years or seventy years, but you would never meet a person who walked
with the Lord like this. So this would be a level of spiritual maturity,
the likes of which we couldn't even imagine. All of our experiences come together in life,
cumulatively to build our faith and to build our love for the Lord, and to increase our
desire to honor Him and glorify Him. By that measure, relative to us, Enoch would
have been off the charts. A lover of God, the likes of which we cannot
imagine. Obedient at a level we cannot comprehend. What must have been the peace in his life,
what must have been the joy in his life, what must have been the level of gratitude in his
life? It is incomprehensible what this man was. Think of the most noble, dedicated, faithful
Christian you know and this man is exponentially beyond that person. We're told to walk as Christ walked. We're told to walk in the Spirit and not fulfill
the lust of the flesh. We struggle to do that in the few years that
we're given in life. Here is a man who walked what the New Testament
calls the truth walk, he calls the honest walk, the love walk, the light walk, the wise
walk, the holy walk for 300 years. What triggered it? Well it seems to indicate that the birth of
Methuselah triggered it. Now fatherhood does have its motivations,
but it probably wasn't just the fact that he had a baby that catapulted him into this
conversion, this salvation, this walk with God. What do you think it might have been? Well, it might have been the testimony that
God must have revealed to him that showed up in the name of Methuselah because he was
to name his son a name that spoke of the coming forth of divine judgment. And it seems as though at the age of sixty-five,
he was giving his son a God-given name, a God-revealed name and that once he became
aware of the judgment that was going to come and it was going to be inaugurated when that
son died, he got his spiritual act together in the face of that judgment. But here is a man who walked with God for
300 years. He pleased God because he believed in God. He sought the reward of salvation and all
its blessings that God gives, and he sought communion with God. You know, I'd have to add one other thing
here, two others, to our little outline. He set an example for us. He set an example for us. There's no question that this is an example,
but I want you to see how impactful that example was. In Genesis we are all familiar with a man
who happens to be the great grandson of Enoch. His name is Noah. Noah was very, very different than all the
people in his world...very, very different. Listen to what it says in Genesis 6:8. "Noah found favor, or grace, in the eyes of
the Lord. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his
time." And then listen to this, "Noah walked with
God." Noah was a righteous man. And Noah walked with God. What other families could that be said of
at that time? None. He became the father of three sons, Shem,
Ham and Japheth, and the earth was corrupt in the sight of God and the earth was filled
with violence. It was so bad that verse 5 says that the Lord
saw the wickedness of man was great on the earth. Every intent of the thoughts of his heart
was only evil continually. The Lord was sorry that He had made man on
the earth. He was grieved in his heart. The Lord said, "I'll blot out man whom I've
created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things, to birds of
the sky. I'm sorry that I made them." You know what came? The Flood and drowned everybody in the world. But there was one man who was righteous and
blameless in his generation and walked with God, and it was the great grandson of Enoch. And we could say that Enoch's testimony showed
up in Noah. Enoch's example showed up in the life of Noah. I suppose, in one sense, it's a good thing
it did or none of us would be here. He was...he was it. That's the impact of a life. You don't measure heroism, spiritually speaking,
by the number of people it influences, but by how it influences. We could honestly say that Enoch's life didn't
have an extensive impact. He did not set an example that masses of people
followed. We really don't know how many followed his
life. We do know one man who essentially lived the
life that Enoch lived, and that was Noah. And how important was Noah? You never know how important one life influenced
is. And there's another area that causes this
man to be a spiritual hero, even in the face of horrendous judgment. And with what might even be soon to be minimal
impact and that is he preached the Word of God. Turn to Jude, the little epistle of Jude. And here we find reference made to Enoch,
verses 14 and 15. It was also about these men...what men?...false
teachers...false teachers. That's what he's been talking about...all
the way back, verse 4, "Certain persons crept in unnoticed who were long beforehand marked
out for condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness,
deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ." These kinds of people, these false teachers. Verse 8, "These men by dreaming defile the
flesh, reject authority, revile angelic majesties." Verse 10, "These men revile the things they
don't understand, things they don't...things they know by instinct like unreasoning animals. By these they are destroyed. Woe to them, they've gone the way of Cain,
from pay they rush headlong into the error of Balaam, perished in the rebellion of Korah. These men, false teachers, are hidden reefs
in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves, clouds
without water, they are carried along with winds, autumn trees without fruit, doubly
dead, uprooted, wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam, wandering stars
for whom the black darkness has been forever." It was also about these men that Enoch in
the seventh generation from Adam prophesied saying, Enoch was in a world full of false
religion, false teachers, in a world catapulting toward drowning and hell, a world rejecting
the true God, the God who is, the God who rewards those who seek Him, the God who desires
to walk with sinners to whom He grants righteousness. They had rejected the true and living God
but in His place there were plenty of others to pick from. And they all had their salesmen, as they always
do, the false teachers. And Enoch in the seventh generation from Adam,
preached saying "Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones, to execute
judgment upon all and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have
done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against
Him." Enoch was a preacher of judgment in a time
where false teachers proliferated. This is a quote from Enoch, it is taken from
an old Jewish source called Enoch. Apparently it's an accurate quote, this is
not a Bible book but is a book that is a part of ancient Jewish literature in which Enoch's
message was written down and preserved. Pretty clearly his message was, "This is an
ungodly society." He used the word "ungodly" four times. This is what makes him so remarkable. He is so out of touch with his generation. He is...he is this paragon of purity and virtue
and worship and adoration of the true God, walking in sweet fellowship with God, mature
beyond anything he can...we can even imagine. And he's caught up in the midst of a vile
and corrupt world. I think, sometimes, we assume that the culture
has to help us without spirituality. That we can't make it on our own, so we need
to make sure that we do what we need to do in Washington, and in public education, and
in the media to protect ourselves just so that the world doesn't become so bad we can't
make it. Well, the world was as bad as the world could
be. We haven't been burned up by fire yet. So maybe we aren't at exactly where the world
that was drowned was. But Enoch lived against the grain of that. And he set an example that was followed, at
least for sure, by his great grandson Noah and his children who were protected and preserved
by God for the rest of redemptive history. Enoch was a faithful preacher and he preached
an unpopular message. He wasn't a popular preacher. Do you think people wanted to hear him if
that's his message? "Behold the Lord...the Lord came with many
thousands of His holy ones." This is the message that the Lord gave him,
that would be angels coming to execute judgment on all you ungodly sinners for the things
you've spoken against him? The whole society was against God. It wasn't that they were indifferent to God. God didn't drown them because they were indifferent
to him. God drowned them because they were against
him. And Jesus put it this way. "He that is not with Me is...what?...against
Me." He's a remarkable man, this Enoch. He stands against the grain in the way he
lives and he preaches against it in his preaching. He's the first judgment preacher. What an amazing man. And, as a result of it, he has a private Rapture. He...he had a private Rapture. Genesis 5:24 says, "Enoch walked with God
and he was not for God took him." But in Hebrews 11 it gives us even a more
specific description. It says this, "He was not found because God
took him," quoting from Genesis 5. Then at the end of verse 5 it says, "He was
taken up...taken up because he was pleasing to God. And he didn't die. He didn't see death." God was so pleased with this man, maybe one
lesson you can draw from this is if you could live for 300 years and reach that level of
spirituality, you might not have to die. Why did God do that for him? So that he could become an illustration of
what pleases God. He pleased him. He lived against his culture, against the
world. Like ethanacious contramundum(????), against
the world. And he preached against the world and so pleased
God that he never died. God longs for the full fellowship of His beloved,
and after 300 years he was so nearly heavenly, he was as near to being ready for heaven as
anybody could be. The Lord just translated him in the process. It's an incredible story. What do we learn from Enoch? To believe in the true God, to come to Him
as the one who will reward those who seek Him, to come by way of sacrifice, to walk
with Him. And by our communion with Him, to set an example
for others to follow so that those in our family, generations after generation will
follow our faith, to proclaim His message of salvation and judgment. And one day though in our case through death,
enter into His presence. However, there is a Rapture out there waiting,
isn't there? And Enoch is an illustration of the fact that
before the final judgment comes, the Lord will snatch the church out and then bring
the judgment. I'd like to be in that snatching, wouldn't
you? Father, we thank You for the testimony of
this amazing man, the encouragement that his life is to us, remarkable, so remarkable. Let us, Lord, in the years that we have, the
few years that we have, follow the pattern of Enoch and see him as an example to follow,
to believe in You, the true God, the God You are, to come to You as the rewarder of those
who seek You with all their heart, the reward being salvation and all its blessing. To walk with You in sweet communion and thereby
to set an example and ever and always to be bold to preach Your message, warning the ungodly
of judgment and calling sinners to pursue You. All with a view toward that day when we take
our walk to heaven, whether it's in the Rapture and we miss death, or through the veil of
death into Your presence, we'll one day end up right there with You, with Enoch, and with
Elijah and all the saints who gather around the throne. We long for that day with eager hearts in
Your time, in the meantime, may we live for the life You give us here like Enoch lived
and would You use us to be an example that others may follow who will also be righteous,
blameless in their generation and walk with You. These things we ask in Christ's name. Amen.
