Scripture: Genesis 12:1-5; Hebrews 11
Enoch was one of the grandsons of Adam and the father of Methuselah who lived longer than any other person recorded in the Bible (969 years). Enoch lived a long time, also, 365 years, but he was such a godly man that, one day, God just took him into heaven. The writer of Genesis tells us that Enoch “walked with God” (Genesis 5:24), in other simpler terms, Enoch spent his life in intimate fellowship with God. What a eulogy! Do we know what it was about Enoch that pleased God so much? According to Hebrews 11, “By faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death, . . . [for] without faith it is impossible to please Him” (Hebrews 11:5-6). Enoch was so sold to the way of life in the heavenly country that he was able to step right into it. Maybe we should see here that aside from Jesus of Nazareth no one on record ever did a better job of living according to a heavenly way of life on earth than Enoch did. Even though he was here a long time, this world was not his home; he was neither fulfilled nor complete here. There was a better world for which he reached.
Then there was Noah who lived in a time of such prevailing corruption that he was the only good man God could find. God decided that the creation of the human race had been a colossal mistake so it was back to the drawing board. The story goes on to state that God decided to flood the whole earth and virtually start all over again. To protect this one good man, his family, and a sample of all that was good in the rest of creation, God tells Noah there will be a great flood. To be protected from it, he is going to have to build a gigantic houseboat, an ark. No one, Noah included, had ever heard of any such thing. But, Noah decided to do it. Maybe he was afraid not to do it. In Hebrews, the writer noted that Noah “moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household” (Hebrews 11:7). Because his eyes were fixed on a greater world, he was able to follow God’s instructions which made little sense to him and endure the taunts of people all around who kept insisting that they’d never heard of an ark or anything like it before. Actually, by Noah’s faith and his focus on what transcended this world, our text explains that “he condemned the world” (Hebrews 11:7).
It wasn’t that Noah consciously passed judgment upon the world, for that was not his to do. But the author of Hebrews shows that every faithful confidence in God unconsciously and severely condemns the fretful lives of those who choose to establish their own security, obtain their own salvation, and work out their own destiny, without Christ.
We all know Abram’s (Abraham’s) story, too. It is a well-known story from our Old Testament lessons:
By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God (Hebrews 11:8-10).
Abraham, literally, was in search of a new homeland on earth which, of course, was never fully realized. He was reaching for a city founded on the promises of God, a city whose builder and maker was God. That city, land, and country has never lasted upon this earth, but Abraham looked forward to it in faith.
To Be Continued
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 
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