Tonight I will be preaching from Genesis chapter 5 in Wednesday night Bible study at Ballenger Creek Baptist Church. Can I be honest about something? Genesis chapter 5 is a very boring chapter, it is all genealogies and the only great truths that you can find in it are concerning Methuselah's name (http://curtking.blogspot.com/2013/07/methuselah-and-what-he-teaches-us-about.html) and about Enoch. Aw, Enoch! The man, Enoch, is the exact opposite of boring; he takes this dry, kind of dull passage and turns it into something amazing. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. Now, I could easily talk about the miraculous events around the idea that Enoch "was not, for God took him," but I don't see how that would be as helpful to anyone as what I am about to say:
Let me ask you a very personal question. What do you want to be know for? What do you want people to say about you? While we are living on this planet, we do have ways of controlling people's perception of us; I understand that doing so does produce consequences at times, but we have all tried to direct people's thoughts in a certain way when it comes to their perception of us. Some of us try to come off as funny, some of us try to come off as serious, some of us try to come off as wise, some people even try to come off as idiotic! There will come a point in time where you can no longer control people's perception of you. The point that I am speaking of is death. You see, the moment you die, people will remember you for who you were and that memory will forever be locked into their minds. How does this apply to Enoch? In Genesis chapter 5, Enoch is mentioned in 6 verses, five of which are genealogies. He is also mentioned in Luke 3, which is a genealogy, in Hebrews 11:5, recounting the events of that one verse in Genesis, and lastly in Jude 14 speaking of Enoch's prophetic ministry. Ultimately, there are only three verses in the entire Bible that say anything about Enoch other than who his father was or who his son was. That isn't very much! But with only three verses completely dedicated to him, we still know one huge thing about Enoch: Enoch walked with God, and he was not; for God took him. Enoch will forever go down in history as the man who walked with God.
Here is my challenge: Someday you will die. What will be said about your life? Will people say, "Boy, he sure was a jokester!" or "She was so good with children," or any thing similar to that? My hope is that when I die people will say, "He sure did love Jesus," or "His walk with the Lord challenged me to live for Jesus". Do you see the difference? We should all strive to walk with our Saviour so much that it just rubs off onto other people and they can't help but see it! If your friends and family can't tell that you've been walking with Jesus, then you may not have been walking with Jesus! Let's all make it our goal: Jesus will be all the world to me and my greatest goal in life is to walk with him. When we do this, I believe we will leave behind a godly legacy, just as Enoch did. I want to make it so that when my time on earth is done, people will say "Curtis walked with God."
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