Gen 5:21-24 “And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah: And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters: And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years: And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.”
The scriptures do not give us a lot of detail about what Enoch did during his 365 years on earth. According to Jude, he was a prophet (Jude 1:14). He had the testimony that he pleased God (Heb 11:5), and he appears in the genealogy of Jesus (Luk 3:37).
My attention was drawn, again, to the writing in Genesis that “Enoch walked with God.” Enoch, a descendent of Adam, walked with God. He was a companion to God. Enoch exercised himself in the will of God. He was up and about the business of God. He was focused on what God would have him do. I can think of no greater thing that I would wish to be said of me than that I had walked with God. Just to contemplate that phrase brings tears to my eyes and humility to my heart that I cannot describe. We are tempted to think that Enoch was not a “normal” man. I will remind us all again that Enoch was Adam multiplied, just as you and I are.
Since Enoch was obviously a man descended from Adam, he was also obviously a sinner. There are some defects in people that are passed from generation to generation, but occasionally the defect will skip a generation or two only to show up again later. The malady of sin is the one defect that has never skipped any of Adam’s offspring: all have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23). Take heart, beloved of God! Enoch is proof that being a sinner does not prevent us from walking with God.
I am not saying that Enoch’s walk with God was not amazing. He was translated that he should not see death. We need to take care, lest we attribute this miracle to Enoch’s work (walk), rather than to God with whom he walked. Enoch walked with God, and he was not. We do not have cause and effect here; we have a simple statement of fact concerning the faithfulness of God.
Enoch lost himself as he walked with God. Enoch’s focus was not on Enoch when he walked with God. When he walked with God, God took him. I am not negating the fact that Enoch did not see death. I am not contradicting the idea that Enoch never went to the grave in the sense that we think of death. However, Enoch was not sinless because he was from the loins of Adam. There is a sense in which this is applicable to us as we walk with God. John the Baptist made the statement at one point that “He (Jesus) must increase, but I (self) must decrease.”
Enoch walked with God and he (Enoch) was not. When we walk with God, dear ones, we are not. We are not the focus, we are not the cause, and we are not the reason: when we walk with God, He becomes to us all in all. When we walk with God, He takes us. He uses us for His glory. He manifests Himself in us and to us in ways we cannot imagine when we are walking for ourselves. When we walk with God, He increases and we decrease.
We know that we cannot make God more than He is; so how is it that He increases? He increases in the same sense that Mary said her soul magnified the Lord. When we magnify something, we do not literally make it larger or more important than it already is. When God is magnified or increased, it is our view of Him and our understanding of Him that has grown. If we walk with God, then we joyfully become insignificant before His majesty and grace. When we can joyfully become insignificant, then God has truly taken us. While this house of clay will someday fall, I will never see death because God has taken me and shown me a manger, an empty cross, an empty tomb, and a throne filled with the Majesty and Glory of His Only Begotten Son!
May we be exercised (walk) with God, drawn by His grace, knowing as we walk with Him the joy of not being in our own strength, but fully taken (relying) on the power and love of Almighty God!
