Enoch, Elijah, and John

Well, I mentioned that we've been up at the council meetings and, before that, doing some strategic planning as we begin the budgeting season for the church. It's always interesting this time of year, and I always rather enjoy the planning and budgeting times. I don't really enjoy all the minutiae of detail that you have to go through and put together, but I do enjoy the talks and the discussions and the plans of where we go. Those of you who have worked in business, you might have found that time to be interesting. As we talk about it in the church, it's interesting to see where things go. We lay a plan for the next year and five years down the road and things like that in business. We do those things in our personal lives, too. It's good to have goals and plans that we establish. That's something that God does. He established a plan for the world and mankind before the world was ever created. He's kept to that plan ever since mankind has been on this earth. We are mere human and we make plans and things change. From our hearts, we should be planning our lives just as we do for the church with God's goals in mind, always looking to Him to provide for us and to lead us and guide us. Life takes some turns every now and then. This year, when I look back at our discussions last year and the plans that we had, no one saw coronavirus interrupting church services, interrupting life, interrupting the normal everyday routine of the church the way that it has. So when we look at our budgets and see where we've been, we have these gaping holes of things we just haven't been able to do. And so we have some room to do some other things that we didn't plan to do because there's funds available in this year's budget to do that. But we don't know what the work goes on. So God knows where the twists and turns are going to be. We don't always know where the twists and turns are going to be. But we always have a view of God, and we learn over time. Just keep your eyes on Him and your faith in Him. And whatever He's leading us through, He's got a purpose, and there's things that we need to learn and things that we need to grow in, mainly to keep our eyes on Him and to never lose faith.

I want to talk today about three men who are related in a way, in a different sort of way. Last week, if you listened to the webcast from Cincinnati, you heard the sermon on, What Would You Say? Or, What Will You Say When God Gives You What Your Mission Is? And you heard Mr. Dunkel talk about Zacharias and Elizabeth who found themselves in an unusual situation, Mary and Joseph, who found themselves in unusual situations, raising the children that they were going to raise. And as I thought about that sermon and Jesus Christ, who is one of the children, and John the Baptist of Zacharias and Elizabeth, I found myself thinking about John the Baptist quite a bit this week, because he did leave us an awfully good example of following God, yielding to God, and letting God lead his life in probably, or perhaps a far different way than he ever imagined. You know, when we're young, we have thoughts about what our lives will be like. What will we do as a career? What will it be like when we're married? What will it be like when we have children? What about this? What about that? And John the Baptist, you know, his life was predetermined.

He was going to preach the gospel of the kingdom of God, and he was going to live in the manner that the Holy Spirit led him. We're told that he had the Holy Spirit from the time that he was born. And he lived his life, and he did his job, his mission that God put him in this earth for extremely well. So well that Jesus Christ said of him that there are prophets born of women, there is none greater than John the Baptist.

It's a pretty high commendation. But John the Baptist didn't have the kind of life that you and I have, maybe not even the kind of life you and I would like to have. He lived a life that was planned by God, and he followed God every step of the way. He didn't rebel, he didn't revolt, he didn't have ideas about he wanted to do this and he wanted to do that. It was his lot in life, and he completely yielded to God to do that. As we look at John the Baptist and I think about him, there's things for years that I thought about him, and probably certain things come to your mind as well.

Let's just look at a few things that we can learn about John the Baptist. Living a life that took some twists and turns that he probably didn't see coming in his life, yet he remained focused. He didn't let them derail him, he didn't let them cause him to falter or to waver or to leave the calling that he had. In John 3, in verse 30, let me start a little bit before that, though. John the Baptist, as you know, when he began to preach, he preached, you know, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

And he preached a pretty powerful message and a pretty convincing message because as you look at him, you see that he had literally lines of people waiting to be baptized. You have these pictures of him at the Jordan River that come to mind, and one by one, the people are there to be baptized because they heard his words, they were convicted. They knew they needed to follow Jesus Christ, and whatever they were doing, they needed to repent, turn back to God, and be baptized.

And he would teach the people as well. John the Baptist had a following, and you remember the time when some of the Pharisees came up and he would tell them, you know, what are you brood of vipers doing here? He was pretty candid with his words to them. You have to show fruits of repentance before you can be baptized. Well, they knew they needed to do something, but he knew that they weren't ready to be.

But anyway, through all that, John the Baptist had a following, and he was a human just like we are, right? So he had feelings, and I loved the people that followed him, just like any minister. And I don't know if he was a minister ever ordained, but he certainly was ordained of God. But there came a time in his life where there was a little bit of conflict all of a sudden, and it turns out to be with Jesus Christ and his followers were looking at it, saying, hey, our calling or our congregation here is being threatened a little bit.

John 3, verse 25. There arose a dispute between some of John's disciples and the Jews about purification. And they came to John and said to him, Rabbi, he who was with you, not Jesus Christ, he who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you have testified, behold, he's baptizing, and all are coming to him. Well, we're losing our crowds. We've got someone now they're going over to see him. Kind of a human-type thing. That shouldn't be happening.

We want them here with us. John, at our certain said, a man can receive nothing unless it's been given to him from heaven. See the attitude that John had here. He had human nature just like us, and he could have been like, yeah, I don't want those people to leave.

But he says his attitude is whatever God gives, that's what we work with. You yourselves bear me witness, he says in verse 28, that I said, I'm not the Christ, but I have been sent before him. He who has the bride is the bridegroom, but the friend of the bridegroom who stands and hears him rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom's voice. Therefore, this joy of mine is fulfilled. I'm glad to see people going to him. I'm glad they're being baptized into his name. And verse 30 is a verse that I remember reading years ago that has stuck with me.

What a tremendous attitude John the Baptist had. He must increase, but I must decrease. You know, there you have a picture of humility. And one of God's, all of God's people, must have humility if God is going to work with us. John the Baptist had it. He never let his followings go to his head. He never let the number of people that he was baptized go to his head. He always knew this was God's work, and wherever God took him, and whatever God gave him, he was fine with it.

And Jesus Christ came, and he said to his disciples something that I'm sure they remembered as well. He must increase, but I must decrease. You know, as we go through our lives, and as we see the twists and turns that will come before us between now and the return of Jesus Christ, we may remember the humility that John the Baptist had.

We may remember that this is God's work. There may be things that we just don't understand or don't like, but it is God's will.

It is God's will, and we accept them no matter what they are, always keeping in mind what our calling is and the direction we're going. John the Baptist never lost sight of that. But he was human, too.

And as he preached and as he baptized and as Jesus Christ preached and baptized, and as he watched him in motion and in action, he began to think, or he wanted some clarification, I guess, or some assurance that he really was the Messiah. Let's go back to Luke 7.

Luke 7, we find not a wavering John, but at this point John is in prison. He may have never seen himself being in prison. He may have thought when he was doing the will of God and with all the people that were coming to him, how would he ever end up in prison? But he did. And he might have wondered, how am I ever going to get out of prison?

I don't know if any of us have ever been in prison. I can't picture myself in prison, but there may be a time that we find ourselves on the other side of the government preaching things that they don't want to hear, that they don't want being said. We could be in prison for what we're teaching. And Brown the Baptist was there because of what he had told the king who didn't like what he had to say. In verse 19 of Luke 7, John sends two of his disciples to Christ to ask him a question that's interesting. It says, John, calling two of his disciples to him, sent them to Jesus, saying, Are you the coming one, or do we look for another?

Well, things may not have been going the way John the Baptist or John thought they should go. Jesus Christ, he knew he was the Messiah. He knew he was what his position was. He was the Savior. But Jesus didn't seem to be doing the things that John thought he should do. He thought, perhaps, that why isn't he taking the kingdom now? Why is Herod still king? Why isn't he king? Why isn't he taking over the Jews? That's what I expected. He was going to come to earth. He was going to become king of kings, Lord of lords. He would be king. He would set me free. All the world would turn to him. Yet John was sitting in prison, and there was no indication that Christ was going to take the kingdom at that time. That might have been a twist. That might have been a turn to him that he didn't expect. And so he went to him and asked the question. Just much like we may take some questions to God and ask why. I don't understand. Why didn't this prayer get answered? Why do we keep asking for these things that they never occur? We don't lose faith. We keep asking. We keep looking to God. We don't lose our faith over it. We strengthen our faith and are committed more and more, just as John the Baptist. He was just asking the question, are you him? Should I be looking for another? And then Christ answered it in the best way he could. Look at the healings. Leopards are cleansed. The blind see. The lame walk. I am that Savior. It may not look. It may not be exactly the way that you wanted it to be. It may not be exactly the way that you planned it to be. But this is the way God planned it to be. It's his plan.

John didn't lose faith. John just kept going and John ended up being beheaded. I dare say it was never part of his plan that he saw in his life that he would be beheaded. I have no idea that he thought, you know, the way my life is going to end at a young age is I'm going to be brought before here and thrown in jail. And because a young girl decides this is a birthday present, my head's going to come off.

Would any of us think that? Would that be planned? Would that make us lose our faith in God? If we became a martyr or if we saw things happening that we never saw our lives happening? Happening in our lives? It shouldn't. Because there is physical life and there is spiritual life and life goes on beyond that. When God sees us, he sees us in our physical lives today. But if we're here, if we're baptized, if we have this spirit, he sees us as children that will live forever. This is just one phase in his mind, but John and his life was ended in a way he never saw coming. But we know he didn't denounce God. He didn't shake his fist and ask God, you know, what's going on? And if we have thought as he was being led to his death, what was happening? Twists and turns. But through it all, John the Baptist remained faithful. So that Christ said of him, of those born to women, there is no prophet greater than John the Baptist. He said that later on here in chapter 7 and in verse 28. High commendation. Things he didn't expect. And in our lives there can be things that we just don't expect. Maybe already in our lives, maybe, well, I would say probably, certainly in the years ahead. When we look at the Bible and when we look at what the prophecies are, and we look at even the world around us in the direction that it's going in, we can see the handwriting on the wall if we're listening, if we're paying attention. And maybe we need to be paying a little more attention and be thinking about how things will be when a life takes a turn that we didn't see coming. Because now we have the time to be ready for it. Now that we have the time to prepare. Well, that's all I'll say of John the Baptist. But he's tied to another man that I want to talk about as well. In verse 27 here of Luke 7, Christ says, this is he, speaking of John the Baptist, this is he of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before your face. Who will prepare your way before you? That's what John's mission was. That's why he was born. That was what God's role for him was. He did it very, very well. Whatever your role is that God has for you, whatever my role is, our mission is, whether we want that or not, is to do it the way that God said. He will give the strength. He will give the spirit. He will give the courage. He will give whatever we need to get it done.

We just have to follow him, trust in him, and take it to him. Back in Matthew 18, not Matthew 18, Matthew 11, Matthew 11, verse 14. Speaking of John, Jesus Christ said this. In verse 13, he says, Well, back just one book in the Bible, but from the New Testament back to the Old Testament, into Malachi 4. In verse 4, it says, Remember the law of Moses, my servant, which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. Verse 5, Behold, I will send you, Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse. Christ said, John is the Elijah to come, but the Elijah in Malachi 4, verse 5, is yet to come. He is coming before the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

John the Baptist is one. There's another one coming. That's a topic for another sermon. But let's talk about Elijah, because when we think about John the Baptist, we can talk about Elijah because Jesus Christ ties them together. John had his mission. John had his role. John did it very well. Elijah the same way. He lived, of course, back a thousand years before, well, 800-some years before Jesus Christ and John the Baptist.

But he was a great prophet. Christ said John was a greater prophet, but Elijah was a notable prophet in the Old Testament. And you know the stories about Elijah. God worked through him some fantastic things and some fantastic miracles. Elijah had a life that he may not have thought when he was a younger man that he would lead. I don't know if he thought, I want to be a prophet, or if God had put that in his mind early on, this is what you're going to do. If he did think he was going to be a prophet, he might have thought that people were going to receive him and be very happy with him. But it turned out in life that wherever he went, kings didn't like him. The king of record at the time that he was the prophet most of the time is King Ahab, who really didn't like Elijah at all. Didn't like what he had to say. And Ahab, you recall, was married to a woman named Jezebel who really, really didn't like Elijah. Everything he said, she could just do without. He was prophesying in a nation of Israel, God's people who had departed from God. There were some, we learned, that still worshipped God, but the majority, well, the vast majority of Israel, they had moved over to worship the Bails, the pagan gods. They had left God behind. And Elijah was there to turn the hearts of the people back to God. As you go through his life and you see the miracles he did and the things that he did, there was one key moment in his life that he lived for. And that was when to bring Israel back to the knowledge of who the true God is. Who the true God is, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God they had forgotten, the God they had wandered away from. And so he went through this process. Let's go back to 1 Kings 18.

And as it came to the culmination of his work, it went on a little bit beyond this, but if there's a defining moment in Elijah's ministry, if we want to call it that, it was with the occasion with the prophets at Baal.

And at that time, three and a half years before that time, Elijah had prayed and had told Ahab there was not going to be any rain in Egypt for three and a half years. That was the prophecy that he said. And so Israel has been living under drought during all that time. Here's a man of God who had said, this is what's going to happen, and it was happening.

But it came time for Israel to get off the dime, if you will. The time had come for Elijah to prophesy of God. Let's pick it up in chapter 18. I'm in the wrong book. 1 Kings 18.

And verse 17. It happened. When Ahab, King Ahab, saw Elijah, that Ahab said to him, is that you? Is that you, O troubled of Israel? That's what happens, right? You make a prophecy of God, it didn't rain, and so Ahab blamed the messenger. He didn't blame himself or look to himself as to what the cause was. Is that you, O troubled of Israel?

And Elijah answered, I haven't troubled Israel, but you and your father's house have, and that you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and you follow the Bails.

And so then he offers a challenge to Ahab.

Now therefore send and gather all Israel to me on Mount Carmel, the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal, and the four hundred prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel's table.

So Ahab did that, gathered them all together, and Elijah came to all the people and said, verse 21, How long will you falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him, but if Baal, follow him.

So here we have this defining moment. Ahab has agreed. Fine. Let's bring all four hundred fifty or eight hundred fifty of these prophets together.

Let's prove that who we're following is the true God. And Elijah, it'll just be you, and you can deal with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who we have effectively eliminated from our lives.

We just don't follow him anymore. And Elijah calls him to account. It's time to make a stand.

Will you follow God when you know he's God, or will you continue to cling to these gods that are the false gods and idols that you think are doing something in your lives?

It's a defining moment in our lives if that question was asked to us as well. If there is Elijah today, and perhaps the Elijah to come will tell that to the people.

You need to decide whether you're going to follow God, or you're going to follow these false gods, this government, these idols of Satan.

And if I can prove to you who the God is, will you follow?

You know, it's a question for us too, because the very first commandment says, you will have no other gods besides me when you look at the accurate translation.

You and I may still have little gods that we look at in the world, little gods and things that we trust in and run to when we're in trouble in the world.

God will see. At one point in time, we're going to have to say, will it be God we stand, or will we and will we eschew these other idols that are part of our lives?

This was a defining moment for Israel, and Baal, not Baal, Elijah, was about to show them and prove to them who the real God was.

Well, you know the story as you read down through chapter 18 here. The prophets of Baal, they set up a sacrifice.

What the test is, is they will set up a sacrifice, set up an altar, and the real God would send fire down from heaven and consume the sacrifice.

The prophets of Baal do that. The prophets of Baal march around the altar all day long, asking their God to bring down fire.

Of course, it never happens. It's just a god of stone and a god of nothing.

When we move down to verse 27 here in the chapter, we see Elijah beginning to mock him, even, like, Okay, keep marching. Maybe he's just asleep. Maybe he's just not paying any attention to you or away for the day or something like that.

They keep crying out, but nothing ever happens.

Verse 29 says, Verse 30, And in verse 36, He prayed that prayer.

Heartfelt, full of faith, knowing that God would answer.

Verse 38, They fell on their faces, and they said, Now, back just a few verses earlier when Elijah issued this challenge to him, they didn't say a word.

But now they knew. There was absolutely no doubt.

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, He is the true God.

Elijah had to be so elated in the right way.

He had complete faith that God was going to answer that prayer. He knew that God was going to do that.

His life had been built on building His faith in God and trust in God.

So that even when He prayed the prayer about it not reigning for three and a half years, He knew. He prayed in faith.

And He prayed in faith this time.

And He had to be so happy that the people saw God's power that they would turn back to Him.

And He had to be so excited about what was going to happen in Israel that this monumental event had occurred.

I dare say He didn't see the next twist in His life occurring.

You know, He had spent His body. He had spent His energy on these people.

He had spent His energy that time.

You know, to make this happen, and He went and the prophets were killed.

And as you read down through the rest of the chapter there in chapter 18, Elijah prayed and rain came.

There could be no doubt in anyone's mind who the God, who the true God is.

And when we know who the true God is, there should be absolutely no doubt who we will worship, who we will follow, who we will have faith in, who we will have trust in.

There should be no doubt. There should be no doubt.

So Elijah had to be on a high if we can put it that way.

Happy for God, not taking any of the credit to himself, but realizing it was God who did it, and just happy the people came to Him. But then life took an unexpected turn in chapter 19 in verse 1.

Ahab went and told his wife Jezebel all that Elijah had done, also how he had executed all the prophets with a sword.

Elijah had no reason other than to think, Ahab's going to be thrilled.

Jaiel Jezebel, she's going to see the light. She's going to turn to God. She's going to do things his way from here on out.

But Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I don't make your life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time.

News flash. Jezebel wasn't receiving the message the way Elijah had planned.

She wasn't receiving the message the way he thought would be the only way that it could be received.

She, in fact, turned the tables on him and said, you know what, Elijah? You will die.

I can't stand the fact that you did this. I can't stand the fact that you have made the people know who God is.

And in my position as queen, you'll die for doing it.

Now, we learned something. We learned something about kings and queens who have turned from God.

We learned something about societies who turn from God.

We learned they don't really want to hear about God. They don't really want to hear His word.

They don't really want to hear the truth. Even when Jesus Christ was on earth, then He was preaching to His people, and He was going around all of Judea, healing people, being kind to them, sitting down with them, engaging them in a way that the Pharisees and the Jews of His day never did.

In the end, all they wanted to do was kill Him. They didn't like what He had to say.

Satan never likes what God has to say. Satan gets very angry when people see who the true God is.

Satan gets very angry and wants to kill, and people with that spirit in him who don't have God's Holy Spirit to offset that spirit, or to overcome that spirit of hate, all they want to do is kill. Stop God's Spirit. Stop the truth. Whatever it takes, stop it.

Elijah faced it. Christ faced it.

In times ahead, we've been in Revelation. We see the prophecies. There will be a government that says, don't want to hear it. In fact, if you're going to preach it, you're going to die.

We'll preach what we want, we'll say what we want, and your job is to obey what we have to say, believe what we have to say, and if you're going to preach any of this word of God, then you're going to die.

There's a monumental conflict, I guess if you will, at the end of the age when the two witnesses are preaching against the beast power that will be on earth at that time that the Bible prophesies, they'll be preaching the words powerfully. All the world will hear it. What will be the message? We can't wait until they're dead. They'll make attempt after attempt after attempt to kill those two witnesses.

Satan, a world under the sway of Satan, will not tolerate the word of God.

Israel in this day, even though they were God's people, even though they were God's people, Jezebel, who is a symbol of Satan here, is not about to tolerate it.

I dare say Elijah didn't see that coming. Here is a twist. Here is a twist in his life that he didn't see coming at all.

What did he do? He ran. He ran. He hid in the cave for a while. He had to build his energy back up. And God knew he was human. He wasn't running from God. He was just stunned. I didn't see this coming. Never in my wildest imagination did I think that this would be the response that was there.

And apparently Israel didn't follow either, even though they said, The Lord, he is God. The Lord, he is God. They just followed the queen. They just followed the king, who continued to walk in the ways of the false gods, their idols.

And so, Elijah, you remember the word that he said, he's bound, and he says, God, can I just die? Can I just die? I've spent my life doing this, and probably in a way it felt like he was a failure, because it didn't end up the way that he thought it would.

But it ended up exactly the way God wanted it to end up. It was part of his plan.

Elijah had to learn that, and Elijah did learn that.

So God eventually called him out of the cave, just like God will call us out of our doldrums and our depression. Get to work, Elijah. There's still some things that you have to do.

There's still some things you have to do, Elijah. He went out and did them, and his work went on for a while. But God gave him an assistant, Elisha, who continued the work of schooling people and educating people in Israel.

And the work went on, the teaching of God went on. Israel never embraced it. They eventually went into captivity because they departed from God. But then his life ended. We find, over in 2 Kings, 2, the end of Elijah's mission in Israel, whether this was the end of his life, might be. There are some scriptures that indicate that he might have lived beyond that, but in another capacity. Not a capacity, but another place later on. But we don't want to get into that. Here in 2 Kings 2, Elisha has been trained. Elijah is about to be relieved of his role. He's done his job well. Exactly the way God wanted it to him. It was time for him to leave. As you read through chapter 2 and verse 3, you see it says, The sons of prophets who were at Bethel came out to Elisha. And these sons of prophets, when you read these, it indicates that these are like schools of people that Elisha is training.

Because his job was more education. Not turning the hearts of the people back. It's certainly part of everyone's mission. But churches have missions, commissions that we do. Follow what God said. And this is what Elijah did his. Elisha did his. And the sons of the prophets who were at Bethel came to Elisha and said to him, Do you know that the Lord will take away your Master from you today? And he said, Yes, I know. Keep silent. I don't want him to go. And it happened again. And then as we get down to verse 11, It says, It happened, as they, Elisha and Elijah, continued on and talked, That suddenly a chariot of fire appeared with horses of fire, And separated the two of them. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And that was the last we read of Elijah. There's another thing in 2 Chronicles. Now, my Bible, when I look at the heading here, it says, Elijah sends into heaven. The commentaries that I read all say, Elijah went to heaven that day. He died. God took him to heaven. I'm here to say, God did not take Elijah to heaven. If there's anyone who believes that, Jesus Christ himself made the statements, There is no man in John 3.13. No man has ascended into heaven, Except he who came down from heaven. That is Jesus Christ. We know that Elijah died. Whether God took him and placed him in another part in Israel to do something else, Only God knows. Whether God, whether he died, and God placed him in the ground at that point.

But Elijah did die. Elijah is not in heaven. No one is in heaven, Except Jesus Christ of men who have lived on the earth. Acts 2.34 says the same thing. David is not in heaven. And David was a man after God's own heart. So we know the truth about that. And when we read the things about Elijah, You know, don't let ourselves get taken away by thoughts and whatever. Always remember what God's plan is. For some reason, the way God relieved Elijah of his role at that point Was to simply take him up in a chariot, and either he died and was placed somewhere in the earth waiting to be resurrected Or someplace else where he might have lived for a few more years and done something else. I don't know the answer. I could turn to some verses, but I won't do that right now. We know he died. And that was the way God decided to take him. The lesson from Elijah is that he did his job well. Things took a turn that he didn't expect. He never renounced God. He never lost faith. He kept his eyes on the goal. No matter what his personal plan was and his personal thought was, When it didn't turn out the way he thought, he didn't run off and worship Baal. He didn't go off and renounce God. He kept going. He had some momentary times that he had to recover because we are human and we are frail and we have emotions And we have to have those times to recover sometimes. But he did not lose faith.

As we walk through perilous times and things may happen, or even in your personal life, and someone turns against in a way, Some of the prophecies that are out there are, you know, we should do more than just look at, but we should contemplate a little bit. And think, if that's in your plan for me, God, give me the strength. Give me the courage. Help me to be preparing now for that time. If I have relative, friend, boss, turn against me and betray me, that I find myself in the situation to be a martyr, Never let me lose faith in you. Let me remember it's your plan that never fails, that has been since the foundation of the world, And that's what I count on. And I count on you. Not on what my will is, but what your will is because you know best.

And I know the end of what you have called me to, no matter what the in-between is.

Elijah did. Elijah will be resurrected. But God took him in a way that's so unusual. Only two men. Only two men were taken up in the way that Elijah was taken up.

So let's talk about the other man who's related in that way to Elijah. We find him way back before the flood. Way back before the flood. We find a man named Enoch back in Genesis 5. Let's turn back there. In Genesis 5, you have the whole genealogy from Adam down to Noah. And as you read through there, you'll see, of all these men who had many, many sons and daughters, one man, one son is noted as the offspring of all these men. This is the godly line. This is who God, his word and his truth never departs from earth. But these men carried on the truth of God from Adam down to Seth. Adam, of course, didn't. Adam rejected God, but had a son Seth who followed him. But if we come down to verse 21, we find this man Enoch. Enoch lived 65 years, he says, and he begot Methuselah. How many years in Methuselah live? 969 years, the longest recorded life. Enoch lived 65 years and begot Methuselah. After he begot Methuselah, Enoch walked with God 300 years and had sons and daughters. So he lived, by our standards, 300 years. This is a pretty long time. By the standards of the rest of the people in this genealogy, he only had a third of a little more than a third of his life. But 300 years, he lived after having Methuselah. Methuselah lived right up until the year of the flood. We don't know that he died in the flood. God maybe had him die before the flood, but he died in the year of the flood.

As it turns out, 500 years of Noah's life, he had Methuselah as grandpa who was there. He obviously taught Noah some good things. We'll get to that in a minute. But here we have Enoch. So all the days of Enoch were 365 years, and the second time it says, Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.

And it leaves it at that. So it doesn't say Enoch died. God took him. So we have two men in the Bible, Elijah, and we have Enoch. We have Old Testament, Elijah, prophet. We have pre-flood Enoch, a man. And we had the same thing happen to him, and twice God said of him, he walks with me.

The other man in that genealogy that walked with God is Noah. Notable that they were related, notable that they had 500 years together, 300 years that Enoch had the opportunity to teach Methuselah and rear him, 500 years that Methuselah had the opportunity to rear and educate and train Noah, and of Enoch and Noah, they walked with God.

Well, we can look at this time of life, and it was hard to even imagine a world where you were the only one who was following God. You know, we have each other. Most of us have families in the church, and so we have that kinship and that camaraderie and that brotherhood that God says is so important. But Enoch and his family, and Noah and his family, and Methuselah, they just had their family. They had the rest of the world that were against them. It wasn't a godly world. Remember, that world had its genesis with Adam and Eve, who flat-out rejected God. They walked with God. They saw God. They knew what happened, and when it came to a choice between them, take the tree of life or take the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they said, sorry God, turning our back on you, we'll take this tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That's what that world was founded on. So we can imagine, under Satan's influence, this was a pretty evil world, and God verifies that for us here as we go into chapter 6. In verse 5, you know, that world, 1500 years before the flood came and washed everything we know about that world away except what we find in the Bible. In Genesis 6, verse 5, it says, the Eternal saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth. Well, we would expect that. It was, they chose Satan to follow him. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his head, of his heart, was only evil continually. Sounds like an awful place to live, doesn't it? If that's what all the men except these few were like.

And God was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and he was grieved in his heart. I didn't want man to turn out this way. I didn't want them to be so miserable. I can't believe that he could believe, but you get the feeling of what he is. He was so sorry man had descended into this. And so he says in verse 7, I'll destroy man with whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast creeping things and birds of the air. I'm sorry I've made them. I'm going to wipe them all away. I'm going to cleanse the earth. Everything in it will be gone. No vestiges left. No buildings. No books. No records. Nothing except Noah and what goes on that ark. Now what's in Noah's head? And God knows the rest of when on back there. Verse 9, we see Noah. Noah was a just man. Perfect in his generation. He was the only one walking with God. He says it right there. He walked with God. If we go down to verse 11, God talks again about how corrupt the world was. The earth was corrupt before God. It was filled with violence. So he looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. So God told Noah the end is near. The end is near. I've had it. Mankind has shown that they absolutely will not turn back to me. They have rejected me, and there is no going back in their hearts.

Now Noah was a just man, and God told Noah, you begin to build this house. The end is near. The die has been cast. The judgment has been made. And for a hundred years, Noah built his house. It was a physical ark that was his way of physical salvation through that flood. That was how he survived from one world to the next world. God gave him all the details. God told him exactly what to do, and Noah, if you build this ark exactly the way I tell you, you and your family will survive. The die is cast on the world that we live in today. God does give us time to build the house that he wants us to build. It's not a physical ark today. It's not a physical building today. It is the temple of God that he is building in me, in you, and in us collectively.

And it will be through that house that's built, to his specifications, that salvation comes through Jesus Christ. There is no other way. There is no other name by which salvation comes. And if we follow him, and if we build that temple that he is looking to us to build, that spiritual temple, there is salvation.

There is a way through the flood to the world that God has called us to when Jesus Christ returns. That's what Noah and his mission was for 100 years. For 100 years, people saw him building an ark in the middle of nowhere where there was no water close by. They likely jeered at him. They likely made fun of him. Noah never lost faith. Noah never caught himself saying, Why am I doing this? Do I really believe that God can flood the entire earth?

Why am I building this boat? For 100 years of my life, I'm going to build this boat. All these people are against me. They're laughing at me. They probably more than laughed at him. They probably hated him for what he was doing.

Yet he continued doing it.

He saw the world, the way God has shown us the world. It was a corrupt, a violent world. We can look at the world around us through God's eyes today. Would he say, It's a corrupt world you live in there in America.

It's a violent world you live there in America. The corruption that is there, we begin to see. The corruption that is there probably more and more will be revealed to just how corrupt the world and our society is. We've seen flashes of violence that haven't been seen before. And the utter destructiveness that has no purpose other than a spirit in people's hearts to just destroy and maim. We see words coming out of people's mouths that are foreign to where we are.

Back in those days, the world was corrupt and it was violent. The world we live in today becoming ever more so because that is one of the marks of the world when people are following Satan's way rather than God's way. It becomes more and more decadent, more and more deprived. You can read Romans 1. And it tells you what we become like if we depart from God, what the world becomes like if they depart from God.

It happens in the world around us today, but we get a very ugly picture of the anti-Diluvian world when we read Genesis 6. But Jesus Christ gives us a different picture or a complementary picture that fills in the blanks for us back in Matthew, or forward, in Matthew 24.

In his Olivet prophecy, when he speaks of the world of Noah, he doesn't speak of just the violence and just the corruption and just all the anti-evil things that they did and that their hearts were just filled with evil continually.

He says this instead in verse 27 of Matthew 24. Oh, I'm in the wrong chapter. It sure doesn't look like that. Let me see here. It's not verse 37. Did I say verse 37? Matthew 24, verse 37. He says, As the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving and marriage, given and marriage. Until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they didn't know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of man be. So here we get a picture. It's kind of a vibrant society. People were moving about. People were happy, if you want to put it that way. They were eating and drinking. They seemed to have plenty. There's no mention of famine, no mention of pestilence, no mention of disease. They were going about life, and it seemed like a pretty good life. There was wealth. There was prosperity. Because when you use words like they were eating and drinking and marrying and giving and marriage, this is society that seems okay. And so we have another picture of the pre-flood world. In God's eyes, violence, corruption, evil continually. But another mark of a world about to disappear is it has extreme wealth, and when you look at it physically, it looks like an okay place to live. There's plenty. I'm not going hungry. I've got cars in my garage. I've got houses to live in. I've got money to spend. I've got time to do things. I've got a lot of comforts in life. I have a lot of leisure in life. And so we put together the pictures of the pre-flood world, and all of a sudden we see a world that looks similar to what we live in today. How many times have we been told in the last several years, there's never been a more wealthy nation on earth than what we live in today? We can all attest to that, right? Our lives are pretty good. There's nothing really that any of us, well, there's plenty of things we probably want, but nothing that we really need that we're doing without. America is a really, really prosperous place. We live lives that everyone that lived before us, in millenniums before us, would trade places with us instantaneously. And yet we have this dichotomy of the picture of the world that it really is a violent place. It really is becoming a corrupt place. There is a lot of things going on behind the scenes that when you look at it spiritually, it's depraved, it's decadent, it's everything that isn't good. Yet at the same time, it's got prosperity. It's got these good times if we want to put it in that vernacular to go on. And so we see a picture of Satan's society. Evil, depraved, violent, corrupt, decadent, yet prosperous. Back in Deuteronomy 8, verse 3, Christ warned Israel, his people. He said, you know, when the good times come, when you have plenty, when there's food on every table and you're never wanting or worrying about where your next meal is coming from, don't forget me.

Many times I've said, we go through trials of sickness, we go through trials of other things. Maybe the biggest trial we all go through is when we have plenty. Do we remain loyal to God? Do we still have the same focus on Him that we do when we're hurting, sick, or in trouble some way and we have to call on Him because there's no other way out?

We have to remain loyal to God no matter what comes our way, whether it's wealth or trials. Now, we can see this pattern not just in the pre-flood world because, you know, recently we've talked about Sodom and Gomorrah. What was Sodom and Gomorrah like? Whenever we think of Sodom, we don't think of, hey, this is a wonderful place to live. We think of all the absolute decadence and the perversity that was in Sodom. Not a place that anyone would want to live in, right? Like any place but Sodom. Yet there was a man of God who lived in Sodom. A lot. And we're told when God came down, when the angels came down and said, Sodom is as bad as we thought. We're going to destroy it instantaneously. It's going to be destroyed by fire. A lot you need to get out with your family. That they actually had to drag Lot out of that Sodom because it was a good place to live. They had luxuries that weren't in other cities at that time. They had wealth. They had plenty of food. It was a good place to live, even though it had all these spiritual things that were abominable to God. In fact, if we go back to Ezekiel 16, we can see what God says was the iniquity of Sodom. He doesn't list the things that we might list. He doesn't list perversity and sexual perversity and sexual immorality and violence and corruption. He lists the things that led to Sodom's problem. In verse 49 of Ezekiel 16, it says, Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom. She and her daughter had pride. Pride's always associated with sin. She and her daughter had pride. They had fullness of food. That should be a good thing, right? They had fullness of food. And they had abundance of idleness. They didn't have to go out and work from sunrise to sunset, plowing the fields, gathering their food. They had abundance of idleness. Neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. So if we took the word Sodom out of there, and we looked at the societies and the world we live in today, we would say, that's us. That's us. Plenty of pride. Plenty of pride in America. Plenty of food in America. Plenty, plenty, plenty of idle time in America. Plenty of comforts. And yet, as the nation moves further and further away from God, you see more and more of the spiritual illness that is among us.

It's a sign of a world, a society that's under the sway of Satan. Spiritual depravity. Spiritual poverty mixed with physical prosperity. We live in such a time now. If we fast forward to Revelation 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, when it talks about the Babylon at the end time, that succeeds and it comes out of the midst of nowhere, that the world marvels after, that brings wealth to the world. When you read Revelation 18 and that society is being destroyed by God right before the return of Jesus Christ, remember it says in Revelation 18, the merchants of the world wail. Wait! We were made rich through this entity.

There was wealth. We had all these things in this society. Yet when you read the first few verses of chapter 18, the way God describes it is, it's a habitation of demons and every hated bird. God sees it spiritually, but it has this wealth to it. So when we look at the antediluvian world, where it had come to the point where God made His judgment on them, it's going to be destroyed. It's going to be wiped out. It's going to happen suddenly, even though it took a hundred years for Noah to build that ark, and they saw, the people around there saw Him building that ark, they didn't believe it. They cast it aside. They put it out of their mind. They went on with their lives, eating and drinking and marrying and giving a marriage, paying no attention to what Noah was doing, paying no attention to what God had given them, the witness of what He was doing and what was coming.

And suddenly the rain came, and suddenly they were left out, and suddenly that civilization was destroyed. But there was this man Enoch. Noah lived through it, and Noah, you know, had things that he passed on to his sons. But there was this man Enoch that was there who walked with God, were told twice.

And then he was taken, and he was no more.

Let's go back to Jude, because we don't read anything about Enoch until we get to the book of Jude, which is positioned right before the last book of the Bible, Revelation. And in Jude 14, there's just a couple verses about Enoch.

Now, as you're turning there, some will say that this was taken from the book of Enoch.

And I know sometimes people will say, the book of Enoch, should we be reading the book of Enoch? Is the book of Enoch truth? It's not. There's a reason the book of Enoch isn't in the Bible. Even the secular scholars have looked at it. Even the secular scholars say there's no evidence the book of Enoch came through the flood, that it was written by Enoch, that it was compiled by anyone who knew Enoch. It never appeared in society until two centuries before Christ. And it has error in it. Total error in it. It has some truth in it, because Satan's way, remember, is truth and error, not just pure error. There's some truth in it that you can validate through the Bible and historical records, perhaps. But it is not the truth of God. Even they will acknowledge it doesn't belong in the Bible.

In fact, one of the things that was widespread among the Jews at the time that Jesus Christ was there was this widespread belief that angels could intermarry with people. And so some, even in the church today, will think when you look at Genesis 6 where we were, and it talks about giants and earth in those days, that this was an occasion where demons intermarried with women, and there there were these giant, evil people on earth that was the product of this union.

Absolutely false. It comes from the book of Enoch. It's something that was widely believed in the time of the Jews that Jesus Christ was there, but he dashed that and set the record state when he said, angels in this lifetime or in the future do not marry. And that goes back to the truth, some of which we've been talking about in the Hebrew Bible study. Mankind was created for a different purpose than angels. Angels are one set of heavenly beings. Mankind is a different set of beings. There is no intertwining of the two, just like you don't match, you don't mate a cow with a horse. Mankind and angels don't mate, kind after kind. Heavenly beings, one. Mankind is another. You know what the purpose of mankind is. If you don't, come and we'll talk about it. But here in Jude, you know, Jude says some things about Enoch, and we don't need the book of Enoch to know what the truth is. God knows what the truth is. All scripture is inspired by God. He knows what went on there. He's the one who inspired these words to be kept in the book for us. So we have a little bit of picture of what Enoch was doing back in the pre-flood days. Now, Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men also saying, talking about false prophets the Jude is talking about here, Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his saints to execute judgment on all, to convict all who are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds, which they have committed in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. Notice how many times he says ungodly in just those two verses? This was an evil society, and Enoch was preaching this back before the flood. He was preaching in the world before the flood the same gospel that we preach today, the same gospel that Jesus Christ preached. I don't know how the people in pre-flood days took it. My guess is they didn't like what Enoch was saying at all. We don't want to hear about a return of Jesus Christ. We don't want to hear about ten thousands of his saints coming back. We don't want to hear about him being king of kings. We like it the way it is. We want to live in the way that we're living now. But he was preaching that gospel, that same gospel that Jesus Christ tells his church today to preach. He was preaching the same gospel that the two witnesses will be preaching before the return of Jesus Christ. To me, that's comforting. God had his plan before the world ever was, including the pre-flood world. The purpose, the plan, was already set. Jesus Christ would return. Maybe for the people, and even Noah and Enoch—well, Enoch wasn't alive at the time— maybe for Noah, he never saw coming that God would actually flood the entire earth and every living thing would die in it. Who could think that in their minds? Noah continued to walk with God, and Enoch, the only one, preaching this gospel to a world that hated that message. And he was speaking of his time. He was dealing with ungodly people, doing ungodly deeds, living in an ungodly way, and speaking ungodly things about God himself. A couple of books back in Hebrews. Hebrews 11.

Verse 5, we find Enoch, mentioned here as one of the faithful who will be resurrected. By faith, Enoch was taken away so that he didn't see death. And he wasn't found because God had taken him. For before he was taken, he had this testimony. He pleased God. He was taken away so he didn't see death. What does that mean? Could it possibly mean that, remember he only lived 365 years, could it possibly mean that people so hated Enoch that they were like, you know what, we want to kill him. Let's come up and let's just kill Enoch. They want to kill Jesus Christ. They want to kill the two witnesses. Christ says, we will be hated of all nations for his name's sake. Did God take Enoch so he didn't see death by the hands of those people? I don't know, just a supposition. And we know he died because at the end of the book of Hebrews 11 it says these all died having faith in God. Enoch never lost his faith in God. He never allowed the ire of people, the hatred of people, to turn him away from God. He kept walking and he had faith in God. He's right there at the beginning of the faith chapter. A tremendous lesson to us. Maybe he never saw coming when he was preaching the truth of God, that people would hate him, that they would actually want to kill him. Who knows what? Who knows what? Until he's resurrected, we won't know everything he went through. But he's an inspiration to us, and an inspiration to us because he remained loyal to God in the face of things you and I haven't had to face. The only one in the world preaching those things. And so his life took some twists and turns. Our lives may take some twists and turns. What will we do when those twists and turns come? Will we remember God's plans? When his plan may not equal what our plan for our life is? Will we be asked to do something that we never saw ourselves being asked to do? Or being in a situation that we never saw ourselves being in? Or even perhaps being martyred, or the threat of martyrdom that's so hard to even think about? What will we do? Will we be like John, Elijah, Enoch? And will we take faith in what they took faith in? God is in control. His plan stands. We can count on it and nothing else. Let's conclude in Isaiah 46. Isaiah 46, verse 8. Remember this. It says, Remember this. Always when God says, Remember, pause and remember it. Remember this. Show yourselves men. Recall to mind, you transgressors. Remember the former things of old. For I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is none like me. Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done. Saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure. Through good times and bad, always count on God. Never turn your back on Him.