WALKING WITH GOD

C. Middleton

Genesis 3: 8–10; 5: 21–24; Matthew 11: 28–31; 2 Timothy 4: 10

We have been speaking about the ark and the way in which the people’s affections became attached to the ark. Again one desires to speak simply, so that the young ones may be able to follow, as to the way God would attract us and attach us to Christ. Now in Genesis we see a striking contrast in these two scriptures. In the first one God is walking in the garden, and man and his wife hiding themselves in the midst of the trees. It seems as though God had come to walk in that garden and He would have been pleased to have them walk with Him; but instead of their walking with Him they were hiding amongst the trees. Then in Genesis 5 we get a record of a man who did walk with God, and he pleased God; we are told that about Enoch, and I have no doubt that walking with God pleased Enoch. It is a remarkable contrast.

The garden of Eden must have been a wonderful place to live in; there has not been any place like it since. There was everything pleasant to the sight; God made it for man to be very happy in it. We do not know how long it was that they were happy in it, maybe it was only a very short time. We are not told whether they had ever walked with God in it, possibly they did—I do not think we can say but it does appear that God would have desired that they should walk with Him. I believe this would make us think. There are still some places that are pleasant to the sight; people go away on their holidays and they like to find places where things are pleasant to the sight.

They may not find anything as good as the garden of Eden, but in the goodness of God there are places where it is pleasant to go, and God does not grudge us getting the enjoyment of this.

I expect if it was the case at all that Adam and Eve ever knew what it was for God to come into the garden in the cool of the day, they being ready to walk with Him, they would have said that, however much they enjoyed that garden and being amongst it all the time in its pleasant conditions, the happiest time of the day was when God came and walked with them in it. Now I believe that, when we are young particularly, we may do well soberly to take account of that, that God in His goodness may give us a great deal that is very pleasant, but what really does the most good are the times when we find, so to speak, God walking with us, when we are near to Him.

I believe there are young ones who are very pleased to come to the meetings, and it is not simply that it is happy to be amongst the brethren, but we have a sense that God comes into those meetings, and it is the greatest privilege we can enjoy really to know God coming in. It would have been the greatest favour for Adam and Eve. We do not know for certain whether they ever enjoyed it, but we do know that Enoch enjoyed it, even when conditions had been marred by sin; we see how God triumphed, even in those conditions, in this man who lived some few years after what had happened in the garden of Eden. God had this man walking with Him, and if you had gone round to all the people who were living in the world then (I suppose there were quite a good number by that time) you would not have found a happier man anywhere than Enoch.

What we read about in Genesis teaches us about conditions that are still continuing, in the principle of them. The happiest people you find in this world are the people who are walking with God. It is meant to be attractive to us. We know that sin has come in, and that question has had to be settled; a man cannot enjoy walking with God until he knows that his sins are forgiven, but then, that is what God wants us to know. We are to receive the forgiveness of our sins. That does not mean merely that it is something that is done and settled, but we have received it, we have got it; it is something we really enjoy. A man who has his sins forgiven really knows God better than Adam and Eve knew God before they had sinned. However solemn this matter of our sins is, (it is a solemn matter and nothing but the death of Christ could meet it) yet for the man who has received the forgiveness of his sins it is one of the assets he has, something that he is really enjoying because he knows the God who has forgiven him.

So this matter of walking with God was not something peculiar to Enoch. We are told that Enoch walked with God, and that Noah walked with God, and I believe there were others who walked with God; at any rate the possibility of it is not finished even now. It is a very wonderful thing to walk with God. Enoch started when he was sixty-five years of age, but that is not intended to suggest to us that we can leave it until we are sixty-five. Actually people lived so long in those days that Enoch was really comparatively young when he was sixty-five. He lived three hundred and sixty-five years, and a good many people lived longer than that. More than eighty per cent of Enoch’s life was taken up with walking with God. It is meant to make us realise that it is not meant for people to do it only at the end of their days, but to see that it is a privilege that is open to us when we are not very old, that we should be attracted to the Lord.

We find in the gospels those who were attracted to the Lord. I believe a good many of them were comparatively young. We are not given their ages, but I think that may well have been the case, and it is very encouraging when we come to the New Testament to find that this idea of walking with God is not finished. I expect we remember the verse in John 6 where it says, “From that time many of his disciples went away back and walked no more with him”, (John 6: 66), I expect we ourselves can remember people to whom that seems to have happened.

We live in very serious times; the kind of thing that we read about in the Bible has actually happened in our day. Probably even some of the younger ones here can remember people who have now gone back. Thank God we know some who have gone on; but there are quite a number of people we know who have gone back. Well, that is what happened when the Lord Jesus was here, “many … went away back and walked no more with him”. When we think about that scripture it makes us realise that they did not all go back; there were some who continued to walk with Him. I believe that is meant to encourage us, that we can be amongst those who continue to walk with Him.

We were speaking earlier about the time when the children of Israel were in the wilderness; between what we read about in Exodus 25 and Joshua 3 they had quite a number of years in which they had not very much to their credit; but they did have the ark with them all that time, and those who were really concerned, have no doubt, got more and more attached to the ark, because the ark was going through the wilderness with them. In fact it says the ark searched out a resting place for them. That suggests Christ and His consideration for the people; though in wilderness conditions. He would do His best for them, He would search out a resting place for them.

Now, when we come to the New Testament we find the Lord Jesus here, and we find the disciples, and some at least were prepared to continue to walk with Him. I believe that is what the Lord wants us to know something about today; that we should not be amongst those who go back and walk no more with Him. We have seen a lot of people going back; now the Lord wants us to go on. We may say we thought this matter of walking with Him was something just a few very devoted brethren were doing. Why should we not be devoted, rather than have no object in our lives? You see, the more you know about Christ the more attached you get to Him. That is what God is doing with people, He is attaching them to Christ. It is true that some rebel against it and they want to go their own way, but if we let God have His way with us He is attaching us more and more to Christ.

The apostle speaks in 2 Corinthians 1: 21 about those who are established. God establishes us, and according to the note that means “attaches firmly to” Christ. Nobody is established unless he is attached firmly to Christ. We may think some people have been on the road a long time and they must be established christians. Well, they are if they are attached firmly to Christ; if they are attached firmly to something else it will soon manifest itself. If a man is so firmly attached to his family that he could not give up his family and he would rather give up Christ, that is a serious thing. He may be firmly attached to his business; a young man may be firmly attached to sport, or something of that kind. But the man who is established, who goes steadily through and is not overthrown, is the man who is firmly attached to Christ.

Now I read these scriptures in the New Testament by way of contrast, because what we get in Matthew 11 is the Lord’s invitation to “Come”, and in 2 Timothy 4 we read about a man who had “gone”. I do not want to say much about him, but we do learn things by way of contrast, and these contrasts are not abstract things just put in the scripture so that we might study them, but they bear on what we find in actual experience. There have been quite a number of people somewhat like Demas in our day. Demas, Paul says, “has forsaken me, having loved the present age, and is gone to Thessalonica”. Well, we might say, there was not anything much wrong in going to Thessalonica; we do not know quite what it was like, but you can be sure that when he got there he would not be any help to them. Maybe he did not go out of fellowship, we cannot say exactly, but “Demas”, he says, “has forsaken me, having loved the present age”, and he “is gone”. That was the sad thing about Demas, he had gone. We know a good many people who have gone, and but for the mercy of God we might be gone.

Now christianity is marked by this word “Come”. In the gospel preaching we hear the preachers often using that word “Come”—God is using it, inviting people to “Come”. The Lord Jesus, in Matthew 11, is inviting persons to “Come”. I believe that is how we begin to know what it is to walk with Him—you “come”.

The invitation here is to those who labour and are burdened. Maybe they came to Christ because they felt their need of Him; that is how most of us begin; I suppose. We do not begin with very high motives, as men would say, but we feel we need the Lord and we come to Him. The sinner has to come to Him; the sinner needs a Saviour and there is no other Saviour; you must come to Christ for salvation, but then, having come, what we are to do is to find what a wonderful Person this is that we have come to.

So we do not just go on for a little while, like Demas, and then it has to be said ‘he is gone’. We stay, that is the point. “Come to me, all ye who labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest”. That is in the midst of a scene where there are a good many labours and burdens, and yet to the one who comes to Christ, the Lord gives rest. I expect there are many here who could say more about this than I can, but we all know that that is really true, that in the midst of all the pressure and trouble and things that burden people, the Lord can give them rest. It is not simply that He will do it in the future. When we are with the Lord for ever we shall be in rest; we shall not have a lot of labour and burdens in heaven; but the one who gets near to the Lord now, who comes to Him, finds that the Lord gives him rest now, rest in his spirit.

Of course he may be working very hard, he may be very busy; the apostle Paul, I suppose, worked very hard night and day, he worked very hard serving the saints, yet if we had asked the apostle Paul if he experienced this; the Lord giving him rest, I have no doubt that he would say that is just what he had experienced. The Lord says, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me”. That is what it comes to, for those who come to the Lord, that He takes control. We have to accept that, and I have no doubt that those who accept it find it is the happiest place to be in. Satan would like to take control, but here the Lord takes control and Satan does not get any opening at all.

It is a very serious consideration, that Satan can take control even in true believers, but he does not have control for ever. The Lord will take them out of his control eventually, but it does speak about those who are taken captive by him. I do not know whether we should say that Demas was taken captive by him, perhaps he was; but it is a very solemn thing that it is possible for true believers to be taken captive by him. One of the ways he does that is to attach them to things of this world.

In John’s first epistle he writes to young men particularly; he says they are strong and have overcome the wicked one. Well, there are some who have had experience and they have overcome, up to a point they have overcome, but then Satan is still seeking how he can overcome them, so they are warned by the apostle, “Love not the world”, he says, “nor the things in the world” (1 John 2: 15). There are some who are not babes, they are young men, they have had experience, they have got so far and they have overcome to some extent, and yet the enemy is set to overcome them by the things that are in the world, it may be. They might say, We have not gone into the world, we are still in fellowship; perhaps Demas would have said that he was still in fellowship, but nevertheless the things of the world had got control of him, he “loved the present age”. Some of the things of the world had got such hold on Demas that Paul had to say he was gone. We do not know whether he had gone right out of fellowship, nevertheless Satan had got some measure of control over him or he would not have gone.

The things in the world are what Satan uses, maybe ambition, or money-making, or pleasure, sport, all kinds of things, we may say, if we come to the Lord does that mean that we shall never be able to do anything we like? I believe some young people get that kind of idea, but, you know, the Lord has been teaching us subjection I suppose from our earliest days. I remember Mr. Taylor saying that God teaches us subjection in the position where it is easiest to learn it—that is as children. As children under the control of our parents we learn what subjection is, where there is the affection of the parents, and we all know that the happiest children are those who are subject to their parents. I can remember when I was a boy, I could never have said that subjection to my parents meant that I could never do anything that I liked. I think we did a great many things we liked.

Well now, God is good to us. He does not tell young people they will never be able to do anything they like, but He does mean us to be brought under control, just as children have to be under control by their parents if they are to be happy, for to be preserved in any sense we need to be under control.

So those who come to the Lord come under His control. He says, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest to your souls; for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light”. The children of Israel when they were in the land of Egypt were under the yoke of the Egyptians and it was very hard bondage, they did not enjoy it at all, they had a very hard time. But those who come under the yoke of the Lord do not say that. He says, “for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light”. It is a very blessed thing to be really under the control of the Lord. You may say this is very basic and simple, and yet we have known some who were a long way on in their history, and if they had really learnt this lesson it would have saved them; persons who have gone, like Demas.

This is the only real way of preservation, to respond to this invitation of the Lord to “Come” and to take His yoke upon us. That is how people are preserved and they find it is a very happy thing; anyone who is out of control, where does he get to? The fact is that, in one sense, no one is out of control; if we think we are not going to be controlled by anyone it really means Satan is getting control. When you see the world full of people doing their own will, that is just what Satan wants them to do because that is his will. He knows that will take them further and further away from the Lord, and that is what he wants. But the Lord’s invitation is to “Come” and “Take my yoke upon you”. You really learn that subjection to Christ is the happiest position to be in.

“And learn from me”; you see, you can go on learning from Him. When we are young we go to school for perhaps seven or eight or nine years and then we may be finished with it, but when you are learning from the Lord you do not finish with it, there is always more to learn. I expect many of us have come here hoping we should learn; we come to the meetings and we learn more. We are under the hand of the Lord and He is teaching us and we are learning from Him, for He says, “I am meek and lowly in heart”. The Lord was very attractive to people who had any right sensibilities. The Pharisees did not like Him because He was such a contrast to them, but those who had a sense of need, and anything that was really of God in their souls, were attracted to Christ.

He was meek and lowly in heart, and I have no doubt He is implying here that if we learn from Him we shall be meek and lowly in heart; that is one of the things He is operating in the souls of the saints so that we are learning from Him, and learning not only to get something into our heads but something really into our hearts so that we are like Him—meek and lowly in heart. If you find a meeting full of persons, meek and lowly in heart you do not find very much trouble in that meeting. The Lord has control, and, as He says, “ye shall find rest to your souls”. He does not promise us the most restful conditions in this world where He has been rejected; He provides that as He will, it may be so and it may not, but He does promise rest to our souls. I think that is a wonderful thing to enjoy. We read some of Mr. Darby’s hymns and we find how much he appreciated this thought of rest. You get that as soon as you get near to Christ.

I believe this is like Enoch walking with God; in one sense it is more personal now because, the Lord Jesus having become a Man, this sense of walking with Him is a very blessed thing to enjoy. We have to feel that we cannot say much about it, but the Lord is still giving this invitation to “Come”, and I believe that would be a word even to some of the young ones here, that the Lord’s invitation is to “come”. Do not let all the best years of your life go by before you come. Enoch spent more than eighty per cent of

his life walking with God. If we do that we shall find it is well worth while. One just felt this was a very attractive thing, for we are in days which are very critical and we know there are people who have gone, like Demas. Well, do not let us be amongst those who go, like Demas, but those who “Come”. May it be so, for His name’s sake.

Address at Maidstone
28 July 1973