When looking at Adam’s descendants listed in Genesis 5, Enoch is one of the most important. This devotional reading looks at how we put righteousness into practice as we walk with God.
Nuggets
- Enoch was the son of Jared, making Enoch the great-great-great-great grandson of Adam.
- We walk with God by faithfully showing our love to Him.
- Once we love God, we have to repent and turn from our sinful ways.
- When we have faith in God, we want to please and obey Him.
- Constantly walking with God takes persistence and determination.
- Because we love God, we want to spend time with Him in meditation, prayer, and praise.
- We are to tell others about God.
- We need to walk in truth, love, and justice.
- Walking with God must be put into practice in our everyday lives.
- God takes us where we are and grows us to where He wants us to be.
- The only way we can truly walk with God is to have a deep knowledge and extraordinary wisdom of Him.
- Each of us must decide for ourselves what our relationship with God will be.
- We have to have a genuine relationship with God.
Enoch is credited with walking with God.
We only get the regular information about Enoch. But we got one other tidbit about Enoch. He walked with God.
Ooo, baby! Three simple, complex words. So, what does that phrase mean?
Walking with God means we are humble, reverent, teachable servants of God. Okay, so what does that mean?
It is all about walking with God. This is how we are perfected.
Maclaren talked about that. He wrote, “… the perfected condition is not reached by surrender only, but by assimilation; and that assimilation comes by contemplation.”
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Okay, so how do we not only contemplate but also put into practice this surrender and assimilation?
Note: This ran long, so I have split it into two devotions.
Let's Put It into Context
To read devotions in the Creating Everything theme, click the button below.
Devotions in the The Influence of Sin series
Who Was Enoch?
“When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him” (Gen. 5: 21-24 NLT)
Enoch was the son of Jared, making Enoch the great-great-great-great grandson of Adam.
Enoch’s father was 162 years old when Enoch was born. He was 65 years old when his son Methusaleh was born.
Cain’s descendants were credited with inventing several societal things. Enoch was the only one that had more than dates listed for him. His was about his righteousness.
Enoch was the first one mentioned to have a relationship with God. It is important that we study that to help us in our walk with God.
Walking with God
Love God
We walk with God by faithfully showing our love to Him.
Walking with God starts with faith in God. “It was by faith that Enoch was taken up to heaven without dying — ‘he disappeared, because God took him.’ For before he was taken up, he was known as a person who pleased God. And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him” (Heb. 11: 5-6 NLT).
That faith is bound up in the greatest commandments. “Jesus replied, ‘The most important commandment is this: “Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.” The second is equally important: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” No other commandment is greater than these’” (Mk. 12: 29-31 NLT).
We have to surrender our will to God, and then we have to obey His Will in our dealings with others.
Reconcile with God
Once we love God, we have to repent and turn from our sinful ways.
While Jesus is the only way to salvation, it is easy to think that believing in Jesus is the only thing we need. Wrong. “There is salvation in no one else! God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved” (Ac. 4: 12 NLT).
Believe is really a two-step action verb. It does have the heart-knowledge part. It also has an action part. “Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives” (Gal. 5: 25 NLT).
It is easy to equate believe with love. Our faith has to be more than that.
When we perform the action part, we truly resolve to fix our impurity issue. Sin corrupted our pure nature and made us impure.
That has to be fixed so that we can come before God.
Think about it. This is a two-step deal. Believe. Repent. If we only do one of the steps, we don’t gain salvation.
I know. The thief on the cross only believed, and he gained Paradise. With nails in his hands and on his last breath, he couldn’t be baptized, He couldn’t do the Matthew 25 to-do list.
But isn’t the thief on the cross witnessing to us? He shows us the complete turnaround that we need.
Please and Obey God
When we have faith in God, we want to please and obey Him.
Pleasing and obeying God doesn’t have anything to do with our nationality. It has to do with the condition of our hearts.
“For you are not a true Jew just because you were born of Jewish parents or because you have gone through the ceremony of circumcision. No, a true Jew is one whose heart is right with God. And true circumcision is not merely obeying the letter of the law; rather, it is a change of heart produced by the Spirit. And a person with a changed heart seeks praised from God, not from people” (Rom. 2: 28-29 NLT).
We talk a lot about self-denial. “Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me’” (Mt. 16: 24 NLT). We know that means we have to follow God’s Will instead of our own.
But how do we do that? We walk obediently, humbly, and patiently.
Walking obediently means more than just diligently obey the commandments. We can do the actions without having the desire to please God.
McNeile told us how we showed our obedience. He wrote, “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.”
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I think a good way to summarize what McNeile said is that we need to have cheerful obedience. We follow God because we love Him, not kicking back or doing it for some selfish purpose.
That type of walking would need a huge dose of humility. We acknowledge and act to show God’s superiority over us. We have to revere and respect Him.
Pleasing God also means that we will patiently endure. Things won’t magically right themselves when we become disciples. They/ won’t instantly become easier.
Jesus addressed this.
- “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake” (Mt. 24: 9 NLT).
- “But the one who endures to the end will be saved.” (Mt. 24: 13 NLT).
Pleasing and obeying God leads to real life.
Our Walk
Constantly Walk with God
Constantly walking with God takes persistence and determination.
Think about the time in which Enoch lived. Not only had the original sin been committed, but also Cain had separated himself from God to follow a worldview existence. The timeline was closer to Noah than it was to Cain, so the people populating the earth had become more and more sinful.
But here was Enoch. For 635 years, he had walked with God. He hadn’t been 100% fruit of the Spirit perfect, but he is credited as being the first saint.
Life wouldn’t have been easy for Enoch. But he had stayed true to God.
Walking with God isn’t going to be easy. Disciples will find themselves – as Jesus did – as being countercultural.
What does that mean? We will have beliefs, customs, and desires that are polar opposite than others. We will face persecution and possibly physical harm.
And we have to stand for God.
Oh, yeah. We have a wonderful reward waiting for us when we are persistent and determined.
But it could be a really hard row to hoe to get there. We still have to stand.
That means our walk with God isn’t a start/stop/repeat journey. It should be 24/7/356/eternity.
It also means we don’t believe only certain things found in God’s Word. We have to believe and obey it all. We can’t rewrite passages or laws and commandments that we want to keep as pet sins.
Boston got it right. We have to make walking with God a habit.
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It becomes easier to do these things when we do them constantly.
Spend Time with God in Meditation, Prayer, and Praise
Because we love God, we want to spend time with Him in meditation, prayer, and praise.
Yes, God is an unseen, divine Being. But we can — and just — spend time with Him.
Baker gave us a list of how to remain in constant communication with God. He wrote,
“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.”
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It is only by completing these eight practices that we find God’s guidance. The LORD says, ‘I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you’” (Ps. 32: 8 NLT).
We don’t have to worry about it being hard or confusing to figure out. God will help us follow Him.
Pleasing Testimony
We are to tell others about God.
Wow! No one except Elijah —that we know of — had the same testimony as Enoch.
Both were men of God. Both understood the marching orders: we are to tell others about God.
- “And then he told them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the Good News to everyone’” (Mk. 16: 15 NLT).
- “Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Mt. 28: 19-20 NLT).
Enoch understood that and acted on those orders. “Enoch, who lived in the seventh generation after Adam, prophesied about these people. He said, “Listen! The Lord is coming with countless thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment on the people of the world. He will convict every person of all the ungodly things they have done and for all the insults that ungodly sinners have spoken against him” (Jude 1: 14-15 NLT).
Both Enoch’s and later Elijah’s exit from earth showed God’s pleasure in them.
Walk in Truth, Justice, and Love
We need to walk in truth, love, and justice.
Three churchy words are truth, love, and justice. What do they mean?
John talked about living in truth in his second letter. “How happy I was to meet some of your children and find them living according to the truth, just as the Father commanded” (II Jn. 1: 4 NLT).
What John was talking about was he was happy to see disciples living out their faith. They saw God’s ways — His commandments — as truth, and they were using them upon which to build their lives. “Teach me your ways, O LORD, that I may live according to your truth! Grant me purity of heart, so that I may honor you” (Ps. 86: 11 NLT).
We are to walk according to justice. “No, O people, the LORD has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (Mic. 6: 8 NLT).
This says we are to do what is right. It isn’t focusing on doing the do’s and not doing the don’ts. Justice is bringing order back to God’s creation so that all people receive the rewards He has for His children.
What God requires of us is to bring order back to God’s creation. In other words, witness. Do the spiritual Matthew 25 to-do list rather than the social.
God wants us to walk in love. This isn’t talking about all the love-one-another commands. “And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5: 2 NLT).
God wants us to show others Who He is by imitating Him in our walk.
Boston made an observation. He wrote, “He gives one rule of walking, extending to man’s 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 (Ephesians 5:15).”
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Remember, God gave Adam and Eve only one law. Walking with God has only one rule: be constant.
Practical
Walking with God must be put into practice in our everyday lives.
I agree, and I disagree with Boston. He wrote, “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 heart’s going along with Him.”
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If you’ve read prior devotions, you know I stress that God is more concerned about the spiritual condition over the physical condition. Before all, we must admit we are sinners, believe Jesus is the only way our relationship with can be restored, and confess God is Sovereign Lord.
The way we do that is to demonstrate that through our walk – our journey – through life. That is the practical part.
If our conversion to Christ makes no changes in how we go through our lives through our thoughts and actions, it wasn’t a conversion.
Jesus Himself said this. “Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing them” (Jn. 13: 17 NLT).
Don’t just have the head knowledge. Don’t just have the heart knowledge. Put that knowledge into action.
Grow in God
God takes us where we are and grows us to where He wants us to be.
When we come to God for forgiveness and salvation, He accepts us where we are. He doesn’t make us stop sinning before He offers us salvation.
But God doesn’t leave us there. He wants us to become more like Him. “Dear friends, you always followed my instructions when I was with you. And now that I am away, it is even more important. Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him” (Phil. 2: 12-13 NLT).
What we should have is a steady progression toward what God wants us to be. The churchy word is sanctification. It takes us from regeneration to perfection.
We have to grow. We have to change.
No, people do not like change. Get over it. Being a disciple of Jesus is all about change.
Possessing Knowledge and Wisdom of God’s Character and Laws
The only way we can truly walk with God is to have a deep knowledge and extraordinary wisdom of Him.
Enoch had to have had a profound knowledge and great wisdom of God. He knew what God was looking for in our character and actions. He used his knowledge of what God told him to discern His Will.
The laws and commandments that God would have revealed to Enoch would serve the same purpose as they do with us — they show us God’s character. “And we can be sure that we know him if we obey his commandments” (I Jn. 2: 3 NLT).
Spurgeon made a great point. Enoch not only walked with God, but God also walked with Enoch. God sends unholy men away from Him — like He did Cain.
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We have to have the intelligence and wisdom to discern God’s Will. We have to see what His Word says and apply that to our lives.
Independent
Each of us must decide for ourselves what our relationship with God will be.
Hmmmm. Independent? Where did this come from?
Griffiths said that. He didn’t clarify that.
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My first thought was free will thinking allowed us to think we could have independent thinking. We don’t want anyone or anything to control us.
Let’s consider what Boston said. He believed walking with God is to be the foundation on which our relationship with God.
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That I agree with. I think the independence comes in where we have to choose to do that.
What Does That All Mean?
We have to have a genuine relationship with God. That includes surrendering ourselves to Him. “Can two people walk together without agreeing on the direction?” (Amos 3: 3 NLT).
We have to do things God’s way.
Father God. We want to walk with You. We want to be closer to You. Amen.
What do you think?
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