Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him. Genesis 5:24
Is walking with God really such a big deal? We walk because the dog or a doctor nags us, hoping to keep the Grim Reaper at bay. Indeed, Enoch walked for three hundred years and sidestepped death altogether. He shares the latter distinction with famed Elijah who was taken up to heaven in a fiery horse-drawn chariot. Because “he was not,” fifty men searched for him three days before they accepted Elisha’s eyewitness account. Remarkably, the author of Hebrews puts only the portrait of obscure Enoch into his Heroes of the Faith gallery in chapter 11. Of him he writes, “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 attested as having pleased God.”
In Genesis 3 we learn that the Lord found it pleasurable to walk in the garden in the cool of the day. Today we might say that the heavenly Father liked to “hang out” with his earthly kids. He was the Initiator and Practitioner of the relationship that made Eden a true paradise. Sin ruined that natural communion. Tragically, the Fall bred a contrary instinct to run from God and tune Him out. Delightful living turned into dreary existence. Even a cursory look at Genesis 5 conveys a sobering sense of this. The litany of the reproductive cycle is tiresome. Men lived and died, lived and died, lived and died… Part 1 of 2
Comment: What if we spiced up the subject of “otherworldly walking” by throwing some genealogies into the mix? No eye-rolling needed, since none other than the Apostle Paul just shot down the idea. He warned Titus of people with warped minds who mess with the candor of the Gospel. “But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, discords and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless” (3:9). At one time I merely tackled some OT ancestries to look up names and get a feel for the people. It was fun to meet limping Joe and hairy Mitch, along with skinny Jim and portly Frank. As it turned out, “they” were more like “us” than creatures from an alien planet. Actually, my sampling revealed more physical than spiritual attributes. But now Noah gets into the mix and I don’t remember any mention of his physical build, only that he built a vessel big enough to house a floating zoo. His movements were thus curtailed, but in Genesis 6:9 we read, “Noah walked with God.” Enoch was his great-grandfather, and Methuselah his grandfather. All three are listed as Christ’s ancestors in Luke’s genealogy (3:35-37) As always, Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance has helped me to nail the gist of “walk.” The Hebrew meaning as listed under 1980 implies walking “in myriad applications,” but the word “conversant” stood out. Does the expression “walk the talk” ring a bell? All the other walking in Hebrew under 3212 is perfectly explained in Psalm 81:12 where God does the talking, “So I gave them up unto their own hearts’ stubbornness; they walked after their own counsels.” Let’s cap this with Jude in verse 14, “And Enoch, the seventh from Adam, also prophesied as to these, saying, ‘Behold, the Lord has come amidst myriads of His holy ones.’”
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