Faith that pleases God begins with a decision to believe in His existence and is demonstrated through a devoted lifestyle of walking with Him daily. The sermon uses the example of Enoch, who "walked with God" for 300 years and was ultimately taken to be with Him, illustrating that a life of faith is not cyclical or aimless but leads to a specific, eternal destination. This journey involves a conscious choice to follow God, a consistent devotion in daily life, and the assurance of a future with Him, as evidenced by biblical figures like Paul and Peter. The message encourages listeners to make or reaffirm their decision to follow Jesus, emphasizing that this faith is a lifelong commitment leading to a purposeful existence and an ultimate heavenly reward.
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There are some times that we get close to heaven here, friends, right? One of these times, I think, was this morning. I'm an old brass guy who's lost his arm brochure. You know how that works. So I live vicariously through these guys, you see. But when we sing, don't you find yourself almost floating? Just kind of like that. Just, well, all right, you can settle down now. That's the way it life is. I happen to be in the presence of about 25 other men who lead larger churches in New England. Vision New England sponsored a conference that was meant for folk who are in leadership of churches that have more than 400 adult members on Sunday morning.
There are, give and take, there are about 70 such churches in New England. Do you realize that? 70 churches, not unlike ourselves. We're on the low end. There are some churches that have a couple thousand folk. And so one of the nice things about this is we had the chance to talk shop. You know, how's it going? What's true in your life? What's happening? But underneath it all, the prevailing theme was this. How will you finish? How will you finish? Finishing well was the big issue. What does it mean to conclude a life of ministry in a way that pleases God? not just by virtue of our concern with each other at this conference center, but it was brought into relief because a couple of the guys that had previously been there, the last time I was there about five years ago, have not finished well.
They've gotten into trouble. They've compromised everything that they stood for. How do you finish well? I guess I could tell you that that's exactly the theme for our study this morning. So if you have your Bibles, I'd like you to turn to Hebrews chapter 11. We're going to look at verse 5 and then read some related passages in Genesis chapter 5. Hebrews 11, verse 5. I want you to read it with me. We're going to read it out loud twice just so that you get a clue as to what we're about here. Hebrews 11, verse 5. It's found on page 1191 in your Pew Bible. You read out loud with me as we do this together.
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. Let's say it one more time together, just so you lock it into your thinking, together. By faith, Enoch was taken from this life so that he did not experience death. found because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. Now, if you are keeping your Bible open to Hebrews 11, put your finger there, and turn back to Genesis first book of the Bible, chapter 5.
And I just want to read the verses upon which this verse is the comment. There's not a lot written about Enoch, but this is the key text, Genesis chapter 5. We're going to break into a series of genealogies beginning at verse 18. Genesis chapter 5 verse 18. When Jared had lived 162 years, he became the father of Enoch. And after he became the father of Enoch, Jared lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Jared lived 962 years and then he died. When Enoch had lived years, he became the father of Methuselah. And after he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked with God 300 years and had other sons and daughters.
Altogether, Enoch lived 365 years. Enoch walked with God. Then he was no more because God took him away. Now we'll look at these texts together, but first of all, I want to set the context for what we're about. I don't want us to lose what the writer of the book of Hebrews is doing with this history. He's using people's faith in the Old Testament as a way to promote our faithfulness and the faithfulness of Christians who are undergoing times of stress. If you look back at Hebrews chapter 11, the verse just before Hebrews 11, 1, is Hebrews 10.39, where the writer implores those Christians to whom this letter comes that we are not those who shrink back, but those who believe.
The important thing to do is that we are people who hang on to what we've been given. And therefore, the writer says, if that's characteristically true of Christians, what does that faith look like? And I'm reviewing some of the things we've talked about in the last couple weeks. That in Hebrews 11, 1 to 3, and then again, verse 6, there are four characteristics of that faith. It's a confident faith. It has confidence. It's being sure of things. Two, that faith has content. You can look back at what God has done in history, and so that faith is something that you can get your hands and your mind around. It's not some kind of mindless faith.
It's a faith that has content to it. You can study God's actions, and that actions encourages you to believe. It doesn't depend on you. It depends on God's work in history. That leads to a worldview. We call that a construct. It's basically found in verse 3. This faith understands certain ways of looking at reality. And those people who do not have a Christian faith often see the world slightly different than we do, almost sometimes 180 out, such that you almost are speaking the same language, but talking about it in different ways. You've had that experience, haven't you? Try to explain to people who don't know who Jesus is.
And it's almost like we're saying things, but our minds are going past each other because our worldview is different. That leads us ultimately to verse 6, which ultimately is the context for our study in Enoch's life today. The faith looks like a faith to which we can commit ourselves. It's something that you know by basically committing your life to. last week the writer then suggests what's the first dimension in this life this faith works and he uses the person of Abel that faith ultimately influences our ritual life how we worship today we look at Enoch which speaks a little bit about the nature of our walk or our reputational life and next week we'll look at Noah Noah's called on to do a radical work for God radical obedience to understand the sequence in terms of the argument.
You start with what you worship. It leads to how you live your life day by day. And then as a result, it informs God's ability to use your work for his sake. Worship, walk, work. Do you catch the drift here? In other words, what we say before God when we worship should influence the way we live our life in the common events of life. That sets us up as we do that to hear God speaking to us, as we'll look next week in the character of Noah, to do things that the rest of the world doesn't understand at all. Boat? Why build a boat? That's where we're headed. So today, the writer of the book of Hebrews looks at Enoch, and he says, among other things, that how you walk with God typifies the nature of your faith relationship with him.
Now, before I'm looking at Enoch in detail, you'll notice one other thing. You'll notice that we read the Hebrews text, and then we read the Genesis text, and the point of view of the two texts is very different. In the Genesis text, Enoch is the subject. He's the actor of what's being said. He's the one who becomes the father of Methuselah. Enoch's the one who walks with God for 300 years. Enoch's the one who has other sons and daughters. the verbs he's the one in charge but if you look at the hebrews text you'll realize that enoch is passive he's not involved at all it's god that's the actor god's the one that's doing things in enoch's life god's the one that takes enoch from this life he's the one that takes him away so he can't be found god's the one who takes three times the word taken is used and enoch is the recipient of God's action.
You'll understand that, friends, that you start to look at it and you'll find that both perspectives are at work in this life of faith. It's something we do and it's something that God does for us and to us. In fact, the same life can be seen from very different points of view. What do we do by faith? We understand also that God is doing something in our life. That forms, of course, the basis for what the writer wants us to understand, regarding Enoch as what kind of faith pleases God. I've used these three sentences that are found in Hebrews 11, 5 to suggest there are three characteristics of this pleasing sort of faith.
It, first of all, begins with a decision. It begins with a decision. He pleased God. He was commended, chapter 11, verse 5, as one who pleased God. Now, the mechanics for what this decision entails are found in verse 6, Hebrews 11, 6. I want to revisit again with you. Look at Hebrews 11, 6, and look at what's being said here. It says, and without faith, it's impossible to please God because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists, and he rewards those who earnestly seek him. Enoch makes a decision, first of all, to believe that God is there and it influences the way he walks.
He believes and that influences the way he walks. He decides that God is there against the general apostasy of his world. Next week we'll look at Genesis chapter 6 and the character of Noah, but it's starting to happen as Enoch is living on the earth, that what has is the general worldview that God is in charge of everything is starting to recede out of the thinking of the people of the earth at that time. By the way, no big difference, right? Most people today don't really understand how God is particularly involved in the lives of individuals. They sort of think that God's kind of left them and has gone away.
But here's the text that one of the characteristics of the faith that pleases God is that he makes a decision to believe. in Friends. Because in the Hebrew world, what you believe is tied to how you live. In fact, for the Hebrew worldview, if you thought something that didn't influence your action, it was like you hadn't thought it at all. It's sort of the same idea that the book of James says. Faith without works isn't faith at all. Their view is that faith and life are not separate from each other. believe really influences the way we act.
That's the sense of it here. So the decision to believe is tied to the way in which Enoch walks. Sometimes you might want to do a study on the word walk in the Bible. In every case, you'll find that the person's walk is tied intimately to the way in which they believe what they think. We are the kinds of people who think that we can believe something up here and we can live very, very differently down here. That's not true. So the writer says, among other things, that the first thing that Enoch did was he believed that God existed. There are four traditional arguments for that.
Maybe it was true in Enoch's life that he believed God existed because he understood the character and concept of God because it's been passed down to him by Adam and Eve. Maybe he believed it because, among other things, he had a causal belief. He saw that everything in creation seemed to work by cause and effect kinds of things. That causal effect, or the technical word, the teleology of it, was such that he believed, among other things, that everything has a cause because he understood how cause and effect works in creation. Maybe he also believed the technical term here is that he had a cosmological view of the existence of God, that the cosmos is so ordered that it's almost impossible to see anything come together in a complex system that has not been brought together by something more complex.
Or if you believe in the law of entropy, everything moves from complexity to lack of complexity, from order to disorder. Therefore, he believed that something of great power and order had to have been there from the very beginning. believe in ontology, teleology, or cosmology as arguments for the existence of God, there was one final one that I think Enoch believed, that he believed ultimately in a Christological view because he remembered what God spoke to Adam and Eve in the garden. And that word of prophecy to Eve was that one day the deliverer was going to come and that the evil that had been done to them by virtue of the serpent's lie was one day going to be put right and he was looking for the day.
Maybe it became the belief system of those in Eve's line that one day through Eve's line someone would come who would crush the head of the serpent. So that when Jesus comes on the scene thousands of years later declaring himself to be the son of God the real question before us is either he's lying, he's crazy, or he's true. And that becomes the decision that we need to make, not only to believe, but to bring ourselves into compliance with who this God is. Can I ask you, friends, today, have you made the decision to believe in God? Maybe you've come here a bunch of times.
Maybe this is the second, third, or fourth time. Maybe somebody has harassed you to come. the line you came just because you thought it was a good deal but you never personally made the decision to ask jesus to be the lord of your life you may have grown up in a religious background you may have been like me who kind of brought was brought to church in the womb i was singing the songs onward christian soldiers through amniotic fluid you know how that works you know that's kind how that worked. But somewhere along the line, friends, I had to realize it was not my surroundings that saved me. It was Jesus that did.
And somewhere along the line, like Enoch, I had to make a decision. And the decision was that Jesus came for me and he died for me. Have you decided to follow Jesus? No turning back. No turning back. Kind of works this way. Friends, it's spring. You know it is. It's spring, although there's still a chance for another snowstorm. No, it's spring. You see how that works, okay? And what happens to me at springtime is I get these phone calls. I got two in the last two weeks. And it's usually some woman. Usually it's a woman. And she gets on the phone and she says, I understand you're the person that marries people around here.
I would like, excuse me, we would like to be married. You know how they say all of a sudden the move from the singular to the plural is a hard thing to get a hold of here, you see. And we would like to be married. And usually, because I just can't help myself, I ask the question, well, how did you meet the poor guy? No, the great guy, you know, the works. And in the last two weeks, as we've brought together, two different folks have said to me, well, it's amazing. We met at a Bible study. Bible studies are weird and powerful things. Stay away if you're single. No, I'm just teasing like that. Now here, understand what's going on here, friends. Here are two folk who have decided to commit themselves to each other for the rest of their life. But they made a decision, at least in this case, to attend a Bible study.
Who would have thought that something as innocuous as going to a Bible study would change the whole outcome of their life? That's the way it is with God. It seems like it's an easy decision. Okay, Jesus, yeah, I'm going to decide to follow you. But a just the whole life have you decided to follow Jesus at the end of our time today I'm going to leave a space period I'm not one of these people that harasses folk but I don't know who's in my audience today I can't see into your soul it's real easy to come to church and basically look like you're one of the faithful we all have different clothes on we all stand up and sing the whole nine yards, and yet maybe it's true that today you came, and this is the day that's decision moment for you.
And that somewhere along the line, the life that pleases God, that faith begins with a decision. Now, it doesn't end there, because the next thing that's said about Enoch is that he lives a life that's full of devotion. Or as Eugene Peterson says, it's a long obedience followed up by a whole series of decisions that become part of the devotion. Know what it says. He couldn't be found ultimately because God took him away. It's filled with this devoted characteristic, and it's a devotion that walks with God. Remember that when you walk, you're basically living out what you believe to be true.
If your belief system doesn't affect the way you act, I suggest to you that your belief system is invalid, and you're telling yourself the lie. Our walk is the legacy of the multiple choices made so often that they become habit-forming and character-defining. He makes a devotion that walks daily with God. There's something in the text that when I get to heaven, I'll have to ask, I'm going to have to ask Enoch how this works. But probably you noticed it in the Genesis account. It says that he was alive for about 65 years, and then he gives birth to Methuselah. Did you notice that? And then it says, for the next 300 years, he walked with God.
I wondered, what happened when Methuselah was born that all of a sudden encouraged Enoch to walk with God? Except that children make you aware, somewhere along the line, that you desperately need God in your life. I'm not sure. I'm reading stuff in. I'm not going to go to the wall on this, but I'm just saying that it seems to be in the text that he was around for a while. Does Methuselah the guy comes, and all of a sudden he says, God, I need your help. case that some defining event has taken place in your life. Maybe you knew God, but you've kind of been piddling around. And maybe today isn't the issue when you ask God to come into your life, but this is the day you say, Lord, you and I, we're going to walk together the rest of the way until the end.
He makes a decision that becomes an act of devotion and to this happens is that it's a devotion that starts to wonder. If you look at the text, Genesis 5, 24, it's almost mysterious. It says Enoch walked with God and he was not for God took him. It's almost of a mystical quality. Our mind's strained to try and figure it out. Well, what happened? I want the video cam to be there. I want to see what happens. But it doesn't tell you in the text. Something takes place where maybe he starts just walking and and God provides this stairway to heaven, and we just don't know.
But the fact of the matter is that the quality of his devotion was such that the nature of his life with God in heaven seemed to have a seamlessness to it, that walking on earth and walking on heaven were part of the same ball of wax. What's your devotion quotient this morning? Are you closer to God now than you were a year ago? is it such that you can anticipate his answers to your prayer because you almost can complete his sentences to you a couple weeks ago frank vitaly and i were visiting carbon and phyllis dempsey you know the dempsey's well actually you probably if you remember they're always up in that room up there okay he was our video guy for a long time and carbon struggled with some issues and we were going to go find out how he was doing frank and i went over to say thanks for what's going on.
We come into the house and there's Carbon sitting in his chair and Phyllis sitting in her chair. And for the next hour and a half, we went down memory lane. We found out they met in Panama. We found out all sorts of things. But the amazing thing about the conversation with them is that one person would start the thing and the other person would complete it. I find myself doing that with my wife. Scary stuff. You know how that works. but they had the stories down so that when someone couldn't remember what the event was, the other one finished for them. Do you understand how that works? In other words, they were so devoted to each other that it's almost like there wasn't two people in the room. There was only one person telling the same story.
I think we could have been there all afternoon. Their devotion to each other meant that their life together was seamless. That was the illustration that comes to my thinking somewhere along the line in the quality of life that God wants to have with us. He wants us not just to have a decision kind of life where way back when we said, Jesus, I'll follow you, he wants to walk with us in a devoted way so that when we open the text to Hebrews 11, I've seen the verses before, I know what it is, I can repeat it back to you before you even tell me because God told me the story way back when. And you say, yeah, that's what it's all about. It's devotion.
It's devotion that doesn't catch us by surprise because in our walk with Jesus, he's already told us what's going to take place. Have you decided to follow Jesus? Are you devoted in that decision? This gets a little tricky, friends, because I know I have my ups and downs and my backwards and forwards. I start to ask questions. How about you? does your devotional life need to be rekindled fanned into flame here we're talking to a very different set of folks in this room not those who need to come to Jesus for the first go-round but those that did it way back when who are kind of gotten a little bit they need some encouragement oh by the Spirit of God would you recognize that God wants you to walk with him all the days of your life.
Of course, that gets us back to the beginning of Hebrews 11, 5. You see, the kind of faith that pleases God not only starts with the decision and continues with the life that's devoted to him, but it ultimately results in a destination. Note what it said in the text. Enoch was taken from this life so that he did not experience death. He got somewhere. Now, it's important to understand this, friends, because there are some prevailing notions about life that that are countered by this statement. The first is that somehow or other life is cyclical. That was the belief, the Eastern view of life. That life is just a series of incarnational and reincarnational cycles. Life just keeps on going and going and going and going.
And that Eastern view of life is permeated. It's kind of summed up in the popular phrase, same old, same old. You know, whatever has happened, it's happened before, just going on and on and on. Life is one just big cycle. It works its way into popular music. into our thinking, and that there's nothing you can do to change it. You're not ending up anywhere. You just may come back in a different form. Enoch's life proves that statement wrong. Life is going in either one or two destinations. We're either going to spend time with God or apart from him. The second lie of our age is that life is aimless. It may not be cyclical, but we have no idea where it's going.
the outcome is in doubt we're not sure where life is heading it's one of those great things that people start to say you know I just don't know all I can deal with is what I see and I don't know what's going to happen after I die it's just great uncertainty it was basically the view of the Greeks to whom the letter of Hebrews is being written the Greeks believed that there was a huge aimlessness that the gods came down and made play play things of the people. They dallyed with the folk in the field and we didn't quite understand what the meaning to life was. It may well be that you run into people in your day and age and they have no clue.
Maybe even you will wonder, is there a purpose to life? Is life purpose driven or does it have an uncertain purpose? Or worse than that, is life completely meaningless? That was the view of the Romans. In the first century, the Romans said, you only can deal with the here and now because you have no sense that there's meaning beyond death. Really, when we die, we just go away. There's nothing after death. But you see, the faith that pleases God starts with a decision to believe he exists, continues with a devoted lifestyle that walks with him every day of your life, and ultimately results in a destination where you live with him for effort and so what happens here on earth is part of that greater meaning by which God wants to have relationship with us not just in the here and now but for the ever afterwards such that in Enoch's life the decision he made the devotion he exemplified became part of the destination to which he was at it and he was able to go there consider how this fact is played out in the major authors of the New Testament.
Note what Paul says in 2 Timothy chapter 4. He writes this, I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. There's a destination. I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge will award me on that day. And not only to me, but also to those who have longed for his appearing. For Paul, destination was an award ceremony. He was going to get there and God was going to give him. the benefit of his life. He was going to reward his behavior, his devotion to him. Or remember what Peter says in 2 Peter chapter 3. But keeping with his promise, we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.
For Peter, the destination was a redeemed culture. Amid all the pagan immorality of the first century, he was looking to a place, home of righteousness. Or you'll remember the words ultimately of John when he's writing at the end of Revelation chapter 22. He says, and if anyone takes the words away from this prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and the holy city. The destination is there, friends. I've seen it. And one day, we're going to be part of citizens of a holy city. And John's response at that point is saying, oh, Lord, come quickly.
Come quickly. Or you'll remember the words that Jesus himself spoke that are used at Christian funerals all over the place. John 14, verses 1, 2, 3, and 4. Where Jesus says, do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God. Trust also in me. In my father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, I would have told you, I am going to prepare a place for you. This is not cyclical, aimless, or meaningless. place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me so that you can be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.
There's a destination in the future of those folk who follow Jesus. Friends, are you sure of your destination? Have you made the decision today to follow Jesus? Jesus. Have you checked your devotion quotient and said, oh Lord, I want to affirm. I've wandered a bit off the track. I'm coming close back to you again. Oh, this destination. I want it to be foremost in my thinking so that among other things, it's not just a culture. It's not just a city.
It's not a community, but it's the very place where you are. That's where I want to be with you. Tomorrow is the 109th running of the Boston Marathon. You're all ready for it. You've already picked up your bib thing like this, and you're entering into your carbohydrate bulking regime. We're ready for the marathon, correct, right? You're ready. I can tell. You're excited, okay? And what's going to happen is the Boston Marathon is taking place typically on Patriots Day, right? Tomorrow, right? You know what happens in Patriots Day in Boston? In Lexington Green, The reenactors of the Revolutionary get at war, get up.
The British on one side and the Colonists on the other, and the British kill the Colonists, and after they go out for a pancake breakfast. You know how that works. They reenact it all over again, and they shoot each other, and not really, but that's what happens. They have pancakes afterwards, and then a little bit further away from Lexington and Hopkinson, Massachusetts, upwards to 5,000 folks, some legal, some illegal, some registered, some unregistered, again at Hopkins, they start running. They run 26 miles plus. I ran four miles yesterday. That was enough. Four years ago, there was a man who ran from Korea named Li Bongju, or Bongju Li, depending on how you want to understand.
Oriental people say their name. First name, last name first. father was a rice farmer. And he taught his son that there is no end to work until the harvest is brought in. You work every day until the job's done. One month before the Boston Marathon, Lee Bung Jew's father died. He brought in the rice harvest, went home, fell asleep in his chair, and died. A month later, Li Bung Ju found himself at the starting line and hopping into Massachusetts for the 2001 Boston Marathon.
For the previous ten years, the marathon had been won by Kenyans, and the Kenyans were favored to win again. There's much that could be said about the nature of the race, except about almost three-quarters of the way through, when the Kenyans started to surge into the lead. Li Bung Ju remembered his father. victory ceremony after it says that when life came hard for me at Heartbreak Hill, it was like my father was there with me and waiting, working with me to finish life. And Lee Bung Jew won the Boston Marathon this year, that year, 2001. Friends, there's a much more important race that we're all on and there's a father in heaven who wants to run it with us we first of all need to ask him to be part of the decision to be partners with him in this race called life it's not a sprint it's a marathon we need to be devoted to walking with him every day of our life there's
a destination in store and one day as Enix life illustrates we will get to the finish line do you need that encouragement today that God is waiting for you he's walking with you and he longs to be the person that you come to at the first go around a time just blank. We're going to pray, and if you've never asked Jesus to be the Lord, the Savior of your life, this is your time to do it. After I have a brief prayer, we'll sing a final song, and then we're done. If you would like to talk about any of these things, please feel free to come and talk afterwards.
Let's pray again. Lord Jesus, some of us want to come to you this morning and make the decision to make you the Lord of our lives. Would you hear our prayer? would you help us to come to you father there's other us here who have decided that a long time ago but we've wandered away and we need to start to say Lord I want you to walk with me tomorrow in the various events of my life would you increase my devotion Lord those of us who've been on the way sometimes heaven seems far away, would you help us to see that the same quality of relationship we have with you now is just more of the same when we get to heaven?
Encourage us to look forward to the great destination that's before us. We give you ourselves this day. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.