And Enoch walked with God: and he [was] not; for God took him.
24. and he was not ] For this expression used to denote an unaccountable disappearance, cf. Gen 42:13; Gen 42:36; 1Ki 20:40. In order to make it quite clear that the words did not imply death, LXX renders ; Vulg. “non apparuit.”
The shortness of his life as compared with the other patriarchs might have been regarded as a proof of Divine displeasure, if the next sentence had not been added to explain the circumstance.
for God took him ] “Took,” or “received,” him, i.e. into His own abode, without death: cf. “he shall receive me” (Psa 49:15). Sam. “the Angel took him”; LXX = “translated”; Lat. tulit; Targ. Onkelos, “for the Lord had made him to die.” Our word “translated” has passed into general use from this passage and from the allusion to it in Heb 11:5, “By faith Enoch was translated (Lat. translatus est) that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God translated him.” For the only other instance in the O.T. of a Saint’s “translation,” see the story of Elijah (2 Kings 2). In the early Babylonian traditions, Xisuthros, the hero of the Babylonian Deluge story, is “translated” after the Deluge, that he may dwell among the gods.
Late Jewish tradition was very busy with the story of Enoch. Enoch was supposed to have received Divine revelation concerning “all mysteries,” and to have recorded them in writing in apocalyptic books. This current belief concerning Enoch, as the repository and the recorder of the mysteries of the universe, gave rise to the writing of the extant apocalyptic work, “The Book of Enoch,” composed in the second century b.c.
The devout Israelite was able to believe that they who walked with God would somehow be taken by God; cf. Psa 73:24, “Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward take me to glory.” In an age which had no conception of a general resurrection there was faith in God’s power and a trust in fellowship with Him.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Gen 5:24
Enoch walked with God
The life and translation of Enoch
I.
Consider THE LIFE OF ENOCH. He walked with God. These words seem to imply that Enoch possessed a remarkable resemblance to God in moral excellence; that he realized Gods presence, and enjoyed His communion in an extraordinary measure, and that he publicly avowed himself to be on Gods side, and stood almost alone in doing so. We notice especially the quietness and unconsciousness of his walk with God. The life of David or of Job resembled a stormy spring day, made up of sweeping tempest, angry glooms, and sudden bursts of windy sunshine; that of Enoch is a soft grey autumn noon, with one mild haze of brightness covering earth and heaven.
II. Notice ENOCHS PUBLIC WORK OF PROTEST AND PROPHECY. The Epistle of Jude supplies us with new information about Enochs public work. He not only characterized and by implication condemned his age, but predicted the coming of the last great judgment of God. He announced it
(1) as a glorious and overpowering event;
(2) as one of conclusive judgment and convincing demonstration.
III. Look now at ENOCHS TRANSLATION. How striking in its simplicity is the phrase, He was not, for God took him! The circumstances of his translation are advisedly concealed: translated that he should not see death. Many a hero has gathered fame because he stood face to face with death, and has outfaced the old enemy; but death never so much as dared to look into Enochs eye as it kindled into immortality. The reasons why this honour was conferred on him were probably–
(1) to show his transcendent excellence;
(2) to abash an infidel world;
(3) to prove that there was another state of being, and to give a pledge of this to all future ages. (G. Gilfillan.)
Enochs life
Few words are needed to describe the salient features of the majority of human lives. It is not needful to write a volume to tell whether a man has spent a noble or a wasted life. One stroke of the pen, one solitary word, may be enough.
I. HERE IS A LIFE SUDDENLY AND PREMATURELY CUT SHORT; for, although Enoch lived 365 years, it Was not half the usual age of the men of his day.
II. A LIFE SPENT AMID SURROUNDING WICKEDNESS.
III. A LIFE SPENT IN FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD. In the expression walked with God, there is the idea of–
(1) strong persistence and determination;
(2) progress.
IV. A LIFE OF NOBLE TESTIMONY. V. A LIFE CROWNED BY TRANSLATION. His translation was–
(1) A reminder to the men of his day that there was another state above and beyond the present;
(2) an intimation of the final reward of the saints. (J. W. Atkinson.)
Enoch, one of the worlds great teachers
Three strange things in connection with Enochs history:
(1) That so little is said about him;
(2) the comparative shortness of his stay on earth;
(3) the manifest singularity of the life he lived.
I. HE TAUGHT THE WORLD BY HIS LIFE.
1. He walked with God.
2. He had the testimony that he pleased God.
II. HE TAUGHT THE WORLD BY HIS TRANSLATION.
1. That death is not a necessity of human nature.
2. That there is a sphere of human existence beyond this.
3. That there is a God in the universe who approves of goodness.
4. That the mastering of sin is the way to a grand destiny.
III. HE TAUGHT THE WORLD BY HIS PREACHING (Jud 1:14-15).
(1) The advent of the Judge.
(2) The gathering of the saints.
(3) The conversion of sinners. (Homilist.)
The heavenly walk
I. THAT IT MAY BE PURSUED NOTWITHSTANDING THE PREVALENCY OF SIN AROUND.
II. THAT IT MAY BE PURSUED IN THE VERY PRIME OF BUSY MANHOOD.
III. THAT IT MAY BE PURSUED IN THE VERY MIDST OF DOMESTIC ANXIETY AND CARE. Many people have lost their religion through the increase of domestic cares. But a godly soul can walk with God in family life, and take all its offspring in the same holy path. Enoch would instruct his children in the right way. He would pray for them. He would commend them to his Divine friend. Happy the home where such a godly parent is at its head.
IV. THAT IT MAY BE PURSUED INTO THE VERY PORTALS OF HEAVEN AND ETERNAL BLISS. Enoch walked with God, and one day walked right into heaven with Him. Heaven is but the continuation of the holy walk of earth. (J. S.Exell, M. A.)
Enoch: accounting for mens disappearance from the earth
God took him.
I. WE SHOULD TAKE AN INTEREST IN THE DESTINY OF MEN.
II. WE SHOULD RECOGNIZE THE HAND OF GOD IN THE REMOVAL OF MEN.
III. WE SHOULD BELIEVE IN THE PARTICULARITY OF GODS OVERSIGHT OF MEN. When God takes a good man–
(1) He takes that man to a higher blessing,
(2) He will fill that mans place as a Christian worker upon earth.
(3) He trains survivors towards self-reliance and emulous work. Or thus:
1. God took him the assertion of a sovereign right.
2. God took him–an illustration of Divine regard.
3. God took him–an assurance of eternal blessedness.
4. God took him–a pledge that all like him will be associated. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Enoch
I. ENOCH AS TO HIS AGE.
1. It Was an age of longevity.
2. It was an ungodly age.
II. ENOCH AS TO HIS RELIGION.
1. He was independent.
2. Practical.
III. ENOCH AS TO HIS DEPARTURE.
1. His departure implies a future state.
(1) Analogy says so.
(2) The state of the world shows that there is a hereafter to square the accounts.
(3) Revelation proves it.
2. His departure shows that there is a reward to the faithful.
(1) Present satisfaction.
(2) Future felicity. Heb 4:9. (W. Griffiths.)
Enoch
I. WHAT IS MEANT BY ENOCHS WALKING WITH GOD?
1. That he was well-pleasing to God (Heb 11:5). Amity, friendship, intimacy, love.
2. That he realized the Divine presence (Heb 11:6). God was to him a living Friend, in whom he confided, and by whom he was loved.
3. That he had very familiar intercourse with the Most High.
4. That his intercourse with God was continuous. He did not take a turn or two with God and then leave His company, but walked with God for hundreds of years. He did not commune with God by fits and starts, but abode in the conscious love of God.
5. That his life was progressive. At the end of two hundred years he was not where he began; he was not in the same company, but he had gone forward in the right way.
II. WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES WERE CONNECTED WITH ENOCHS WALKING WITH GOD?
1. The details of his life are very few. Quite enough for us to know that he walked with God.
2. It is a mistake to suppose that he was placed in very advantageous circumstances for piety.
(1) A public man.
(2) A family man.
(3) Living in a very evil age. Still he bore his witness for God.
III. WHAT WAS THE CLOSE OF ENOCHS WALK?
1. He finished his work early.
2. He was missed. Not found (Heb 11:5).
3. His departure was a testimony. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Enochs walk with God
In Kittos Daily Bible Readings there is an exceedingly pleasing piece, illustrating what it must be to walk with God by the figure of a fathers taking his little son by the hand and walking forth with him upon the breezy Dills. He says, As that child walks with thee, so do thou walk with God. That child loves thee now. The world–the cold cruel world–has not yet come between his heart and thine. His love now is the purest and most beautiful he will ever feel, or thou wilt ever receive. Cherish it well, and as that child walks lovingly with thee, so do thou walk lovingly with God. It is a delight to such children to be with their father. The roughness of the way or of the weather is nothing to them: it is joy enough to go for a walk with father. There is a warm, tender, affectionate grip of the hand and a beaming smile of the eye as they look up to father while he conducts them over hill and dale. Such a walk is humble too, for the child looks upon its father as the greatest and wisest man that ever lived. He considers him to be the incarnation of everything that is strong and wise, and all that his father says or does he admires. As he walks along he feels for his father the utmost affection, but his reverence is equally strong: he is very near his father, but yet he is only a child, and looks up to his father as his king. Moreover, such a walk is one of perfect confidence. The boy is not afraid of missing his way, he trusts implicitly his fathers guidance. His fathers arm will screen him from all danger, and therefore he does not so much as give it a thought–why should he? If care is needed as to the road, it is his fathers business to see to it, and the child, therefore, never dreams of anxiety–why should he? If any difficult place is to be passed, the father will have to lift the boy ever it, or help him through it; the child meanwhile is merry as a bird–why should he not be? Thus should the believer walk with God, resting on eternal tenderness and rejoicing in undoubted lave. What an instructive walk a child has with a wise, communicative parent! How many of his little puzzles are explained to him, how everything about him is illuminated by the fathers wisdom. The boy, every step he takes, becomes the wiser for such companionship. Oh, happy children of God, who have been taught of their Father while they have walked with Him! Enoch must have been a man of profound knowledge and great wisdom as to Divine things. He must have dived into the deep things of God beyond most men. His life must also have been a holy life, because he walked with God, and God never walks out of the way of holiness. If we walk with God, we must walk according to truth, justice, and love. The Lord has no company with the unjust and rebellious, and therefore we know that he who walked with God must have been an upright and holy man. Enochs life must, moreover, have been a happy one. Who could be unhappy with such a companion! With God himself to be with us the way can never be dreary. Did Enoch walk with God? Then his pilgrimage must have been safe. Nothing can harm the man who is walking with the Lord God at his right hand. And oh, what an honourable thing it is to walk with the Eternal! Many a man would give thousands to walk with a king. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
High ground
I. WHAT IS IT TO WALK WITH GOD?
1. Reconciliation with God.
2. Spiritual life (Gal 5:25).
3. None walk with God closely but those who love Him supremely.
4. Those with whom we walk, and whom we love, we are desirous to please and oblige. And those who walk with God delight to do His will.
5. Communion with God.
6. Similarity of disposition and feeling.
II. THE ADVANTAGES ARISING FROM SUCH A WALK.
1. It gives a real enjoyment, for which we are not at all dependent on external things, and of which nothing in this world can deprive us.
2. It sweetens all earthly pleasures and pains.
3. The man who walks with God learns much of the will of God.
4. Such a walk is a preparation for the enjoyment of God in heaven. (Benson Bailey.)
Enoch
I. ENOCHS PIETY.
1. Walking with God includes–
(1) A true knowledge of God–of His character and laws; of His will concerning us, etc.
(2) Reconciliation to God (Amo 3:3). In Jesus alone can this be effected.
(3) Cheerful obedience to the commands of God (1Jn 2:3).
(4) Devotional intercourse with God. Meditation. Prayer. Praise.
(5) Assimilation to the holy image of God (2Co 3:18).
(6) Advancement in all the things of God.
2. Walking with God is associated with–
(1) True dignity.
(2) Real pleasure.
(3) Permanent security. And
(4) eternal advantages.
II. HiS DISTINGUISHED REMOVAL.
1. He was not. No more among men.
(1) He was not allowed to remain in a troublesome and ungodly world.
(2) He was not subjected to the, otherwise, universal stroke of mortality. Exempted from disease, death, and corruption.
2. God took him.
(1) In a peculiar way. Body and soul unseparated.
(2) God took him to Himself–to His own immediate presence, where is fulness of joy, etc.
(3) God took him; and thus signalized and honoured distinguished piety.
Application: Learn–
1. The nature of true piety. To walk with God.
2. The reward of true piety. Interested in Gods gracious care; and ultimately raised to His own Divine presence.
3. Removal of Enoch teaches immortality of soul. (J. Burns, D. D.)
Enochs walk with God
I. EXPLAIN THE VIEW GIVEN OF ENOCHS LIFE AND CHARACTER.
II. THE SINGULAR CLOSE OF HIS PIOUS COURSE.
1. It was a sudden change.
2. It was a miraculous change.
3. It was a happy change. (The Evangelical Preacher.)
Walking with God
I. HIS GENERAL CHARACTER. He walked with God.
1. What walking with God supposes.
2. Some advantages which result from walking with God.
(1) Guidance in difficulties (Pro 3:6). He shall direct. Psa 32:8).
(2) Preservation from falling (Psa 16:8).
(3) Assistance in weakness (Isa 41:10).
(4) Comfort in afflictions (Psa 46:1; Psa 94:19).
(5) Improvement in piety (Pro 4:18).
II. SOME PECULIAR CIRCUMSTANCES CONNECTED WITH IT. Particularly–
1. The period of its commencement, and the time of its continuance. It commenced in what may be considered his early youth; when he had not lived the twelfth part of the then usual age of man. This shows us that early piety is acceptable to God (Pro 8:17). Seek it (Ecc 12:1); for early habits are most easily formed, and most lasting Lam 3:27). It continued at least three hundred years. This teaches us that the pleasures of religion never cloy (Psa 63:3-4); and that Gods grace is sufficient for the longest pilgrimage (2Co 12:9).
2. The relations under which it was sustained.
(1) The relation of a family governor. Hence, we see the falsehood of three common suppositions. First, That solitude is necessary to piety. This is an error of superstition; as Christians we are called to sociability Mat 5:14-16). Secondly, That religion is injurious to social duties and comforts. This is an error of prejudice, which is confuted by many living characters (Pro 12:26). Thirdly, That we serve God only when we engage in acts of devotion. This is an error of ignorance; for we also serve God acceptably when we serve mankind in obedience to Act 13:36; Gal 5:14; Gal 6:2; Gal 6:10).
(2) This character was also sustained by Enoch, under the relation of a public teacher. From this example we learn that teachers of others should be careful to walk with God themselves; in domestic life, that they may engage their families in Gods service (Jos 24:15); in public life, that their labours may be blessed by God (Psa 51:12-13; Mal 2:6).
3. The scenes amidst which it was preserved. These were examples of prevailing ungodliness, when piety was generally reproached. Thus, when iniquity is general, it is our duty to be singular (Exo 23:2); for we are called by God to be a peculiar people (Tit 2:14; Rom 12:2). A resolute confession of God in the face of an opposing world, is highly pleasing to Him (Heb 11:5). He pleased God Num 14:24). Those who honour God are honoured by Him (1Sa 2:30).
4. The glorious event which succeeded this holy walk: God took him. He was translated body and soul to heaven, without seeing death.
(1) This removal was gainful to him; it perfected his felicity. So the death of all true believers is followed by the eternal consummation of all their happiness (Php 1:21; Php 1:23; Luk 23:43).
(2) It was honourable to God. To His wisdom in discriminating characters; to His goodness, in rewarding the faithful; and to His truth, in fulfilling His promises. So is the death of all His saints (Psa 116:15; Psa 58:11).
(3) It was beneficial to mankind. It teaches mankind in all ages–
(a) That there is another and better world reserved for the righteous, as the ascension of Elijah and our Lord did afterwards (Heb 1Pe 1:3-5);
(b) that piety is extensively profitable, being evidently conducive to our eternal, as well as to our present welfare (1Ti 4:8);
(c) that the redemption of our bodies as well as our souls is certain. For we see God able and faithful to fulfil His engagements (Ho Php 3:21);
(d) that an early removal is no loss to the righteous. For what is taken from time is added to a blissful eternity (Rev 7:14-17);
(e) that a sudden removal, when God appoints it, is no cause of terror to those who die in Him, for to all such characters sudden death becomes sudden glory. (Sketches of Sermons.)
Walking with God
I. WHAT IS IMPLIED IN THE TERM.
II. I SHALL PRESCRIBE SOME MEANS, IN THE LAWFUL USE OF WHICH BELIEVERS ARE ENABLED TO KEEP UP THEIR WALK WITH GOD.
1. By studying the Scriptures.
2. By constant and earnest prayer.
3. By watching the dealings of God without.
4. The motions of God within.
5. Walking in ordinances.
6. Walking in providences.
7. In the communion of saints.
8. And by meditation.
III. I SHALL OFFER SOME MOTIVES TO STIR US UP TO THIS HOLY PRACTICE. It is most honourable: most pleasing: and abundantly beneficial to the souls of men.
1. This walking is by faith in Christ (2Co 5:7).
2. Looking to the promises of God (1Ti 4:8).
3. Trusting to the wisdom of God (Rom 8:28). (T. B. Baker.)
Enoch
I. ENOCHS CHARACTER. He walked with God.
II. ENOCHS END. He was not any longer subject to pain, sickness, infirmity, sorrow; all of which are still the portion even of those who walk with God in this vale of tears. He was not any longer tempted by Satan, by the world, by his own fallen nature, to sin against his kind Friend and Saviour; and thus his heaviest burden is removed. He was not any more vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked, with the dishonour cast on his God, with the triumphing of the wicked. He was not spared to see their ungodliness proceeding to that gigantic pitch, which at length brought upon them the flood of waters to destroy all the earth. (J. Jowett, M. A.)
Enoch; or, the earthly walk and heavenly home
I. HE WALKED WITH GOD–A BRIEF AND SIMPLE STATEMENT OF A MOMENTOUS FACT. Of course the meaning is, that he was a good man, that he lived religiously. True religion is, walking with God. We are meant to walk with someone. We are social as well as active. Solitary journeying is sorrowful journeying. Company gives safety as well as cheer, beguiles the long hours and goads the flagging spirits. Most men have fellowships in their journey through life–companions of their moral ways, walking with the wise, or going with the evil. But the highest of all fellowships is with God: and if we all walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another. We walk with God. What does it include? Unquestionably realization. God is with us wherever we are, but we are with Him only as we recognize and feel Him to be present. God is invisible, and only faith can realize; and by faith Enoch was translated. In the dark night, a stranger perhaps might place himself by our side, or just behind us, for a time, but we should not walk with him. In the dark night of sin, God is not far from every one of us, but only one here and there are with Him. To see God, to be aware of His solemn nearness, to act as if this thought were ever in our mind, Thou, God, seest me, doing His will as that of a present Master, rejoicing in His favour as that of a present Friend, and trusting in His succour as that of a present Protector–to go on thus divinely right, and brave, and happy, is to walk with God. It includes intercourse. But truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.
II. Enoch walked with God, AFTER THE BIRTH OF METHUSELAH. It was then, so far as appears, that he began to do so. It is not said that he did so before. Until then it is said that he lived, as it is said of the rest. Does it not imply that he had not walked with God for sixty-five years? Or, supposing the expression, in his case, refers to eminence in religion, does it not imply that at that time his religion received a new start?
III. Be this as it may, the fact is clear that Enoch did walk with God after the birth of Methuselah and the births of other children. One of the two men who have had the honours of translation in this world for pleasing God was a man who LIVED IN THE MIDST OF SOCIETY, and was surrounded with children; he was not a recluse or a celibate. He lived in that condition in which there are natural and necessary distractions and temptations. It would be saying very little for religion if such a case were impossible. It would be queer theology which taught that man must denude himself of a portion of himself, ignore some of his capabilities and propensities, in order to know and possess much, or most, of God. When it is said that Enoch walked with God, it is meant that he attained to special religious excellence. His religion did not merely come into contact with his secular life; his spiritual humanity did not merely touch his social humanity, but, like the prophet upon the dead child, stretched itself upon it, mouth on mouth, eyes on eyes, hands on hands, and made it live. His religion was life, an active life. He walked with God.
IV. We see Enochs eminent godliness attaining A STRANGE AND SIGNAL HONOUR. He was not, for God took him. Paul says of Enoch, he did not see death. Christ says of every disciple that he does not taste death. I know not how it strikes you, but I always feel when reading this passage as if there was a beautiful fitness in this exit, a fitness of course and end. God took him who had walked with Him, bore him away to another sphere. The very silence of the historian aids the impression: there is no breach between the earthly and the heavenly life, no defined horizon–clouds, and sky, fields, hills, and wood, meet together, and this worlds beauty and the glory of the world above melt into each other, and one unbroken scene fills and satisfies the eye. He was with God here, he is with God there. He became more and more Divine in the lower and harder conditions of life, and now he has reached a state where nothing exists to check or disappoint his Godward aspirations. There is no translation now for the righteous, but there is better, transformation, the being changed from glory to glory now, and the bearing of the image of the heavenly hereafter. (A. J. Morris.)
Enochs character and translation
Observe, Be the times never so bad, it is mens own fault they are bad too. Eminent holiness, and intimate communion with God, may be attained in the worst of times. The reasons are–
1. Because, however men grow worse and worse, heaven is still as good and bountiful as ever (Isa 59:1-2).
2. Because those that mind for heaven must row against the stream always; and if they do not, they will be called down the stream in the best of times; for, says our Lord (Mat 11:12).
3. The badness of the times affords matter to excite Gods people the more to their duty and close walking with God. The profaneness and formality of those they live among, and the dishonour done to God thereby, should be like oil to the flame of their holy love and zeal, as it was to David Psa 119:126-127).
4. Because, as the Lord shows Himself most concerned for the welfare of those who are most concerned for His honour, so the worse the times are, they that cleave to Him closely may expect to fare the better.
I. Let us consider Enochs holy life in this world; Enoch walked with God. The Spirit of God puts a special remark on this. It is Enochs honour, that he did not walk as others did, after their lusts. Observe,
1. God takes special notice of those who are best when others are worst Gen 6:9).
(1) To be thus argues an ingenuous spirit, a love to the Lord for Himself, and a love to His way for its likeness to Himself; that the soul is carried thus to it against the stream of the corruption of the age.
(2) It argues not only grace, but the strength of grace. It must be strong faith, love, etc., that so much bear out against the strong temptation to apostasy, arising from the combination of a generation against God and His way. To be holy when the helps to a holy life are least in the world, argues the vigour of grace in the heart. Labour ye then to be best while others are worst, to confront the impiety of the generation wherein ye live. Do they indulge themselves in licentiousness? be ye the more strict and holy in your walk. Do they take up with mere externals in religion? strive ye the rather to get into the inner court, to taste and see, and here to have communion with God. Observe,
2. It is the honour of a professor of religion to outgo others in the matter of close walking with God. In the first part of the words we have–
(1) The person characterized; and that is Enoch. There was another of this name descended from Cain, who had a city called after his name Gen 4:17). Immortality is desired of all; and because men cannot stave off death, they follow after a shadow of immortality, that at least their name may live when they are gone. Therefore that has been an ancient custom, for men to call their lands after their own names (Psa 49:11). How much better was it with this Enoch, that took that course to get on him the name of the city of God, which Christ promises to write on all his people (Rev 3:12)? The city called by the name of the other Enoch was destroyed by the deluge, and is now unknown; but the city of God lasts still, and will last forever. Observe, True piety is the best way to honour, even to true honour. For the righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance, when the memory of the wicked shall rot. Observe, They that live near God are most likely to be put upon His secrets, and to know most of His mind (Psa 25:14).
II. His character; he walked with God. He lived like a man of another world; a life of close communion with God. It imports–
(1) That he was really religious; not only religious before men, but before God. Religion lies inwardly. We are that really which we are before the Lord; He is a Jew which is one inwardly. See, here, what he was: a spiritual traveller through the world; he walked. He walked with God. He looked on himself as a pilgrim and stranger in this present world Heb 11:13). (T. Boston, D. D.)
Of walking with God
I. First, I am to consider walking with God in the foundation thereof, with respect to our state.
II. Secondly, I shall consider walking with God in the matter of it, in respect of our frame and conversation. And, indeed, this duty goes as broad as the whole law. If we would have the life of religion in our walk, we must not walk at random.
1. We must walk with God in the way of habitual eyeing of Him in all things.
2. We must walk with God in the way of the hearts going along with Him in all things, as the shadow goes with the body. Walking with God is no bodily motion, but a spiritual motion, a moving of the heart and affections; and so it must import necessarily the hearts going along with Him.
3. We must walk with God in ordinances (Luk 1:6). The ordinances are the banqueting house of Christ wherein He feasts His people (Son 2:4), the galleries wherein the king is held by those that walk with him there (Son 7:5).
4. We must walk with God in the stations and relations wherein He hath placed us. These are the sphere that God hath given us to move in, in the world. There are two pieces of work which a Christian has to do.
(1) One for himself, and that is his salvation work (Php 2:12). This lies in his personal walk.
(2) One for God, and that is his generation work (Act 13:36). This lies in his relative walk.
5. We must walk with God in all our actions, whether natural, civil, or religious. Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God (1Co 10:31).
III. Thirdly, I shall consider walking with God in the properties thereof. Walking with God is religion; and it is–
1. Practical religion, religion in deed, not in word only; and there is no other sort of religion that will bring us to heaven; hence says our Lord Joh 13:17).
2. It is inward and heart religion (1Pe 3:4). They that have no religion but what is visible to the world, have no true religion; for God is the invisible God, and walking with Him must be so too (Rom 2:28-29).
3. It is heavenly religion (Php 3:20). According to mens state and their nature, so will their actions be; for as is the tree, so will the fruit be. The heart of man, according as grace or corruption reigns in it, will tincture everything that comes through it.
4. It is lively and active religion, being a walking with the living God, wherein there is not only grace, but grace in exercise (Son 1:12).
5. It is regular religion, and uniform; for he that walks with God must needs walk by a constant rule, eyeing Him not in some things only, but in Gal 6:16; Psa 16:8). He gives one rule of walking, extending to mans whole conversation; and so he that walks with Him, walks regularly, aiming at a holy niceness, preciseness, and exactness, in conformity to that rule in all things (Eph 5:15).
6. It is laborious and painful religion; for it is no easy life they have whose trade it is to walk on their feet (Heb 6:10). And it is no easy religion to walk with God. Religion is not a business of saying, but doing; not of doing carelessly, but carefully, painfully, and diligently.
7. It is a self-denied religion (Mat 16:24).
8. It is a humble religion (Mic 6:8).
9. It is constant religion. Walking is not a rising up and sitting down again, but a continued action, like that of a traveller going on till he come to his journeys end. Enoch walked on through the world, till he was not.
10. It is progressive religion; religion that is going forward (Pro 4:18). (T. Boston, D. D.)
Walking with God
I. First and chiefest, because it will secure the rest, walk CONFIDENTLY with God. Rest upon His faithfulness. Entertain no suspicions of His love.
II. Walk OBEDIENTLY with God; i.e., be diligent in keeping His commandments. And let your obedience be an unreserved, warm-hearted, zealous, faithful obedience, an obedience of love which is ready at all times, as love is ready. Walk, then, unreservedly, in the love of the Lord with all its glorious consequences. And walk obediently with God in the second commandment as well as the first. Oh! then, let your walk with God be obedient; unreserved, without fear of excess; universal, without exception or partiality; and persevering, without yielding to monotony.
III. Walk HUMBLY with your God. He is a Father, and we are children. What does that relationship call for? Reverence–filial reverence, it is true, but still reverence, or honour–the honour of the father and the mother. If I be a Father, He says, where is My honour? and if I be a Master, where is My fear? Further, He is the Creator, and we are the creatures of His hands; and this relationship calls for real subjection and prostration.
IV. Walk PATIENTLY with God. For however confiding your walk may be; however obedient with all the great characteristics of obedience; however humble, still you will suffer, and must be prepared for endurance. The Lord chastens every son whom He receiveth; and you must not expect to walk through this world exempt from trouble. Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you as though some strange thing happened unto you. It is not a strange thing, it is the common case of the Lords children. (H. McNeile, D. D.)
Enochs walk and translation
I. THE CHARACTER OF ENOCH, WITH HIS DECIDED RELIGIOUS WORTH.
II. ENOCHS GLORIOUS TRANSLATION FROM EARTH TO HEAVEN.
1. A sign of Gods love.
2. It is remarkable that three eminent translations distinguished three dispensations of Gods mercy to men–the last the most glorious.
(1) Enochs translation in the patriarchal age.
(2) Elijahs translation in the prophetic age.
(3) Our Lord Jesus Christ ascended, was translated to heaven, in the Christian dispensation, when, after His triumphant resurrection and sojourn on earth for forty days, He ascended on a cloud of glory before His own disciples. Now, these three most memorable instances of translation to heaven clearly prove a separate state–a glorified humanity and an immortal life.
III. A FEW PRACTICAL REFLECTIONS MAY PROFITABLY CONCLUDE THIS SERMON: especially when a solemn event fills the minds of so many with deep thoughts.
1. We may all copy the living sermon of a holy life dedicated to Christ.
2. How sweet and blessed is the death of the Christian! His soul is taken away to the Saviour whom he loved; and his body rests in hopes of resurrection glory. His soul is gone; he is not on earth; God has taken him to heaven! No more shall sin or sorrow cloud the soul; no more shall trial, suffering, or death affect the body; no more shall the gloom of life intercept or darken the eye of faith, or the streaming light of heaven. (J. G.Angley, M. A.)
The piety and translation of Enoch
I. ENOCH WALKED WITH GOD.
II. THE TRANSLATION OF ENOCH.
1. As a work of omnipotence.
(1) A suspension of the order of nature in this particular case, arresting the arm of death.
(2) There was also a miraculous removal of the body of Enoch.
2. As a work of mercy. The wings of heavenly mercy overshadowed him, to protect him from the penalties of a violated law.
3. The translation of Enoch eminently displays the glory and honour of God. His love of the righteous was strikingly shown. His moral government was manifested, and His entire command over the present and the future so fully exemplified, that we cannot contemplate it without profound adoration of the Most High.
4. It was calculated to be beneficial to mankind, and to serve in that early stage of society the interests of truth and piety. (Essex Remembrancer.)
The character and translation of Enoch
I. HISTORY OF ENOCH.
II. CHARACTER OF ENOCH.
III. CONDUCT OF ENOCH. The conduct of this antediluvian saint was the piety of intelligence; he understood Gods claim and his own obligations, and it was not a mere custom. It was the piety of deliberate design and choice; he was not, so to speak, thrown accidentally into Gods company, but chose to go to Him, and with fixed, determinate purpose, sought His friendship. It was the piety also of a minister of religion; and what is any minister of religion, without personal godliness, but an actor in the most dreadful tragedy ever performed on the stage of this world, since it ends not in the feigned, but the real, death and destruction of the performer? It was the piety of one who had few of those helps and advantages of divine revelation and ordinances which we enjoy, and therefore shows how God can, and will, help those in the Divine life, who are, by Providence, deprived of the assistance which others possess. It was piety, maintained during a long period of severe trial, a profession consistently upheld amidst all conceivable opposition for nearly four centuries, thus exhibiting a sublime instance of endurance, perseverance, and victorious faith.
IV. TRANSLATION OF ENOCH. Enochs translation was a testimony to that generation of which he was a member, and to the whole world from that time to this, of Gods approval of his conduct. (J. A. James.)
Walking with God
I. WHAT IS IMPLIED IN WALKING WITH GOD.
II. THAT GOD WILL MANIFEST SOME PECULIAR TOKENS OF HIS FAVOUR TO THOSE WHO WALK WITH HIM.
1. God will guard them against the favours of the world.
2. God graciously guards his friends while they walk with Him, from their invisible as well as visible enemies.
3. God will give those who walk with Him peculiar evidence of their interest in His special grace. He loves those who walk with Him, and will manifest His love to them. He expressly called Abraham His friend when he offered up his son upon the altar. He sent a messenger from heaven to declare that Daniel was greatly beloved. And He manifested His special love to David by lifting the light of His countenance upon him.
4. God will manifest His peculiar favour to those who walk with Him, by giving them not only inward light, and joy, and peace, and the full assurance of hope, but by granting them outward prosperity.
5. Those who walk with God have ground to hope for another great and peculiar favour; that is, His gracious and comforting presence when they leave the world.
IMPROVEMENT.
1. We may learn from the nature and effects of walking with God how all true believers may attain to the full assurance of hope. If saints would prevent or remove darkness, doubts, and distress from their minds, let them walk closely with God, who will give them peculiar tokens of their displeasing Him, and standing high in His favour.
2. If God manifests peculiar tokens of His favour to those who walk with Him, then they have more to gain than to lose by walking with Him.
3. If God be highly pleased with His friends while they walk with Him, then He must be highly displeased when they depart from Him.
4. It appears from the nature of walking with God, that those who walk with Him in a day of degeneracy do peculiar service and honour to religion.
5. This subject calls upon all who have professed to walk with God to inquire whether they have walked worthy of the vocation wherewith they are called.
6. This subject exhorts all who have not hitherto walked with God to walk with Him. (N. Emmons, D. D.)
Walking with God
Other notable men existed in that ancient time, to whom we are apparently more indebted than we are to Enoch; men who were the fathers of arts and sciences, and the founders of political institutions–pioneers in the onward march of civilization. But what are Jabal, and Jubal, and Tubal-Cain to us but so many cyphers associated in our minds with certain objects? We know something of these mens work; of themselves we know absolutely nothing. Here, on the contrary, nothing is told us of any outward work that the man did; we only have the brief and summarized story of an inner life. But more than this. Enoch was the first saint, in the full sense of the word, of whom we hear anything in human history, as Abel was the first righteous for justified] man. He stands, perhaps, historically speaking, at the head of the great master roll of heavens nobility; and it is the brotherhood of saints that makes the ages one. We are more indebted to the first pioneer upon the highway of holiness than to the earliest discoverers in science and in art. Holiness is, above everything else, the reproduction of the Divine. As I said a moment ago, very little has been told us about Enoch, where our curiosity would fain have heard a great deal; but the little that has been told us is suggestive, and every point seems to carry its own lesson. To begin with his name. Enoch has the double meaning of consecration and initiation, suggesting first the thought that he who bore that name was to be one of Gods consecrated ones, a priest unto God, and next that, as a priest, he was to be introduced into the spiritual temple, to be allowed to see and know what the outer world knows nothing of, and to be initiated into the deeper mysteries of the spiritual life. And in this name we have the clue not only to his career, but to that of every other saint who, like him, walks with God. The life of fellowship must needs be the product of a state of consecration. God consecrates us His spiritual priests that our whole manhood may be set apart and our whole lives dedicated to His service. We may be occupied, as Enoch was, in the ordinary duties of life; our hands and our heads may be busy, yet may we find Gods temple everywhere, and His service in everything. For there is nothing secular, all is a sanctity, where all is given to God. Further, our attention is specially called by a New Testament writer to the fact that Enoch was the seventh from Adam. His was the Sabbath life in that genealogical record. As the Sabbath days to the other days of the week, so must his life have seemed as compared with the lives of others in those troublous and tumultuous days. And there is a rest even here for the people of God. We need not defer the Sabbath keeping of the soul to that glorious future which awaits Gods faithful ones yonder. It may seem, perhaps, fanciful to call attention to another fact mentioned in this brief notice, but I cannot bring myself to pass it over. We read that all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years. That is to say, he lived a perfect year of years; as many days as there are in the year, so many years there were in his life; he fulfilled his year. Perhaps when we reach the other side we shall make some strange discoveries with respect to the term of our existence here in the house of our discipline. Perhaps we may find that some lives have been lengthened out to extreme old age, just because lifes lessons were being learned indeed, but learned wondrous slowly by very dull scholars; and that some lives were cut short just because Divine Omniscience saw no probability of these lessons ever being learned at all by scholars who positively refused to learn. But to every man is appointed his own proper year; and blessed are they who so live that the year completes the life in every sense of the word! Blessed are they who so walk with God that when their appointed life period draws to a close their life lesson may be learnt, and they themselves be ready for the call to higher knowledge and more perfect service, while it is said of them, He was not; for God took him. Enochs life was not a long one as lives went in those days; he was only in what would be then regarded as early middle life when his call came, but had fulfilled his year. His life was complete in Gods sight, his days work done, and there was no necessity that he should tarry in the house of discipline through the long ages which measured the life of a Methuselah. But it is time that we looked more closely at this pregnant phrase, which tells us all that we historically know of the religious life of this ancient servant of God, Enoch walked with God. What is it, let us ask, to walk with God? More than a single idea would seem to be suggested by this familiar expression. As the words stand in the original they suggest primarily the idea of walking with reference to God. It is the idea that the Psalmist expresses when he says, I foresaw God always before mine eyes. In the practical issues of life, and in all its complete details, everything turns upon our choice of our centre of reference. He whose central idea in life is, How shall I please myself? can never walk with God, because God is not his centre of reference. Or again, this life of reference to God stands contrasted with the life of reference to the world, that conventional life which so many people condescend to lead. With such the question is, What is expected of me? or, What is the correct thing? or, What do others do? or, Will people like it? What will people say if I adopt this course, or do not adopt the other? Do not aim at singularity, but, on the other hand, do not shrink from it. You needs must be singular if you serve God in a world that serves Him not; you needs must be singular if you put the good before the fashionable in a world that puts the fashionable before the good; you needs must be singular if you put duty before worldly expediency, and the love of God and man before both in a selfish, shallow world, where all men seek their own. But there is nothing to be ashamed at in such singularity, and he who plays the poltroon, and is afraid to face reproach, would indeed be very singular in heaven if he were ever to get there. Better surely to be singular in this perishing world than hopelessly out of harmony with the spirit and genius of heaven. But this leads us to consider another thought suggested by the words of our text, closely connected with what we have just been considering, and yet distinct from it. To walk with God is not only to walk with reference to God, but to move, so to speak, on the same moral plane as belongs to God–seeing things from His point of view, entering into His designs, and drinking ever more and more deeply of His Spirit. There is a unity of heart and mind, of thought and feeling, that is usually a feature of close association amongst ourselves; and something of this kind would seem to be implied by the words, Enoch walked with God, Listen to the words quoted by St. Jude, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him. The man that uttered those words was clearly looking at things from the Divine standpoint. With him sinners are regarded specially as ungodly, and sins are ungodly deeds; the habit of life that induces them is an ungodly habit of life, and the very words that such sinners are wont to speak are ungodly words. And the reason of this way of viewing things is that the man is walking with God. He takes measure of evil and of good, according as it affects that Divine Being with whom his life is hid. His standpoint is no longer merely ethical; he is conversant rather with She very heart of God than with moral principles. He is jealous for Gods glory with a godly jealousy, and is fired with a holy indignation at all that militates against this. And oh, with what a heart full of yearning love does he who thus walks with God gaze upon a God-dishonouring world! God loved the world, and loves it, and he who is in fellowship with the mind of God must needs love it too. The more He hates sin, the more does He long for the salvation of the sinner. But let us take the words of our text in the meaning which they most naturally bear, and which suggests perhaps the most important lesson of all. Enoch walked with God; that is to say, he lived in the society of God. In all his life an invisible but ever-present Friend was his Companion. He lived in His society, he consulted Him about everything, he was in communion with Him everywhere. So he lived out his allotted life, his year of years, until he passed from the triumphs of the walk of faith to the glories of the Land of Vision; for there is no death for such. The presence of God makes earth heaven, and brings heaven down to earth. The presence of God turns the shadow of death into the morning, and invests him who enjoys it with immortality. I am the resurrection, and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and he that liveth and believeth on Me shall never die. By-and-by, when the last of the three hundred and sixty five days of his year had arrived and was reaching its close, the call came, Friend, come up higher: and he was not; for God took him. For as to walk with God is the secret of perfection here on earth, so to walk with God will be the crowning glory of that higher world. (W. Hay Aitken, M. A.)
Enoch, the model walker
I. A SAFE WALK. During a sudden freshet, a labouring man and his child, living in a cottage that stood by itself, were obliged to walk at midnight for more than a mile through water reaching to the little boys waist before they could reach a place of safety. After they had changed their clothes, and were feeling comfortable, the friend in whose cottage they had found shelter said to the little boy, And wasnt you afraid, Jack, while walking through the water? No, not at all, said the little fellow, who was but seven years old: I was walking along with father, you know. And I knew he wouldnt let the water drown me. This was very sweet. And if, like Enoch, we are walking with God, let us remember that we are walking with our heavenly Father. And He promises us expressly, When thou passest through the waters, they shall not overflow thee (Isa 43:2). One morning a teacher found many empty seats in her schoolroom. Two little scholars lay dead at their homes, and others were sick. The few children present gathered around her, and said, Oh! what shall we do? Do you think we shall be sick, and die too? The teacher gently touched the bell, and said, Children, you are all afraid of this disease. You grieve for the death of your little friends, and you fear that you also may be taken. I only know of one thing for us to do, and that is to hide. Listen whale I read to you about a hiding place. Then she read the 91st Psalm, which begins thus: He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. They were all hushed by the sweet words, and then the morning lesson went on as usual. At recess, a dear little girl came up to the desk, and said, Teacher, arent you afraid of the diphtheria? No, my child, she answered. Well, wouldnt you be if you thought you would be sick, and die? No, dear, I trust not. The child gazed wonderingly at her for a moment; and then her face lightened up as she said, Oh! I know! You are hidden under Gods wings. What a nice safe place that is to hide in!
II. WALKING WITH GOD IS A USEFUL WALK. Suppose that you and I were taking a walk through the wards of a hospital. It is full of people who are suffering from accidents, and diseases of different kinds. There are some people there with broken limbs. Some are blind, others are deaf; and some are sick with various fevers, and consumption. And suppose that, like our blessed Lord, we had the power, as we went from one bed to another, to heal the sick and suffering people in that hospital. Here is a lame man. We make his limbs straight and strong, so that he can walk. Here is a blind man. We touch his eyes with our fingers; they open, and he can see. We speak to those who are suffering from diseases of different kinds, and make them well. Then we might well say that our walk through that hospital was a useful walk. But we have no such power as this to cure the diseases from which the bodies of men are suffering. Yet this may afford us a good illustration of what we can do for the souls that are suffering around us, when we become Christians, and walk with God. Some years ago a gentleman from England brought a letter of introduction to a merchant in this country. The stranger was an intelligent man with very pleasant manners, but he was an infidel. The gentleman to whom he brought the letter of introduction, and his wife, were earnest Christian people. They invited the stranger to make their house his home during his stay, and treated him with the greatest possible kindness. On the evening of his arrival, before the hour of retiring, the gentleman of the house, knowing what the views of his guest were on the subject of religion, told him they were in the habit of having family worship every evening; that they would be happy to have him join with them; or, if he preferred, he could retire to his room. He said it would give him pleasure to remain. Then a chapter of the Bible was read, and the family knelt in prayer, the stranger with them. After spending a few days in that pleasant Christian home, the stranger embarked on board a ship, and sailed to a foreign land. In the course of three or four years he returned, and stayed with the same family. But what a change there was in him! His infidelity was all gone. He was now an humble, earnest Christian. In speaking to his friend of this change, he said: Sir, I owe it all to you. When I knelt down with you at family prayers on my former visit, it was the first time for years that I had ever bowed my knees before God. It brought back to me the memory of my pious mother, now in heaven, and all the teaching she had given me when a boy. I was so occupied with these thoughts that I did not hear a word of your prayer. But this led me to give up my infidelity, and seek the blessing of my mothers God. And now I am as happy as the day is long in His service. Here again we see how true it is that walking with God is a useful walk.
III. A PLEASANT WALK. When we are taking a walk there are several things that will help to make up the pleasure to be found in that walk. If we have a guide to show us the road; if we have a pleasant companion to talk with as we go on our way; if we have plenty of refreshments–nice things to eat and drink; if there are bright and cheerful prospects around and before us; and especially, if we are sure of a nice comfortable home to rest in when our walk is ended, these will help to make it pleasant. But when we walk with God, as Enoch did, we have all these things, and more too.
And these are sure to make it a pleasant walk. Solomon is speaking of this walk when he says: Its ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are peace. I visited a poor old woman belonging to my congregation, said a minister. She was entirely dependent on the church for her support. Her home was a very small cottage. The moment I entered it I saw how neat and clean everything was. She had just been gathering some sticks from the lane with which to cook her evening meal. Her face was one of the sweetest I ever saw. It was surrounded by the strings of her snow-white cap. On the table lay a well-worn copy of the Word of God. I looked around for a daughter or friend to be her companion and caretaker, but saw none. I said: Mother Ansel, you dont live here alone, do you? Live alone! Live alone! she exclaimed in surprise, and then, as a sweet smile lighted up her face, she added, No, sir, the blessed Lord lives with me, and that makes it pleasant living! Certainly she found walking with God a pleasant walk. A Christian lady was visiting among the poor one day. She called, among others, on a little sick girl. Her home was a dreary looking one. The room she occupied was on the north side of the house. There was nothing bright or pleasant about it. Everything looked dark and cheerless. I am sorry you have no sun on this side of the house, said the lady. Not a ray of sunshine gets in here. This is a misfortune, for sunshine is everything. Oh, maam! you are mistaken, said the sick girl, as a sweet smile lighted up her pale face. My sun pours in at every window, and through all the cracks. But how can the sun get round on this side of the house? asked the visitor. It is Jesus, the Sun of Righteousness, that shines in here, was the reply, and He makes the best sunshine. That sick girl found walking with God a pleasant walk.
IV. A PROFITABLE WALK. We see a good deal of walking done without much profit. But sometimes we hear of people who are able to make their walking pay. There was a walking match in New York not long ago. A number of persons were engaged in it, and the man who won the prize secured twenty-five thousand dollars. That was profitable walking, so far as money was concerned; but walking with God is more profitable than this. Suppose there was a savings bank half a mile from your house, and you were told that if you walked to that bank every week, and put a penny in the treasury, for every penny you put in you would get a dollar at the end of the year. A penny a week would make fifty-two pennies by the end of the year, and if for these fifty-two pennies you were to receive fifty-two dollars, that would make your walk to the bank profitable walking. It would be getting what we call a hundredfold for the money invested there.
There is no such savings bank as this. But, when we learn to walk with God, we find that serving Him is just like putting money in such a bank. Jesus says that if we give a cup of cold water to one of His disciples, or if we suffer for Him, or do any work for Him, we shall receive a manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting. And if such rewards are given to those who walk with Him, then we may well say that that is profitable walking. An infidel was one day laughing at a plain farmer because he believed the Bible. The farmer surprised him by saying, Well, you see, we plain country people like to have two strings to our bow. And pray what do you mean by that? asked the infidel. Only this, was the farmers answer, that believing the Bible, and acting up to it, is like having two strings to ones bow; for, if the Bible is not true, still I shall be a better and happier man for living according to its teachings, and so it will be profitable for me in this life; this is one string to my bow, and a good one, too. And, if the Bible should prove true, as I know it will, it will be profitable for me in the next world, and that is another string, and a pretty strong one, too. But, sir, if you do not believe the Bible, and do not live as it requires, you have no string to your bow in this world. And, oh, sir! if the tremendous threatenings of the Bible prove true–as they surely will–you will have no string to your bow for the next world, and what will become of you then? This shows us that walking with God is profitable walking. (R. Newton, D. D.)
Known by his walk
That mans been in the army, said a gentleman to his friend the other day, as a stranger passed them in the street; I know a soldier by his walk. Men ought to know Christs soldiers by their walk.
The biography of Enoch; or, a glorious life and a glorious end
Enoch is one of the few excellent men mentioned in the Bible, of whom nothing bad is recorded. Abraham is described as the father of the faithful; and yet there are instances on record in which his mighty faith gave way. Who ever thinks of the flaws on the face of beauty? Who ever thinks of the spots which deface the sun? They exist, you may find them by minute observation; but they do not make a deep impression upon your mind. Thus the character of Enoch, in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation, seemed to be one mass of light, in which there was no darkness at all. Enoch is one of these men who owe their immortality to the brightness of their characters. Let us then consider the text as–
I. A SIMPLE RECORD OF A GLORIOUS LIFE. What does a glorious life consist in? The poet thinks it a glorious thing to produce burning thoughts, to master the powers of language, to command brilliant imagery; to revel in imagination through the ethereal regions of the lovely, the grand, the eternal; and then descend from those lofty heights to the lowly regions of real life, to enlighten its gloom, to soothe its sorrows, to strengthen its hopes. The orator thinks it a glorious thing to rivet the attention of assembled multitudes. The warrior thinks it a glorious thing to be entrusted with the command of a powerful army. Here is a simple record of a glorious life; let us now endeavour to analyse it. The words point to–
1. A life of absolute devotedness. It is not a selfish existence, but an existence linked to another existence, subordinate to another existence, devoted to another existence. With God.
2. A life of steady progress. This is clearly suggested by the term walking. Man is never more dignified than when he walks with a regular, firm, steady step; it is then that he looks every inch the lord of creation; you wonder not that other creatures should submit to his sway. But let him loiter about as if he had nothing to do, or let him run as if he were pursued, and he falls at once in your estimation. There is a touch of manliness about the very act of walking, which indicates a definite purpose, a reasonable aim, a complete mastery over ones self. You have only to conceive of a man walking and a man running, and compare these two conceptions together, in order to be impressed with the superiority of the one over the other. But the expression employed here has a wider meaning than this. Enoch walked with God. This indicates progress. It is progress in knowledge, progress in holiness, progress in good works. It is an upward struggle, a heavenward course, a climbing up to the mount of God.
3. A life of blessed companionship. With God. Now, the blessed companionship of Enoch with God, which was a type of all true companionship, implied faith in God. Enochs companionship implied also a certain degree of familiarity with God. Just think of it. Gods friend must become a God-like character. The moon which is bathed in the transforming light of the sun, becomes itself a luminous body, and lightens up the sombre blackness of the night with its pale, beautiful, silvery rays. And so the man who walks in the light of Gods countenance must necessarily catch some of the glory and reflect it upon the world around him. Besides this, Gods friend needs fear no enemy.
II. A SIMPLE RECORD OF A GLORIOUS END. And he was not, for God took him. A good man is never lost; long after his body has mouldered in the dust, the influence of his holy example will remain, will remain as a mighty power; a power which will not diminish, but grow with the flight of ages. (D. Rowlands, B. A.)
Enochs walking with God
I. As the first acceptable worshipper of God was Abel, so the first acceptable walker with God was Enoch, in Scripture record. Here are two remarks upon Enoch recorded in Scripture. The first is, his appearance in the world. The second is, his disappearance from the world.
1. His appearance is attended with sundry considerable circumstances. As
(1) his name.
(2) His time.
(3) His Age.
(4) His office or employ. Concerning his name Enoch, which has a double signification.
Enoch signifies dedicated; his father Jared (which signifies meek) being a lowly and a holy man, did dedicate this son to God, as soon as he had received him from God.
II. Enoch signifies catechized or instructed; well knowing, also, that the care of the means was committed to the father, though he had committed the care of the end to the Lord. The paternal instruction must promote the dedication. As Jared had marred him by propagation (begetting a son in his own, the fallen image), so he must mend him by instruction. God is so exact in Scripture record, stating him the seventh patriarch, not only to declare the genealogy of Christ in a more distinct chronology of succession than can be found in any of the best human histories, but also to show both His great care of His Church and His great delight in His Church.
1. His great care of it in upholding it by seven descents of holy patriarchs.
2. His great delight in His Church above all other His concerns in the world, being only, all of them, in order to His Church.
3. The age of life that Enoch lived. The years that he lived in this lower world were exactly answerable to the days of a year, to wit, 365. What he wanted in the silver of a life natural, he had well paid him in the gold of a life eternal; so that not only the shortness of the fathers life was made up in the long life of his son, but also, God took him from a worse place to plant him into a better. His translation was but transplantation, as it were, out of Gods kitchen garden into His heavenly paradise. Thus we see here on earth, those northern plants which are transplanted out of their cold climate into a warmer southern soil, find no detriment, but advantage thereby, and thrive the better. How much more was it no loss, but gain, to Enoch to be translated out of the vale of tears into Gods garden of celestial pleasures! There are many talkers and but few walkers; many talkers of God, few walkers with God. Their lives give the lie to their lips or tongues, as not running relatively in parallel lines together with the heart. A mans conversation is the most conspicuous comment upon all that the heart believeth and the mouth expresseth (Rom 10:9-10).
I. WHAT IS THIS WALKING WITH GOD?
1. Negatively. It is not as if a man should desert the society of mankind, and run into a desert or cloister; or as if a man should depart out of the world, and fly up into heaven. Neither does this phrase import only Enochs public capacity, as if it were proper solely to such as serve God in some high office. There are three Scripture phrases–
(1) Walking with God, as here.
(2) Walking before God (Gen 17:1).
(3) Walking after God (Deu 13:4).
2. Showing what it is to walk with God positively; that is, he did serve God in his generation according to his will, as is said of David (Act 13:3; Act 13:6).
II. HOW THIS WALKING WITH GOD IS MANS DUTY. Upon a threefold respect.
1. It is the principal end why God created man, that man should walk with God his Creator.
2. It is the creatures homage and fealty to his creator, God, to walk with Him, not with Satan, or with sin and sinners.
3. This walking with God is the very badge and character whereby saints are distinguished from sinners, believers from unbelievers, and the children of God from the children of the World.
III. HOW THIS WALKING WITH GOD IS MANS DIGNITY AS WELL AS DUTY. It is not only mans homage, but it is also his honour to walk with God. It is accounted honourable to be but a follower of a mortal king. Inferences hence are–
1. It is our duty to walk with God, though the whole world walk contrary to God. The worse that times are, the better should we be, that the times may not be worse, but better by us. We should all strive to be the most holy persons, even in the most unholy times.
2. Therefore we should all strive to walk with God, upon these three following motives; besides the reasons of the duty, as also of the dignity.
(1) Safety.
(2) Solace.
(3) Satiety.
Having done with Enochs first grand concern, to wit, concerning his appearance in the world–all which he managed in a constant walking with God–I come now to discourse upon his second grand concern, concerning his DISAPPEARANCE FROM THE WORLD; to wit, his translation from earth to heaven. (C. Ness.)
The memorial of Enoch
Could we but hope that, even in a limited sense, these words might be inscribed as the motto on our tomb, then we need not envy either the mausoleums of the Pharaohs, the tomb of Alexander or Napoleon, or the sepulchres of the Caesars! Our record would be on high, and our memorial would live when the scroll of fame should be scattered by the winds of heaven, and perish forever in the conflagration of the world; for they who walk with God on earth shall reign with Christ in heaven.
I. CONTEMPLATE THE CHARACTER HERE GIVEN OF ENOCH–HE WALKED WITH GOD. Let none suppose that, whatever this may imply, it was the exclusive privilege of Enoch, and, therefore, is not to be sought after by others; for of Noah it is written–he found grace in the eyes of the Lord; for he was a just man, and perfect in his generation. And Noah walked with God. To Abraham, also, it was commanded–Walk before Me; and this the father of the faithful actually described himself as doing, when he said, The Lord, before whom I walk, will send His angel with thee, and prosper thy way.
1. It must imply the true knowledge of each other; for familiar intercourse is founded on knowledge. On the part of God, the knowledge is perfect and infinite. Well, then, might the Psalmist exclaim–O Lord, Thou hast searched me and known me. Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine up-rising; thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compasseth my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but lo! O Lord, Thou knowest it altogether. But man is naturally ignorant of God. He knows Him not, nor desires to know Him; for God is not in all his thoughts. How, then, shall he understand His being and perfections, His works and His ways? Such knowledge is too wonderful for him; it is high, he cannot attain unto it. For who by searching can find out God? who can find out the Almighty to perfection? But He has graciously revealed Himself to us by His Spirit, in His Holy Word.
2. The most sincere friendship.
3. The strongest proofs of devoted attachment. Without these, friendship itself is only a name; but with them, the very balm of life.
4. But, in one word, to walk with God includes a community of interests. Their aim is one. Now, as God necessarily exists for His own glory, and delights in its manifestation in the happiness of His creatures; so man, regenerated and sanctified, supremely seeks the glory of God in all things.
II. CONTEMPLATE HIS SPECIAL PRIVILEGE. He was removed to heaven, without tasting the bitterness of death. It might be sooner than he expected; for he had not attained to half the years of the life of his father–but he rejoiced to depart, and to be with God, his exceeding joy, forever and ever! And was not this the richest boon he could possibly receive? Classic story has told us of two lovely youths that were found dead in their bed, soon after the prayer had been offered for them, that they might possess the best blessing heaven could bestow. And the Christian well knows, that to depart, and to be with Christ, is far better than anything here. Such was the privilege of Enoch–but as to the mode of his translation we know nothing. Yet, it must have been eminently gracious. Whatever was the manner of his translation, it was evidently supernatural–the doing of the Lord, and marvellous in the eyes of all. No rude stormof chaos, no fortuitous blast of atoms hurled him on high. But the Lord did it, in His own most gracious way. He had frequently conferred on him many distinguished favours–but then, to crown all, he took him as a special friend to Himself, to be forever with Him in heaven, in joys unutterable and full of glory. But do not expect the same kind of dismissal as Enoch. Only Elijah and he ever entered the eternal kingdom, without passing through the gate of death. (J. Clunie, LL. D.)
Enochs holiness and its reward
His mind was pure; his spirit rose above the turmoil of worldliness; he delighted in calm communion with God; once more the familiar intercourse between God and man, which had existed in the time of paradise, was restored; the path commenced by Seth was continued by Enoch; the former addressed God by the medium of the word; the latter approached Him by the still more spiritual medium of thought: the highest form of religious life was gained. But, unfortunately, Enoch alone walked with God; his contemporaries were sunk in iniquity and depravation; but the measure of their wickedness was not yet complete; three generations more were required to mature their destruction; and God, in order to rescue Enoch, took him to Himself, delivering him from the contamination of his time at a comparatively early period of his life. Was this early death a punishment? But the piety of Enoch is repeatedly stated. Was it a misfortune? It was this as little as the full length of Noahs life; both cases were analogous; in the one, the pious man left the wicked generation; in the other, he was by a catastrophe freed from it; and in both instances, the deliverance was miraculous and supernatural, by the immediate agency of God. If this is the clear internal meaning of Enochs history, who can doubt that he was called away from the earth, not to cease his life abruptly, but to continue it in a better sphere, and in still more perfect virtue? We are convinced that the taking away of Enoch is one of the strongest proofs of the belief in a future state prevailing among the Hebrews; without this belief, the history of Enoch is a perfect mystery, a hieroglyph without a clue, a commencement without an end. If, then, pious men could hope to continue a brighter existence after their transitory sojourn upon earth, the books of the Old Testament are not enveloped in the gloomy clouds of despair; they radiate in the beams of hope; and, if a long life on earth was also gratefully accepted as a high, though not the highest, boon, this may have sprung from the just feeling, that man is born to enjoy and to work, to receive much and to give more; and that he does not deserve the blessing of eternal rest before he has toiled to extend the empire of truth and piety (comp. Gen 4:7-10.) God took Enoch as He took Elijah (2Ki 2:9), or he was translated by faith, that he should not see death, and was not found, because God had translated him (Heb 11:5). The notion seems to be, that Enoch passed from earth to heaven without the intermediate state of decrepitude and dissolution; he suffered no bodily infirmity; his eye grew not dim, nor did his natural strength abate, as it is stated with regard to Moses, who also disappeared, so that no mortal knew his grave. For the pious Enoch, death lost its pang and its sting; though the descendant of a sinful race, he was delivered from the real punishment which sin inflicted upon the human family; his existence was uninterrupted; he was undying, as man was originally intended to be; for he passed from this life into a future state both without fear and without struggle. God took him as a loving father to His eternal home. The history of Enoch has ever been regarded as embodying profound truths; and, we think, there are few so strongly affecting the very root of religious life as those which we have just briefly indicated. And, as the virtuous are thus translated into heaven, the wicked are devoured alive in the gulf of the earth (Num 16:1-50). It is known that the classical writers also mention such translations into heaven; they assign this distinction among others to Hercules, to Ganymede, and to Romulus. But it was awarded to them either for their valour, or for mere physical beauty, which advantages, though valued among the Hebrews, were not considered by them as sublime or godlike; a pious and religious life alone deserved and obtained the crown of immortal glory. In no single feature can the Scriptures conceal their high spiritual character. However, the idea of a translation to heaven is not limited to the old world; it was familiar to the tribes of Central America; the chronicles of Guatemala record four progenitors of mankind who were suddenly raised to heaven; and the documents add that those first men came to Guatemala from the other side of the sea, from the east. This is, then, apparently, a rather remarkable connection of the primitive traditions of the most different nations. (M. M. Kalisch, Ph. D.)
My ministry
On the 22nd of February 1880 Dr. Raleigh preached for the last time. His text was, And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him. Had he known that he would never preach again, he could not have chosen a more appropriate text, or have spoken with more impressiveness and pathos. One of the members of the congregation said, on returning home, I have heard today what I never expect to hear again in this world. Dr. Raleigh was compelled to rest; weeks passed away, but there was no amendment in his health, and at length he had to be told that there was an hope of his recovery. When he received the intelligence he said, Then my ministry is ended. There was a pause, and then he added, My ministry!–It is dearer than my life. On the Tuesday before his death, he was visited by the Rev. Joshua Harrison, to whom he freely expressed his confidence in the glorious work of the Saviour, and said, in any case I may well be content and thankful. I am not an old man, yet I have lived long and worked hard. I have had, on the whole, a most happy, and I think I may say successful, ministry. God has blessed my work, and has always given me true friends. If I have finished my work, I am ready to go. Indeed, I should have no regrets but for these dear ones (his wife and children). When reminded of the prayers which were being offered on his behalf, he replied, Yes, my peoples prayers make me sometimes think I may have a little more work to do, but it not, I shall calmly march up to the gates. Still trusting in Christ, he went through the gate, April 1880. In the presence of a sorrowing multitude, his coffin was lowered into a grave in Abney Park Cemetery. (Old Testament Anecdotes.)
Gathering flowers to compose him in the hour of death
We know it to be a Scripture fact that men have walked with God in closest intimacy, and that God hath held converse with them, even as a man converseth with his friend. Such was the case with Enoch, Abraham, Moses, and all that luminous cloud of witnesses so brightly and clearly revealed in the Bible. The Church of God, even down to our own time, furnishes innumerable witnesses to this truth, which we will establish by the mouth of two of them. John Holland was an old Puritan minister, who died two hundred and fifty years ago. Little is known of him, except what relates to his deathbed. Perceiving that he was near his end, he said, Come, oh, come; death approaches. Let us gather some flowers to comfort this hour. He requested that the eighth chapter of Romans might be read to him. But at every verse he stopped the reading, while he expounded it to the comfort of his soul, and to the joy and wonder of his friends. Having thus continued his meditations above two hours, he suddenly cried out, Oh, stay your reading. What brightness is this I see? Have you lighted any candles? They told him No; it is the sunshine. Sunshine? said he; nay, my Saviours shine! Now farewell, world–welcome, heaven. The day star from on high hath visited my heart. Oh! speak when I am gone, and preach it at my funeral, God dealeth familiarly with man. In such transports his soul soared towards heaven. His last words, after repeating the declaration that God doth and will deal familiarly with man, were these: And now, thou fiery chariot, that camest down to fetch up Elijah, carry me to my happy home. And, all ye blessed angels, who attended the soul of Lazarus to bring it to heaven, bear me, oh! bear me to the bosom of my best beloved. Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus, come quickly! One other present witness is Gilbert Tennent, who was a main instrument, with Whitefield and Edwards, of the great revival in New England one hundred years ago. In one of his letters to his brother, the holy William Tennent, he says, Brother, shall I tell you an astonishing instance of the glorious grace of the Lord Jesus Christ? It is this, that one of the meanest of His servants has had His presence every day, in some degree, for above eleven weeks, Nor is the great, good Master yet gone. Oh, brother, it is heaven upon earth to live near to God! Verily, our comfort does not depend so much upon our outward situation as is generally supposed. No, a Saviours love is all in all. Oh, this will make any situation sweet, and turn the thickest darkness into day! (Old Testament Anecdotes.)
Preparation for death necessary
I have read of a gentleman who died very suddenly, and his jester ran to the other servants, and having told them that their master was dead, he, with much gravity, said, And where is he gone? The servants replied, Why, to heaven, to be sure! No, said the jester, he is not gone to heaven, I am certain. The servants with much warmth asked him how he knew that his master was not gone to heaven? The jester then replied, Because heaven is a great way off, and I never knew my master take a long journey in his life but he always talked of it some time beforehand, and also made preparations for it; but I never heard him talk about heaven, nor ever saw him making preparations for death, and therefore I am sure he is not gone to heaven. (H. G. Salter.)
Enochs translation
This moment Enoch is surrounded by antediluvian sinners, transformed by evil passions into demons; the next, he is in the society of angels, of the general assembly of the firstborn, of God Himself: this moment he is in a humble tent; the next, he is in the city and palace of the King: this moment he is in imminent danger; the next, his is quietness and assurance forever: this moment he is in earth–an earth reeling with wickedness, and ripening fast for ruin; the next, he summers high in bliss upon the hills of God: this moment he is almost a solitary protester against evil; the next, he has outsoared the shadow of sin, and is one of a holy company that no man can number, standing before the throne: this moment his body is frail and corrupt, a body of death, even as others; the next, his body has become a glorious body, winged, radiant, immortal: this moment he is like all men, subject to, and in danger of, death; the next, he has evaded the grim king of terrors, escaped not only the feeling, but the sight, of death. (G. Gilfillan.)
A singular saint is a precious saint
As the morning star in the midst of the clouds, and as the moon when it is at full; as the flower of the roses in the spring of the year, and as the lilies by the springs of waters; as the branches of the frankincense in the time of summer, and as a vessel of massy gold, set with all manner of precious stones, and as the fat that is taken from the peace offering;–so is one Enoch, that walketh with God when others walk from Him; one Rahab, in Jericho; one Elias, that boweth not his knee to Baal; one David, in Mesech; one Esther, in Shushan; one Judith, in Bethulia; one Joseph, in the Sanhedrim of the Jews; one Gamaliel, in the council of the Pharisees; one innocent and righteous man, in the midst of a crooked and froward generation. (J. Spencer.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
i.e. He appeared not any longer upon earth, or amongst mortal men. The same phrase is in Gen 42:36; Jer 31:15.
For God took him out of this sinful and miserable world unto himself, and to his heavenly habitation: see Luk 23:43. And he took either his soul, of which alone this phrase is used, Eze 24:16; or rather both soul and body, as he took Elias, 2Ki 2:11, because he so took him that he did not see death, Heb 11:5.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
24. And Enoch walked with Godacommon phrase in Eastern countries denoting constant and familiarintercourse.
was not; for God took himInHeb 11:5, we are informed thathe was translated to heavena mighty miracle, designed to effectwhat ordinary means of instruction had failed to accomplish, gave apalpable proof to an age of almost universal unbelief that thedoctrines which he had taught (Jdg 1:14;Jdg 1:15) were true and that hisdevotedness to the cause of God and righteousness in the midst ofopposition was highly pleasing to the mind of God.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And Enoch walked with God,…. Which is repeated both for the confirmation of it, and for the singularity of it in that corrupt age; and to cause attention to it, and stir up others to imitate him in it, as well as to express the well pleasedness of God therein; for so it is interpreted, “he had this testimony, that he pleased God”,
Heb 11:5
and he was not; not that he was dead, or in the state of the dead, as Aben Ezra and Jarchi interpret the phrase following,
for God took him, out of the world by death, according to
1Ki 19:4 “for he was translated, that he should not see death”, Heb 11:5 nor was he annihilated, or reduced to nothing, “for God took him”, and therefore he must exist somewhere: but the sense is, he was not in the land of the living, he was no longer in this world; or with the inhabitants of the earth, as the Targum of Jonathan paraphrases it; but the Lord took him to himself out of the world, in love to him, and removed him from earth to heaven, soul and body, as Elijah was taken; [See comments on Heb 11:5]. The Arabic writers u call him Edris, and say he was skilled in astronomy and other sciences, whom the Grecians say is the same with Hermes Trismegistus; and the Jews call him Metatron, the great scribe, as in the Targum of Jonathan: they say w, that Adam delivered to him the secret of the intercalation of the year, and he delivered it to Noah, and that he was the first that composed books of astronomy x; and so Eupolemus y says he was the first inventor of astrology, and not the Egyptians; and is the same the Greeks call Atlas, to whom they ascribe the invention of it. The apostle Jude speaks of him as a prophet,
#Jude 14 and the Jews say z, that he was in a higher degree of prophecy than Moses and Elias; but the fragments that go under his name are spurious: there was a book ascribed to him, which is often referred to in the book of Zohar, but cannot be thought to be genuine.
u Elmacinus, Patricides, apud Hottinger. p. 239. 240. Abulpharag. Hist. Dynast. p. 9. w Juchasin, fol. 5. 1. Pirke Eliezer, c. 8. x Shalshalet Hakabala, fol. 74. 2. y Ut supra. (Apud Euseb. Evangel. Praepar. l. 9. c. 17. p. 419.) z Shalshalet Hakabala, fol. 1, 2.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
24. And he was not, for God took him. He must be shamelessly contentious, who will not acknowledge that something extraordinary is here pointed out. All are, indeed, taken out of the world by death; but Moses plainly declares that Enoch was taken out of the world by an unusual mode, and was received by the Lord in a miraculous manner. For לקה ( lakah) among the Hebrews signifies ‘to take to one’s self,’ as well as simply to take. But, without insisting on the word, it suffices to hold fast the thing itself; namely, that Enoch, in the middle period of life, suddenly, and in an unexampled method, vanished from the sight of men, because the Lord took him away, as we read was also done with respect to Elijah. Since, in the translation of Enoch, an example of immortality was exhibited; there is no doubt that God designed to elevate the minds of his saints with certain faith before their death; and to mitigate, by this consolation, the dread which they might entertain of death, seeing they would know that a better life was elsewhere laid up for them. It is, however, remarkable that Adam himself was deprived of this support of faith and of comfort. For since that terrible judgment of God, ‘Thou shalt die the death,’ was constantly sounding in his ears, he very greatly needed some solace, in order that he might in death have something else to reflect upon than curse and destruction. But it was not till about one hundred and fifty years after his death, (255) that the translation of Enoch took place, which was to be as a visible representation of a blessed resurrection; by which, if Adam had been enlightened, he might have girded himself with equanimity for his own departure. Yet, since the Lord, in inflicting punishment, had moderated its rigour, and since Adam himself had heard from his own mouth, what was sufficient to afford him no slight alleviation; contented with this kind of remedy, it became his duty patiently to bear, both the continual cross in this world, and also the bitter and sorrowful termination of his life. But whereas others were not taught in the same manner by a manifest oracle to hope for victory over the serpent, there was, in the translation of Enoch, an instruction for all the godly, that they should not keep their hope confined within the boundaries of this mortal life. For Moses shows that this translation was a proof of the Divine love towards Enoch, by connecting it immediately with his pious and upright life. Nevertheless, to be deprived of life is not in itself desirable. It follows, therefore, that he was taken to a better abode; and that even when he was a sojourner in the world, he was received into a heavenly country; as the Apostle, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, (Heb 11:5,) plainly teaches. Moreover, if it be inquired, why Enoch was translated, and what is his present condition; I answer, that his transition was by a peculiar privilege, such as that of other men would have been, if they had remained in their first state. (256) For although it was necessary for him to put off what was corruptible; yet was he exempt from that violent separation, from which nature shrinks. In short, his translation was a placid and joyful departure out of the world. Yet he was not received into celestial glory, but only freed from the miseries of the present life, until Christ should come, the first-fruits of those who shall rise again. And since he was one of the members of the Church, it was necessary that he should wait until they all shall go forth together, to meet Christ, that the whole body may be united to its Head. Should any one bring as an objection the saying of the Apostle,
‘
It is appointed unto all men once to die,’ (Heb 9:27,)
the solution is easy, namely, that death is not always the separation of the soul from the body; but they are said to die, who put off their corruptible nature: and such will be the death of those who will be found surviving at the last day.
(255) Adam died at the age of 930. Enoch was born when Adam was 622, and was translated when he himself was 365. Age of the world, 987.
So that Adam had been dead 57 years when Enoch was translated. Whence it would appear that either the word “ centum,” a hundred, had slipped by mistake from Calvin’s pen; or which is more probably, that, though the two Latin editions before the Editor, have the mistake, the more early ones were free from it. For the French version and the Old English one are correct. — Ed.
(256) “ S’ils fussent demeurez en leur premier estat.” These words, in the French translation, have no corresponding passage in the original, but are so obvious an explanation of Calvin’s language, that they are here translated. — Ed.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(24) Enoch walked with God.This is translated in the LXX., Enoch pleased God, whence comes the testimony quoted in Heb. 11:5. Really it gives the cause of which the Greek phrase is the effect; for it denotes a steady continuance in well-doing, and a life spent in the immediate presence of and in constant communion with God. (See Note on Gen. 4:18.)
God took him.Instead of the mournful refrain and he died, coming like a surprise at the end of each of these protracted lives, we have here an early removal into another world, suggesting already that long life was not the highest form of blessing; and this removal is without pain, decay, or death into the immediate presence of God. Thus one of Adams posterity after the fall succeeded in doing, though, doubtless, not without special help and blessing from the Almighty, that wherein Adam in Paradise had failed. We learn, too, from Jud. 1:14-15, that Enochs was a removal from prevailing evil to happiness secured. Already, probably, the intermarriages between the Cainites and Sethites had begun and with it the corruption of mankind. Philippson, while regarding the phrase God took him as a euphemism for an early death, yet finds in it an indication of there being another life besides this upon earth. We may further add that Enochs translation took place about the middle of the antediluvian period, and that his age was 365, the number of the days of the year. As, however, the Hebrew year consisted of only 354 days, and the Chaldean of 360, the conclusion that Enoch was a solar deity has no solid foundation to rest upon. But see Note on Gen. 8:14.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
24. The testimony to the exalted piety of Enoch is emphatically repeated; and where we might expect to read again the solemn phrase, “and he died,” we find instead the mysterious words and he was not; for God took him. The expression, and he was not, has frequent parallels in the Hebrew Scriptures, denoting any sudden and mysterious departure . Thus, Jacob says of his lost sons, (Gen 42:13; Gen 42:36,) “Joseph is not, and Simeon is not . ” The LXX translates, “And he was not found,” quoted in Heb 11:5. He was suddenly withdrawn from sight, for God took him. If the expression, “and he was not,” does not teach annihilation, much less, as Murphy remarks, does the phrase, “and he died.” Enoch’s life, by its brevity, strongly contrasts with that of the other patriarchs. His earthly existence was a year of years, symbolic thus of an ideal human life in its perfect cycle. Thus, perhaps, would man have lived and been “taken” had he never fallen. The apocryphal Book of Wisdom says happily of him, (chap. 4:13, 14,) “He being made perfect in a short time fulfilled a long time.” The Targums show that the story of Enoch was regarded by the Jews as a revelation of human immortality. It was also proof of the great doctrine afterwards intimated by the translation of Elijah, and fully revealed by the transfiguration and resurrection of Christ, that the human body will share in the bliss and glory of immortality.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Gen 5:24. Enoch walked with God This is fully explained by what is said of Noah in the 9th verse of the next chapter. See also ch. Gen 17:1. To walk with or before God, signifies “to live, as if always in his presence.”
And he was not He ceased to appear among men: for God took him to heaven, as he afterwards did Elijah. See 2Ki 2:3. So we read, Heb 11:5. By faith Enoch was translated, that he should not see death: and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation, he had this testimony that he pleased God. Enoch, it is plain, from Jud 1:14 was a prophet: and the heathens had some general traces of his history, under the name of Annacus, or Nannacus, who, they tell us, lived before Deucalion, and foretold the flood. Some have thought that there are traces of Enoch’s prophetic spirit in the name of Methuselah, which he gave his son; for the first part of it, methu, says Bochart, evidently carries in it the name of death, being as much as he dies: and selah signifies the sending forth of water, as in Job 5:10. And therefore Methuselah imports as much as “when he is dead, shall ensue an emission or inundation of waters,” to the destruction of the whole earth. Methuselah died in the very year of the deluge.
REFLECTIONS.Observe, 1. How death passed upon all. Their lives were long indeed, but the burden of the tale is, and he died. Health, riches, wisdom, and, what is better, godliness, make no distinction here. 2. Their days are mentioned, to remind us that years and ages are but longer days; and when they are gone, will be like yesterday which is past. A sinner looks back with regret on these lives of ages, and wishes their return; a saint of God rejoices in his happier lot, that he is not left so long to groan in this tabernacle, being burdened.
From Adam to Enoch, nothing is said of the characters of those whose names are mentioned. The silence of the sacred writer bids us hope the best. But in Enoch God singles out one to be the imitation of future ages, as he was the glory of that in which he lived. Observe,
1. His conversation in the world. He walked with God.
(1.) His practice was agreeable to God’s will; he maintained a happy communion with him: his soul was weaned from the vanities of the world, and fixed on God as his only portion. And indeed the life of every christian is walking with God. 1. As a reconciled sinner, through the blood of Christ. 2. As a restored soul, through the spirit of Christ. 3. As an obedient servant, according to the word of Christ. 4. As an observant worshipper in all ordinances, and an attentive improver of all providences. 5. As happy in the fellowship obtained with God, through his dear Song of Solomon 6. As a constant expectant of God’s appearing to take us to himself, that we may behold his glory.
(2.) His preaching. He not only himself lived for God, but he laboured for God, Jud 1:14 boldly rebuking sin, and encouraging the faithful in their adherence to God, from the prospect of the appearance of the Lord, to judge the ungodly, and to reward his saints.
(3.) His perseverance herein: to the end of his days. There seems no reason to apprehend he did not walk with God before; we are assured, however, after he begat Methuselah, he did three hundred years. Every true saint of God is known by his perseverance in the ways of God. It was a long while to live thus in a wicked world: but he walked by faith.
2. His translation from earth to heaven. It was his business and happiness to live for God: it was his reward to live with God. He was in the prime of life, when God took him; had not, according to general reckoning, lived out half his days: but surely he was a wonderful gainer by the exchange. He quitted a wicked world for a heavenly kingdom; a life of toil for a rest in glory; a scene of vanity for bliss eternal. May we not hence observe, that we ought not too much to lament for our dear friends that die in the Lord, lest our selfishness, rather than our affection, appear. Though the child be robbed from the tender parents, the pious husband from his weeping family, or the zealous minister from his desolate flock: the loss indeed is ours, the gain is theirs. They have lived enough, whom God takes to himself: the days which are cut off from the labours of time, shall be added to the rewards of eternity. Early deaths, and sudden deaths, are reckoned untimely; but who can think it untimely to go to the bosom of Jesus? Or who should grieve that:
No painful agonies need to untie The soul that’s ready to ascend on high, And mourns its exile from its native sky!
3. The manner of his translation. He was caught up, perhaps visibly, as Elijah afterwards, into heaven: his body changed in the twinkling of an eye from corruption to incorruption, from dishonour to glory; and his soul made meet for an inheritance among the saints in light. We may not hope for such a change, but we expect an equivalent; the arm of death, which snatches the believer from the earth, shall carry him to the place, whither Enoch is gone before.
4. The grand principle which influenced him to such a conduct, and brought him to such an end; faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah that was to come, the promised seed, Heb 11:5. For (1.) faith only can enable us to walk with God; (2.) and thus shall we please God; (3.) and God will testify his pleasure in such a walk by his witness in our hearts now, and by his approbation in the day of judgment. (4.) Eminent believers shall have singular honours, as one star differeth from another star in glory.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
DISCOURSE: 11
ENOCHS WALKING WITH GOD
Gen 5:24. And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.
THE cares of a family are by no means incompatible with a life of devotedness to God. The man distinguished for his piety above all others in the antediluvian world, had a very numerous offspring [Note: His eldest son, Methuselah, was born to him at the age of sixty-five; after which he continued for the space of three hundred years to beget sons and daughters. 123.], to whom doubtless he paid every attention in his power: yet he was not impeded in his spiritual course; but found time to serve his God, as much as if he had been free from all concern about this present world.
We shall consider,
I.
His conduct
We are told, he walked with God. Now walking with God implies,
1.
Agreement
[Enoch, as a fallen creature, was once alienated from God, like others [Note: Eph 4:18.], and, during his unconverted state, was full of enmity against him both in heart and life [Note: Rom 8:7; Col 1:21.] ; walking after the flesh, according to the course of this world, and altogether contrary to God [Note: Rom 8:1; Eph 2:2; Lev 26:27-28.]. But now he was reconciled to God through faith in Christ [Note: It is said in Heb 11:5 that Enoch was translated by faith: and though that faith might have more immediate respect to some promise given him relative to his translation, yet we can scarcely conceive but that it had a further respect to the promised Messiah. And this idea is greatly strengthened by the account St. Jude gives of his foretelling the very manner of the future judgment (4, 15.): for if he prophesied of Christs second coming, doubtless he was not ignorant of his first advent.] And was brought by this means to an agreement with him both in mind and will. Thus must all of us obtain reconciliation with God through the blood of Christ, before we can resemble this eminent saint; for it is not possible for two to walk together except they be agreed [Note: Amo 3:3.].]
2.
Familiarity
[Friends who associate much together, contract a familiarity with each other: they open to each other their sorrows and their joys: they consult each other in their difficulties; and maintain with the greatest freedom a mutual intercourse. Thus did Enoch with his God. He considered God as his friend: he had familiar access to him at all times: he opened to him all his wants, all his fears, all his trials: he did nothing without first asking counsel of his friend, and engaging his assistance.
Nor was this an honour peculiar to him: it is the duty and the privilege of all the saints: we may go and knock at the door of our Friend, and he will always open unto us [Note: Mat 7:7-8.]: we may have access to him with boldness and with confidence, even in his most private apartments [Note: Jam 4:8; Eph 3:12; Heb 10:19]: we may ask what we will of him, and he will do it for us [Note: Joh 15:7.]. He, on the other hand, will come and knock at our door; and will come in and sup with us [Note: Rev 3:20; Joh 14:23.]: he will communicate to us his secrets [Note: Psa 25:14.] ; and will in ten thousand ways manifest himself unto us as he does not unto the world [Note: Joh 14:21-22.].]
3.
Affection
[Affection is the very essence of friendship: mere agreement or familiarity are of little value without it: where this does not exist, the intercourse cannot be such as is implied in walking with God. Enoch loved his God, if I may so speak, with all his heart, and mind, and soul, and strength: God would never have given him a special testimony of his approbation, if his heart had been destitute of the sacred flame of love. He went forth to meet his God, as Adam was wont to do in his state of innocence: he looked forward with joy to the seasons when he should again renew his fellowship with him: he studied to avoid every thing that might in any respect grieve him; and made it the great object of his life to do what was pleasing in his sight.
It is in this way that we also are to walk with God: we Heb 10:19. must commune with him not by constraint, but willingly and of a ready mind [Note: 1Jn 1:3.]. We must delight ourselves in him [Note: Psa 37:4.]. His loving-kindness must be better to us than life itself [Note: Psa 63:3.]: and it must be as marrow and fatness to us to serve and honour him. [Note: Psa 63:5.] ]
How acceptable to God this conduct was, we may learn from,
II.
The reward with which God honoured him
The manifestations of Gods presence and favour which he continually enjoyed, were a rich recompence for any self-denial which he exercised, or any exertions which he used, to please his God. But, besides all these, God,
1.
Exempted him from death, the common lot of all men
[All, the righteous as well as the wicked, must pay the penalty of death, which has been entailed on them by the sin of Adam, and been richly merited by their own personal transgressions. But God has been pleased to exempt from it one in the old world, and one in the new [Note: Compare 2Ki 2:11 with the text.]. This testimony of his approbation God vouchsafed to Enoch. He was a bold and faithful witness for God, and doubtless incensed many against him [Note: Judges 14, 15.] And God took him from a persecuting and ungodly world, who probably enough were seeking to destroy him on account of his pungent admonitions [Note: In Heb 11:5 before cited, it is said he was not found. This may refer to some search made by his friends (see 2Ki 2:16.) or rather by his enemies, (see 1Ki 18:10.)]. He took him in the prime of life, without any previous pain or sickness. To some indeed it might appear a calamity to be taken away, in the midst of his useful labours, and while his family were still looking up to him for instruction and support: but he thought it far better to depart and to be with Christ, than to prolong his days in the midst of a tempting and ungodly world: and God gave him the desire of his heart.
We, however diligent in walking with God, cannot hope to participate in such a reward as this. But death shall be disarmed of its sting, so that it shall be to us rather an object of desire, than of fear and terror [Note: 2Co 5:4.]: and while the most stout-hearted sinner in the universe trembles at its approach, we shall be enabled not only to meet it with serenity and composure, but to triumph over it as a vanquished enemy. [Note: 1Co 15:55.] ]
2.
Exalted him both in body and in soul to a more immediate enjoyment of his presence
[While Enoch was in the body, he could not endure the full splendour of the divine glory [Note: 1Ti 6:16.]: he could only behold his God through the dark medium of faith [Note: 1Co 13:12.], or, at most, be permitted to see his back parts [Note: Exo 33:23.]. But God translated him, both in body and soul, to the highest heavens; making him thereby not only an eminent type of Christs ascension, but an earnest and pledge to us, that our bodies shall hereafter be raised to a participation of the happiness, which our glorified souls shall enjoy at the instant of their departure from the body. To what extent the blessedness of every individual will be advanced by the re-union of the soul and body, it is not possible to say: but it is reasonable to suppose, that that which consummates our reward, will greatly enhance our felicity. This, however, Enoch had not to wait for; he received his full reward at once; and was thereby distinguished from all those disembodied spirits, which, though perfected in glory, waited for their complete happiness till the day of judgment. The happiness of Enoch in communing with God on earth was doubtless exceeding great: but when he arrived at the full fruition of the divine glory, his blessedness as far exceeded all that he had before experienced, as the early dawn is surpassed by the meridian light.
It need not, however, be any matter of regret to us, that we are not to expect this reward; since, on our dismission from the body, we shall instantly be in Paradise; and at the day of resurrection, we shall have our bodies raised to a participation of our bliss.]
3.
Made him a most distinguished monument to the whole world, of the love he bears to those who seek communion with him
[We know but little of the state of those who are gone into the invisible world, though we believe, from the word of God, that they are completely happy. But here is an evidence to our very senses, that none shall be suffered to seek Gods face in vain. Who, after beholding such an interposition of the Deity, such an honour conferred on a man of like passions with ourselves, can doubt one moment of the acceptance which all shall find, who serve their God in sincerity and truth [Note: Isa 64:5.] ?
In this view then we may consider his reward as an earnest of ours. We shall not be left without many expressions of Gods love even in this world, if we endeavour to walk closely with him. But, whether our present state be more or less joyous, we are sure that in the eternal world we shall not lose our reward. We need only to consider the exalted condition of this distinguished saint and we may see in him the blessedness reserved for us.]
Infer,
1.
What an honourable character is the Christian!
[We consider those as honourable who associate with great men on earth: but the Christian has higher company than earthly monarchs; he walks with God himself; and God is not ashamed to call him his friend [Note: Heb 11:16; Jam 2:23; Joh 15:15.]. In some sense, the Christian is already translated into Gods kingdom [Note: Col 1:13.], and admitted into the heavenly Zion, and joined to the society of glorified saints and angels [Note: Heb 12:22-23.].
Let every one then walk worthy of this high calling; and, in a dignified contempt of all inferior objects, endeavour to attain this sublime privilege in its highest perfection.]
2.
What a happy character is the Christian!
[His singularity may bring upon him much odium and persecution. But what need he to regard the frowns of men, who enjoys fellowship with God? One smile from his almighty Friend is sufficient to counterbalance all the indignities that can possibly be cast upon him. Yet, after all, his happiness in this world is but as the drop before the shower. When he has filled up the measure of his obedience, God takes him to himself; a band of angels are sent to bear his spirit to the regions of the blest. It must not be said of the Christian, He dies; but merely, that God translates him from a world of sin and misery, to a world of blessedness and glory. Such honour have all his saints; God grant it may be ours for ever and ever! Amen.]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
Gen 5:24 And Enoch walked with God: and he [was] not; for God took him.
Ver. 24. And Enoch walked with God. ] And so “condemned the world”: Heb 11:7 first, by his life; secondly, at his death. By his life, in that he kept a constant counter-motion to the corrupt courses of the times; not only not swimming down the stream with the wicked, but pronouncing God’s severe judgment against them, even to the extreme curse of Anathema Maranatha, as St Jude tells us Jdg 1:14 Secondly, by his death he condemned them: in that so strange a testimony of God’s grace and glory, in his wonderful translation, did not affect and move them to amend their evil manners. The heathens had heard somewhat afar off, concerning this candidate of immortality, as the ancients call him, a and thence grounded their apotheoses. Eupolemon saith that their Atlas was Enoch, as their Janus was Noah. And how fitly are the Papists called heathens b by St John. Rev 11:2 Since, besides their Atlas of Rome, on whose shoulders the whole Church, that new heaven, must rest, there was at Ruremund, in Gilderland, a play acted by the Jesuits, anno 1622, under the title of the “Apotheosis of St Ignatius.” c
a Alsted, Chron. , p. 85.
b Gentes sunt Antichristus cum suis asseclis . – Paraeus .
c Jac. Revil., Hist. Pontif. Rom ., p. 309. Sil. Ital.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Genesis
THE COURSE AND CROWN OF A DEVOUT LIFE
Gen 5:24
This notice of Enoch occurs in the course of a catalogue of the descendants of Adam, from the Creation to the Deluge. It is evidently a very ancient document, and is constructed on a remarkable plan. The formula for each man is the same. So-and-so lived, begat his heir, the next in the series, lived on after that so many years, having anonymous children, lived altogether so long, and then died. The chief thing about each life is the birth of the successor, and each man’s career is in broad outline the same. A dreary monotony runs through the ages. How brief and uniform may be the records of lives of striving and tears and smiles and love that stretched through centuries! Nine hundred years shrink into less than as many lines.
The solemn monotony is broken in the case of Enoch. This paragraph begins as usual-he ‘lived’; but afterwards, instead of that word, we read that he ‘walked with God’-happy they for whom such a phrase is equivalent to ‘live’-and, instead of ‘died,’ it is said of him that ‘he was not .’ That seems to imply that he, as it were, slipped out of sight or suddenly disappeared; as one of the psalms says, ‘I looked, and lo! he was not.’ He was there a moment ago-now he is gone; and my text tells how that sudden withdrawal came about. God, with whom he walked, put out His hand and took him to Himself. Of course. What other end could there be to a life that was all passed in communion with God except that apotheosis and crown of it all, the lifting of the man into closer communion with his Father and his Friend?
So, then, there are just these two things here-the noblest life and its crown.
1. The noblest life.
Of course, we have here, underlying the phrase, the familiar comparison of life to a journey, with all its suggestions of constant change and constant effort, and with the suggestion, too, that each life should be a progress directly tending to one clearly recognised goal. But passing from that, let us just think for a moment of the characteristics which must go to make up a life of which we can say that it is walking with God. The first of these clearly is the one that the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews puts his finger upon, when he makes faith the spring of Enoch’s career. The first requisite to true communion with God is vigorous exercise of that faculty by which we realise the fact of His presence with us; and that not as a jealous-eyed inspector, from whose scrutiny we would fain escape, but as a companion and friend to whom we can cleave. ‘He that cometh to God,’ and walks with God, must first of all ‘believe that He is’; and passing by all the fascinations of things seen, and rising above all the temptations of things temporal, his realising eye must fix upon the divine Father and see Him nearer and more clearly than these. You cannot walk with God unless you are emancipated from the dominion of sense and time, and are living by the power of that great faculty, which lays hold of the things that are unseen as the realities, and smiles at the false and forged pretensions of material things to be the real. We have to invert the teaching of the world and of our senses. My fingers and my eyes and my ears tell me that this gross, material universe about me is the real, and that all beyond it is shadowy and sometimes we think doubtful, or, at any rate, dim and far off. But that is false, and the truth is precisely the other way. The Unseen is the Real, and the Material is the merely Apparent. Behind all visible objects, and giving them all their reality, lies the unchangeable God.
Cultivate the faculty and habit of vigorous faith, if you would walk with God. For the world will put its bandages over your eyes, and try to tempt you to believe that these poor, shabby illusions are the precious things; and we have to shake ourselves free from its harlot kisses and its glozing lies, by very vigorous and continual efforts of the will and of the understanding, if we are to make real to ourselves that which is real, the presence of our God.
Besides this vigorous exercise of the faculty of faith, there is another requisite for a walk with God, closely connected with it, and yet capable of being looked at separately, and that is, that we shall keep up the habit of continual occupation of thought with Him. That is very much an affair of habit with Christian people, and I am afraid that the neglect of it is the habitual practice of the bulk of professing Christians nowadays. It is hard, amidst all our work and thought and joys and sorrows, to keep fresh our consciousness of His presence, and to talk with Him in the midst of the rush of business. But what do we do about our dear ones when we are away from them? The measure of our love of them is accurately represented by the frequency of our remembrances of them. The mother parted from her child, the husband and the wife separated from one another, the lover and the friend, think of each other a thousand times a day. Whenever the spring is taken off, then the natural bent of the inclination and heart assert themselves, and the mind goes back again, as into a sanctuary, into the sweet thought. Is that how we do with God? Do we so walk with Him, as that thought, when released, instinctively sets in that direction? When I take off the break, does my spirit turn to God? If there is no hand at the helm, does the bow always point that way? When the magnet is withdrawn for a moment, does the needle tremble back and settle itself northwards? If we are walking with God, we shall, more times a day than we can count when the evening comes on, have had the thought of Him coming into our hearts ‘like some sweet beguiling melody, so sweet we know not we are listening to it.’ Thus we shall ‘walk with God.’
Then there is another requisite. ‘How can two walk together except they be agreed?’ ‘He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk even as He walked.’ There is no union with God in such communion possible, unless there be a union with Him by conformity of will and submission of effort and aim to His commandments. Well, then, is that life possible for us? Look at this instance before us. We know very little about how much knowledge of God these people in old days had, but, at all events, it was a great deal less than you and I have. Their theology was very different from ours; their religion was absolutely identical with ours. Their faith, which grasped the God revealed in their creed, was the same as our faith, though the creed which their faith grasped was only an outline sketch of yours and mine. But at all times and in all generations, the element and essence of the religious life has been the same-that is, the realising sense of the living divine presence, the effort and aspiration after communion with Him, and the quiet obedience and conformity of the practical life to His will. And so we can reach out our hands across all the centuries to this pre-Noachian, antediluvian patriarch, dim amongst the mists, and feel that he too is our brother.
And he has set us the example that in all conditions of life, and under the most unfavourable circumstances, it is possible to live in this close touch with God. For in his time, not only was there, as I have said, an incomplete and rudimentary knowledge of God, but in his time the earth was filled with violence, and gigantic forms of evil are represented as having dominated mankind. Amidst it all, the Titanic pride, the godlessness, the scorn, the rudeness, and the violence, amidst it all, this one ‘white flower of a blameless life’ managed to find nutriment upon the dunghill, and to blossom fresh and fair there. You and I cannot, whatever may be our hindrances in living a consistent Christian life, have anything like the difficulties that this man had and surmounted. For us all, whatever our conditions, such a life is possible.
And then there is another lesson that he teaches us, viz. that such a life is consistent with the completest discharge of all common duties. The outline, as far as appearance was concerned, of this man’s life was the same as the outline of those of his ancestors and successors. They are all described in the same terms. The formula is the same. Enoch lived, Mahalaleel, and all the rest of the half-unpronounceable names, they lived, they begat their heirs, and sons and daughters, and then they died. And the same formula is used about this man. He walked with God, but it was while treading the common path of secular life that he did so.
He found it possible to live in communion with God, and yet to do all the common things that men did then. Anybody’s house may be a Bethel-a house of God-and anybody’s work may be worship; and wherever we are and whatever we do, it is possible therein to serve God, and there to walk with Him.
2. And now a word about the crown of this life of communion. ‘He was not, for God took him’
‘ He was not .’ As I have said, he disappeared; that was what the world knew. ‘God took him’; that was what God tells the world.
Thus this strange exception to the law of death stood, as I suppose, to the ancient world as doing somewhat the same office for them that the translation of Elijah afterwards partially did for Israel, and that the resurrection of Jesus Christ does completely for us, viz. it brought the future life into the realm of fact, and took it out of the dim region of speculation altogether. He establishes a truth who proves it, and he proves a fact that shows it. A doctrine of a future state is not worth much, but the fact of a future state, which was established by this incident then, and is certified for us all now, by the Christ risen from the dead, is all-important. Our gospel is all built upon facts, and this is the earliest fact in man’s history which made man’s subsistence in other conditions than that of earthly life a certainty.
And then, again, this wonderful exception shows to us, as it did to that ancient world, that the natural end of a religious life is union with God hereafter. It seems to me that the real proofs of a future life are two: one, the fact of Christ’s resurrection, and the other, the fact of our religious experience. For anything looks to me more likely, and less incredible, than that a man who could walk with God should only have a poor earthly life to do it in, and that all these aspirations, these emotions, should be bounded and ended by a trivial thing, that touches only the physical frame. Surely, surely, there is nothing so absurd as to believe that he who can say ‘Thou art my God,’ and who has said it, should ever by anything be brought to cease to say it. Death cannot kill love to God; and the only end of the religious life of earth is its perfecting in heaven. The experiences that we have here, in their loftiness and in their incompleteness, equally witness for us, of the rest and the perfectness that remain for the children of God.
Then, again, this man in his unique experience was, and is, a witness of the fact that death is an excrescence, and results from sin. I suppose that he trod the road which the divine intention had destined to be trodden by all the children of men, if they had not sinned; and that his experience, unique as it is, is a survival, so to speak, of what was meant to be the law for humanity, unless there had intervened the terrible fact of sin and its wages, death. The road had been made, and this one man was allowed to travel along it that we might all learn, by the example of the exception, that the rule under which we live was not the rule that God originally meant for us, and that death has resulted from the fact of transgression. No doubt Enoch had in him the seeds of it, no doubt there were the possibilities of disease and the necessity of death in his physical frame, but God has shown us in that one instance, and in the other of the great prophet’s, how He is not subject to the law that men shall die, although men are subject to it, and that if He will, He can take them all to Himself, as He did take these two, and will take them who, at last, shall not die but be changed.
Let me remind you that this unique and exceptional end of a life of communion may, in its deepest, essential character, be experienced by each of us. There are two passages in the book of Psalms, both of which I regard as allusions to this incident. The one of them is in the forty-ninth Psalm and reads thus: ‘He will deliver my soul from the power of the grave, for He will take me.’ Our version conceals the allusion, by its unfortunate and non-literal rendering ‘receive.’ The same word is employed there as here. Can we fail to see the reference? The Psalmist expects his soul to be ‘delivered from the power of the grave,’ because God takes it.
And again, in the great seventy-third Psalm, which marks perhaps the highwater mark of pre-Christian anticipations of a future state, we read: ‘Thou wilt guide me by Thy counsel, and afterwards take me’ again the same word ‘to glory.’ Here, again, the Psalmist looks back to the unique and exceptional instance, and in the rapture and ecstasy of the faith that has grasped the living God as his portion, says to himself: ‘Though the externals of Enoch’s end and of mine may differ, their substance will be the same, and I, too, shall cease to be seen of men, because God takes me into the secret of His pavilion, by the loving clasp of His lifting hand.’
Enoch was led, if I may say so, round the top of the valley, beyond the head waters of the dark river, and was kept on the high level until he got to the other side. You and I have to go down the hill, out of the sunshine, in among the dank weeds, to stumble over the black rocks, and wade through the deep water; but we shall get over to the same place where he stands, and He that took him round by the top will ‘take’ us through the river; and so shall we ‘ever be with the Lord’
‘Enoch walked with God and he was not; for God took him.’ This verse is like some little spring with trees and flowers on a cliff. The dry genealogical table-and here this bit of human life in it! How unlike the others-they lived and they died ; this man’s life was walking with God and his departure was a fading away, a ceasing to be found here. It is remarkable in how calm a tone the Bible speaks of its supernatural events. We should not have known this to be a miracle but for the Epistle to the Hebrews.
The dim past of these early chapters carries us over many centuries. We know next to nothing about the men, where they lived, how they lived, what thoughts they had, what tongue they spoke. Some people would say that they never lived at all. I believe, and most of you, I suppose, believe that they did. But how little personality we give them! Little as we know of environment and circumstances, we know the main thing, the fact of their having been. Then we are sure that they had sorrow and joy, strife and love, toil and rest, like the rest of us, that whether their days were longer or shorter they were filled much as ours are, that whatever was the pattern into which the quiet threads of their life was woven it was, warp and weft, the same yarn as ours. In broad features every human life is much the same. Widely different as the clothing of these grey fathers in their tents, with their simple contrivances and brief records, is from that of cultivated busy Englishmen to-day, the same human form is beneath both. And further, we know but little as to their religious ideas, how far they were surrounded with miracles, what they knew of God and of His purposes, how they received their knowledge, what served them for a Bible. Of what positive institutions of religion they had we know nothing; whether for them there was sacrifice and a sabbath day, how far the original gospel to Adam was known or remembered or understood by them. All that is perfectly dark to us. But this we know, that those of them who were godly men lived by the same power by which godly men live nowadays. Whatever their creed, their religion was ours. Religion, the bond that unites again the soul to God, has always been the same.
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
took him. See Heb 11:5. Translated without dying: as Elijah was, 2Ki 2:9. Enoch was “the seventh from Adam” (Jud 1:14). He prophesied “by faith”. Therefore Divinely instructed, Rom 10:17.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 9
ENOCH
“Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.”
Gen 5:24
My heart is motivated, driven and governed by four great concerns. Here are four things I want more than anything in this world. I am not an ambitious man. But I am ambitious for these four things. For the attainment of these four things I am prepared, by the grace of God, to sacrifice everything else. I count all other things to be but rubbish by comparison.
1.I want to know Christ (Php 3:10). Yes, I believe that in measure I do know him. God has revealed his grace and glory to me in the Person of his dear Son. Still, I want a growing, spiritual, experimental knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to know all that he has done for me. I want to know him. I want to know him fully.
2.I want to be totally committed to Christ. I want to totally lose my life to Christ and in Christ, so that I can truthfully say with the Apostle Paul, For me to live is Christ. I want to be committed to Christ as he was to the Father, so that my heart says to him in all things, Not my will, thy will be done. It is my continual prayer that God will give me a heart committed to the Lord Jesus Christ. Committed to his will. –Committed to his gospel. –Committed to his people. –Committed to the cause of his glory in this world.
3.I want to be like Christ. My heart longs to be like him, conformed to him, made into this likeness. I want to be like him love, tenderness, and thoughtfulness, in zeal, dedication, and devotion, purity, holiness, and righteousness.
I know these goals are not attainable in this life. Yet, they are the things for which my soul hungers and my heart thirsts. I cannot be satisfied with less. I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus (Php 3:13-14). I shall be satisfied when I awake with Christs likeness (Psa 17:15), but not until then.
4.I want to live in communion with Christ. Like Enoch of old, I want to walk with God (Read Gen 5:21-24). Enoch walked with God. What a statement – Enoch walked with God. This is astounding to me. Enoch walked with God. The text does not say, Enoch thought about God, or Enoch worshipped God, or Enoch served God, or Enoch talked with God, or Enoch talked about God, though he certainly did all those things. The Holy Spirit uses four simple words to describe the outstanding feature of this mans life: Enoch walked with God. In his daily life Enoch walked with God, realizing Gods presence as his living Friend, in whom he confided, by whom he was loved. Enoch walked with God.
Some use Enoch as an example of sinless perfection. Some use him to teach the deeper life doctrine. Others use him to promote self-righteous morality. But the Spirit of God explains that Enochs life was a picture of grace, an example of faith in Christ (Heb 11:5-6). Enoch walked with God(and) he had this testimony, that he pleased God. That is the heart desire of every true believer. We want to walk with God in sweet fellowship and please him in all things. How can this desire be accomplished? How can you and I walk with God and please him? This is the thing we must see, if we are to understand what it is to walk with God and please him. — It was not Enochs conduct that pleased God, but his faith (Heb 11:6). More specifically, it was Christ, the Object of Enochs faith, that pleased God.
What does the Scripture mean
when it says, Enoch walked with God?
How did Enoch walk with God? What does that statement imply? The author of Hebrews gives us some help by telling us that, while Enoch walked with God, he had this testimony, that he pleased God. But how, how did this man please God? What was there about him that pleased the Lord?
Obviously, Enoch did not always please God, nor did he always walk with God. Enoch was a man like us. He was not born a saint. He did not simply decide one day that he would start walking with God. Enoch was a fallen sinner. He too was a son of Adam. Enoch was, like you and me, a fallen, depraved sinner, with a wicked heart, by nature departing from God.
He was born in spiritual death. He went astray from his mothers womb, like all others, as soon as he was born, speaking lies (Psa 58:3). He was a man who needed pardon, cleansing, redemption, atonement, justification, and regeneration, just like us. Before he could please God, his sin had to be removed and righteousness had to be imputed to him. Otherwise, God could never accept him, much less be pleased with him. In order to have these things, Enoch must believe God. He must have faith in Christ. For righteousness comes by faith in Christ unto all and upon all them that believe (Rom 3:22).
It was by faith that Enoch pleased God (Heb 11:6). Enoch was not pleasing to God by virtue of his conduct, his works, his disposition, or his personal character. There was nothing at all remarkable about the man by nature that caused God to look upon him with pleasure. God was pleased with Enoch because Enoch believed God. He believed that which God had spoken. Enochs faith was the same as Abels before him and Noahs after him. The faith by which Enoch walked with God and pleased God was the same faith that the dying thief possessed when he cried, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom (Luk 23:42). Indeed, it is the same faith that Gods elect have today. This is very important. If we would walk with God, we must believe God. Walking with God is neither more nor less that believing God. The only way anyone can walk with God and please him is by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Enoch had experienced a mighty change by the power and grace of God. The Lord God had changed his heart. God changed the bent, bias and direction of his will. This fallen sinner had been given life and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ (Eph 2:1-10). This was a work of grace, without which Enoch could never have walked with God and pleased him. Long before Enoch was translated into glory, he had been translated in his heart and soul. He was delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of Gods dear Son. That which the Holy Spirit commends to us is not Enochs character and conduct, but Enochs faith in Christ, the grace of God upon him. This man, Enoch, believed Gods revelation of himself and his will in Holy Scripture. He believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, the Redeemer God promised in type and prophecy. He believed Gods promise of immortality and eternal life in Christ (Jud 1:14-15). Enoch believed that God is and that he is the Rewarder of them that diligently seek him (Heb 11:5-6).
When we are told that Enoch walked with God and that he pleased him, the Scriptures mean for us to understand that Enoch believed God. Be sure you understand this – Nothing pleases God except his Son. The only way you and I can walk with God and be please to him is by faith in his dear Son, the Lord Jesus Christ (Joh 14:6; 1Pe 2:4-5). This is what it is to live in the Spirit (Rom 8:1-9). This is what it is to walk in the Spirit (Gal 5:16).
The highest measure of sanctification is exactly the same as the earliest beginnings of salvation. It is believing God. To grow in grace is to grow in faith. The strongest believer lives exactly as the weakest babe in Christ — by faith. We stand before God by faith. We grow strong only as we know ourselves to be weak and lay hold on Christs strength by faith. Having begun in the Spirit, we are not then made perfect by the works of the flesh. We do not begin and go a certain distance by faith in Christ, and then finish our course, making up the difference by the works of the law. Salvation is by grace alone. Our standing before God is by grace alone. Our acceptance with God is by grace alone. To walk with God is to continue as we begun — by faith (Col 2:6-7).
The believers life is a life of faith. I stress this point because it needs stressing. Enoch pleased God because he believed God. He walked with God by faith. We are sometimes tempted to strive after some imaginary higher ground or deeper life, by looking to our feelings, or our works, instead of looking to Christ alone. That is wrong. Any doctrine, any religion, any sermon that leaves you looking to yourself, that turns your eyes away from Christ is evil. We are not to look to our feelings, but to Christ. We are not to look to our works, but to Christ. We are not even to look to the image of Christ created in us by the Holy Spirit, but to Christ alone. Jesus Christ alone is our acceptance with God. By faith Enoch walked with God. By faith Enoch pleased God. Let us follow his example.
This mans walking with God by faith implies many things. When I read that Enoch walked with God and that he pleased God, my heart cries out, Thats what I want as I make my pilgrimage through this world – I want to walk with God and please him in this world. What is it to walk with God? To walk with God is to live in the realization of his presence (Php 4:4-5). To walk with God is to enjoy familiar communion and fellowship with him (1Th 5:16-18). To pray without ceasing is to live in communion with God, ever trusting Christ, seeking his will and his glory, submitting to his providence (Pro 3:5-6).
The term walked implies perseverance and continuance. Enoch persevered in faith. He walked with God for three hundred years. His religion was not in spurts. His communion with God was steady and constant. He walked with God, steadily, for three hundred years.
The phrase walked with God also implies progress. Enochs faith was not stagnant, but progressive. At the end of three hundred years he stood upon the same ground, was built upon the same foundation, and was in the same company as in the beginning. But he was not in the same place. And he was not the same man. Enoch went forward in faith. At the end of his days he knew more, enjoyed more, loved more, did more, believed more, received more, and gave more than in the beginning of his walk with God. A believer walks with God in this world like a little child walks through the woods with its father. .It is a loving walk, a walk of confidence and trust, an instructive walk, a happy walk, and a safe walk.
What were the circumstances
In which Enoch walked with God?
We all have a tendency a tendency to think, Enoch lived in a different time. The world was different then. It was relatively easy for a man to walk with God in those days. Such thinking is wrong. The details of Enochs life are sketchy. We do not know much about him. Still, we can be sure that the life of faith was not easier then than now. Enoch lived in the most trying, most stressful, most difficult times the world has ever known. He lived in those days just before the flood. In those dark, dark days, when very few people did, Enoch walked with God.
He was a public man, with great responsibilities. This patriarch was the head of a large family. As such, he was a prophet, priest, and king in his household. He had public cares and responsibilities as a public leader. And Enoch had his trials. He bore the brunt of opposition from powerful men who hated the way of faith, who hated God and his truth. We know this is so because the Scriptures tell us plainly that all who live godly in this world shall suffer persecution. Yet, Enoch walked with God for three hundred years.
He was also a family man. Like many today, he had the responsibilities of providing for, caring for, disciplining and educating a large family. He had a wife and many children. Yet, Enoch walked with God.
He lived in a terribly wicked, degenerate society. In those days, men commonly lived to be more than eight hundred years old. Their long lives gave them opportunity to invent many forms of evil. Sin covered the earth. The sons of God and the daughters of men made unholy alliances. There were few who believed God. Scoffers, mockers, unbelievers and infidels were abundant. The few who did profess to believe God compromised every principle and tried, as much as possible, to make a marriage of righteousness and unrighteousness. Yet, Enoch walked with God.
Still there is more. — Enoch faithfully bore witness to Christ in the midst of that wicked generation (Jud 1:14-15). He delivered his testimony in spite of opposition. He stood his ground firmly against the tide of blasphemy. The more men spoke against God, his Son and his truth, the more Enoch spoke for his Redeemer. Enoch walked with God. He was a man of faith, and therefore a man of conviction, purpose, boldness, and courage. In the midst of greater evil, greater opposition and greater trials than we can imagine, If this man could, by the grace of God, walk with God in his day, then you and I, who are saved by the same grace, washed in the same precious blood, and sanctified by the same Spirit, can walk with God today.
What was the result
of Enochs walking with God?
Enoch left here at a comparatively young age. Compared to others in his day, he was just a young man, in the prime of life, when God took him. He was only three hundred and sixty-five years old. He seems to have finished his course early. It appears that it did not take this man, walking with God, very long to do all that God had for him to do. Be that as it may, here are three things which are clear results of Enochs walking with God.
1.Because he walked with God, Enoch escaped death. Let us walk with God by faith, with our hearts set upon Christ, and we too shall escape death (Joh 11:25; Rev 20:6). Soon we too shall be translated to glory (2Co 5:1-9; Col 3:1-4).
Of course, everyone knows that believers die physically, just as unbelievers do. Yet, the Son of God declares plainly that those who trust him shall never die. The word death, as it relates to believers is used only to accommodate our present weakness and lack of understanding. The fact is, the death of the body for the child of God is not death at all, but the beginning of life!
2.Because he walked with God, Enoch was greatly missed. When Enoch was gone people began to look for him, but he was not found. When men and women like Enoch, people who walk with God, are taken from us, they are missed.
3.Because he walked with God, when Bro. Enoch went to glory, he left a testimony behind him. Before he was translated he had this testimony, that he pleased God. Everyone who knew Enoch knew about his God, his righteous judgment and his salvation in Christ.
Enochs translation is a warning to all men and women. Soon you will be swept out of this world, without warning, and ushered into eternity to meet the holy Lord God in judgment. Enochs translation to glory is also a testimony of comfort to encourage Gods pilgrims in this world. God is a Rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
Can you hear Enochs voice. He is saying to every child of God in this world, Press on, weary pilgrims, press on. Walk with God by faith. There is a kingdom prepared for you, where there is no more sorrow, no more weeping, no more pain, and no more death. There is a Redeemer waiting to embrace you. There is a God waiting to crown you. There are saints and angels waiting to welcome you. There is a Fountain to refresh you forever, a Tree to feed you forever, a Light to lighten you forever. Press on. Walk with God. Make your steps lively, ever Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith.
What are we to learn from this
man, Enoch, who walked with God?
1.The only way any sinner can ever be accepted with God is in Christ. We must be in Christ by faith, or we can never please God. But, being in Christ, all who are in him always please God in him.
Nearer, so very near to God, Nearer I cannot be,
For in the Person of His Son I am as near as He.
With His spotless garments on I am as holy as Gods Son.
2.God sometimes makes great differences in his providence toward his beloved children. Both Abel and Enoch walked with God and pleased God. Both were loved, chosen of God, redeemed by the blood of Christ and saved by his grace, but Abel was murdered and Enoch was translated. Today both are seated around the throne in the presence of Christ.
3.That which God did for Enoch he will do for all who walk with him by faith in Christ (1Co 15:51-58). Some saints must die, in a physical sense, and be resurrected. Some saints will be taken alive into glory. But all will be translated into the glorious image of Christ.
4.Only those who walk with God in this world by faith will live with God in that glorious eternal world called Heaven. Let us then walk with God by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Fuente: Discovering Christ In Selected Books of the Bible
Walking with God
Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.Gen 5:24.
How strange it is, if you are reading the Bible from the beginning, to come to this text! Here was a man in the very childhood of the world, who seemed distinguished from those who lived around him and from those who came after him, because he walked with God. What does it mean? The words which would explain it are so simple, and the thoughts which they contain are so sublime, that one almost hesitates to speak about it. Yet we might shape it perhaps, at any rate in outline, according to our own experience, and we might say, this primitive man, not seeing or touching God any more than we do, yet realized habitually His existence; recognized His presenceHis close presencewith Him every day; as one would pass many days in the society of some dear friend, so he passed his days in the society of God, but with this beautiful difference: we cannot spend many consecutive days with our dearest friends; some of them we are obliged to leave, others we are obliged to lose; with God the companionship need not be intermitted. It was not necessary to leave Him, and the man therefore kept up a companionship unbroken. When he woke from sleep in the morning, the first thought that rushed into his mind would be:
Still, still with Thee,
When purple morning breaketh,
When the bird waketh,
And the shadows flee.
And as he went about his businessthe business of the herd, or of the ploughing, or the ordering of his householdthe sweet consciousness of that companionship might be submerged beneath the surface for a little, but surely to emerge again directly the occasion was presented. The occupations of the day did not disturb the reality of the life, any more than business men, who love their wives and children, feel that their love is in the least affected because they have to go into the city in the morning, and to be plunged into the toil and the cares of the days business. Quite the contrary, it is that love which animates their toil and keeps them close to the task, and it is the thought of coming home in the evening, the welcome of the wife and the smiles of the children, which presents itself to them as the reward of their labour. Just so, when the pressure relaxed, Enoch would exclaim: Return unto thy rest, O my Soul; resume thine intercourse with thy Beloved. We may fancy also that he talked with God, talked sometimes aloud, talked also when in the presence of others it was necessary to talk in silence. Sometimes his words were uttered in the presence of God, as in the presence of a mighty Potentate, and words would come slowly, with trembling and fearfulness. But much oftener he would talk to God familiarly, and in a childlike way; would tell Him of the cares and anxieties of the day; would ask his God to come and share his deepest joys; and would not hesitate to ask whatever he wanted, keeping up an hourly conversation with Him. This walk with God would be the dominating fact of the mans life: the foundation on which the palace of life would be built: the ground harmony from which the variations of his music would be developed. And such a walk with God, maintained for some years, would render it inapplicable to speak of death in connexion with the man; and, when death came, it would be necessary to use another phrase altogether, and to say, He was not; for God took him.
That we should establish ourselves in a sense of Gods Presence, by continually conversing with Him. That it was a shameful thing to quit His conversation to think of trifles and fooleries.1 [Note: Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God, 6.]
That in order to form a habit of conversing with God continually, and referring all we do to Him, we must at first apply to Him with some diligence: but that after a little care we should find His love inwardly excite us to it without any difficulty.2 [Note: Ibid. 10.]
His priest am I, before Him day and night,
Within His holy place;
And death, and life, and all things dark and bright,
I spread before His Face.
Rejoicing with His joy, yet ever still,
For silence is my song;
My work to bend beneath His blessed will,
All day, and all night long
For ever holding with Him converse sweet,
Yet speechless, for my gladness is complete.1 [Note: Gerhardt Tersteegen, trans. by Frances Bevan.]
I
Enoch walked with God
The phrase walking with God is used continually throughout the Old Testament to characterize a religious life. In the brief record of Enochs life in Gen 5:22-24 it is mentioned twice that he walked with God. It was evidently the fact which was most noticeable in him, and it passed down to posterity as his distinguishing mark. Again in Gen 6:9 the same statement is made about Noah, the preacher of righteousness before the Flood. In Genesis 17 a slightly different expression is used of Abraham: God said to him, Walk before me, and be thou perfect, and Abraham afterwards, in chapter 24, speaks of God as The Lord before whom I walk. This expression about Abraham is taken up again in the prayer of Hezekiah: Remember, O Lord, he says, how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart. And one of the Psalmists in the 111th Psalm declares his intention of walking before the Lord in the land of the Irving. In the 16th Psalm, again, the same thought is stated in a different way: I have set the Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. In the Prophet Micah, this Walking with God is mentioned as one of three things that God requires of man: To do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God. And then, in the last book of the Old Testament, we are told about Levi that he walked with God in peace and uprightness, and turned many away from their iniquity (Mal 2:6).
In the New Testament we learn that we are to walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. We are to walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called. We are to walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing. We are to walk circumspectly. We are to walk in the light. We are to walk by faith.
What are we to understand, then, when we are told that Enoch walked with God?
1. First of all it is implied that God is a person as Enoch is a person. This twofold conception is necessary to any adequate idea of religion. There is a theory which makes man the only active spirit in religion; all religion is but mans reflection upon the world, and upon his own nature. Now, that theory is in truth a denial of religion. To negate God, to blot out the Divine Personality, is to undermine religion. Some reverence in face of the mysterious forces of the world, and the majesty of the universe, some sort of naturalistic piety, there might be, but it would fall short altogether of what is the very essence of religion. That essence is communion and intercourse between personsthe person man and the Person God. Communion with a universe depersonalized does not yield religion, and it leaves man in that most terrible lonelinessthe embodiment of a great need for which there is no satisfaction, and his life one great agonizing cry to which there is no response.
Herbert Spencers suggestion that God may be superpersonal, some sort of Being other and higher than personal, does not serve us at all. If God is superpersonal, He is nothing to us, for the highest being we can conceive is conceived in the terms of personality. We cannot think outside ourselves, and an absolutely inconceivable God is to us no God. The basis of religion rests on this as one of its two fundamental convictionsthat there resides in this universe the eternal self-conscious Spirit who made it, who goes on making it, and who reveals Himself to man. Religious truth is not the product of the action of mans mind upon a passive universe. Something is given to mangiven by One who knows that He gives; a communication is made by the eternal self-conscious Spirit to the human spirit.1 [Note: T. R. Williams.]
2. To walk with God, in the next place, implies harmony. The carnal man is enmity against God, and there must first be reconciliation. How can two walk together, except they be agreed? Arnos asked that question, and there is logic in that little word can. An appeal is it to the nature of things, and the nature of things is the law of God. Harmony of sound is music. Harmony of word to thought is poetry. Harmony of colour is beauty. The most beautiful thing in nature is the rainbow; God blends the colours. Life, the philosophers are telling us, is correspondence with environment. In disease or death something is thrown out of correspondence. The deaf man is thrown out of correspondence with the world of sound; the blind man with the world of beauty. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. Co-relation of part with part is intimate, and any interference means friction. The perfect workmanship is frictionless. Sin is disagreement, fermentation, rebellion, alienation, estrangement, mutiny, discordthe one all-pervading discord of the universe.
The great dramatist, in the Tempest, makes Ferdinand and Miranda fall in love at first meeting. A glance, he says, and they changed eyes. The man who walks with God is he who has changed eyes with God. He sees as God sees. There is not an honest student of the Bible anywhere, says Joseph Cook, who is not willing to admit that salvation is harmony with Godloving what God loves, and hating what God hates.
Culture is pained by contact with coarseness. The eye of the artist is troubled with a false blending of colour. The ear of the musician is tortured with dissonance. Handel tells us that a flatness felled him like a blow. And a high, lofty moral nature is wounded by the worlds sin and shame, and shrinks with grief at its beholding. Love and hate can never be at peace. Corruption and cleanliness must necessarily quarrel. This is a law woven into the nature of things. Until a man is washed by the blood of Jesus from the guilt of sin and the power of sin and the love of sin, he cannot be at peace in the presence of infinite holiness.1 [Note: M. J. MLeod.]
3. But, again, to walk with God is to keep the commandments of God. For what supremely attracts the Divine approbation is not greatness, but goodness, moral goodness. Enoch had neither worldly wealth, nor grandeur, nor power. He was not famed for any of these. His excellency in the sight of God, and what distinguished him from his contemporaries, was his personal purity. Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God. That is the condition of the beatific vision. Only the pure in heart can see God, and only in the degree in which they are pure. The pure in heart behold Him here. The impure could not see Him even therethe vision of God, the sight of the King in His beauty, and of the land that is very far off, is vouchsafed not to science but to sanctity, not to talent but to love. In the spiritual world a man is measured, not by his gifts but by his graces, not by his intellect but by his likeness to God. God does not reason or remember, perhaps, just as we do, but He loves. He cannot believe, for He fills immensity; He cannot hope, for He inhabits eternity; but He can love.
All the world praises the clever men; the talented originators, the ingenious inventors. They never lack crowns and rewards. But is there not something to be said for the men and women who have simply purity and elevation of character? The man who sends a current of pure air or purifying example through the worlds work-field is at least as praiseworthy as the man who supplies its machinery. Some men serve the world by what they are rather than by what they do. Economically, they are cyphers, but as sweeteners of the worlds life they are worth more than gold. I have known a few men and women who have done more to make me believe in God and goodness than all the books I ever read. Their names never get into the newspapers, but their sanctity pervades the air like a perfume from the heavenly fields. When they die, they leave no fortune or triumphant record of startling deeds; they leave only the sweet memory of what they were. We felt their healing touch as they passed by, and we are far better men for having known them. And their epitaph is fitly written in such words as these: He walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.1 [Note: J. G. Greenhough.]
4. Once more, to walk with God means progress. Not only does it mean that progress is being made. That is true. For in the spiritual life as in all life, there is no standing still. But it also signifies that some maturity of religious consciousness has been attained. There is a sense of Divine companionship, of harmony with the higher will; there is a conquest of the life of sense, an at-home-ness in the spiritual life.
The conquest of the spiritual over the natural life is not unlike the advancing light of the morning sun. At Grindelwald I remember watching it. At first it only just tipped the very highest of the mountain peaks; gradually the whole peak was in the brilliant light, all the valley still in shadow. But the peak in the light was guarantee that the shadow was doomed. Watch it: inch by inch the shadow is chased down the hill until the lowliest flower in the valley stands bright in the victory of day. At first the sense of God illumines only our best momentsthose whitest and highest parts of our life, those mountains of transfiguration where we do not build tabernacles nor remain. Yes, Gods light is there, but life is mostly valley still in the shadow. Let us take heart. Let us keep our eye on those shining heights. All the shadows are doomed; it is in the nature of that sun to conquer. He which began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ (Php 1:6).1 [Note: T. R. Williams.]
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by lifes unresting sea!2 [Note: Oliver Wendell Holmes.]
5. And, last of all, to walk with God means rest. For harmony comes through obedience, and obedience always gives rest. There is harmony in music because in music there is no self-will. Music is built on law. Man did not make this law; he has simply discovered it. If he breaks it the music ceases. Each Haydn and Handel is as much bound by it as each amateur. The same is true of mans relation to his every art. Find out its principles, and all the genius of that art is yours. But disobey its principles; try to excel in any other way than by conformity to its nature, and all that art contends against you, and balks you at every step. We cannot change ocean current or tide, but we can build our ship and stretch our sail, and by adapting us to wind and wave we can gain any Liverpool or Queenstown. We cannot conquer lightning. Obedience pulls the sting out of the lightning and makes it harmless. Fire is a bad master, but a good servant. So is it in the spiritual life. If we obey the law of God we have rest and peace in the beloved. He who is in love with his neighbour, filling the sphere in which God has placed him, has heaven in his heart already. Only through blue in the eye, scientists tell us, can blue out of the eye be seen. Only through C in the ear can C out of the ear be heard. Jerusalem which is above is recognized because that City has already descended from God.
After a hard days work Bengel retired to rest. Some one heard his prayer: Blessed Lord, we are on the same good old terms to-night. Then the good man slept. His life was keyed to the divine life. His heart kept time to the pulse of God. He had peace.1 [Note: M. J. MLeod.]
II
Enoch was not
He was not; for God took him; that is, as the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews has it, he was not found. That expression he was not found seems to suggest that he was missed and sought for. Such a man would be missed. No doubt the men of that age knew him well. He was a preacher of righteousness, and had often warned them of a judgment to come. With his departure there was a palpable blank. He was not found, because God had translated him.
1. Enoch would be missed because his life was a good life. Though a life so full of God, though so constant and so close in the most sacred of communions, yet neither monks life nor hermits life was Enochs. It was a life in all its outward circumstances as ours is, or may be, or should be. It was a life, not in the wilderness in a contemplative solitude, but in the thick and throng of society. Nor was it the select society of a religious community apart from worldly cares and common relationships; it was a life domestic, not monasticwe read of his son Methuselah; and it was after the birth of his son that he walked these noted three hundred years with God. Thus, as regards his own household, this distinguished piety flourished in plain, natural, domestic life. There is nothing exceptional, nothing exotic about it; not a growth within the shelter of costly walls, under fostering heat, with dainty soil and a covering of glass; it was in the open and common air of the world. Indeed, so far from favouring, circumstances were against him. Enochs age was a deeply corrupt age. It was a God and eternity forgetting world that the patriarch lived in. But he was no silent, unremonstrating witness of the worlds corruption and carelessness. He gave his living and lifelong example; and, moreover, he spoke out. The Spirit of that God with whom he walked inspired his speech, and gave his words a heavenly sanction, so that his warnings partook of the nature of prophecy. Like Noah, Enoch was a preacher of righteousness and herald of judgment: Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him (Jud 1:14-15).
If I should die to-night,
My friends would call to mind, with loving thought,
Some kindly deed the icy hand had wrought,
Some gentle word the frozen lips had said:
Errands on which the willing feet had sped
The memory of my selfishness and pride,
My hasty words, would all be put aside,
And so I should be mourned to-night.
Oh, friends, I pray to-night,
Keep not your kisses for my dead, cold brow.
The way is lonely; let me feel them now.
Think gently of me; I am travel worn;
My faltering feet are pierced with many a thorn.
Forgive! O hearts estranged, forgive, I plead!
When dreamless rest is mine, I shall not need
The tenderness for which I long to-night.1 [Note: Robert C. V. Meyers.]
2. But this grand revelation did not disclose itself fully and clearly until they lost Enoch. The full significance of a noble life is scarcely ever, perhaps never, realized until we have lost it. Whence hath this man these mighty works? This carpenter of Nazareth we know; his brothers and sisters live next door to us. Ay, He was too near them. They had not yet seen the majesty and the grandeur of Him, and even to His disciples He said, It is expedient for you that I go away. As who should say, I am too near to you now. I must get further away before you can understand me, and receive the mighty Spirit that shall reveal all things to you. The prophet is only half understood as we rub shoulder to shoulder with him. He talks to us as one of ourselves, and we do not know the mighty spirit that speaks to us and inspires us until he has passed away to the glorious crown of the mighty. And so God glorifies Himself in His servants by their death as well as by their life. It is for Him to choose. It is for Him to determine by which we shall glorify His name the more. For us the one purpose, the one ambition should be, to leave the strongest, deepest impression we can upon the world, to leave it the grandest inspiration possible. If that can be done best by our life, then God grant that we may live. If it can be done best by our death, then death were glorious.
III
For God took him
God took him. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, following the translation of the Septuagint, it is said, Before his translation he had witness borne to him that he had pleased God well. Does not the writer here imply that God took him, because He was well pleased with him?
A little girl was once talking with another little girl about Enoch. The second little girl had never heard of him, and so the first, who was rich in Bible stories, told her by her mother, made up a version of the story of Enoch which has a very beautiful suggestion in it. Said the little girl to her friend, God was accustomed to take walks with Enoch, and one day they went further than usual, and God said, Enoch, you are a long way from home; better come in and stay with Me; so he went, and has stayed ever since.
Came the relief. What, Sentry, ho!
How passed the night through thy long waking?
Cold, cheerless, dark,as may befit
The hour before the dawn is breaking.
No sight? no sound? No; nothing save
The plover from the marshes calling,
And in yon western sky, about
An hour ago, a star was falling.
A star? Theres nothing strange in that.
No, nothing; but above the thicket
Somehow it seemed to me that God
Somewhere had just relieved a picket.1 [Note: Bret Harte.]
God took him means Victory. This is the thought which persists in ones mind after one looks at the picture of Enoch. Remembering the context, and how the biography of Enoch stands out in unique grandeur amongst those of the other men who died, we cannot miss the purpose of the sacred writer. We may say that the Old Testament saints met death with grim resignation, but we cannot say with hope. The desire of escaping death, or overleaping Sheol, is constantly re-echoed by the Psalmists. Here we have a foreshadowing of that complete victory which can only be won in Christ.
(1) Now, we know that for us death is inevitable. Christ has not taken away death, but He has passed through it.
Christ leads me through no darker rooms
Than He went through before;
He that into Gods kingdom comes
Must enter by this door.2 [Note: Richard Baxter.]
(2) But Christ has conquered the power of death by taking away its sting. St. Paul says, The sting of death is sin but thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1Co 15:56-57).
(3) And we must never forget the principle which these words of St. Paul teach usour share in the conquest. Christ has taken away the sting of death. God will give us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us learn our lesson from Enoch: he began his walk with God on earth. By faith Enoch was translated.
I do not know to what extent The Pilgrims Progress is read at the present time, but I never return to it without wonder at the genius and insight which it displays. I should be delighted to quote the whole of its wonderful closing scenes, but those who are familiar with them will be grateful to me for two paragraphs which I quote, especially for the last sentence, with its very direct bearing on the value and power of faith in the last crisis, and because of their reference to the subject of this chapter.
Now I further saw, that betwixt them and the Gate was a River, but there was no Bridge to go over; the River was very deep; at the sight therefore of this River the Pilgrims were much stunned, but the men that went with them, said, You must go through, or you cannot come at the Gate.
The Pilgrims then began to enquire if there was no other way to the Gate; to which they answered Yes, but there hath not any save two, to wit, Enoch and Elijah, been permitted to tread that path, since the foundation of the World, nor shall, until the last Trumpet shall sound. The Pilgrims then, especially Christian, began to despond in their mind, and looked this way and that, but no way could be found by them, by which they might escape the River. Then they asked the men if the waters were all of a depth? they said No; yet they could not help them in that case; for, said they, You shall find it deeper, or shallower, as you believe in the King of the place.1 [Note: A. S. Peake, The Heroes and Martyrs of Faith, 45.]
Death, thou wast once an uncouth hideous thing,
Nothing but bones,
The sad effect of sadder grones:
Thy mouth was open, but thou couldst not sing.
For we considerd thee as at some six
Or ten years hence,
After the losse of life and sense;
Flesh being turnd to dust, and bones to sticks.
We lookt on this side of thee, shooting short,
Where we did finde
The shells of fledge-souls left behinde;
Dry dust, which sheds no tears, but may extort.
But since our Saviours death did put some bloud
Into thy face,
Thou art grown fair and full of grace,
Much in request, much sought for, as a good.
For we do now behold thee gay and glad,
As at dooms-day,
When souls shall wear their new aray,
And all thy bones with beautie shall be clad.
Therefore we can go die as sleep, and trust
Half that we have
Unto an honest faithfull grave,
Making our pillows either down or dust.1 [Note: George Herbert.]
Literature
Banks (L. A.), The Great Saints of the Bible, 21.
Barton (G. A.), The Roots of Christian Teaching, 88.
Burrell (D. J.), The Religion of the Future, 137.
Davies (J.), The Kingdom without Observation, 172.
Greenhough (J. G.), Old Pictures in Modern Frames, 1.
Greer (D. H.), From Things to God, 123.
Horton (R. F.), Lyndhurst Road Pulpit, 51.
Jenkins (E. E.), Sermons, 249.
Lilley (J. P.), The Pathway of Light, 19.
Lonsdale (J.), Sermons, 135.
McLeod (M. J.), Heavenly Harmonies, 9.
Morris (A. J.), The Open Secret, 162.
Myres (W. M.), Fragments that remain, 94.
Oosterzee (J. J. van), The Year of Salvation, i. 416.
Pearce (J.), Life on the Heights, 9.
Price (A. C.), Fifty Sermons, i. 81; x. 65.
Purves (G. T.), Faith and Life, 215.
Raleigh (A.), The Way to the City, 408.
Roberts (E.), in The Peoples Pulpit, ii. No. 43.
Ryle (J. C.), The Christian Race, 243.
Smellie (A.), In the Secret Place, 4.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xiii. No. 1307.
Thomas (J.), Myrtle Street Pulpit, iv. 35.
Christian World Pulpit, xxxix. 139 (Goadby); xl. 356 (White); lii. 328 (Stalker); lxxi. 97 (Jowett).
Expositor, 2nd Ser., vii. 321 (Cox).
The Rainbow
I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.Gen 9:13.
The Flood was a judgment. The record of it is written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. When sin reaches a certain point, it demands the interposition of God. It is so in individual life. God is provoked every day. He is long-suffering and of great pity. He gives a thousand chances. He calls and calls again. He reproves gently. He rebukes sternly. He chastens tenderly. He smites severely. Every sinful career is marked by such gradations of discipline. At last the cup is full. Long trifled with, God is not mocked; and he who would not have Him for his Father must at last know Him as his Judge. It is so with individual lives, and it is so with the life of communities, and of the world.
But the record of judgment passes into a record of mercy. Like all Gods judgments, it was tempered with mercy. Noah builded an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt-offerings on the altar, then the Lord smelled a sweet savour, and said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for mans sake; for the imagination of mans heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. And therefore God formed a covenant with Noah, making the rainbow the visible sign of it: And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud, and I will remember my covenant which is between me and you and every living thing of all flesh.
Still young and fine! but what is still in view
We slight as old and soild, though fresh and new.
How bright wert thou, when Shems admiring eye
Thy burnisht, flaming Arch did first descry!
When Terah, Nahor, Haran, Abram, Lot,
The youthful worlds gray fathers in one knot,
Did with intentive looks watch every hour
For thy new light, and trembled at each shower!
When thou dost shine darkness looks white and fair,
Storms turn to Musick, clouds to smiles and air,
Rain gently spends his honey-drops, and pours
Balm on the cleft earth, milk on grass and flowers.
Bright pledge of peace and sun-shine! the sure tye
Of thy Lords hand, the object of His eye!
When I behold thee, though my light be dim,
Distant, and low, I can in thine see Him,
Who looks upon thee from His glorious throne,
And mindes the Covenant twixt All and One.1 [Note: Henry Vaughan.]
I
The Rainbow
1. What is it that makes the rainbow? You must have a cloud or rain, and you must have light. Now, every drop of rain is a little prism. The prism divides the pure ray of light into its several parts. You know that if you mix all the colours together you get what we call white. And if you were to mix together all the colours that are in the rainbow, that is to reunite them, so that they blended together perfectly, you would have the pure ray of light. All those hues are only different parts of the pure white ray. And so whenever you see one of those colours appear through the prism, you may depend upon it, it is because the prism has divided the pure ray of light, and has let you have only a portion of it.
The rainbow does in another way what the flower does in the garden. It is another way, but with a similar result. You have a beautiful rose, it may be, in your garden; how charming it is in scent and colour! Well, what does that rose do? It takes in the light of the sun. Yes, but not all of it: it takes certain hues of that light; and what it does not take in, it gives back again. Now that which makes it beautiful is not what it takes in, but what it reflects back again. So that the flower is beautiful because it is not selfish enough to take to itself all the light of the sun that descends upon it. The prism is in that respect even more self-denying than the flower, because it does not take any colour to itself, but sends all the colours forth at different angles; and of these one colour or more reaches your eye.1 [Note: D. Davies.]
I find the explanations of science very interesting, and I do not find, that they necessarily destroy the realities of faith. My rainbow is not less beautiful to me when I have learned how it is formed, nor need it tell me less of God. May it not indeed tell me more? Thomas Hoods lines
I remember, I remember
The fir trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky;
It was a childish ignorance,
But now tis little joy
To know Im farther off from heaven
Than when I was a boy,
have a pathos which we all feel, and yet may we not urge that they are based on a misconception? Do not I now know heaven to be nearer, not farther off, than I thought it was when a boy? Surely it is now nearer to me than the fir-tops!
I grieve not that ripe Knowledge takes away
The charm that Nature to my childhood wore,
For, with that insight, cometh, day by day,
A greater bliss than wonder was before.2 [Note: A. J. Bamford.]
2. The business of science is to observe and to experiment, to understand and to explain, not to go into raptures; and she finds matter to observe in the clods as in the clouds, in the freckled skin of a toad as in the cheek of the fairest of Eves daughters. She ignores my feeling of the beauty of the rainbow. To her the purest blues and the softest rose-tints are simply examples of decomposed light, incomplete light. It is the colourlesscontaining all colourthat is complete, the sunlight that is ever and everywhere streaming upon and into our life. And may I not welcome this fact and gather comfort from it? So gracious has God ever been that I will not forthwith assume that He could not appoint as His token what may, in a sense, be termed imperfect. He manifests Himself in ways adapted to our receptive powers, and if our attention is more readily arrested by the more exceptional than by the more usual, He may graciously make the more exceptional His sign. But how comfortable a thought that it is the imperfect that is exceptional and the complete that is common! The decomposed light is seen under certain special conditions; the perfect light is ever being poured upon our daily tasks.
Quite recently I happened to pass through one of the most crowded parts of London, when, of a sudden, a rainbow of wondrously intense colour and of unusually perfect form became visible, and changed the whole prosaic scene. It was marvellous to see little knots of busy people, their eager movement arrested, their worldly preoccupations forgotten for the moment, standing in admiration before the gracious apparition. The rainbow lingered but for a brief space, and then slowly faded away. But it remained long enough to tinge with a Divine splendour the homely face of the city, to cheer many a heart with a vision of rare beauty, nay, to create the thought that God does not abandon any part of His world, or wholly sever the bonds of love that link Him to His human children.1 [Note: Morris Joseph.]
Poor Thomas Carlyle, dyspeptic and morose, once looked up at the stars and said, with a growl, It is a sad sight! But a little girl looked up at the same sight and said, Mamma, if the wrong side of heaven is so fine, how very beautiful the right side must be!2 [Note: L. A. Banks.]
3. The rainbow is chiefly suggestive of thoughts either (1) of mystery or (2) of joy and sorrow.
(1) Mystery.There is no more striking illustration of the vast difference between the religion of the Bible and that of the ancient pagan world than is afforded by their respective explanations of the rainbow. A phenomenon so remarkable would naturally excite the wonder and curiosity of primeval man. Its mystic beauty, the rarity of its appearance, the fact that it had the heavens for its scene, almost inevitably invested it with a supernatural significance. The old mythology, as we know, discerned a god in every wonder of Nature; and therefore it is not surprising to find that for the ancient Greeks the rainbow was the visible representative of a golden-winged maiden who attended the Lord and Mistress of Heaven, and carried their messages to mortals. According to one account, Iris is actually changed into the beautiful rainbow as a reward for her services; according to another, the rainbow is but the glittering ladder by which she descends from the sky to do her errands on earth. Now, contrast this myth, graceful, yet lacking the true religious spirit, with the interpretation of the rainbow given in Genesis. Here the phenomenon is made to tell a story of the Divine love for all the worlda story which breathes comfort into every heart that opens to receive its message.
Rude and distant tribes agree in the conception of the Rainbow as a living monster. A New Zealand myth, describing the battle of the Tempest against the Forest, tells how the Rainbow arose and placed his mouth close to Tane-ma-huta, the Father of Trees, and continued to assault him till his trunk was snapt in two, and his broken branches strewed the ground. It is not only in mere nature-myth like this, but in actual awe-struck belief and terror, that the idea of the live Rainbow is worked out. The Karens of Burma say it is a spirit or demon. The Rainbow can devour men. When it devours a person, he dies a sudden or violent death. All persons that die badly, by falls, by drowning, or by wild beasts, die because the Rainbow has devoured their ka-la, or spirit. On devouring persons it becomes thirsty and comes down to drink, when it is seen in the sky drinking water. Therefore when people see the Rainbow, they say, The Rainbow has come to drink water: look out, some one or other will die violently by an evil death. If children are playing, their parents will say to them, The Rainbow has come down to drink: play no more, lest some accident should happen to you. And after the Rainbow has been seen, if any fatal accident happens to any one, it is said the Rainbow has devoured him. The Zulu ideas correspond in a curious way with these. The Rainbow lives with a snake, that is, where it is there is also a snake; or it is like a sheep, and dwells in a pool. When it touches the earth, it is drinking at a pool. Men are afraid to wash in a large pool; they say there is a Rainbow in it, and if a man goes in, it catches and eats him. The Rainbow, coming out of a river or pool, and resting on the ground, poisons men whom it meets, affecting them with eruptions. Men say, The Rainbow is disease. If it rests on a man, something will happen to him. Lastly, in Dahome, Danh the Heavenly Snake, which makes the Popo beads and confers wealth on man, is the Rainbow.1 [Note: E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 293.]
Suddenly
The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky
Received at once the full fruition
Of the moons consummate apparition.
The black cloud-barricade was riven,
Ruined beneath her feet, and driven
Deep in the West; while, bare and breathless,
North and South and East lay ready
For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless,
Sprang across them and stood steady.
Twas a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect,
From heaven to heaven extending, perfect
As the mother-moons self, full in face.
It rose, distinctly at the base
With its seven proper colours chorded,
Which still, in the rising, were compressed,
Until at last they coalesced,
And supreme the spectral creature lorded
In a triumph of whitest white,
Above which intervened the night.
But above night too, like only the next,
The second of a wondrous sequence,
Reaching in rare and rarer frequence,
Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed,
Another rainbow rose, a mightier,
Fainter, flushier and flightier,
Rapture dying along its verge.
Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge,
Whose, from the straining topmost dark,
On to the keystone of that arc?
He was there.
He himself with his human air.2 [Note: Browning, Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day, vi.]
(2) Sorrow and Joy.The devastating waters, concerning which God has made with men His covenant of mercy, are the waters of sorrow. These, too, have their bounds set them by the Divine hand. To them the fiat goes forth: thus far and no farther, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed. The torrent of affliction may swell and rise, and toss the heart on its heaving bosom; but God sits above the flood, enthroned for ever, and under His restraining hand it is not suffered to overflow or to deal utter ruin. This is the message of the rainbowthat smile set in the still frowning heavens. It is the message echoed by the Psalmists confession: God hath chastened me very sore; but he hath not given me over unto death.
The rainbow is a child of the storm; and it is very beautiful. It springs out of the conflict between light and darkness; it is caused by the sun of heaven shining upon the fast-dripping tears of earth. It tells, and will always tell, that nothing very beautiful ever comes to pass in human life, except there be sorrow. It tells, and will always tell, that sorrow alone, cannot give birth to this beauty of human life and character. It needs the fast-falling tears of sorrow and sadness below; but it needs also the sunshine, the light, and the glory, from heaven above. People are always wondering why there should be sorrow and suffering; why human tears should flow so freely. There really is not any answer but what the rainbow gives, or at least suggests. Say what you like; be as impatient of suffering as you will; you will yet have to acknowledge, as a fact, that in human character there is hardly anything very beautiful, very attractive, but it has suffering for a necessary condition; suffering lighted up by love.
Through gloom and shadow look we
On beyond the years;
The soul would have no rainbow
Had the eyes no tears.
We are like him of whom the poet sings
Resolve
Upbore him, and firm faith, and evermore
Prayer from a living source within the will,
And beating up thro all the bitter world,
Like fountains of sweet water in the sea,
Kept him a living soul.
We hear of those upon whom there has fallen some sorrow which seems calculated to destroy all the worth of life. He will never be the same man; she will never be the same woman againso we exclaim. And yet, though the stricken ones reel under the blow, they do not fall, or if they fall they rise again. Some secret well-spring within is opened, and pours forth its healing stream.1 [Note: M. Joseph.]
An old couple, who greatly glorified God by their glad lives, were asked: And have you never any clouds? Clouds! said the old woman, Clouds! Why, yes indeed, else where would all the blessed showers come from?2 [Note: H. S. Dyer.]
A friend of mine yesterday, when he was told there was a rainbow, looked for it in the direction of the sun. He evidently did not know better. God never puts rainbows in the direction of the light. There is no need of them so long as you can see the sun shining as gloriously as it did yesterday afternoon. It is when you have to look at the cloud that you want a rainbow. Thus you will always find that if the sun is in the east the rainbow is in the west. Hence the old saying
The rainbow in the morning
Is the shepherds warning;
The rainbow at night
Is the shepherds delight.3 [Note: D. Davies.]
II
The Rainbow as a Sign
i. Symbols
In times when contracts were not reduced to writing, it was customary, on the occasion of solemn vows, promises, and other covenant transactions, to appoint a sign, that the parties might at the proper time be reminded of the covenant, and a breach of its observance be averted.
It has been said that a sign is a thing which, over and above the impression which it makes upon the senses, causes something else to come into the mind. Anything, therefore, can be taken as a sign: e.g. a stone which has in itself no meaning or value, may be used as marking the boundary of a field. Not such is this sign. There is a principle here the same as that in those parables which take some object in nature or some fact in the physical world to symbolize the spiritual truth or fact, and which are properly called symbolic parables. It is such a principle that gives the wonderful comfort found in the 125th Psalm. This rainbow had a fitness for the purpose to which it was applied, for after the appearance of an entire rainbow, as a rule no rain of long duration follows; and the darker the background the more bright does it appear. As such a sign doubtless Noah already knew it. A harbinger of the cessation of a storm was a fitting symbol of the close of that flood which was never to be repeated. The beautiful object which already had a natural adaptation to its purpose God consecrated as the sign of His love and witness of His promise.
Have not I myself known five hundred living soldiers sabred into crows-meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which they called their Flag; which, had you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen? Did not the whole Hungarian nation rise, like some tumultuous moon-stirred Atlantic, when Kaiser Joseph pocketed their Iron Crown; an implement, as was sagaciously observed, in size and commercial value little differing from a horse-shoe? It is in and through Symbols that man, consciously or unconsciously, lives, works, and has his being: those ages, moreover, are accounted the noblest which can the best recognize symbolical worth, and prize it the highest. For is not a Symbol ever, to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of the Godlike?1 [Note: Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, bk. iii. ch. 3.]
Nature everywhere bears the touch of God. The vast universe is a collection of tokens; the whole system of worlds is a revelation of Divine covenants which the invisible God desires to publish. There are hours when one feels this and sings
O earth! thou hast not any wind which blows,
That is not music; every reed of thine,
Pressed rightly, flows with aromatic wine,
And every humble hedge-row flower that grows,
And every little brown bird that doth sing,
Hath something greater than itself, and bears
A living word to every living thing.
Albeit it holds its message unawares.
All shapes and sounds have something which
Is not of them; a spirit broods amidst the grass;
Vague outlines of the everlasting thought
Lie in the melting shadows as they pass;
The touch of an Eternal Presence thrills
The fringes of the sunsets and the hills.
Sometimes (we know not how, nor why, nor whence)
The twitter of the swallow neath the eaves,
The shimmer of the light among the leaves,
Will strike up through the thick roots of our sense
And show us things which seers and sages saw
In the green earths gray dawn; something doth stir
Like organ-rhymes within us and doth awe
Our pulses into listening, and confer
Burdens of being on us; and we ache
With weights of revelations; and our ears
Hear voices from the Infinite that take
The hushed soul captive.
Very beautiful is this idea of God giving us something to look at, in order to keep our faith steady. He knows that we need pictures, and rests, and voices, and signs, and these He has well supplied. We might have forgotten the word, but we cannot fail to see the bow; every child sees it, and exclaims at the sight with glad surprise. If any one would tell the child the sweet meaning of the bow, it might move his soul to a still higher ecstasy! And so with all other things God has given us as signs and tokens: the sacred Book, the water of Baptism, the bread and wine, the quiet Sabbath, the house of prayer;all these have deeper meanings than are written in their names; search for those meanings, keep them, and you will be rich.1 [Note: Joseph Parker.]
ii. A Token of a Covenant
1. The covenant is that there shall not be any more a flood to destroy the earth, and the token of the covenant is the bow in the cloud. But was there not a rainbow before there was a flood? Of course there was. You do not suppose that the rainbow was made on purpose? There were rainbows, it may be, thousands of ages before man was created, certainly from the time that the sun and the rain first knew each other. But old forms may be put to new uses. Physical objects may be clothed with moral meanings. The stars in heaven and the sand by the seashore may come to be to Abraham as a family register. One day common bread may be turned into sacramental food, and ordinary wine may become as the blood of atonement! The rainbow which was once nothing but a thing of evanescent beauty, created by the sun and the rain, hence-forward became the token of a covenant and was sacred as a revelation from heaven. When you lived in a rich English county the song of the lark was nothing to you, it was so familiar; you had heard the dinning trill of a hundred larks in the morning air; but when you went out to the far-away colony, and for years did not hear the voice of a single home bird, you suddenly caught the note of a lark just brought to the land, and the tears of boyhood streamed down your cheeks as you listened to the little messenger from home. To hear it was like hearing a gospel. From that day the lark was to you as the token of a covenant!
In speaking to Noah God did not then create the bow; He turned it into the sign of a holy bond. The fear is that we may have the bond and not the oath. We may see physical causes producing physical effects, and yet may see no moral signification passing through the common scenery of earth and sky. Cultivate the spirit of moral interpretation if you would be wise and restful; then the rainbow will keep away the flood; the fowls of the air will save you from anxiety; and the lilies of the field will give you an assurance of tender care. Why, everything is yours! The daisy you trod upon just now was telling you that if God so clothe the grass of the field He will much more clothe the child that bears His own image.1 [Note: Joseph Parker.]
2. The phenomenon has actually no existence unless there is an eye to see it. Not that the eye in any sense designed or can create it, for there must be the raindrops and the sun, things altogether outside of, and separate from, the beholder, before it can come within the sphere of possible existence; but when it has come into that sphere, then it must, if we may say so, remain absolutely non-existent until it is brought into contact by those wonderful processes, which it needs a scientific pen to describe, with the organs which convey the perception to the brain. Now, this is a very close and a very complete type of what we may understand to have taken place immediately after the deluge in the case of the same phenomenon. It may be said to have then come into existence for the first time; but how? In its higher character of a token, of a covenant between God and man. It was then made, and it then became capable of being seen in that view by the eye of faith, and it would need the eye of faith so to see itthat is, in the same sense; it would need the eye of faith to bring it into being as the token of a covenant between God and man. The eye of faith had not to create it in that character. To suppose that would be to confound between faith and imagination. Its creation was altogether Gods, entirely outside of, and separate from, any action, faculties, or powers that man could bring to bear upon it. Neither the rain nor the sunshine, nor the background of cloud whereon to paint the image, was in any way directly or indirectly produced by hand of man or controllable by the will of man; but still, until man looked upon it, not only with a seeing eye but also with a believing spirit, its existence as the token of the covenant was no more capable of proof than is the presence of Christ in any church at any moment.
It is a quaint idea of the Rabbins that in an age conspicuous for righteousness the rainbow is not visible; the virtuous, they say, are a sufficient sign that God remembers His covenant. And truly it is mans mercy to man that is the most eloquent witness of the Divine love. Every pang assuaged by human agency, every soothing, encouraging word that is spoken to still the complaining, to strengthen the despairing, spirit, every deed of true charity, every grasp of a friends hand, every ray of light that falls upon our life from the soul of our beloved, is a manifestation of Gods mercy. Those virtues of men and women, by the exercise of which they bless one another, are as truly Gods angels as are the tranquillity and the strength that will sometimes mysteriously find their way into our disquieted hearts, coming we know not whence.1 [Note: Morris Joseph.]
3. What God did for Noah and his sons was just to take the old familiar rainbow, which was and is merely one of the occasional effects of the unchanging laws of natureand to make it His bow: to make it a visible symbol, a painted sacrament, of His personal faithfulness and love. That is the great law which runs through all sacraments. No sacramental thing is ever new as far as its outward form and material are concerned. Our Saviour made His own two great sacraments of grace out of the very simplest and commonest and most familiar of all actionsthe pouring of clean water over the body; the partaking together of bread and wine, themselves the most ordinary and universal articles of diet in His country. And He made them effectual signs and symbols of a grace which is stronger than sin, of a love which is stronger than death. Or look again at marriage, which is a sacrament of nature common to the whole human race, coming down to us from the Garden of Eden. On its natural side, its historical side, it is nothing but that instinct of pairing which human animals share with all other animals. On its supernatural side, God has chosen it from the first to be a great mystery. It is a sacrament of love and grace, so effectual that out of it all the progress of mankind in refinement and in civilization has sprung; so profound, that in it has been fore-shadowed and represented all along that mystical union between Christ and His Church, by which we also live.
4. For what purpose then was the bow set in the cloud? The great purpose was to be a witness to Gods Faithfulness. The God which the Book of Genesis goes on revealing and unveiling to us more and more is a God in whom men may trust. The heathen could not trust their gods. The Bible tells men of a God whom they can trust. That is just the difference between the Bible and all other books in the world. But what a difference! Difference enough to make us say, Sooner that every other book in the world were lost, and the Bible preserved, than that we should lose the Bible, and with the Bible lose faith in God.
In Calvarys awful scene, we behold the Divine Faithfulness. Clouds of sin have risen from the earth; a shoreless ocean of despair has covered the life of man; but Godthe Faithful God, the Covenant-keeping God, the God who remembers that man is His child, and that in his very constitution and life He has left pledges and intimations that help him to look heavenward from some ark of hopeHe has not forgotten, He is keeping His word of grace, and the clouds are shot through and through with the power of Christ, the Sun of Righteousness. Sin is retreating like the flood, and peace, My peace, as Christ says, hangs like a rainbow above the cross of Jesus and the life of man.
Not seldom, clad in radiant vest,
Deceitfully goes forth the Morn;
Not seldom Evening in the west
Sinks smilingly forsworn.
The smoothest seas will sometimes prove,
To the confiding Bark, untrue;
And, if she trust the stars above,
They can be treacherous too.
But thou art true, incarnate Lord,
Who didst vouchsafe for man to die;
Thy smile is sure, thy plighted word
No change can falsify!
I bent before thy gracious throne,
And asked for peace on suppliant knee;
And peace was given,nor peace alone,
But faith sublimed to ecstasy!1 [Note: Wordsworth.]
Literature
Bamford (A. J.), Things that are Made, 105.
Banks (L. A.), The Great Promises of the Bible, 268.
Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women, and Children, 301
Gunsaulus (F. W.), Paths to the City of God, 112.
Howatt (J. R.), The Childrens Pew, 31.
Joseph (M.), The Ideal in Judaism, 142.
Kingsley (C.), Gospel of the Pentateuch, 51.
Kingsley (C.), National Sermons, 423.
Morrison (G. H.), Flood-tide, 170.
Parker (J.), Peoples Bible, i. 168.
Smellie (A.), In the Secret Place, 272.
Vaughan (C. J.), Christ the Light of the World, 133.
Winterbotham (R.), Sermons in Holy Trinity Church, 76.
Wiseman (N.), Childrens Sermons, 158.
Christian World pulpit, xxvii. 97 (Kempe); xlviii. 91 (Abbott).
Old and New Testament Student, x. 274 (Denio).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
walked: Gen 5:21
he was not: The same expression occurs, Gen 37:30, Gen 42:36, Jer 31:15, Mat 2:18
for: 2Ki 2:11, Luk 23:43, Heb 11:5, Heb 11:6, 1Jo 1:7
Reciprocal: Gen 6:9 – and Noah Gen 17:1 – walk Gen 24:40 – before Lev 26:12 – I will 2Ki 20:3 – I have walked 2Ch 6:14 – walk before Psa 1:1 – walketh Psa 25:10 – the paths Psa 39:13 – be no Psa 103:16 – it is gone Ecc 6:6 – though Zec 10:12 – walk Eph 4:1 – walk 2Pe 1:6 – godliness
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
THE WITNESS OF ENOCH
Enoch walked with God; and he was not: for God took him.
Gen 5:24
The record of one man is given to us as an oasis in the chapter, and he is one of only two men of whom it is recorded in the Old Testament that they walked with God (Gen 6:9).
I. The fact of fellowship with God is suggested by this phrase.Several aspects of our walk are emphasised in Scripture. Walk before Me (Gen 17:1) implying sincerity; Walk after the Lord your God (Deu 13:4), suggesting obedience; Walking in Him (Col 2:6), telling of union; Walking with God, meaning fellowship. This is lifes ideal and the culmination of Gods purpose for man.
II. The commencement of this fellowship is suggested (verse 22).Enoch does not seem to have walked with God until the birth of his son. May it not have been the coming into his life of that little life, Gods gift to him, that led to this close fellowship?
III. The continuance of fellowship.It lasted three hundred years. This was not easy. Enoch was no dreamy sentimental idealist. His life had in it the real difficulty of testimony against evil (Jud 1:14-15). The judgment on the line of the Cainites had to be proclaimed, and this is never anything but an irksome and trying task. Like the rest of mankind in later days, Enoch did not find it easy to walk with God.
IV. The culmination of fellowship.He was not, for God took him. The life of faith was thus crowned by entrance upon the life of perfect fellowship above. They shall walk with Me in white.
Rev. W. H. Griffith-Thomas, D.D.
Illustration
(1)There always have been and will be these two families in the worldthe children of this world and the children of light, the tares and the wheat, the goats and the sheep. We must come out, and be separate, and walk with God, else we shall be dragged down to the worlds level. The strong, healthy days of the Church have always been those when she has dwelt in the holes and caves of the earth, and standing outside has brought her influence to bear on the world that is hurrying down the primrose path to its doom.
(2)The man best known and observed of all while he lived was so taken, that no one could say that he was lost in some of its mountain solitudes, or drowned in its floods, or carried away by violence or guile, but so as to show to others the pathway of life, and a glimpse of glory. What could be a more impressive fact, than that the man who had foretold the future appearance of the Judge of all the earth should, after a life of present worth, be advanced to a future of glory! Beautiful things never look so beautiful as when they are taking their leave, and Enochs leave-taking was that which, of all others, was best fitted to illuminate the teaching of his life, and revive that teaching in all memories. Beheld as a spectacle, or ascertained as a fact, that translation would give new life and power to his teaching, and until the Flood, would be the standing evidence to which piety appealed.
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
Gen 5:24. He was not Any longer on earth or among men; for God took him Out of this sinful and miserable world to himself. He was translated, as it is explained, Heb 11:5, that he should not see death, and was not found by his friends who sought him, as the sons of the prophets sought Elijah, 2Ki 2:17, because God had translated him, had taken him body and soul to himself, as he afterward took that prophet. He was changed, as those saints shall be that are found alive at Christs second coming. But why did God take him so soon? Surely because the world, which was now grown corrupt, was unworthy of him, and because his work was done, and done the sooner, by his attending to it, and prosecuting it so diligently. But it is probable, also, that by his translation, as well as by that of Elijah, God intended to give mankind, generally become infidels with regard to a future state, a demonstration of the reality of such a state, and of the felicity of it, with respect to the righteous. For if there were no witness of his translation, as there was of that of Elijah, the circumstance that his body was not found, added to his eminent piety, might convince, at least such as were considerate, that he was taken to a better world.
Gen 5:25-27. Methuselah signifies, He dies, there is a sending forth, namely, of the deluge, which came the very year that Methuselah died. If his name was so intended, it was a fair warning to a careless world long before the judgment came. However, this is observable, that the longest liver that ever was, carried death in his name, that he might keep in mind its coming surely, though it came slowly. He lived nine hundred sixty and nine years The longest that ever any man lived on earth, and yet he died The longest liver must die at last. Neither youth nor age will discharge from that war, for that is the end of all men: none can challenge life by long prescription, nor make that a plea against the arrests of death. It is commonly supposed, that Methuselah died a little before the flood; the Jewish writers say, seven days before, referring to Gen 7:10, and that he was taken away from the evil to come.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
5:24 And Enoch walked with God: and he [was] not; for {g} God took him.
(g) To show that there was a better life prepared and to be a testimony of the immortality of souls and bodies. To inquire where he went is mere curiosity.