Enoch Walked With God (DD - 3 Jan 25)

Pleasing God in a world of death.

“Let them fear death who do not fear sin.” - Thomas Watson

Today’s Reading: Genesis 5

We see in Genesis 5 Adam’s descendants down through Noah, beginning with Seth, Eve’s appointed son who would continue the line of godly offspring in the wake of Abel’s death and make war against the serpent. Adam lives for 930 years, and sees his descendants to the eight generation grow into maturity. Can you imagine having a relationship with your great-great-great-great-great-grandfather? And yet even as Adam and his sons live to be 800 to 900 years old, each of their accounts end in the same way: “and he died.” Sin entered the world bringing death along with it, and its bitter consequences resound throughout this chapter. That is, until we meet Enoch.

Enoch, who lived to be 365 years old, “walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.” Hebrews 11:5 gives more details:

By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God.

In a chapter filled with death, God offers the hope of eternal life.

Eight times in this chapter, we read the words “he died.” This is the default state of fallen man, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and the wages of sin is death. Only one other person in Scripture is “translated without death” in this way, the prophet Elijah, who goes up into heaven by a whirlwind, with such immediacy that his empty cloak literally falls to the ground.