Sermon Tone Analysis

They say there are two things you can’t escape… Death and taxes… Tax season opens tomorrow..

Yesterday I was at my Uncle Will’s Memorial… There is something about a funeral that makes you reflect on life and what really is important.

As kids, my cousin and I were inseparable, we did everything together until 1989… He joined the Air Force and before he was out I was on the mission field… So yesterday our cousins (most of us, at least) sat together and retraced 30 years of life with people that were both unknown yet oddly familiar.

It’s our common stories that bond us… the old farm house… the pond…Slavia…Geneva… the Fin and the Fiddle… Oveido… Buster… Tomato fights… chickens… roosters… ducks… Great Grandpa’s living room… Uncle Ott’s spitoon…

So even though our ages range from 55 to 5 and our lives have taken us to every corner of the globe we can all find common ground… we can all trace our roots…

And yesterday… as we met in a funeral… we committed to keeping in touch… we took the first step by exchange telephone numbers...

Many times… big life events will shake us and make us reevaluate what is important… it is during these moments that many of us commit to “Walking with God”...

Today we are going to talk about Enoch… Enoch escaped death and knew not of the IRS…

We read about Enoch in verse number 5...

1.

By faith, Enoch walked with God.

And so what happens is this man, Graham just stopped eating because he thought he was dead.

Stopped talking.

He was a habitual smoker and when he woke up and thought he was dead he didn't smoke anymore, like even though he probably had a nicotine fit, it just didn't even, he just quit.

And they actually did some testing on him because he didn't talk, didn't eat, didn't really do anything.

They did some testing on him and they found what they thought was just basically almost imperceptible brain activity.

They couldn't believe it, that the guy was actually alive.

So he really didn't do anything at all except for one thing.

He would leave the house at random times and would make his way to a cemetery.

And then he would just lay in the cemetery because he thought he was dead and so he figured this was the closest that I can get to that, I guess.

And he would just go and lay in the cemetery.

Then eventually, you know, the police would have to come and they would get him and they would take him back to his home, and he was staying there with family and you know, they did their best to love him and try to take care of him.

It's really an extraordinary story.

I mean, I'm glad to note that kind of toward the end of the story, it recorded that Graham had gotten some additional assistance and there were some medications that were involved now that were trying to help him and he was doing a bit better, and in his words, he felt less dead.

It was a real story for Graham, and it couldn't be more real for him and what he experienced and it's sad to think about something like that but as a metaphor for us, it's reasonably interesting.

You see, the guy that we're going to take a look at today in Hebrews chapter 11, he didn't die.

And even though he was living in a time where all around him were walking corpses, death before him, death during his life, death after him, where it was growing in ungodliness and wickedness and violence in the generation that he was living in and it was becoming this blossoming seed that we would see hundreds of years later would become a place that was deserving of judgment and condemnation, that even in the midst of that, there was a man who was not like everyone else it seemed, in that particular time frame and his name was Enoch.

We read about Enoch in in verse number 5 and it says this.

It says "By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so he did not experience death: 'He could not be found, because God had taken him away.'

For before he was taken he was commended as one who pleased God."

1.

By faith, Enoch walked with God.

1.

By faith, Enoch walked with God.

Now I want us to pause here for just a moment, because when we look back at Hebrews chapter number 11 you might have said well, I didn't really see anything in the text about him walking with God.

We need to go back to Genesis to get a fuller picture...

Gen

So the first point that I'm talking about here is that by faith Enoch walked with God.

So the first point that I'm talking about here is that by faith Enoch walked with God.

Now when we hear that phrase, walked with God we're not using it in the same way that maybe it was described in Genesis chapter 2 or 3 with Adam and Eve in the Garden walking with God.

This is not talking about here many generations removed from Adam, seven generations removed from Adam, it's not talking specifically about God showing up in physical form so that they're taking a stroll together.

The idea of walking with God in this context is the idea of intimacy, of fellowship, of connection, of a sharing with someone else.

That's kind of the idea that's here, and Enoch was actually doing that by faith.

Because he believed that this was God that he was walking with and communing with and talking with, right?

He had been told of God from his ancestors that had come before and so he walked faithfully with God.

Now when we hear that phrase, walked with God we're not using it in the same way that maybe it was described in Genesis chapter 2 or 3 with Adam and Eve in the Garden walking with God.

This is seven generations removed from Adam, it's not talking specifically about God showing up in physical form so that they're taking a stroll together.

So the first point that I'm talking about here is that by faith Enoch walked with God.

Now when we hear that phrase, walked with God we're not using it in the same way that maybe it was described in Genesis chapter 2 or 3 with Adam and Eve in the Garden walking with God.

This is not talking about here many generations removed from Adam, seven generations removed from Adam, it's not talking specifically about God showing up in physical form so that they're taking a stroll together.

The idea of walking with God in this context is the idea of intimacy, of fellowship, of connection, of a sharing with someone else.

That's kind of the idea that's here, and Enoch was actually doing that by faith.

Because he believed that this was God that he was walking with and communing with and talking with, right?

He had been told of God from his ancestors that had come before and so he walked faithfully with God.

The idea of walking with God in this context is the idea of intimacy, of fellowship, of connection, of a sharing with someone else.

That's kind of the idea that's here, and Enoch was actually doing that by faith.

Because he believed that this was God that he was walking with and communing with and talking with, right?

He had been told of God from his ancestors that had come before and so he walked faithfully with God.

In fact, the Scripture actually tells us that this fellowship, this communion, this connection, this intimacy with Enoch lasted, listen to it - 300 years he walked faithfully with God.

Some of us would be glad to walk 300 days faithfully with God.

Some of us would be okay with walking 300 minutes faithfully with God.

Enoch walked 300 years faithfully with God.

Now when we talk about this idea of walking with God, the metaphor is used all through the course of Scripture and we’ll look at that in a moment, but before that I want to make sure we are on the same page as far as the definition of walking...

So when we talk about this idea of walking there's a couple of things that I would have you keep in mind when you're thinking about the idea of Enoch walking faithfully with God or maybe you and I walking faithfully with God.

Here's the first thing that I know about walking.

If you're walking with someone you have to be traveling in the same direction.

So what that means for Enoch is this, is that for 300 years he was traveling in the same direction as God.

Wow!

So what that means for Enoch is this, is that for 300 years he was traveling in the same direction as God.

Wow!

You say, okay, how did Enoch do that?

Listen.

The same way we do.

I want you to think about this for just a moment.

How do we know what direction God is going in?

Well, we know it because God has revealed His character to us.

We have the vantage point of looking at God's character through the lens of Scripture and through the person of Jesus that Enoch did not have quite like we have.

We have the beauty of God's character being revealed to us.

That God is righteous and He's true and He's loving and He's just and He's honorable.

And God is faithful and forgiving and gracious.

We have all of this that we know about God.

So we know.

That God is always moving in those directions that are consistent with His character.

We also know that God is always walking the opposite way of those things that rage against His character.

God is always walking in the opposite direction of sin.

You see, what happens with the people of the world that we live in is that they have and they may or may not know it, but they are spiritual corpses that are basically already dead on their way to a spiritual cemetery.

And as they make their way there they don't even realize what they are doing.

They are walking against the direction that God is walking in because when you walk against the direction God is walking in you are walking toward death but when you walk with God you are walking toward life.

You see, this idea of walking means that we are traveling in the same direction as someone and Enoch was testified to as walking in the same direction as God for 300 years.

“It is a good question for us, what direction are you traveling in?

What direction are you traveling in?

Are you traveling in the same direction that the rest of the world is?

Because that's just kind of how the world works, and we're just caught up in all the same stuff that the world is caught up in.

Making idols for ourselves, of other things other than God.

Even if we don't call them that, right?

Our lust for money or our lust for pleasure or our lust in thinking our satisfactions are going to be found just in human relationships and not realizing that all of this is met in the person of God through His Son Jesus.

You know, any dead fish can float downstream.

That's easy to do, right?

Walking in the direction of death toward the spiritual cemetery with the rest of the walking corpses, that's easy to do.

But it takes someone who is going to choose by faith, to trust God to walk against the current, to walk in opposition to sin and to walk faithfully in the same direction as God.

So that's one thing I know about walking, right?

You have to be going in the same direction if you're going to be walking with someone.

It is a good question for us, what direction are you traveling in?