Gen 5:24 Enoch 11/26/2017 ßà
#1. The Representative Principle (Rom
5:14-19, Gen 5:1, Matt 1:1)
#2. Enoch Walked With God (Gen
5:18-27, Rom 3:10, 10:17)
#3. By Faith (Heb 11:5-6)
Please open your Bibles to the Prophecy of
Genesis, Gen 4:25 (2X). This is installment #3 in the new series on Genesis that I started two weeks ago. Last
week we finished the story of Cain and Abel. Last week we
saw two types of descendants of Adam. One type of descendants
was typified by Abel, who worshipped God in faith, and bringing a
blood-sacrifice to God, for this he understood was pleasing to God. The other
type of descendants was typified by Cain, who wanted to worship God in his own
innovative way, ignoring that he was a stupid creature who does not dictate to
God what God must accept as an offering that is pleasing to man. It is true
that we must come to God as little children, but we must not come as rebellious
children who insist on worshipping God in our own way, rather than in the way
God has instructed us. God is not pleased with rebellious children. And Cain
ignored the fact that he was depraved by nature, because he descended from
fallen parents, and that he was a sinner from birth. Therefore his mind was
clouded by sin, and therefore he should not trust his own mind what might be
acceptable or pleasing to God. Last week we also saw the godless line of
descendants from Cain, who in spite of their nice sounding names were even more wicked than Cain. And today we will see
another group of descendants from Adam, a group that was typified by Abel; a group that was called the line of Seth. We read here in Gen
4:25-26,
Ge
4:25 ¶ And Adam
knew his wife again; and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: For God, said
she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.
Ge
4:26 And to
Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began
men to call upon the name of the LORD.
And so, we see from verse 25
that Seth was a child of God, like Abel. Seth was a replacement for Abel. We
can see from verse 26 that the descendants of Seth were God fearing
people, for “then began men to call upon the name of the LORD”. Adam instructed
Seth, and Seth instructed his children, and they believed, and they began to
call upon the name of the Lord. And from the rest of the Bible we understand
that the children of Seth believed because it pleased God to give them faith.
Faith is a gift from God. Let us now continue in chapter 5. There we
read in Gen 5:1,
Ge
5:1 ¶ This is
the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the
likeness of God made he him;
God says here, “This
book is: the book of the generations of Adam” .Now I want you to know
that nowhere else in the OT do we find these words, “The book of the
generations of”. The marvels of computer technology are being put to use in
glorifying God in this place. We find 10 times in Genesis the phrase, “These
are the generations of”, but we do not find the expression, “The book of the
generations of”. But is it not remarkable that when we open the NT we find
there in Matt 1:1,
Mt
1:1 The book of
the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
This remarkable
coincidence leads us straight to “The Representative Principle”.
#1. The Representative Principle (Rom
5:14-19, Gen 5:1, Matt 1:1)
Put a sticker here in Gen 5:1, for we shall
return to this place many times, but please turn in your NT to the
Epistle to the Romans, Rom 5:15 (2X). Who wrote the Bible? God
dictated the words of the Bible to His servants the prophets and what they
wrote was literally what God dictated to them. And so, why would God use only
these two places in the Bible, Gen 5:1 and Matt 1:1, as the only
two places where He uses the expression “The book of the generation of”? Is it
not to teach us, and to emphasize to us, “The Representative Principle”?
What is the Representative Principle? God teaches us in the Bible that mankind
is an organism. Yes, we are not a bunch of individuals, for only angels can be
considered as a bunch of individuals, but mankind is an organism, and the
federal head of this organism is Adam. An example of an organism is a termite
colony. The federal head of the termite colony is the queen. Whatever the queen
does, or has done, is affecting the lives of all the termites in that colony. And
when you attack one termite you have inherited the wrath of all the termites in
that colony. Likewise we read here in Rom 5 that what Adam has done affects
everyone in the human race, for Adam is our representative in the flesh. We all
descend from Adam. We read in Rom 5:14,
Ro
5:14 Nevertheless
death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the
similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.
Ro
5:15-16 But not
as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of
one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which
is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. And not as it was
by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one
to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto
justification.
Ro
5:17 For if by
one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance
of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus
Christ.
Ro
5:18 Therefore
as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation;
even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto
justification of life.
Ro
5:19 For as by
one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall
many be made righteous.
You see, verse 14 already gives us a hint that Adam was a figure,
or a type, of Christ who was to come. How was Adam a type of Christ?
Verses 15 through 19 state this typology five times. Five times does God state
the same Representative Principle: Adam is the representative in the flesh of
all mankind, and Christ is the representative in the spirit of many. But look
now at the wonderful provision for salvation God has made. Since mankind is an
organism it is possible for one individual to represent many. If it is possible
for Adam to represent many in the flesh, then it is also possible for Christ to
represent many in the spirit. Likewise, if someone refuses Adam as his
representative, then that individual cannot have Christ as his representative; for Christ can only be your representative if you are part
of the human organism. And so we see that the disobedience of Adam is counted
as the sin of all mankind, putting all mankind under condemnation, whereas the obedience
of Christ is counted as the gift of righteousness for many. And by the
obedience of Christ is meant His obedience to endure the payment of the
equivalent of an eternity in Hell on our behalf to the bitter end, for only
through this act of obedience the payment for our sins was completed. Let us
now turn back to Gen 5:1 (2X). And so, we discover the reason why
God stated in Gen 5:1, “The book of the generations of Adam” and in Matt
1:1, “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ”. These are the two books
of Federal Headship. In the first book, “the book of the generations of Adam”,
are written the names of all the fallen descendants of the first man. In the
second book, “the book of the generation of Jesus Christ”, are written the
names of all the saints who have been redeemed by sovereign grace, both the OT
saints as well as the NT saints. The first book states the condemnation of all
men through Adam’s sin. The second book is “the Lamb’s Book of Life”, which was
written before the foundation of the W.
Therefore if someone tells you that we
are all free moral agents, and we all have our own free will to accept or
reject Jesus as our Savior, you can tell this person that it is a physical
impossibility. For we are not a bunch of individuals; we are not like the
angels; we are an organism.
And our federal head Adam has cast us into the bottomless pit of total
depravity, from which we cannot escape unless God shall give us another federal
head, which is Jesus Christ. Therefore salvation is all by grace.
But let us now
consider what is meant by the word “generations”. We find this word very
often in the Bible, in the singular as well as in the plural form, in 206
verses to be exact. Gen 5:1 gives us a clear explanation of the meaning of the
word “generations”. It does not mean a looking back to the origin of this
person, but a looking forward to the history and development of his
descendants. When we read in the Bible about “The generations of Noah” it is
not to give us the ancestry of Noah, but to tell us who were his descendants.
Likewise here in Gen 5:1, when we read about the generations of Adam
from this point forward we have the history and the development of the
descendants of Adam. Likewise when we read in Matt 1:1 about the
generation of Jesus Christ, from this point forward we have the history and the
development of Jesus Christ and all those who are considered of the family of
Christ. And let us now consider these descendants of Adam and how they came
into the world.
We have seen in Gen
5:1 that Adam was made in the likeness of God. Adam was created good, not
perfect but good. Adam was created righteous. But Adam lost his righteousness
by sinning against God. And since Adam believed the words of the Devil rather
than the words of God, by sinning Adam sold himself into enslavement to sin and
to Satan, for the Lord Jesus stated this principle in John 8:34, “Whosoever
committeth sin is the slave of sin”. Now we read in Gen 5:3 (2X),
Ge
5:3 And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his
own likeness, after his
image; and called his name Seth:
Adam had become sinful and
Adam begat a son who is also sinful, and called his name Seth. We should not
imagine that Abel and Seth came into the world like innocent sinless children,
as sinless as angels. If the parents are sinful, then the children are also
sinful. God states this principle in Job 14:4, “Who can bring a clean thing
out of an unclean? Not one”. Adam has made himself a slave, and thus all his
children are born in slavery. And so, Gen 5:3 gives us clearly the doctrine of Total
Depravity. Every human being is a descendant of Adam and comes into the
world totally depraved, which means that every human being comes into the world
as a slave of sin and Satan, irresistibly drawn toward evil rather than good,
and incapable of doing anything that pleases God. This is how Abel and Seth
came into the world. But at some point in their life Abel and Seth received the
grace of God unto salvation, and that is why we read in Gen 4:26, “Then
began men to call upon the name of the LORD”. What does that mean? Since the
word LORD is in capital letters we understand that men began to call on the
name of Jehovah. But the name Jehovah is associated with God as the Savior, the
Deliverer. We read this in Ex 6:3, where
God says to Moses,
Ex
6:3 And I
appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God
Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them.
We read this in the
context of God’s promises to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt. He is JEHOVAH,
the Deliverer out of the house of bondage, the Redeemer out of
the slave market of sin. We also read this in Isa 43:11, where God says,
Isa
43:11, I, even I, am
the LORD (I am Jehovah); and beside Me there is
no Saviour.
But we read in the
NT, in Acts 4:12, that there is no other Savior than Jesus Christ:
Ac
4:12 Neither is
there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given
among men, whereby we must be saved.
None other name! And thus we conclude that the
Lord Jesus Christ is also known by the name Jehovah. And so, when we read in Gen
4:26, “Then began men to call upon the name of the LORD”, it means that
they began to beseech the Lord for salvation. The wicked line of descendants of
Cain was not calling upon the name of the Lord. Only the line of Seth was
calling upon the name of the Lord, for God honored the line of Seth, and God
gave them faith, but the wicked line of Cain He left in their sins. This is
important to know, for this explains the words in the beginning of chapter 6,
how God dealt with the descendants of Cain and with the descendants of Seth.
Then we read in Gen 5:4,
Ge
5:4 And the
days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat
sons and daughters:
Adam
begat other sons and daughters. Who did Cain marry? Cain married one of his sisters, for
God says in Gen 3:20 that Eve was the mother of all living. Would one of
the daughters of Adam want to marry Cain the murderer? Yes, because she was
also born totally depraved, as an enemy of God.
Let us now drop down
to verse 18, Gen 5:18 (2X). Here we read about Enoch.
#2. Enoch Walked With God (Gen
5:18-27, Rom 3:10, 10:17)
Ge
5:18 And Jared
lived an hundred sixty and two years, and he begat Enoch:
Ge
5:19 And Jared
lived after he begat Enoch eight hundred years, and begat sons and daughters:
Ge
5:20 And all
the days of Jared were nine hundred sixty and two years: and he died.
Ge
5:21 ¶ And
Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah:
Ge
5:22 And Enoch
walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat
sons and daughters:
Ge
5:23 And all
the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years:
Ge
5:24 And Enoch
walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.
Ge
5:25 ¶ And
Methuselah lived an hundred eighty and seven years, and begat Lamech:
Ge
5:26 And Methuselah
lived after he begat Lamech seven hundred eighty and two years, and begat sons
and daughters:
Ge
5:27 And all
the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years: and he died.
Jared and Methuselah were the
two longest living people in the Bible. Jared lived 962 years, and Methuselah
lived 969 years. Right in between those two longest living patriarchs we find
Enoch. Of all the other patriarch we read, “And he
died”. But in the case of Enoch God made an exception. Enoch, the seventh from
Adam died not. He was translated without seeing death, “for God took him”.
Enoch was a very special person. What was so special about Enoch? Like all the
other children of Adam, Enoch was born as a totally depraved child, as an enemy
of God, for God says in Rom 3:10, “There is NONE righteous, NO NOT ONE”,
and that includes new born babies, and that includes Enoch. But at some point
in the life of Enoch God did a miracle in the soul of Enoch, and he became
saved. When was that? We read in Gen 5:22, “Enoch walked with God after he
begat Methuselah”. And so, we understand that Enoch did not walk with God for
the first 65 years of his life. What brought Enoch to a close fellowship with
God? God did not tell us which event in the life of Enoch was
responsible for causing him to seek for God, since God gives salvation to whom
He will, and not to whom we will. By withholding this information God actually
emphasizes that He is altogether a sovereign God. God does not save us because
we turn to Him in some desperate moment, or we turn to Him in a moment of great
anguish, or we turn to Him because we are so attentive in listening to His
Word, or any other event or experience we might have. God gives salvation to whom He will, at a time and place that He considers the best
time and place. It is true that “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the
word of God” (Rom 10:17), but God does not save us because we listen
attentively to His Word. It helps if we do that, but this is not the condition
for salvation, for faith does not come by the will of the flesh, nor by the
will of man, but only by the will of God. There are only two people in
the whole Bible of whom God says that “they walked
with God”. One was Enoch and the other was Noah. And there are only two
persons of which the Bible writes that “they pleased
God”. One was Enoch and the other was the Lord Jesus Christ. But when we say
that Enoch walked with God we must not imagine that somehow God manifested
Himself on the side of Enoch. We know the principle that the Bible sets forth:
We walk by faith, not by sight. This also applies to Enoch. Enoch walked with
God, because it pleased God to give Enoch this great faith, and as a result “He
pleased God”. And God wrote this to let us know how we can please Him. We
speak often about doing those things that are pleasing in His sight. Keeping a
list in the forefront of our mind of things what not to do according to
the Law, is not pleasing in His sight, for by the works of the Law shall no
flesh be justified. Instead we should ask ourselves what we can do to please Him. It pleases God when we increase
our faith through a study of His Word. It pleases God when we spend more time
edifying our fellow man. It pleases God when we spend more time teaching our
children the ways of God, and teaching them not to follow the ways of man. It
pleases God when we tell others about what Christ has done for us. Think about
this when we whittle your time away watching television. Think about this when
our children are living a life that is less faithful than we wish they would
be. And ask ourselves if in all this we can see God’s hand in preparing the
world for judgment. Let us now turn to another subject:
Let us consider the
words of Gen 5:23, “And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty
and five years”. 365 Years! There are people who see in this number nothing
more than a historical fact. Enoch lived 365 years. But why did God include
these words in the Bible? He could have left them out altogether. If they are
nothing more than historical information, why did God make these words so
important, according to Rev 22:18-19, that if we would change one letter
in this sentence we would be subject to eternal Hell fire forever? Why is that
so? Is it not because every word in the Bible is crafted by God to demonstrate
His wisdom? When we see this number 365, we are inevitably drawn to the days of
one year. Is God drawing our attention to 365 years a symbolic year,
symbolizing a certain time period? Does this not remind us of “the acceptable
year of the Lord”? Please turn in your Bibles to the Gospel according to
Luke, Luke 4:18 (2X). The Lord Jesus gave His first sermon in the city
of Nazareth, the city where He grew up, the city that knows Him as the
Carpenter of Nazareth. They were curious to hear what Gospel He was preaching.
But at the end of this sermon they wanted Him dead. In this chapter we see the
first presentation of the Gospel to the people who were supposed to know Christ
best, and we also see the persecution that followed from those same people who
were supposed to know Him best. It reminds us of the preaching of the true
Gospel throughout time, how well it was received by the heathen and the
barbarians, and how ill it was received and how it was
persecuted by those in the churches who were supposed to know Him best.
We read here in Luke 4:
Lu
4:18 The Spirit
of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel
to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance
to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them
that are bruised,
Lu
4:19 To preach
the acceptable year of the Lord.
What did Jesus call the
acceptable year of the Lord? It was not for one year! His first year was
not more special than the following two and a half years. V.18 speaks in
symbolic terms of the preaching of the Gospel and the resulting deliverance of
people from their bondage to sin and Satan. But the preaching of the Gospel did
not stop when Christ went to the cross. In fact it intensified after the cross.
And so, from these verses we understand that God is equating the entire NT
period of time, beginning there in Nazareth, with “the acceptable year of the
Lord”. God is equating the entire time of the preaching of the true Gospel with
the period of one symbolic year. And here is where the 365 years of Enoch come
in. Enoch’s time period is equivalent to “the acceptable year of the Lord”,
which is the entire period of preaching the full and true Gospel, and at the
end of that time period God shall rapture all the living saints up to be with
Christ forever. You see, Enoch is a type of those
believers who shall be alive on this earth when our Lord shall come on the Last
Day to judge the world. And those believers who shall be alive on that day have
been preaching, like Enoch has, the Gospel and the return of Christ for
judgment. Please turn in your Bibles to the Epistle of Jude, Jude 1:3
(2X).
Jude, or Judas, was
a half-brother of the Lord Jesus. The father of Jude was Joseph, and the Father
of the Lord Jesus was God. But both had the same mother, who was Mary. Yes,
Mary had at least six more children after she gave birth to Jesus. We find that
in Matt 13:55-56, where we read,
Mt
13:55-56 Is not
this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? and
his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us?
The Epistle of James
was written through the pen of James, another half-brother of Jesus, and the
Epistle of Jude was written through the pen of Jude, or Judas, the
brother of James. When we open to the Epistle of Jude we see right away in verse
3 why he was driven to write this epistle.
Jude
1:3-4 Beloved,
when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was
needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should
earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.
For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old
ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into
lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.
God indicates here that the main purpose
why He wrote this epistle was to warn us for false teachers who have crept in
unawares into the church, and whose aim is to turn the grace of our Lord into
lasciviousness, which means unbridled sexual lust. Their teaching is primarily antinomian,
briefly described by “Let us sin, for Christ has paid it all anyway”. This
warning applies all the more when we approach the time of the end, for it is
especially in our time that the errors are multiplying in the areas of adopting
divorce and remarriage, and adopting homosexuality as an alternate lifestyle,
and seeing fornication as an expression of love, and approving a proliferation
of pornography, and so on. This is what we see in our lifetime. But Enoch was
already preaching against it. You see, for the last 300 years of his life Enoch
was preacher of righteousness. Please drop down to verse 14 (2X).
Jude
1:14-15 And
Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the
Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, To
execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of
all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their
hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.
Enoch warned the
world of these
same false teachers, and he warned the world that the Lord would come to judge
all them that do not fear God, and He will judge all those who know not God.
God speaks about those for whom Enoch warned the world. The same warnings apply
today:
Jude
1:16 These are
murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaketh
great swelling words, having men’s persons in admiration because of
advantage (gain).
Jude
1:17-18 But,
beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our
Lord Jesus Christ; How that they
told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their
own ungodly lusts.
You see, already at the time of Enoch
there were mockers in the world, and there shall also be mockers in the last
time who shall say, “Where
is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things
continue as they were from the beginning of the creation”. And they
shall not fear the wrath of God, but they shall walk after their own ungodly
lusts. And so, we conclude that Enoch was a preacher of righteousness because
he walked with God and he warned the world of the judgment to come. Enoch’s
walk with God prepared him for his preaching and for his witness. You see,
before we can witness for God we must walk with God, and we must study His
Word, so that we know the Lord when we speak in His name. Unfortunately, much
of what passes for Christian service today is not based on the Word of God.
Many Christian programs that churches have set up are nothing else but
make-work, and keep people very busy, but are unproductive for the Lord and for
winning souls for Christ. But now we want to consider the words of verse 14.
Please turn in your Bibles to the First
Epistle to the Thessalonians, 1Thes 4:13 (2X). What is Jude referring to
in Jude 1:14 where Enoch said, “Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of
his saints”? As you know, the word “rapture” does not appear in the Bible. But
the concept of the rapture certainly does, and every time it occurs it points
to the events of the last day. The Bible teaches that the Rapture of the saints
occurs only on the Last Day. But God prepared us for this event both in words
and in examples. First Enoch was raptured into heaven, then Elijah was raptured
into heaven, then the body of Moses was resurrected and taken up into heaven,
then at the resurrection of Christ a large number of saints was resurrected and
taken up into heaven. In all these instances the saints received glorified bodies which are like the body that Christ received when He
ascended into heaven. Enoch was the first one to be raptured. And so, Enoch is
a picture of all those who shall be raptured on the last day, because when the
last of the elect has been saved there is no need for the world to exist any
longer. It will have served its purpose. We read about the rapture in 1Thes
4:13-18,
1Th
4:13-14 But I
would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep,
that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose
again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.
1Th
4:15 For this
we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and
remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.
1Th
4:16 For the
Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the
archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
1Th
4:17 Then we
which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the
clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
1Th
4:18 Wherefore
comfort one another with these words.
God says in 1Thes
4:14, “them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him”. It means
that all the souls of all the saints who have died, and whose bodies are still
in the grave, will accompany Christ when He shall come again on the last day.
This explains why Enoch said in Jude 1:14, “Behold, the Lord cometh with
ten thousands of his saints”. Actually the Greek word is not “ten thousands”,
but it is “myriads”, which actually means “an innumerable multitude”, so large
that no man can number them. Christ will bring with Him all the souls of all
the saints in heaven. Now read 1Thes 4:16. Then the Lord shall shout
with a great shout, and His shout will be recognized as the voice of the
archangel, referring to the Chief Messenger Michael who is not an angel but
Christ Himself, and His shout will be recognized as the Last Trumpet call,
which is as loud as the trumpet of God. Remember the loud trumpet of God at the
time that He spoke the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. Then everything
following will happen in an instant: the dead bodies of the saints will be
resurrected as glorified bodies, they will be joined with their souls at the
side of Christ, and the saints who are still alive at that moment will also
receive their glorified bodies and will join all the other saints at the side
of Christ. And so shall we ever be with the Lord. All the unsaved will remain
on the earth and will be gathered before the Judgment Throne. This scenario
completely agrees with what we read in John 5 and 6 and in 1Cor 15. Please
turn in your Bibles to the First Epistle to the Corinthians, 1Cor 15:51
(2X). This glorious promise is worth repeating over and over. In this entire
chapter of 1Cor 15 God speaks about the resurrection of the body. The
resurrection of the soul is not in question. The Lord Jesus sufficiently
addressed that in John 3 when He said, “Ye must be born from above”. But now in
1Cor 15 He speaks of another event at another time in history. We read in 1Cor
15:51-54,
1Co
15:51 ¶ Behold,
I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
1Co
15:52 In a
moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall
sound, and
the dead shall be raised
incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
1Co
15:53-54 For
this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on
immortality.
So when this corruptible shall
have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written,
“Death is swallowed up in victory”.
Here again we read that we shall not all
die, but some of us shall still be alive when the Lord comes. Here again is
that Last Trumpet call. Then everything happens in a moment, in the twinkling
of an eye, and we will be joined on the side of Christ at that moment. This is
the rapture. And the translation of Enoch was a foretaste of that event. Please
turn now in your Bibles to the Epistle to the Hebrews, Heb 11:5
(2X). What role does our faith have in all of this?
#3. By Faith (Heb 11:5-6)
Hebrews chapter 11
is the chapter of the heroes of faith. All these are OT saints. Abel is the
first individual mentioned in this chapter, and the second one is Enoch. We
read in Heb 11:5-6,
Heb
11:5 By faith
Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because
God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that
he pleased God.
Heb
11:6 But
without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh
to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that
diligently seek him.
Before his
translation Enoch received from God a testimony that he pleased God. That was
of great comfort to Enoch, for Enoch knew that he was not sinless. But Enoch
also had great faith, and Enoch knew that his sins were forgiven. How else
could God delight in him unless his sins were wiped away? The question that
arises often is, “What came first? Faith or salvation or regeneration?” When a
sinner becomes a saint, his transformation occurs in an instant, for God does
not need a long time. Either we are in the camp of Satan, or we are in the camp
of Christ, but there is nothing in between. The transformation is from being
unrighteous to being righteous, or just, in the eyes of God. That is where the
term “Justification” comes from. When God calls us saved, God calls us justified,
for we have been translated into the camp of Christ. When our soul is
regenerated (John 3:3), all our sins have been washed away in an instant, and
we are called justified by God. When God gives us faith because He pours
His grace upon us, then we are called justified by faith, “for by grace
are we saved through faith, and that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God”.
If we then consider all this in the light of, “Faith cometh by hearing and
hearing by the Word of God”, we realize that all this must be occurring at the
same moment in time. At the same moment that we hear the Gospel of salvation by
the cross of Christ, God gives us a regenerated soul and empowers us to believe
the Gospel. Praise God that He made it so simple that even a child can
understand this. Praise God for a salvation that comes to us so free and so
full of grace that God can save even a little baby. Praise God for the rapture
of Enoch that gave us so much information in only a few words.
AMEN. Let us turn to the Lord in prayer.