Enoch: The Walk of Faith

John MacArthur: So the walk of faith begins with believing that God is who he is and that he is a personal savior who will reward those who seek him. He was pleased with Enoch, not because of his works, but because of his what? Faith in who God is.
Phil Johnson: Welcome to Grace to You weekend with the Bible teaching of John MacArthur. I'm your host Phil Johnson. It's a statistic that is nearly absolute. 10 of every 10 people will die. I say nearly absolute because there have been two exceptions. The prophet Elijah and an Old Testament saint named Enoch who because he walked with God skipped death and went directly to heaven. Now you're obviously not going to avoid death like Enoch did, but you can follow Enoch's example and have a faith that prepares you for heaven. See how today as John MacArthur continues his series from Hebrews 11 titled a faith that pleases God. So turn in your Bible to the book of Hebrews if you're able as John begins the lesson.
John MacArthur: Hebrews chapter 11 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 the first example of faith is Abel, the son of son of Adam and Eve, who demonstrated that he would come to God by faith, not by works, by confessing his own sin and realizing that he was unworthy and needed a sacrifice before he could approach God. The second example then is Enoch. If Abel tells us about how you enter the life of faith Enoch tells us how you live the life of faith or how you walk by faith. And he is identified as having walked with God. Now what you have in the story of Enoch is a kind of a prime evil pre-flood spirituality lesson. And I would remind you that it's not harsh legalism as some people would assume the Old Testament would propound that you know in the Old Testament it was all about legalism. No, it wasn't. God was not a distant sort of demanding deity which you appeased by sacrifices and and ceremonies and morality, spirituality. In the very earliest years was a matter of walking with God. God was a companion. God was not a distant deity. And this man was in daily intimate communion with God. Another way to view this that he walked with God is to say that he was a saved man. He was a saved man. Now let's look at our text in Hebrews chapter 11 and just kind of pick a few things out of here that will give us an insight into what it means to walk with God. First of all, and we'll find this as you noticed when I read it in verse 6 verse 5 saying he was not found. Nobody could find him. Imagine that. Where's Enoch? He didn't come home for dinner. All the kids are saying where where's dad? The wife is saying where is he? He wasn't found because God took him up. For he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God, which is the same as saying he was walking with God. And then comes the lesson as to what it means to walk with God or what it means to please God. Verse 6 without faith it is impossible to please him. There's the first and dramatic dynamic lesson of the entire chapter. The only way to walk with God, the only way to please God is by faith. And it all starts with that. You you can't please God, you can't be reconciled to God, you can't walk with God. You will not enter into the glories of eternal life apart from faith. That is a statement that ought to be underlined in everybody's mind. Without faith it is impossible to please him. So corrupt, so polluted is man's fallen nature even in the first generation after the fall that he cannot of himself do anything that is pleasing to God. Those are who are in the flesh. It's Romans 8:8. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God, cannot please God. Faith alone pleases God. Enoch believed God. Enoch put his trust in God as his savior, his God. And thus he was reconciled to God and received by God. Now let's break it down a little bit. What does it mean to put your faith in him? Well first, he who comes to God must believe that he is. That is a great statement. It's a simple statement but it's profound. He who comes to God must believe that he is. What do you mean by that? Well if I could just extend that if I have if I had translated this verse in this context I might have added some things in italics. Occasionally you see a couple of things there even in that verse. I would have added this little phrase. He who comes to God must believe that he is who he is. You can get the same thing if you just put the emphasis on he. He who comes to God must believe that he is. That is not just saying well I believe there's a God. Oh I believe in God. I'm very spiritual. But that he is who he is. The only true God, not just any God will do, not just some God will do, not just the notion of God will do. That's not sufficient. You must believe that he is the God whom he is. And how do you know the God who is God? By virtue of his revelation he has revealed himself. Even this early in human history in that first millennium of human history God had revealed himself again and again and again. People knew who he had claimed to be. And Enoch believed that. It is not enough for anyone to believe in the concept of God, the idea of God, the notion of God, the reality of God. You must believe in the God who is God. And for us that even is further defined. You must believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the one who is the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. You must believe in the true and living God who has revealed himself incarnate in Christ. That is why you can't be saved apart from Jesus Christ because that's an incomplete view of God. Now you cannot come to God if you do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ who is God in human flesh and whose deity was manifest and validated by the resurrection from the dead. So the first thing that marks Enoch is that he believed in the true God as he had revealed himself. And again the revelation is progressive. There's more of it after him through the Old Testament and the full revelation comes in Christ in the New Testament. We saw that in the beginning of Hebrews chapter 1 verse 1 God spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways in these last days has spoken to us in his son. That's the completion of the full revelation. So Enoch believed what God had revealed to be true about himself. He believed in the God who is who he is. Secondly, he believed that he is a rewarder of those who seek him. That is to say that he is the redeemer, that he is the savior. He believed that God rewards those who pursue him. I mean what critical truth that is. He believed that God was a personal forgiving, loving, gracious God who would provide salvation to those who sought him. That's what being a rewarder means. Enoch knew that. He did not believe in some distant cosmic cause. I mean this is the wonderful wonderful truth that sets Christianity apart from every other religion in the world. No other religion has a God who is a rewarder. All other religions have a God who is a punisher, who is indifferent, who is diffident, who is distant, who is to be appeased, whose primary attitude is one of anger. But the true and living God is a rewarder of those who seek him even though they are sinners and even though they cannot commend themselves, they cannot do anything to achieve reconciliation with him, they cannot on their own please him. Still as Psalm 58:11 put it there is a reward for the righteous or Proverbs 11:18 to him that seeks righteousness shall be a sure reward. In other words, this is to say that God is a savior. So the walk of faith begins with believing that God is who he is and that he is a personal savior who will reward those who seek him. He was pleased with Enoch, not because of his works, but because of his what? Faith in who God is. He was pleasing to God. And this was the mark of his whole life. Wow. His whole life as I said when we started out he lived in a very corrupt time, maybe a kind of corruption that would be inconceivable to us. You know it's bad enough to live 70 years as a fallen being. How'd you like to live 300? What kind of a record of sin would you accumulate? What kind of an exposure level would you have to corruption? I don't know about you, but the older I get the sweeter heaven appears to be. And I really am not you know it's okay. I'm not into gold streets and jeweled hinges and pearl gates. I mean that's kind of neat to see. But the appeal of heaven is the absence of sin. That's the appeal. I can't imagine what it would be like to live 300 plus years exposed to an increasingly corrupt world. As we break up his walk a little bit and just talk about the elements of his walk if I can do that, there's some components of what it means to walk with God. First it assumes reconciliation. It assumes reconciliation. Amos 3:3 how can two walk together unless they're agreed? Which is picked up, isn't it, by Paul in his letter to the Corinthians where he says that how can two walk together unless they're agreed? How can you know God have fellowship with Satan? That's that's not possible. So two walking together presupposes agreement, presupposes harmony, presupposes reconciliation, therefore presupposes salvation. Enoch is a is a saved man. I think that's the way to say it. He's been saved from his sin. He's been given salvation. The second thing that comes to mind when you talk about walking with someone is not only reconciliation, but corresponding nature, corresponding nature. I can't walk with God unless I possess some faculty which we share in common. And that's the marvelous reality of what salvation does. It not only reconciles us to God, but in that reconciliation God disposes to us his own nature. We become new. Light has no communion with darkness to go back to Paul's language. No sinner can walk with God. They have no common life. I can't be pals with a goldfish. It's impossible. There's a difference in nature. It eliminates that possibility. And perhaps you need to go back and read 2 Corinthians 6:14-16 where all these things are laid out. Thirdly, walking with God not only presupposes reconciliation and a corresponding nature, but it also presupposes moral fitness, moral fitness. God doesn't just walk with anybody. And again that's 2 Corinthians 6. Maybe I should read it to you because I'm referring to it enough times. And it's it's crystal clear. Don't be bound together with unbelievers. What partnership has righteousness and lawlessness? Well God is absolutely righteous and sinners are absolutely unrighteous or lawless. So I I can't imagine that a lawless person or an unrighteous person is going to walk with God unless there's something dramatically that's happened to change his moral character. And by the way God doesn't ever deviate out of the path of holiness. He doesn't take a side trip over to you living in unholiness. God always stays on the path of holiness. In him is light, 1 John, and in him is no darkness at all. He never does evil. He's too pure to look on evil, the prophet said. He never deviates out of the way of holiness. So if we're going to walk with God, guess what? We got to get on the way of holiness. So before we can walk with God we have to be then before God viewed as what? Righteous. You may think of the idea of imputed righteousness as a New Testament concept, but it would have to be an Old Testament concept because Enoch or anybody else who walked with God, Noah or Abraham or any of the others would have to be covered with righteousness or God wouldn't commune with them. God demands that all who are in his company surrender to that righteousness. Enoch walked with God for 300 years. He was a believer for 300 years of his life. And the implication is that he was walking in communion with God. That would be true since salvation is permanent, but I think it's more than that because he pleased God. And I think that's something that has to be a desire in your heart. Now you don't roll out of bed and end up pleasing God. It's intentional. It's something you pursue. It's a passion. It's where you get now into the disciplines of grace. The New Testament often calls it walking in the spirit. And if you break down how we walk in the New Testament we're told to walk in the spirit. 3 John 4 we're told to walk in truth. Romans 13:13 is told to walk in honesty. Ephesians 5:2 walk in love. Ephesians 5:8 walk in light. Ephesians 5:15 walk in wisdom. Ephesians 2:10 walk in holiness. Now there's something else to be said about Enoch as we kind of wrap up our thoughts. When you're living in a corrupt society that's declining that 's heading toward a devastating judgment in which the whole world is obliterated except for eight people and you're a godly person, you're going to be concerned about what's happening around you. No question. Truly godly person doesn't just take that. And so we find out something about Enoch that's really important for us to know and it's in Jude. It's in Jude. That little letter tucked under the shadow of the book of Revelation. And it's a most interesting statement about Enoch because it tells us that he was a preacher. He was a preacher. It 's a good thing if he was the best man of his age. He he would be well served by being the preacher. And God would be well served as well. Verse 14 of Jude. And Jude has been writing about false teachers, false prophets. And he says in verse 14 it was also about these men, meaning false prophets who are already around in Enoch's day. Already Satan had his operation going full blast. False teachers were all over the place. False prophets were everywhere. And Enoch in the seventh generation from Adam he is the seventh generation from Adam according to the genealogy prophesied or 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. Wow. He he was a classic prophet, wasn't he? I mean in one sentence he used ungodly four times. By the way this quote does not appear in the Old Testament. It is something Enoch prophesied clearly. He prophesied this because the holy spirit led Jude to write it down as a legitimate prophecy that came from Enoch. If it 's not in the Old Testament how did they know about it? Well there was a lot of oral tradition. There was lots of oral tradition passed down and passed down and passed down. And Enoch was a hero to the Jews. He was some man who walked with God. He was a man who walked right into heaven. They knew that. He was a man who should have been at the pinnacle of godliness in their their annals. They greatly revered him. And what was his message to his generation? What did he say for 300 years? He said the Lord is coming. And he's coming with many thousands of his holy ones and he's going to execute judgment. And it's going to fall on all the ungodly with all their ungodly deeds done in an ungodly way and all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. He was a judgment preacher. I think that's where the the best of the godly ultimately end up. I suppose if Enoch were alive today he'd be a problem not only for the world, but the church. He'd irritate the seeker sensitive group. But here was a man whose character and walk with God showed up in the power of his preaching. And his preaching was judgment. Why? Because judgment was coming. It was bound up in his own son's name Methuselah. It came to pass in the flood. But the truth of the matter is that's not a prophecy of the flood. That's not a prophecy of the flood. That's a prophecy of the final judgment. When the Lord comes with many thousands of his angels that's a prophecy of the return of Christ. That's a prophecy of the end of human history. Wow. He was looking long long down the road, wasn't he?
Phil Johnson: You're listening to Grace to You weekend, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. John's current study is titled a faith that pleases God. Well friend, it's easy to hear a message like today's and assume that Enoch's faith, his obedient walk with God is something Christians today could never have. Some years ago we asked John why was that an unbiblical idea? Why Enoch's faith is no different from the faith God promises believers today? Here's what John said.
John MacArthur: No faith is faith and faith is a gift of God and God gives the same saving faith to anyone who puts trust in him. So yeah, when you think about the faith of the heroes in Hebrews chapter 11 you might think well that's some kind of other faith. That's some kind of transcendent faith. That's certainly not the kind of faith that I could have in my life. There's only one kind of faith. There's only one kind of believing in God. And God grants that faith. You remember what Paul said? It's not of yourselves. It's the gift of God. God when he gives saving faith gives essentially the same kind of faith, the faith that overcomes doubt, overcomes fear, overcomes unbelief, overcomes sin and reaches out for salvation through faith in Christ. This is the kind of faith God gives. Then you look at the heroes of the faith and you say well wait a minute. It wasn't just faith to believe in God. It was faith in the face of all kinds of difficulties. And that again is the same faith that we as believers have. And the difficulties are are the best things in life. You say what are you talking about? We are made strong through our trials. Embrace your trials. Do you remember the scripture says that when you are weak you are strong? 2 Corinthians 12 Paul says his strength is perfected in our weakness. Weakness becomes a strength. It's when you come to the end of your own resources, when you have come to the point where you don't trust yourself anymore that all your trust is put in the Lord and that unleashes his full power in your life. Yes friend, and to help you grow stronger in faith from the hardships you endure let me remind you about the book 12 Unlikely Heroes. You're going to be encouraged as you see how these everyday men and women trusted God even in horrible circumstances and how you can do the same. Order your copy of 12 Unlikely Heroes when you contact us today. The number to call is 855 Grace or you can order from our website gty.org. 12 Unlikely Heroes is reasonably priced and shipping is free. Again to pick up 12 Unlikely Heroes call 855 Grace or go to gty.org. And keep in mind that the message you just heard on the Heroes in Hebrews 11 and the other lessons from John's current study titled A Faith That Pleases God, all of these are available free of charge at our website. You can download the MP3 audio as well as the written transcripts. And in fact all of John's sermons, over 3,600 messages, are free in both formats. We also have free apps for your mobile devices so you can take John's Bible study resources wherever you go. Find the links for downloading the apps at gty.org. Now for our entire staff I'm Phil Johnson. Watch Grace to You television this weekend. Check your local listings for station and times and then be here next week when John MacArthur looks at the faith of Noah and what you can learn from his example. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace to You weekend.