Last week we began looking at the example of Enoch as a man of faith, who pleased God with his faith. That faith was expressed by walking with God, a phrase we first find in Genesis 3, that God was “walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Gen. 3:8). Adam and Eve’s response was not to walk with God, but to hide from him.
But Enoch had learned to walk with God by faith. How much a visible, tangible presence that was we don’t know. But we noticed that for Enoch to walk with God, he had to be going to the same place, taking the same path and walking at the same pace. That is true of us as well. Another thing we noted is that Enoch didn’t take up this practice of walking with God until after Methusaleh was born. “Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah” (Genesis 5:22). He was 65 years old at the time. This tells us that what is important about walking with God is that we start, not when we start. I would encourage you, if you’ve never walked with God, that you start today.
Enoch observed the culture around him, which Genesis 6:5 tells us was exceedingly wicked. “the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5). And Enoch walked with God as a prophet, speaking judgment against the wickedness surrounding him.
14 It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, 15 to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” (Jude 14-15)
This was Enoch’s sermon for 300 years prior to the flood, “You are in God’s cross-hairs. Judgment is coming.” Needless to say, Enoch was never a much-sought-after conference speaker! We have no indication that people listened to either him or Noah. Yet, for 300 years Enoch acted in obedience to God because he believed God. And God rewarded Enoch.
Walking with God was a great reward in and of itself. He experienced the great joy of being in God’s presence on a daily, moment-by-moment basis (Psalm 16:11), “practicing the presence of God” as Brother Lawrence advised. Despite all the difficulties and distractions, all the trials and hostilities, Enoch enjoyed an intimate fellowship with God.
And so God gave him an even greater reward. He took Enoch so that Enoch could have uninterrupted eternal fellowship with God, no longer surrounded by the barriers of sin or this sinful world. Enoch pleased God because that was his ultimate pleasure. He lived out the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism: Question: “What is the chief end of man?” Answer: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.”
God has intended that we experience the ultimate joy of a fellowship with Him that would be uninterrupted and would involve fullest, unbroken joy. God’s plan is to bring you to glory and to shower you with His presence forever. THAT will bring you greatest joy.
Well, if God was pleased with Enoch, how can we imitate Enoch so that God is pleased with us and we experience this great joy?
Hebrews 11:6 answers that question strongly by casting it in the negative: “And without faith it is impossible to please God.” This is the strongest way that our author could impress upon us the absolute necessity of faith. We might have everything else, but if faith is missing, “it is impossible to please God.” It isn’t “difficult” to please God, or “without faith you will have to work extra-hard to please God, but “impossible” to please God. If we have not faith, we cannot please God at all. There is only one thing that makes us pleasurable to God, approved by God, and that is faith.
This resonates with Paul’s insistence that God cannot and will not be pleased apart from the righteousness that comes from God through faith (cf. Romans 3:21, 22; Philippians 3:9). Indeed, without this faith all are under the wrath of God (cf. Romans 1:17, 18; 2:5–8). Christians understand that “by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8, 9).
Paul is just as absolute as the writer of Hebrews when he says “whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23). Paul and our author shut the door, slam the door shut against any possibility of winning God’s favor through anything other than faith.
The reality is you and I cannot possibly be good enough to please God. Any sliver of sin in our lives, even if done only once, makes a holy God abhor us. We can never be religious enough. We can never make enough sacrifices or give away enough money to make God take a glance at us. “Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear” (Isaiah 59:2). And even “all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment” (Isaiah 64:6) which God wants nothing to do with.
But what do we mean by a faith that pleases God? After all, doesn’t James say that even the demons believe? What kind of faith pleases God?
Respected theologian Louis Berkhof defines genuine faith as including an intellectual element (notitia was a term they used), which is…
“a positive recognition of the truth”; an emotional element (assensus), which involves “a deep conviction of the truth”; and a volitional element (fiducia), which involves “a personal trust in Christ as Savior and Lord, including a surrender…to Christ.” (Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1939).
When missionary John Paton was translating the Scriptures for the South Sea islanders, he was unable to find a word in their vocabulary for the concept of believing, trusting, or having faith. He had no idea how he would convey the idea of faith to them. One day, while he was in his hut translating, a native came running up the stairs into Paton’s study and flopped in a chair, exhausted. He said to Paton, “It’s so good to rest my whole weight in this chair.”
John Paton had his word: Faith is resting your whole weight on God. Faith is resting your eternal destiny in the hands of God. That word went into the translation of their New Testament and helped to bring that civilization of natives to Christ. Believing is putting your whole weight, your complete trust, in Jesus Christ.
Our writer tells us two things about this faith, the kind of faith that pleases God and is rewarded by God. First, it is faith placed in the right God, “for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists.” Literally, “must believe that he is.” Mere existence is not the issue, although there is plenty of evidence that the true God does exist. But what pleases God is not simply that we recognize that there is a deity out there, but that we believe in the one true God. The object of the Christian faith is more narrow and focused than just any god. To believe that “he is” is a reference for the name of God by which He revealed Himself to Moses in Exodus. Remember this?
13 Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.'” (Exodus 3:14-15)
Hear the overtones? We must believe the “I am,” that “He is.” We must put our faith in this covenant-making, covenant-keeping God, believe that He is Yahweh. In John 8:58 Jesus aroused the wrath of the Pharisees by saying, “Before Abraham was born, ‘I AM.’” Yahweh and Jesus are one—the self-existent eternal God. God is not pleased when we believe in a created Jesus (Jehovah Witnesses) or a developed Jesus (Mormons). It is never faith in the God we want but faith in the God who is that matters to God and pleases Him.
This “I AM” is the Creator of heaven and earth, the miracle-worker that brought Israel out of Egypt and through the Reed Sea. He is the one who brought down the walls of Jericho and made the sun stand still. And for us, He is the one who conquered the grave and rose again.
Second, God is pleased with a faith that pursues a rewarding God. It is not merely faith in the right God that pleases God, but faith in a rewarding God. It other words, faith that pleases God believes that God will deliver on His promises. We believe that “he is and that he rewards those who seek him.”
Friends, God wants us to believe that the benefits of knowing Him infinitely outweighs anything that might seek to keep us from him. He wants us to believe that knowing him will benefit us and make us happy. He wants us to believe that we will find in Him our greatest delight and satisfaction, that it is a reward to seek Him.
God is a rewarder. It is in His nature to give, because His nature is love. He longs to reward us. And it is through faith that we receive the reward.
C. S. Lewis, in one of my favorite quotes, said this:
If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (C. S. Lewis, Weight of Glory).
How strong do you think the Lord finds your desires for Him and His good gifts? Are you being too easily pleased by other things? These Hebrews were in danger of valuing the benefits they would receive by returning to Judaism as higher than what they could experience by remaining with Jesus Christ. They were not trusting that God would reward them, but feared that they might be losing out, so they were in danger of returning under the Law.
God is pleased with the kind of faith that sees Him for who He is (the Great I AM) and believes that in pursuing Him we receive the greatest possible reward.
The greatest reward we receive, which is also the object of our faith, is God Himself. The prophet Jeremiah was told to tell the people that God could be sought and found. In Jeremiah 29:12-14a we read, “Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the LORD…”
What is the reward of our seeking? God. Of course, God is the ultimate reward of our seeking. Nothing else will ultimately and deeply satisfy us. 2 Chronicles 15:15 puts it this way: “And all Judah rejoiced over the oath, for they had sworn with all their heart and had sought him with their whole desire, and he was found by them, and the LORD gave them rest all around.”
Beautiful, isn’t it? They sought for Him and He let them find Him. That’s what He wants. He wants to be found. He is like the father playing Hide-n-Seek with his child, giving clues and hints to where he hides. He wants to be found. He wants his child to have the joy of finding him.
The question is: Do you have a heart that says, “I want to know Christ. I believe there is greater reward in seeking Him and finding Him than in anything else this world offers.”
That was Enoch. He believed in the true God and He sought Him and when he found God he walked with God. And he was taken up by God. He pursued God all the way to heaven!
Do you remember the day God let you find Him? What a glorious day! Maybe you don’t remember it well. Don’t stop seeking. Keep pursuing Christ.
Paul experienced this same pursuit. Here is how he explained his salvation in Philippians 3. In his testimony in Acts we hardly get a glimpse of what was going on inside of Paul. Those testimonies focus on what God did and how God had called him. And maybe Philippians 3 is in retrospect, but they do explain Paul’s motivations and thinking.
If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. 7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith– 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Does that express your heart’s desire? Do you value Christ and want to know Him so much that you are willing to give up everything that made you who you were before? Paul wanted to be “found in him,” because that is where true righteousness was found, righteousness that is a gift of God to all who believe. And in coming by faith, it enabled Paul to experience knowing Christ in both sufferings and resurrection.
God is looking for those who have the faith to believe that He is worth the effort of chasing and losing everything else in order to find Him.
Here is the great and grand point: Enoch lived in dark, hostile days that were uncongenial to his faith. Life was so inhospitable to righteousness that finally, in the time of Noah:
Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.” (Genesis 6:11–13)
However, Enoch resisted the sinful gravity of his culture and walked with God for over three hundred years! He set his goal on the city of God—God’s place; so he walked the same path —striding in step with God’s pace. Three hundred years of trusting pursuit!
Why was he able to do it? First, because he believed that God is, that “he exists” in all his creative and personal power. Second, because he believed that God “rewards” those who earnestly “seek him.” Enoch was sure God would be equitable to him. As a result, there was great pleasure in Heaven—and God took him. Perhaps the stars echoed with God’s joyous laughter.
Seek this God while He may be found. Today is the day of salvation. We are guaranteed no other day.
And if you have found Him, walk with Him. Far too many Christians only want enough of God to guarantee heaven. But He saved you for so much more! I hope as a son or daughter of God that you want to know Him and you will pursue knowing Him and enjoying Him in all of His grace and goodness.
The reality is, there is more reward to be found! Keep on seeking and you will find Christ to be a never-ending treasure of goodness and grace. Keep on seeking and you will discover that Christ is everything you ever thought you needed and more than you ever dreamed of.
His love has no limit, His grace has no measure,
His power no boundary known unto men,
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus,
He giveth and giveth and giveth again.
That’s what happened to Enoch. He started walking with God at age 65 and didn’t stop walking with God. And finally he reached home. God opened the door and said, “Come on home.”
In Revelation 3 God provides an invitation to a church we don’t think much of, the church of Laodicea. But it is an invitation to all of us.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. (Rev. 3:20)
He is pursuing you. Seek Him by faith. Believe that He is the great I AM and that finding Him will thrill your soul.
We may not have the same experience of Enoch in being translated to heaven without dying, but we do know that if we pursue God by faith that ultimately we will stand alive before God in heaven, and to our heart’s deepest desire, worship Him forever.
“The soul is measured by its flights, some low and some high. The heart is known by its delights and pleasures never lie.” (Anonymous)
Grace Still Amazes 