EXTRACT

We come now to another point in regard to Enoch, and that is “before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God”. The same is in principle true as to the church, it is for His pleasure. If you refer to Philippians 2: 12–16, you will see that God effects what is for His pleasure. Enoch before his translation pleased God, and the fact is that God translates what pleases Him; Enoch pleased God, and God translated him. So, too, the church is here for God’s pleasure and hence God translates it. In the meantime He works in us to will and to do of His good pleasure. It is a wonderful thought that God should have pleasure in anything in the midst of a sinful world; but God has wrought that there may be that which is for His pleasure. Enoch was not, as a man, more for God’s pleasure than anybody else, but God wrought in Enoch that he might be for God’s pleasure and hence God translated him. It is virtually

God saying, ‘I will dispense altogether with the judgment of death, and will take that man’. God foresaw that death would be annulled in Christ’s death, and therefore translated Enoch.

Now death has been annulled—He “death by dying slew”, and God says, I will produce that upon earth that shall be for My pleasure, and will translate what pleases Me. That is the course which God has taken in regard to the church—“It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure”.

It is an extraordinary thing that we can be here for God’s pleasure. You see the idea of it coming out in the passage I referred to—“Do all things without murmurings and disputings, that ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation”. A generation blameless, and harmless, here in the world, not doing great things, but “sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation”; like Enoch and Noah, “among whom ye shine as lights in the world; holding forth the word of life”.

I understand it to indicate entire separation from the spirit of things around us, that in the midst of it we may be shining as lights in the light of God, at the same time holding forth the word of life.

It is like what Christ was in the world; He was of God, God’s Son, and God’s servant, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, shining as light in the world, holding forth the word of life. That is the true place for the church. God has wrought that there may be a generation of Him, and according to Him, which pleases Him, and has given us the marks of that generation, and we ought to be exercised to answer to it. It is God that worketh in you that you may be in accord with Him, to do of His good pleasure.

F. E. Raven (Vol. 12, pp.437, 438)

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