◄ What Does Hebrews 11:5 Mean? ►

The first people listed in the 'roll-call of 'faith' in Hebrews, lived before the flood. The essential quality that identified them as men of faith was having the confident assurance that future events revealed by the Lord will certainly take place, and that things that may be invisible, or hidden from our understanding, are nonetheless true. What God has promised to do, He will do. And what God has revealed in His Word is also true even though it may be concealed from our eyes.

Faith that pleases God not only looks back to the origin of the universe and the way He formed the heavens and earth in the beginning, but it also looks ahead to the future. Faith that honours the Lord believes what God has foretold on how He will bring it to its conclusion. 

The two people of faith who lived prior to the flood of Noah, were Abel and Enoch. While Abel was a man who was murdered by his brother, Enoch was a man who never died, but was raptured away because he was pleasing to God. While Abel presents the picture of a justified man, Enoch demonstrates the life of a sanctified man, that walked by faith.

It is faith that pleases God, and both Enoch and Abel were men of faith, who pleased God. The blood-sacrifice that was offered by Abel was accepted by the Lord, Who bore witness to his faith. And while his brother, Cain, gave the Lord an unacceptable offering through the works of his own hands, Abel's sacrifice of an innocent lamb was acceptable to the Lord, for without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.

God saw the heart of both brothers, but only one was a man of faith who worshipped God. God commended Abel's faith by accepting his gift, and although he died by the hand of his jealous brother, the faith of this young man has become a great witness throughout generations and a life that points to the true sacrificial Lamb of God, Whose shed blood takes away the sin of the world.

The reverence Abel offered to the Lord through the blood-sacrifice, signifies the first step in a believer's walk of faith, that salvation is by grace through by faith in God's Word. But once that initial step is taken, a life-walk of faith is needed, and Enoch exemplifies a sanctified man who lived his life by faith in God.

It is as we walk with the Lord day by day (as Enoch did), that we please Him. It is as we talk with Him at every opportunity, through prayer and praise, that the desire of our heart is realised because His perfect desire has become the dear desire of our heart.

It is as we fellowship with our Heavenly Father in sweet communion and unbroken intimacy, that our life becomes a heavenly walk where we live and move and have our being in unbroken intercourse with Him.

Enoch was a man who discovered the joy of a close affinity with his Heavenly Father, and for three hundred years we discover that this faithful man walked and talked with the God Whom he loved and trusted, until one day God took him home.

Enoch was aware that a day was coming when this would happen because before he was taken up, this godly man had obtained a witness that he was pleasing to the Lord. God had made it clear to him that he pleased the Lord and would not see death. Others may have looked for him, but Enoch was never to be found, for God took him up.

Enoch was taken before the flood-waters of judgement were poured out on the wicked, corrupt, pre-flood generation, and Enoch is a beautiful picture of the Rapture of the Church which will also take place before the fire of God's wrath is poured out on today's God-hating, Christ-rejecting, sinful world.

Like Enoch, we may not know the day or the hour when the Lord is coming for us, but like this godly patriarch, we need to walk in daily fellowship with our Father and enjoy sweet communion with our heavenly Lord so that we may be ready for the day when He comes in the clouds to take us to be with Himself.

It was Enoch's walk of faith that was pleasing to the Lord. And it is as we walk in close communion and intimate fellowship with our Heavenly Father, by grace through faith in His Word, that we too become pleasing to Him. And like Enoch, we are waiting for Christ’s any day return, when we will be caught up to meet the Lord Jesus in the air and so we shall ever be with the Lord.

Let us comfort one another with these words.

Dear Father, what a wonderful testimony Enoch had, that he pleased God. Thank You also for the story of how he was raptured away to heaven by God before the Great Flood engulfed the earth. I look forward to the time Jesus comes to rapture His Bride to heaven before the 7 year Tribulation on the earth. Until that time, may I live my life the same way as Enoch by faith that is pleasing to You. In Jesus' name, AMEN.