35. "Walk faithfully with God" Genesis 5:22-24

 35. "Walk faithfully with God"

Genesis 5:22-24 After he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked faithfully with God 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Enoch lived a total of 365 years. Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away. 

We have read many scriptures about the way to live, but unless our life is ungodly, we will live life with sin and it causes us death. Death in many areas of our life, the deadening life is the result of unhealthy spiritual life. Now, let us talk about the way to escape death.

In our verse we can read the life of Enoch, from the line of the first family of mankind Adam. After he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked faithfully with God 300 years and had other sons and daughters. (Genesis 5:22)

We may notice here about Enoch who walked with God. He did not just live but his life is with God, Enoch faithfully walked with God. "Altogether, Enoch lived a total of 365 years. Enoch walked faithfully with God; (Genesis 5:23) 

To walk with God is to take Him as our center and everything, to do things not according to our own concept and desire but according to His revelation and leading, and to do everything with Him. This implies the denying of our self and everything that is of our self that we may be one with Him.

Matthew 16:24-25 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.

How can we able to see and find an escape to death? By walking by God, as we walk as disciples of Christ, following His teachings and commandments we will gain life, for Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. 

Another example who also followed to what Enoch did, in Genesis 6:9 we can read, "... Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God." (Genesis 6:9)

There's also Noah who walked with God, and we knew the result in his life, God made a flood to punish all the wicked people who were ungodly and didn't walked with God, but God spared the life of Noah's family from death by letting them built an Arc. 

Like his great-grandfather Enoch, Noah walked with God by faith. As a result, he became heir of God’s righteousness and a herald of righteousness as a protest against the evil generation. Noah’s righteousness strengthened God’s standing to execute His judgment upon that ungodly generation.

Read Hebrews 11:7, "By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith."

2 Peter 2:5 if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others;

Why God spared Noah's life? Why he did not experience death from that judgment to the wicked people? Because Noah walked with God, became righteous to the sight of God. Whether one is righteous and godly or unrighteous and ungodly is crucial in regard to God’s governmental judgment. To be righteous is to be right with man before God, and to be godly is to express God before man. This was the manner of life that Noah, a manner of life that spared him from God’s governmental judgment according to God's righteousness.

Listen also to Micah's words, the prophetess who also walked her life with God, she said, "He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8)

Micah’s word here concerning what the Lord requires of His people is not a matter of God’s revelation but a matter of the prophet’s concept. The divine concept according to the divine revelation in the New Testament is that Christ has replaced the law (Rom. 10:4 "Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.), and God’s people should live Christ rather than keep the law.

-Christ came to fulfill the law,(Matthew 5:17) that He might terminate the law and replace it. Thus, everyone who believes in Him receives God’s righteousness, which is Christ Himself. 

Romans 8:3-4, "For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit."

In Christ as we recieved Him, we are not living in the flesh but of the spirit of Christ. Through Christ’s crucifixion in the flesh, God condemned sin, which was brought by Satan into man’s flesh. As a result, it is possible for us to walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. 

Again I say, " do not walk according to the flesh, but walk faithfully with God. For in the flesh nothing good dwells; only sin dwells in the flesh. Furthermore, the flesh is of death. Hence, no man can be justified before God out of the works of the law through the flesh. Because of such a weak and impotent flesh, there is something that the law could not do. But praise to Jesus, for He fulfills the law, that we recieved life not death because of Jesus in our life. The law requires us, as sinners, to die, and according to that requirement Christ died for us and with us. Hence, through law we have died in Christ and with Christ.

See, this principle also evident to apostle Paul, as he said, “For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:19-20) this is the reason why Jesus died, for us to be saved from the death and eternal death but to gain life and to live in eternal kingdom in the new Jerusalem.   

Paul said again, "I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain." Philippians 1:20-21

Paul’s life was to live Christ. To him to live was Christ, not the law or circumcision. He would not live the law but would live Christ, not be found in the law but be found in Christ. Christ was not only his life but also his living. He lived Christ because Christ lived in him. He was one with Christ in both life and living. He and Christ had one life and one living. They lived together as one person. Christ lived within Paul as Paul’s life, and Paul lived Christ without as Christ’s living. The normal experience of Christ is to live Him, and to live Him is to magnify Him always, regardless of the circumstances. 

As Enoch walked faithfully with God, let us walk also with our Lord Christ Jesus faithfully. We are not walking with God aimlessly, but we are heading to His promise of life and the escape from death -I'm talking about the rapture day. And see, as Enoch walked with God faithfully, then he was no more, because God took him away." (Genesis 5:23-24)

Enoch was the first person to be raptured. By this he escaped death, the ultimate issue of man’s fall. This first mentioning of the rapture establishes the principle of the rapture: our being raptured depends on our being mature in the divine life by our walking with God. Enoch walked with God day and night for three hundred years. According to Heb. 11:5-6, he did this by faith, believing that God is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. After three hundred years of seeking God and walking with Him, Enoch was taken by God, thus obtaining the reward of not seeing death.

By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death: “He could not be found, because God had taken him away.” For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.(Hebrews 11:5-6)

Also, prophet Elijah was being raptured, read the book of 2 Kings 2:11, "As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind."

Elijah’s rapture typified the termination of the Old Testament age in God’s economy. However, Elijah himself was not terminated. He was taken up into heaven to await the next age, in which he will see Elisha (Christ) doing many gracious and sweet things. The Scriptures say that Elijah will come back again . At the end of the New Testament age Elijah will return to be one of the two witnesses during the three and a half years of the great tribulation. But I believe, rapture will happen before the great tribulation, so the overcoming believers will experience the rapture day, like prophet Elijah and Enoch did experienced as a reward of their walking faithfully with God.

Enoch lived a total of 365 years, let's emitate him even though we cannot meet his age at 365 years but we have years to live in a total of 365 days, walk with Christ everyday, walk faithfully with our God in our 365 days a year... wish we have many years to come and every day of 365 of a year we are found walking faithfully with Jesus. Amen.

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