EXTRACTS

But there is another very sweet consideration to be noticed here. Enoch received testimony that he pleased God, before he was translated. This is very important and very precious. If we walk with God, we have the testimony that we please Him; we have the sweetness of communion with God, the testimony of His Spirit. His intercourse with us in the sense of His presence, the consciousness of walking according to His word, which we know to be approved by Him—in a word, a life which, spent with Him and before Him by faith, is spent in the light of His countenance, and in the enjoyment of the communications of His grace and of a sure testimony, coming from Himself, that we are pleasing to

Him. A child who walks with a kind father and converses with him, his conscience reproaching him with nothing—does he not enjoy the sense of his parent’s favour?

In figure Enoch here represents the position of the saints who compose the assembly. He is taken up to heaven by virtue of a complete victory over death. By the exercise of sovereign grace he is outside the government and the ordinary deliverance of God. He bears testimony by the Spirit to the judgment of the world, but he does not go through it (Jude 14, 15). A walk like that of Enoch has God for its object; His existence is realised—the great business of life, which in the world is spent as if man did everything—and the fact that He is interested in the walk of men, that He takes account of it, in order to reward those who diligently seek Him.

J. N. Darby (‘Synopsis’ Vol. 5, pp243, 244)

I would remark as to the young, that the work of God in them will always show itself in outward smallness, the Lord Himself being the example for us, from the outset of our spiritual history. We are told that in youthfulness He was in the midst of the doctors, not seeking out persons of His own age, but in the midst of the doctors He both heard and asked questions. The young would do well to follow that as an example. It is well that the young people should learn how to sit in the midst of those who know more than they. I speak to the young that you may see how you are to be brought to this, and learn how to be at the Lord’s disposal at all times.

J. Taylor (Vol. 89, p.447)

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