The "School of Faith" by examining the life of Enoch, who pleased God and was translated without seeing death. It highlights that God, as the Heavenly Father and Headmaster, orchestrates trials and chastisements to conform believers to His holiness and the image of Christ. The core lesson is that faith, defined as "forsaking all I trust Him," is essential for pleasing God and overcoming the world, enabling believers to walk with Him daily. The message concludes by emphasizing the purifying hope of Christ's imminent return as a motivation for living a holy life, ready to meet Him at any moment.
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Now we return to Hebrews chapter eleven. We are calling this the School of Faith. And we are seeking to meet the old boys and the old girls of the School of Faith, one by one during this week. And today our subject is in verse five of Hebrews eleven. 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. Now for my young friends especially, if you're taking any notes or want to have a sort of structure at the end of the week, this boy that we are going to meet today, the old boy in the School of Faith, is the boy who pleased God. Yesterday we spoke about Abel as the boy who was right with God. A boy who in his school days was right, righteous.
But here is the boy who pleased God. Now I want you to realize that God is the, I speak with reverence, the headmaster of this school. And the amazing thing is that you are brought into the school of faith by a new birth. And the headmaster... is your Heavenly Father. And as a child born into that school, all through your school days the headmaster of the School of Faith will watch over you. He knows just the right time to teach a certain lesson. He knows just the right time to give you a spanking and correct you.
He knows just the right time to bring the shades and the shadows and the ups and downs of your training to bear upon your life. Now, would you like to meet the headmaster? Turn a page into chapter twelve of Hebrews. Verse eight. For if ye be without chastisement, whereof all our partakers, then are ye bastards and not sons, furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence, shall we not much more be in subjection unto the father of spirits, and live?
For they verily, for a few days, chastened us after their own pleasure, but he, for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. You see, God is holy, and he's brought children into his family, the school of faith, and he wants to bring us up to his standard. Be he holy, as he is holy. and we are going to be partakers of His holiness. And all through the school days, He is seeking to bring us into the will of God, and to conform us to the image of the Son of God, that we might be companions and coerce with Christ in those great unfoldings of the future.
Very soon, faith will give way to sight. Very soon, the school days will be over. but he has brought us into the school of faith and a loving Heavenly Father as the great headmaster watches over us. Now, there are many teachers in the school of faith, and I expect most of you who look back upon school days will remember the many teachers that taught you at school. I tell you, we were very naughty boys when I went to school. We called the headmaster Old Bill. Wasn't that dreadful? I remember we called the second master Jack.
We just called him behind his back Jack. His name was the Reverend J. McNutt, but we called him Jack. Boys will be, boys. We had a French teacher and we called him Froggy. I don't know why, perhaps you can guess. We had a science teacher with all his stink pots and all his big array of stuff, and we used to watch his experiments, and we called him H-II-SO-FOR. And so we boys had nicknames for all these different teachers, but outstanding in the school was the headmaster. And I want you to realize that the headmaster of the School of Faith is none other than the Father of Spirits, who was actually by his Holy Spirit, wrought a work in your dead spirit and brought newness of life, making Jesus real there, and by a new birth he wants Christ to be magnified in you and through you.
And you are a partaker of the holiness of God. Now, some years ago there came down to Jamaica, a very precious servant of God from Kansas. And I shall never forget his ministry. He was one of those wholesome ministers of the word. And amongst many things he told us, he said, you know, I'm a true American. And we just wondered why he said that, and then he came out with this. Perhaps it's an old nut story to you, but it brought the house down in Jamaica. We loved him for it. He said, you know, I was born in Kansas State, and he said, I lived in an old house, and he said, down at the bottom of the garden, there was a wood shed.
Not only loaded with wood, but all sorts of other stuff. And he said, if we boys got into trouble, Father would look across at us and say, Tom, come down to the wood shed. And he said, down in the wood shed, Father would deal with us in chastisement. And he said, Father would lay on the stripes, and we boys saw the stars. He said, I'm a true American, you see, the old spangled banner. But he said, I learned a lesson down in that woodshed, and it was just this, that the nearer you keep to Father, the less it hurts. Now, I've often pictured that.
I've seen Father in the woodshed trying to lay on a good bit of chastisement to this boy, and the boy is clinging right up to his side, and Father's trying to get at him. You know... Can't get that big old lawn smack at him. He's too nearer. The nearer you keep to Father, the less it hurts. And all through the school of faith in lesson after lesson, a loving Heavenly Father is watching over his child. And he wants you to graduate from the school with a good report. As these old boys and girls did. The same school, the same desks, the same teachers, the same exams, the same lessons, even though it's a changing world, they look forward to the promised Christ.
We look backward to the fulfillment of His coming, and all together we look forward to the great future. And if you're in the school of faith, it's the most wonderful thing. Now here is a boy that stands before us named Enoch. And we are told here that by faith Enoch was translated. Now faith is a word that isn't too easy to define. There are three words in the Bible, the word believe, the word trust, and the word faith.
And I suppose very, very often you could almost exchange them. In the Psalms a hundred and fifty odd times it's trust, trust, trust, trust. When you turn to the New Testament again and again it's believe, believe, believe, believe. And then there comes this word, faith. Without faith it is impossible to please God. I remember as a boy hearing someone put up their fingers and saying, F-A-I-T-H. And then they made the acrostic, forsaking all I trust him.
F-A-I-T-H. Forsaking all, I trust Him. God loves to be trusted. It's all the Savior asks. He says, look into my face and trust me, and then go on trusting me. Live looking unto Jesus. This is the life of faith. This is the victory that overcomes the world, and without it, it's impossible to please God. A loving Heavenly Father watches over the classes. sees the examinations and he's pleased as he sees his trusting child moving forward in the school.
Now faith steps out on the seeming void and finds the rock beneath. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. And faith is something in the Christian's life today that gives victory in every realm. Faith came singing into the room. The other guests took flight. Fear and anxiety, grief and gloom sped out into the night. I wondered how such peace could be when faith said, Gently, don't you see?
They really cannot live with me. And let me tell you, when there's a real, trusting, living faith, those other things that distress us move out. Fear and anxiety, grief and gloom. For faith is the victory. Now this boy pleased God. By faith Enoch was translated. Not for death. Not found. God translated him. But before his translation he had this testimony that he pleased God.
Now I think it's wise for us to go back to the book of beginnings. And just have a peep at Enoch in Genesis five. Genesis five and verse twenty-one. And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah, three hundred years and begat sons and daughters. And all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty and five years, and Enoch walked with God. And he was not, for God took him.
Isn't it wonderful to think that someone can walk with God by faith? When I was a boy, if I read a scripture like this, I would think of Enoch in a world that was growing more and more corrupt and wicked. And Enoch walked down the street, and I would see by his side God, God and Enoch, and the people would say, look, there they go, there they go, look at them. And in my boy's way, I would picture Enoch walking with God down the street. But you know that wasn't a true picture. It was by faith Enoch walked with God.
No one saw God, for God is a spirit. And the companionship and close fellowship of that walk was unseen by the world. Girls. You've taken Jesus into your heart and he's your dearest friend, and he says, I will never leave thee, and I will never forsake thee. Lo, I am with you all the days, even to the end of the age. And as you go to school with that pile of books nursed in your arms, no one sees Jesus walking with you. Young fellow, as you go out to play baseball and they see you make a good strike, they know one sees Jesus going with you round for that home run, but he's there.
You can't make water-tight compartments and leave him out and say he's with me on Sunday morning, but he's not with me on the sports field. He's not with me in the bedroom. He's not with me in the college. He's not with me in the business. He has said, I will never leave thee. And so today we can enter into a walk of faith with our Lord Jesus. Just as Enoch did, he walked with God, walking with Jesus by his side I'll stay. Walking with Jesus in the narrow way, traveling along together day by day, walking in the king's highway.
This is a walk of faith. and in the school of God, it's the thing He wants. He wants you to get up in the morning and as you wake, the first waking thought is, Lord Jesus, another day to stand for thee, to live for thee, to walk with thee. Lead me, Lord, into spheres of service. Lead me to some soul today and teach me, Lord, just what to say. And He wants you in the morning to take His hand and go out into all the rush and bustle of the day, never alone. Enoch walked with God. Now it's rather remarkable, but there's a little word in verse twenty-two of Genesis five that is very significant.
It says Enoch walked with God after. Now you can challenge me on this, but I find no evidence that Enoch walked with God by faith before. Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah. Enoch was the seventh from Adam in the line of faith. Enoch was the father of the man who is going to live longer than any other man has ever lived. He is going to live nine hundred and sixty-nine years, Methuselah.
And when Enoch, as a young husband, faced the fact that he was going to be a father of a child, that birth changed the course of his life. Now, I don't expect some of my younger friends to understand what I am saying just yet. But I want to tell you that any honorable, loving, fine man who has given his heart and his life to a precious woman, and she's everything to him in the share of his love and the past of his life, faces one of his biggest tests at the birth of his firstborn child.
Do you know there are some careless fellows who, when their wife is facing the birth of a firstborn child, go off and get drunk? They want to try and forget their responsibility. But I've stood outside in the waiting room of a hospital, and I'd seen men biting their fingernails and a bit concerned and waiting and hoping, and if ever a man prays in the secret place of his life, it's then. He can't share an experience with a loved one. She's got to go through that ordeal alone. And if he's an honest and true and fine man, his cry is, oh, God, spare a life and give a life. And when he hears the cry of a newborn babe, he says, thank God.
And when Enoch saw his wife facing the ordeal and there was born that little boy, He was drawn into a closer relationship and walked with the God of his fathers, and from that time he walked with God. Walked with God, verse twenty-four, until God took him. He was translated, and it was by faith he was translated. Now we saw this yesterday, that faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
And if you had said to Enoch long before his translation, are you going to heaven without dying? He would have said, well, God told me so. He said, I believe it, I can't explain it. He said, I live in a dying world, the children of Adam are all dying, but he's told me that he's taking me for some special reason, away without dying, and I'm not going to taste death. And I believed it. And in simple faith, he believed that he was going to be translated. By faith, Enoch Watts translated it. Now, Enoch called his little boy's name by a very, very amazing name, Methuselah.
Can't see bearing a name like that. Imagine a boy going to school and they're calling the roll call, Methuselah, present. But you know, it's even more amazing when you find out the meaning of that name. We give our children nice little names, you know, like Johnny and Jackie and Harold and Andrew and all this. But Methuselah, what does it mean? Well, I'm told it means, after he is dead, it shall come. Imagine the teacher calling out that name in the school roll. After he is dead, it shall come.
Present teacher! And he bore that name all through his life after he is dead. It shall come. Do you know God revealed to Enoch at the birth of Methuselah that the cup of iniquity of human sin would rise and God would have to step in in judgment and destroy the world with a flood? And Enoch knew this. And Enoch gave the name to the boy. after he is dead, it shall come. And the long-suffering of God that waited in the days of Noah waited until this boy grew and grew and grew and his father had been translated, and he grew and grew and grew until he was nine hundred and sixty-nine years old, and Nor was six hundred years old.
And one day the old man said, I am tired, and he drew his legs up on his bed, and he put his head on his pillow to sleep the sleep of death. And Methuselah, after he is dead, it shall come, died. And the same year that he died, the flood came. And the flood couldn't come until he died. Now with this in mind, I want you to see something. Will you turn to the New Testament, to Jude, the little book just before Revelation? And in Jude, chapter, verse fourteen, we read, And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, or his holy ones.
Now, however you interpret this Scripture, and however you place it in the structure of prophecy, there is no doubt about it that God revealed to Enoch the coming of the Lord in judgment, to deal with wickedness. and it seems it wasn't just the judgment of the flood, but it was God's dealings with the human race in all the awful fruitage of human sin that God would have to step in in judgment. And so he prophesied concerning the coming of the Lord.
Now I want to ask you in my closing moments one or two questions. God brought that precious boy down there and that lovely girl there and that older Christian into the school of faith. You were born again. The life of Christ came by the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, to your dead spirit. That life, that new creation work, began to capture your mind and your affections and your will. And Christ began to grow and he began to speak through your lips and love through your heart and look through your eyes and think through your mind and walk through your feet. And you said, Christ, live it in me.
Now listen, have you found this in nineteen sixty-four in the School of Faith? You haven't got far to go in high school or college, in university, haven't got far to go in the big cities of America. And you talk about the Lord coming back. You say he promised to. He said, I will come again and receive you. He said he would descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God, and the dead in Christ to be raised, and the living believers changed, caught up to meet the Lord in the air. I'm expecting the Lord to come, and you'll see a sneer on people's faces. Oh, I don't believe that rubbish. In the last days scoffers shall come saying, Where is the promise of his coming?
Everything's going on as it always has gone on. And you will be perhaps despised and looked down upon because you're in the school of faith, and because you're old-fashioned enough to believe in the return of Christ as the only solution to world's problems. into the air to take his church to himself, back to the Mount of Orives to Israel in the hour of their great agony and Jacob's trouble, back to the world to judge the nations to reign whose right it is, the great second appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. You believe it, and in faith you walk with him, expecting that every time you break the bread and drink the wine, it's only till he comes.
that every time you serve him, it's only till he come when faith will give way to sight, and you live for his well done. But around you a scoffing world laughs at this great big hope, and they say, oh, what rubbish! There's nothing in it! You're a fool man! And Enoch walked with God. And he knew by faith that God was going to take him out of a world. He wasn't going to share the wrath of God poured out in that world. And he walked with God till his translation. As the dear little girl put it, they went for a walk one morning, God and Enoch, and they walked rather far.
And all of a sudden God said to Enoch, instead of my going home with you to your home today, you come home to my home, and God took him. Yes, that's what's going to happen in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, when Jesus comes back. It's a mystery. Behold, I show you a secret. What is the secret? We shall not all sleep. There are going to be millions of Christians on the face of the earth walking around who will experience a translation to heaven without dying. It could be today, I know, of the reason why it shouldn't be. We should live in the blessed hope and the constant expectation that he's coming at any moment our faith could give way to sight.
And so I look into the face of Enoch, an old boy of the school, and I say, Enoch, they were laughing at me because I said that I'm trusting only in the blood of Christ. I'm only trusting in the precious blood of the Lamb of God for my pardon to get right with God. They were laughing at me. They said I was old-fashioned and silly, and they didn't believe me. And I looked into the face of Abel, and I saw that Abel, by faith, was right with God, the boy who was right, as he stood with the little lamb and stood before God and offered it. And so I'm going to take my place in the old schoolhouse of faith, and I'm going to sit at the same desk and learn the same lessons, and I'm going to take the same stand in contending for the faith that was once delivered to the saints.
Abel, I want to be a man right with God, and I want to graduate out of the school of faith as you did. And Enoch, they don't like me because I talk of the second coming of Christ. They don't see anything in this blessed hope that fills my heart. But I believe I'm in good company, Enoch. I'm going on with a quiet walk with my Lord and tell. Faith gives way to sight, and I shall see him at his coming. And so we are in the school of faith. May we graduate out of that school. with a good report. And I know nothing that produces holiness, nothing that produces holiness, like living in the hope of the coming of the Lord day by day.
I knew a dear old father and mother. Dad died at the age of eighty-seven, and mother followed him six months after to the glory land, and they used to wake in the morning and say, perhaps today. And they would go to bed at night, and they would say, perhaps tonight, and somehow they lived in the purifying hope of the coming of the Lord. They never saw it. They passed through the valley of the shadow. They await the resurrection. Their redeemed spirits with expectation look forward to His coming, when they'll be clothed upon with precious glorified bodies. But we are alive. Everything in our modern world points to the nearness of that coming.
Are you living in such a way that you could at any moment meet him unashamed? Are you? Dear old Jimmy Hodgson, one of the great evangelists that I knew as a boy, used to tell me, he said, Harold, when I was a boy growing up in the home in Yorkshire, he said, I had the most darling mother any boy could ever wish for. He said, I loved mother with all my heart. But he said, one day she looked at me and she said, Jimmy, I've got to go down the street to see a lady. Now you'll be a good boy while mother's gone for an hour, won't you? Yes, ma'am. And the moment mother was out of that door and down the street, he said, I went through the house to the kitchen and I went to the old-fashioned larder where they kept the food.
And he said, I got a big pot of mother's strawberry jam. And I got a big spoon. And he said, I carried it into the kitchen and sat down on the floor, and I was spooning neat strawberry jam down the red lane. When all of a sudden I heard a noise, and it was mother coming back again. She had gone down the street and the friends were out, and she had returned. And she found him red-handed and red-moused with strawberry jam. And with a whimsical way, he used to look into my face and he would say, Harold, you know, don't you dare to suggest to me that I don't love my mother? I loved her with all my heart, but he said I didn't love her appearing.
And you know, there's going to be a very special crown of reward for those who walk by faith with the Lord. in the light of his coming again, ready to say goodbye to the seen world, to enter the great world of God, translated into his presence, who day by day love his appearing and know that everything is ready. I don't know any truth that can teach holiness, which is wholesomeness in the Christian life. And so long the lesson of Enoch. God bless you.