Genesis 5:24

The Man Who Walked With God

And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him. Genesis 5:24.

If you open your Bible at the fifth chapter of Genesis you will find a list of men who were descended from Adam. It begins with Seth and ends with Noah and his sons. About all these men we are told the same thing they lived a certain number of years, and then they died. There is just one exception. Towards the end of the list we come to a man of whom we are told something different “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.”

Did you ever think what these words mean “Enoch walked with God”? They mean that Enoch chose God as his Friend and sought to follow wherever He led. The world had become very wicked in the days of Enoch, but in spite of all the wickedness around him he kept on trying to please God. And then one day God took him to walk with Him in Heaven.

Now God wants to be our Friend too, to walk with us every day of our life. But if we are going to walk with Him there are some things we must do for Him, and there are some things He will do for us.

I.

If we are going to walk with God there are some things we must do for Him, there are one or two rules we must keep.

1. We must be willing to walk in the path He chooses. Have you ever walked somewhere with your mother, father, brother, sister, or friend? Maybe you walked down the driveway, down the road, along a path in the woods, or through the mall. Supposing you came to a place where two roads parted, and your friend wanted to go one way and you the other, what would happen? One of you would need to give in, or you would have to separate. So if we are going to walk with God, we must agree to go His way. He knows much better than we do, and if we put our hand in His He will always lead us along the best path.

2. If we wish to walk with God, we must love the things that He loves, and hate the things that He hates. How do you make a friend? Perhaps you never thought about it, but it really is because you and a certain boy or girl have something in common. Your friend likes something that you like the same storybooks, or the same games, or the same hobbies. Or perhaps it is just something in his nature that answers to something in yours.

And if we are going to “walk with God,” to be God's friend, we must have something in common with Him. We must learn to love all things good and pure and noble, and to hate all that is unworthy and sinful.

3. And then if we wish to be God's friend and walk with Him we must obey Him. What our earthly friends ask us to do is not always right or wise, but God never makes a mistake. Sometimes He asks us to do hard things, but He never asks us to do anything that would harm us. Our love for our earthly friends is a poor thing if we do not try to do something to serve them something that costs us a little and our love for God is a poor, shabby thing if we do not seek to serve Him, and obey Him, and please Him.

II.

But there are also the things that God does for us when we walk with Him.

1. And the first is He helps us to walk straight. If you shut your eyes and tried to walk without anything to guide you, do you know what would happen? You would walk round in a circle. It might be a very big circle, but still it would be a circle. The reason is that your strides are not equal because your legs are not exactly the same length. So, in trying to balance yourself, you would gradually veer round to one side or the other. It is only your eyes that help you to go straight.

Now God is “eyes” for those who walk with Him. We cannot see the path, and if left to ourselves we should walk round in circles and never get any farther. But God sees the path. He can lead us straight on, and He chooses the way that is best for us.

2. And then God supports those who walk with Him. Sometimes the path is rough and thorny, but He is always ready to stretch out a helping hand, and to ease the bleeding feet.

3. But the most wonderful thing about God's friendship is that those who walk with Him become a little hit like Him. People say that we grow to resemble those we live with or of whom we see a great deal. Even creatures grow like their surroundings. The Polar bear is white because it lives among the snows. Some animals such as the ermine change their coat to match the season; they are white in winter and brown or fawn, like the earth, in summer. Lions are sandy-colored to suit the deserts where they live, tigers are striped so that they may be invisible in the jungle. Soles and flounders resemble sand, frogs are green and brown like the earth and the weeds among which they live, and some caterpillars and moths look so like the twigs or the leaves of the trees on which they are resting that it is almost impossible to distinguish one from the other.

There is a beautiful story of a statue which a sculptor carved out of a rock near a village. It was the figure of a young man with a very beautiful and noble face. And the sculptor said that one day a youth would live in that village who would have a face exactly like the face of the statue. At first the people of the village came to gaze upon the statue and to wonder at its beauty. But later they became accustomed to it and passed it without even glancing at it. And the sculptor's prophecy was forgotten.

Years passed, and one day a little boy was born in the village. When he grew big enough to run about by himself he loved to visit the statue because he thought he had never seen anything so beautiful. Every day he came to gaze upon it, and at last there came a day when he stood beside it and someone passing said, “Look, he has the face of the statue!” And all the people saw the resemblance and rejoiced, for it had also been prophesied that the man who resembled the statue should do great things for his country. And so it came to pass.

So it is with us too. If we choose God as our friend and walk with Him every day, if we love the things that are true and noble and good, we shall become like Him. Even our faces will show the difference. They will be lit up with a new beauty.

“Enoch was not; for God took him” We do not know exactly what that means. We know only that Enoch did not die like other men. Perhaps nobody could explain the story better than did a little girl. She had just come in from Sunday school and her mother asked her what the lesson was about. She said “It was all about a man who used to go for walks with God. His name was Enoch. One day they took a specially long walk. And they walked on and on until at last God said to Enoch, ‘ You are very far from home and you must be very tired; you had better just come in and stay.' And he went.”

Some day God will take us too. But we need not be afraid. If we have walked with Him on earth then He will just ask us to come and walk with Him in Heaven. And we shall put our hand in His and go.