ENOCH

Genesis 5:18-24; Hebrews 11:5,6; Jude 14-18

I have been struck, dear brethren, by the verse that we have sung in Hymn 138,

‘A Holy Father’s constant care

       Keeps watch, with an unwearying eye,

To see what fruits His children bear –

       Fruits that may suit their calling high’.

Dear brethren, we are on the eve of our being called on high. Do you believe that? You might say, I am waiting for the Lord Jesus to come. Of course that is true. You will receive your body of glory suited to the eternal day, one which will be in conformity to His body of glory. Yes, you will be relieved of your anxieties and suffering in your circumstances. But there is going to be a call; we are going to depart. Are you ready to go? I speak sympathetically because things that are seen do have a hold on us, but we are on the eve, dear brother and sister, of hearing that call. I say again, Are you ready to go? You will be changed, you will not be found because you will not be here. You will be raptured; you will be in the presence of the Lord Jesus eternally. As we sang, the Father is watching with an unwearying eye, and the words in that hymn of Mr Darby’s go on to say, ‘Fruits that may suit their calling high’. That is what I want to speak about, fruits that are worthy of our calling on high.

My mind went to Enoch. There are several things I would like to speak about which are prominent in his life: walking with God, being pleasing to God, his name meaning discipline and then his being translated, and the resultant fruits which suit our calling on high. Enoch is an interesting man. He is recorded as we have read in Hebrews 11 as being a man of faith, but he is not known for great exploits, things that he did. He is not like Noah, who built an ark; he is not like Abraham who took those steps of faith from Mesopotamia, and took that life as directed of God. He was not like David who established the kingdom of Israel; he was not like Solomon who built the temple. But there are certain distinctive features about the life of Enoch that gave God great delight. I would suggest that he was a man who just went on quietly in communion with his God whom he knew. The testimony has been maintained and secured down through the years, sometimes by persons doing great things but often by persons going on quietly, step by step in communion with God.

The world in which Enoch lived was very similar to our own; it was a wicked world, an evil world. He was taken before the flood, he was not exactly contemporary with Noah, but the evil and the wickedness that was judged in the flood was reaching to a point, spoken of in Genesis 6, where God looked down, “And Jehovah saw that the wickedness of Man was great on the earth, and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart only evil continually”, Gen.6:5. Enoch rises, I believe, to a figure of Christ, especially perhaps in relation to those hidden years of which we know little, from the time when He was twelve years old to the time of His anointing and His public service. The Lord Jesus went on, He passed through this world in which we are, a world that is marked by evil continually.

It was in such a world that Enoch walked and it is in such a world that you are walking. Are you surprised that there is evil all around us? All the communications and all the technology that we have today, dear brethren, is adding to the evil and is exposing what is deep in the heart of man. I wonder at this scripture, God looking down and seeing “the thoughts of man’s heart only evil continually”. How God must have felt that, His own heart so pure, so holy. The earth was corrupt before God. We are living in days of deep corruption, corruption in every sphere. That which has been established by God, which is good and perfect, has become corrupted by the interference of man’s will and his activities; it has become corrupted in every sphere, and it is full of violence. Do you wonder, in the day in which we are living, that the newspapers are full of violence, murders, and all these horrible things? Enoch would have felt it; God felt it and we feel it. This awful violence began with Cain. There was Abel; God accepted his righteous offering, and Cain slew his brother in an act of violence and his blood was crying from the ground (Gen.4:10). But, dear hearers, what greater act of violence was there than this, that they slew our Saviour? That was an act of violence. Those hands that took Him were not gentle hands, those hands that smote Him around the face, buffeted Him, rained down the hardest blows that they could upon Him. They put the crown of thorns upon His head; it would have been forcibly put upon Him. They removed His clothes and in mock humility gave Him that robe which was put upon Him. The earth is full of violence. It is through such a world that you are walking and I am walking, and through which the Lord Jesus has walked. He felt it, and we are to feel it too. Paul when writing to the Corinthians, says that “I have espoused you unto one man, to present you a chaste virgin to Christ”. He was worried and concerned that their thoughts had become corrupted even as to “simplicity as to the Christ”, 2.Cor.11:2,3. If the devil cannot dislodge your faith, he will seek to corrupt your thoughts from simplicity as to the Christ. Cling on to the Scriptures; cling on to what you have been taught, that you might be preserved in “simplicity as to the Christ”.

I want to speak about walking with God, “And Jared lived a hundred and sixty-two years, and begot Enoch. And Jared lived after he had begotten Enoch eight hundred years, and begot sons and daughters. And all the days of Jared were nine hundred and sixty-two years; and he died. And Enoch lived sixty-five years, and begot Methushelah. And Enoch walked with God after he had begotten Methushelah three hundred years, and begot sons and daughters”. He was sixty-five years old when he had Methushelah, and he walked with God. I am not saying anything as to those sixty-five years, but there were three hundred years of walking with God. Maybe there was a point arrived at in the life of Enoch, and maybe there is something in it for us in the birth of a little one. Maybe you have to realise that you are not only responsible for your own actions and that of your wife, but you have another life which you are going to influence to some degree. Enoch arrived at this point; he was going to walk with God for three hundred years. The interesting thing about Enoch is that he only lived three hundred and sixty-five years, compared with his son who lived to nearly a thousand. His life was compressed, but there was that in it which was infinitely pleasurable as he walked steadfastly with God. I would like to invite you to walk in that way.

But first of all, think of the walk of the Lord Jesus, because that is the key to it. If you are going to walk with God, you must have a view of Christ, because there has never been a walk like His. I think we have been taught that they were steps, they were not strides. Such was the steadfast character of the walk of the Lord Jesus, step by step. Sometimes those steps took Him a long way. We referred in the reading to the woman of John 4. There was that One, wearied with the way in which He came, sitting at the well just as He was. His steps had taken Him a long way just to see one poor sinner. Sometimes His steps took Him a very short way. Matthew’s gospel speaks about that time of great pressure in the garden of Gethsemane, and says “going forward a little” Matt.26:39. Then Luke says “He was withdrawn from them about a stone’s throw”, Luke 22:41. Just a stone’s throw; it was not too far, just a few steps, but every one of those steps afforded the Father delight and infinite pleasure.

Earlier the heavens were opened and the Father had expressed His delight, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found my delight”, Matt.17:5. Now I wonder if I can attract you into that way. Let us just look at John’s gospel; what does John the baptist say? “Again, on the morrow, there stood John and two of his disciples. And, looking at Jesus as he walked” – he had never seen a walk like that – “he says, Behold the Lamb of God. And the two disciples heard him speaking, and followed Jesus. But Jesus, having turned, and seeing them following, says to them, What seek ye? And they said to him, Rabbi (which, being interpreted, signifies Teacher), where abidest thou? He says to them, Come and see”, John 1:35-39. What pleasure must have filled the heart of the Lord Jesus to have these two men desiring to follow Him and to walk with Him. Think of how God would have loved the walk of Enoch. What He lost in Adam was recompensed in Christ; Enoch represents this. God came down to the garden, you remember, and Adam and Eve were hiding amidst the trees of that garden, and they heard the voice of Jehovah walking, calling to them, “Where art thou?”, Gen.3:9. What that must have felt to the heart of God that these persons, Adam and Eve, whom He had made so perfectly, should be hiding among those trees, yet the faithfulness of God was crying to them. It was almost in that scripture as if that voice was personified, they “heard the voice of Jehovah Elohim, walking” (v.8). So today, I trust I can encourage you to walk with God, keep company with God. If you stray, if you turn to the left or the right, remember God’s word in Isaiah; there will be a word behind you, “This is the way, walk ye in it”, Isa.30:21. God wants your company. He loves your companionship. As you can see from the scripture we read in Jude, how great things would have come into Enoch’s mind. He was a prophet; he could look right on to the way in which God will come in in judgment. Such was the communion between Enoch and God.

Now I want to speak about pleasing God. I am tested because I have to say, and perhaps many would join with me in saying, that a good proportion of our lives has been spent pleasing ourselves. There is a scripture in Romans that has laid hold of me, “But we ought, we that are strong, to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each one of us please his neighbour with a view to what is good, to edification”, Rom.15:1. Let the next verse sink in, “For the Christ also did not please himself”. Dear brethren, I stand in awe of that section. Christ did not please Himself; the One who had the right to please Himself did not please Himself. How pleasurable that would have been to the eye of heaven. We might try to please God in our own strength, and many persons do, and maybe we all have tried to. It brings in failure, because the one lesson that we have to learn is that, if we try to do it in the power of the flesh, we will fail. We can see from Romans 8 that the flesh cannot please God. There is no need to put on some appearance. The fact remains that the flesh cannot please God (Rom.8:8). It is only in the power of the Spirit that the features of Christ that were seen here are formed in the believer, and they are the features that will please God. Give the Spirit room in your life. Allow Him in. Whatever room you give Him, He will take every bit, and more; and as you allow Him to work, you will become pleasing to God. In Thessalonians; Paul was writing to young believers, “For the rest, then, brethren, we beg you and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, even as ye have received from us how ye ought to walk and please God, even as ye also do walk, that ye would abound still more. For ye know what charges we gave you through the Lord Jesus”, 1 Thess.4:1,2. Paul had already spoken about that; in chapter 2, verse 12, he says, “that ye should walk worthy of God, who calls you to his own kingdom and glory”, but in chapter 4 he desires that we might “walk and please God”. Here we have the two thoughts together, walking and pleasing God. Young believers, what I am saying is not just for those who are a little older. As you go to school, go to college, go to work, be exercised “to walk and please God”.

The next thing I want to speak about is discipline. You will see from Genesis 5 verse 18 that there is a note against Enoch’s name; his name means ‘disciplined, or devoted’. I cannot tell you, because it is not recorded, what discipline he had. Looking around a room like this, there are many dear brethren going through discipline. It is not discipline just for discipline’s sake, it is that there might be fruit for God. You might wonder why you need discipline. It is a very personal thing. I appreciate that the government of God goes on. The government of God perhaps relates to the nations, particularly Israel; maybe it relates even to the Christian church and the public profession. There is that which goes on governmentally, and you can see that in Scripture there are persons with whom, on account of their actions, God had to come in governmentally and it went down the generations. Discipline however comes home to each one of us individually.

I want to refer to one or two persons who have been disciplined. The first is Jacob. Now there is a bit of Jacob in every one of us, is there not? You remember that Jacob was a self-willed man. You get the impression from Scripture that not a lot stopped him. He did what he wanted to do and he went from one crisis to another, going forward in his own strength. He had to leave Laban, who was a man who deceived, and Jacob was a deceiver himself, and eventually he got to a point, having deceived Esau his brother, when he was going to come face to face with Esau himself. Sometimes God brings us in a way by which we come face to face with certain things. What is going to happen? Let us turn to Genesis 32, verse 22, “And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two maidservants, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford of the Jabbok; and he took them and led them over the river, and led over what he had. And Jacob remained alone; and a man wrestled with him until the rising of the dawn”. At that point he did not realise it, but he was wrestling with God. Have you ever wrestled with God, dear friend? At the end of it you can see that your life has been preserved. It seems that they wrestled all night, “And when he saw that he did not prevail against him, he” – that is God – “touched the joint of his thigh; and the joint of Jacob’s thigh was dislocated as he wrestled with him”. God knows just how to touch us, does He not? He brings in just what is needed. Jacob was a changed man. No longer was he going forward in his full strength, he was a weakened, limping man. What does it say? “Therefore the children of Israel do not eat of the sinew that is over the joint of the thigh, to this day; because he touched the joint of Jacob’s thigh – the sinew” (v.32). But Esau still had to be met. How was Jacob going to meet him? In his own strength? No, he was a weakened man; and in every step from this point that Jacob would have taken, he limped. He would say ‘I have been touched by God’. How wise God is. He knows how to bring certain things in. Our own wills, and our reliance on ourselves, is touched so that we might be drawn closer to God, and draw on divine power. Jacob at the end of his days said, “the God that shepherded me all my life long to this day”, Gen.48:15. As an old man he rose and worshipped on the bedhead. Then he gathered his sons and his grandsons before him and he blessed them. What fruit there was as a result of God having had to do with him.

I want to refer to another man, that is Joseph. As far as I see in Scripture, there was nothing that would have drawn out the discipline of God on him; yet he knew discipline, and he knew discipline because he was faithful and God wanted to work something out with him. Let us turn to Psalm 105, “And he called for a famine upon the land; he broke the whole staff of bread. He sent a man before them; Joseph was sold for a bondman. They afflicted his feet with fetters; his soul came into irons”, Ps.105:16-18. How Joseph would have felt it deeply in his soul, his feet in fetters as he was in that tower-house. Pharaoh’s wife had unjustly misrepresented him after requesting of Joseph that he should enter into something that was not right. In faithfulness Joseph had to suffer for it, and how he felt it. I think Joseph is one who suffered silently; he knew his God. “Until the time when what he said came about: the word of Jehovah tried him. The king sent and loosed him – the ruler of peoples – and let him go free. He made him lord of his house, and ruler over all his possessions: To bind his princes at his pleasure, and teach his elders wisdom”, Ps.105:19-22. You can count upon God to come in. You may feel that you are passing through suffering, going through things, and some may say, You do not deserve this. But you can leave things in God’s time, and in His own time those fetters will be released. There are many other persons I could speak of. Then there was Job; how he suffered, he suffered the loss of his possessions. He knew what it was for his sons and his daughters and his possessions and everything to go. At the end of the book, he had heard of God and he says, “but now mine eye seeth thee” (Job 42:5); there was growth there, there was soul fruit that was going to be for the divine pleasure.

I just want to refer to 1 Corinthians 11. I hesitate to speak of this, but it is in scripture; that is, discipline which we might bring upon ourselves. “But let a man prove himself, and thus eat of the bread, and drink of the cup”, 1 Cor.11:28. Tomorrow morning we will come together for the Supper if we are left here. What a privilege, what an honour! May I say, what a responsibility too, “For the eater and drinker eats and drinks judgment to himself, not distinguishing the body. On this account many among you are weak and infirm, and a good many are fallen asleep. But if we judged ourselves, so were we not judged. But being judged, we are disciplined of the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world” (vv.29-32). That is a sobering word, but there is one thing I want to add. Whatever the saints are passing through, suffering, discipline, let us ever remember that God is towards us and that divine love is ever there. Let us read from Hebrews 12, “ye have quite forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons: My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when reproved by him; for whom the Lord loves he chastens, and scourges every son whom he receives. Ye endure for chastening, God conducts himself towards you as towards sons; for who is the son that the father chastens not?” (vv.5-7). You might say, Why are we going through this? Be assured, dear brethren, that the heart of the God of love is ever towards you. I received a letter not so long ago from a brother which affected me deeply, in which he spoke about a clock. You young people, when you are learning the time, you know there is the little hand and there is the big hand. The little hand goes round and every stroke is like the hand of God’s discipline: it must go on. But then there is the big hand, and that goes round sixty fold, and that is the mercy and grace of God; there is sixty fold mercy and grace to that of discipline. And the hands are pivoted in the very centre. What is that? The pivot In the middle of the clock is the love of God in Christ, and those two hands can never be separated.

So what is going to be translated? The writer to the Hebrews tells us, “For they indeed chastened for a few days” – that is our natural fathers – “as seemed good to them; but he for profit, in order to the partaking of his holiness. But no chastening at the time seems to be matter of joy, but of grief; but afterwards yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those exercised by it”, Heb.12:10,11. “The partaking of his holiness”; just think of that. God is working something out with you and the fruitfulness is with a view to partaking of His holiness. What a thought! There is something working out in you that will be for His pleasure. What is going to be translated? Discipline will not be translated; discipline relates to us while we are here. What will be translated is the fruit of discipline. We are all waiting for the Lord to come, are we not? Are we ready to go? Enoch was a remarkable man. It says in Hebrews 11, “By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found” (v.5). In the scripture I read in Genesis, each one up to the sixth person all died, one after the other, but Enoch lived. He was translated and he could not be found. Persons might have been looking for Enoch but he was not there. When the Lord comes to take us to be with Himself, we will not be found. The Lord has His rights to do it. I speak very sympathetically; when the Lord takes His own, they are here today and they may be with Him tomorrow. That is how it will be when the Lord comes to take us, and the Lord has His rights to do that. Enoch was not found, he “was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him; for before his translation he has the testimony that he had pleased God”. Do you know deep in your heart that you have been walking with God; in some measure, and in the Spirit’s power you sought to please Him? How wonderful it is then for the Lord to translate that which pleases Him to be with Him.

Now we will read from Colossians 1. We are all anticipating that wonderful cry, are we not? May the hope of it become brighter to each one of us, but what do you know about translation now? “For this reason we also, from the day we heard of your faith and love, do not cease praying and asking for you”; then Paul adds, “so as to walk worthily of the Lord unto all well-pleasing” (vv.9,10). We get those two thoughts, ‘walking worthily’ and ‘well-pleasing’, and what do we get? “Bearing fruit in every good work, and growing by the true knowledge of God; strengthened with all power according to the might of his glory unto all endurance and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has made us fit for sharing the portion of the saints in light, who has delivered us from the authority of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love” (vv.10-13). What a contrast; from “the authority of darkness”, we have been translated “into the kingdom of the Son of his love”. We are brought into that very sphere where God loves His Son. There is something there that I would love to embrace more fully, that we are brought into the affections and the warmth of the Father’s heart, into a kingdom that is marked by love. What a contrast! I suggest, dear friends, that Enoch was very much in line with what Paul wrote to the Colossians. Enoch knew what it was to walk pleasing to God and to be translated.

I trust that we might be encouraged and exercised to be here in the walk of Enoch; a dear man, and a man who will doubtless have a great place in the coming day. He was a faithful man, and his walk was marked by faith, faith not only as to his practical needs, but also as he drew near to God. We need that and maybe if the days become harder, we will need it increasingly. It could be that those of us who are younger will have to be recalled to the faith of our grandparents and great grandparents. We have had it very easy, especially those of us who are younger. We may yet have to walk more in faith regarding our practical needs, but think of faith too as approaching God. We need faith as we enter God’s presence. We need faith as to translation. We need faith to believe that we will be changed and be with the Lord for ever.

May the Lord bless the word.

Address at Maidstone,

12 December 2015.

C C D Remmington