If Enoch isn't one of your favorite characters in the Bible, I'm really sorry. I love the story of Enoch. He's just mentioned in nine verses in all the Lord's testimony about him. And I'll read those nine verses. Then I want us to look at Enoch's prophecy, Enoch's prophesying. He declared from those very, very early days before the flood, he declared the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, according to the testimony of God. So I'll read the verses in the scriptures that speak of him.

In Genesis 5, 21, and Enoch lived 60 and five years and begat Methuselah. And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah 300 years and begat sons and daughters. And all the days of Enoch were 360 and five years. And Enoch walked with God and he was not for God took him. And if you turn with me in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 11, there's a lovely description of Enoch in Hebrews 11. And I love how it begins.

Hebrews 11.5, by faith, Enoch was translated that he should not see death and was not found because God had translated him for before his translation he had this testimony that he pleased God. But without faith it is impossible to please him, for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

In Luke's gospel, there's just a mention of the son of Methuselah, which was the son of Enoch, which was the son of Jared, the son of Mahaliel, the son of Canaan. In Jude, these verses that we've been looking at in Jude, and we looked at Enoch here a couple of months ago, but I just wanted to go back and look at Enoch's prophecy today. We looked at Enoch's life and something of Enoch's salvation. But in Jude, The Holy Spirit mentions Enoch and Enoch also, Jude 14, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these.

He prophesied of the false teachers that were going to plague the church until the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. The ones that he has described in the previous verses, the ones that there are almost 30 descriptions of in this book. He prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints. to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him." All the hard speeches are speeches that are spoken against the Lord Jesus Christ.

Satan has one focus of all of his attention in this world, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ and him crucified. Colossians 2 tells us that on the cross of Calvary, the most proud being this universe has ever seen was made a mockery. Having spoiled principalities and power, he made a show of them triumphing over them in it. Triumphing over them in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Satan thought his great day of victory had come and yet it was a great day of his shame and yet he hasn't given up at all.

Enoch walked with God. Enoch pleased God. May the Lord lay that as a prayer upon our hearts What a remarkable thing that a child of Adam can walk with God in this world and please him. Abraham was a friend of God. Moses spoke to God face to face as a man speaks to his friend. What is it for someone to be a person who prophesies, who preaches the very first thing that must happen is this person must be made a new creature.

Enoch is a sinner. Enoch is a child of Adam. It's really fascinating in Genesis chapter four, at the end of it, it speaks of the grandfather of Enoch. And Adam lived, verse three of chapter five, lived 130 years and began a son in his own likeness. In his own likeness, after his image and called his name Seth. Methuselah is born of those like we are.

If you shake my family tree and your family tree, you'll get back to Adam. If you take your family tree and my family tree, we must go back to Noah and the three, the eight that were on the ark. You must go back there. And so this idea of race and pride of race and other things which has polluted so much of this world is not a biblical notion in one little tiny bit. But Enoch, to be someone who prophesied of God, Enoch had to be made a new creature.

In Genesis 5.21, Enoch lived sixty and five years and begat Methuselah, and Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah. Had he walked with God 300 years, I believe that's a declaration from God of the fact that Enoch, like the rest of us, you must be born again to enter the kingdom of God.

You must be born again. You must be made a new creature. As the Lord said to Nicodemus, you must be born again to see the kingdom of God. You must be born again to enter the kingdom of God. Someone complained to George Whitfield saying, you're always telling people that they must be born again. And George Whitfield turned around and said, because you must, you must. It's not a reformation of this old man, it's a new man, it's a new creation. A new creation can two walk together unless they be agreed.

How did Enoch come to walk with God? How did Enoch come to be a prophet of God? How did Enoch go from that state that he was in? Listen to the state that Enoch was in. Verse five of chapter six of Genesis, and God saw, this is what God sees. God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Amen. Amen. That's what God saw. Only by the grace of God will we see the same as God sees.

To walk with God is to see what God sees. How did that happen? How did Enoch come to walk with God? While you're there in Genesis 6, verse 8 tells us exactly how Enoch came to walk with God and how Enoch came to be a preacher. found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

The Lord looked down and saw, that's what all men are. The Lord looked down and said, this is what I'll do for those men. I'll do for some of those men in my dear and precious son. To walk with God and to speak for God and to please God is to have found grace.

Enoch's walk and Enoch's pleasing God and Enoch's preaching was God's gift in electing grace to save him out of that present evil world. To walk with God is to know, to know that you're a sinner. to know that the Lord Jesus Christ came into this world to save sinners, not past sinners, sinners, just sinners. Sinners, sinners who sin and that's what they do and that's what they see themselves to be. To walk with God, is to know the faithfulness of God.

God was faithful. God is faithful and God is just in all of what he does. When he brings judgment upon this world, he's telling the truth. What does Satan say in the garden? You shall not surely die. What was God's response? Genesis 5, and he died, and he died. and he died, all the way through the rest of the Old Testament, God is saying, Satan says you surely won't die, God says, and he died. Who's telling the truth? Who's telling the truth? Who is telling the truth in the garden? It's to speak God's truth. And I love what Genesis 5, 21 says, and Enoch lived 60 and five years and begat Methuselah. Enoch was born again when his son was born.

And the remarkable thing about Methuselah's name, Methuselah's name signifies, and it says, when he is dead, it shall be sent. Or when he is dead, there is the sending out of the waters of the flood. According to the genealogies, Methuselah died the year of the flood. According to Jewish traditional understanding, Methuselah died a week before the flood came. When he dies, it shall be said.

My point is, that Enoch walked with God and Enoch prophesied of God, knowing that there was a judgment of God to come upon all humanity. You imagine that every time, every time Methuselah was sick. In all those years that Enoch walked with him, he would say, well, is this it? Is this when the deluge is coming?

He lived and he prophesied with the reality of the coming judgment of God falling upon this world and falling upon all the people of this world. So to walk with God and to please God and to prophesy for him is to speak of God and to speak of the judgment of God, the justice of God. This notion that somehow that the gospel is a love letter from heaven, the gospel is a command from God to people who are dead and their deadness is a reflection of their enmity, their natural enmity against God. The gospel comes with a command, but the gospel comes with a warning. And thank God that the command of God comes with the power of God into the hearts of God's people, and they will believe, and they will repent, and they will look to the Lord Jesus Christ, and they will turn from themselves. To walk with God is to be as Enoch did. 300 years, 300 years, he prophesied of the coming judgment, How many people told him, Enoch, it's never rained? It's never rained. There's no judgment of God.

Is that what we're hearing now? I just heard this morning that a friend of mine who I've known all my life is in a hospice in Sydney, but everything turned off and they're just waiting for him to die. He's got an incredibly aggressive form of cancer. What are people saying to him? What have people told him all his life? It's all okay. there is no judgment of God. We have to declare a just and a holy God.

Enoch walked with God and Enoch prophesied with God and Enoch walked with God in the faith of Abel. What was Abel's Salvation was a grace gift like Enoch's was. And what did Abel come to God? Abel came to God with the Lamb. Abel came to God with the only way that God can accept someone like Abel and Enoch and you and I into his presence if we are united as one to the Lord Jesus Christ. God had respect unto Abel and his sacrifice.

Enoch walked with God like Seth and his son Enos. They were the men that then began men to call on the name of the Lord. Enoch was calling on the name of the Lord. Enoch was coming into the presence of God like Abel. He associated with these people. Enoch lived with Adam for 300 years.

Imagine that. Imagine walking down the road and there you see old Adam and you say to Adam, what was it like? What was it like to walk in the garden with God? What was it like? He had years to talk to Adam about that. How amazing was the creation? What was it like to live in that creation?

What was it like to be a sinner and to hear God walking and you run as far as you can and hide in the darkest place you possibly can find and get as busy as you possibly can stitching a covering for your sin. And Adam would have told him about all Adam would have told him about the justice and the judgment of God in bringing a curse on this creation. Adam would have told him again and again and again about the amazing day when the Lord Jesus Christ came into that garden and called Adam to himself and pronounced all that judgment upon Adam and this creation and Satan to himself and he slew a lamb and the first blood shed in this creation was the blood of a substitute that covered his sin. Imagine the conversations that he had. He walked with God, but he walked with the children of God. He walked with Abel, he walked with Adam, and he walked with Seth and Enoch. To prophesy like Enoch is to walk with God, to walk with God and to please him.

If you're walking along with someone, you're walking in the same direction. To walk with someone and to please him, you're walking at the same pace. You're walking to the same destination. You're going to arrive at that destination together. To walk with someone, you have to be of one mind. You have to be of one mind in the things that are seen and around, the things of yourself and the things of him, To walk with him is to be in fellowship and in communion with him.

Enoch walked with God. It was a conscious activity. It doesn't say God walked with Enoch. Of course he walked with Enoch. But Enoch walked with God. It was the tenor of his life. To walk with God is to say, your will be done and not mine. The walk with God and please Him and preach for Him is to declare that God is right and God is just in all that He does all of the time. God is God.

But also to walk with God, as Hebrews 11 tells us of Enoch, to walk with God is to walk in faith. Walk in faith is to walk, not looking at yourself in any way at all, is to walk in the light of who he is and in the delight of who he is. Faith is the gift of God and therefore faith, according to Colossians 1 and other places, it is the possession of God's people. Enoch walked by faith and it was the faith that God had given him, but it was Enoch's faith. There's no point pretending that you're going to prophesy like Enoch did and not have the walk and the faith of Enoch. Enoch knew God. Enoch knew God.

Who did he walk with? He walked with the Lord Jesus Christ. He talked with the Lord Jesus Christ. That's who he was walking with. What a remarkable thing, isn't it? I love, and I've quoted it many, many times to you, God's children, we walk by faith. We walk by faith and not by sight. Thankfully we walk by faith and not by sight. But we walk by faith in what God has promised.

Listen to what he says, the Lord says in John 12, 26, before he goes to the cross. He said, if any man serve me, let him follow me. That's to walk with him, isn't it? And listen to what he goes on to say. And where I am, there shall also my servant be. When you're walking with God, who goes first? Who's leading the way? Who's holding your hand? Who's carrying you in? If any man serve me, him will my father honour. Faith works by love.

To walk with someone is to love them. It's love for the saviour and love for his righteousness, love for his perfect justice in bringing upon that world that we read about in Genesis 6 verse 5, all of the judgement that Methuselah was going to bring at his death, is to be It's to be aware of the justice of God in the judgment of all humanity. Listen to what he goes on to say, doesn't it? This is, to execute Jude 15, to execute judgment upon all and to convince all the ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.

See, faith works by love. If you love him, you hate the things that are opposed to him. But also if you love him, you love his righteousness in judgment. You love his righteousness in judgment because in salvation, you have witnessed the judgment of God that fell upon your sins in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let me read that verse again. all that are ungodly among them of their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed and of all of their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. Is that me? Is that me? Enoch is looking ahead to the judgment because he's looking back to the judgment that fell upon all of those sins in the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary. That's what it is to preach him, isn't it?

How could he not walk with God? God had to take all of his sins away completely because two can't walk together unless they're agreed. How good do you have to be to walk with God? Holy How good do you have to be to walk with God in heaven? You have to be as good as God. You have to be made a new creation in Christ Jesus. How can Christ dwell in you as he dwelt in Enoch? There's only one possible way that a holy God can dwell in something that looks like me.

To myself and to this world, God has still taken away all my sins and he's done it in the judgment of his son on the cross of Calvary. Have you seen the judgment of God on these sins of yours? If God has revealed himself to you and you walk in him, you will see and love the Saviour who bore those sins in his own body on the tree.

Listen to how Paul walked with God, and listen to how Paul describes what we must preach, isn't it? We preach him. That's all, we preach him. We don't preach ourselves, we preach him. And he says, I am crucified with Christ, Galatians 2.20, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith, the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Anything that denies that, anything that denies that is speaking against him. He loved Enoch and Enoch loved him and loved everything about him. Enoch prophesied of these blasphemers. He prophesied of these that speak evil things against the Lord Jesus Christ. Why? because he knew it in himself and he heard about it all around him. He preached for 300 years. Noah preached for 120 years. The door of the ark was open for seven days with Noah and his family inside. How many went in? What was the fruit? of Enoch's preaching, what was the fruit of Noah's preaching?

The fruit is the glory of God, brothers and sisters. The fruit is the glory of God. Was God glorified in saving those eight? Was God glorified in drowning billions in this world? Was God right in doing that? Was God right? Was that just? All of this points so wonderfully to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.

What is going to save us from the judgment of God that must fall? Enoch lived his life knowing that when Methuselah died, this is all over. We live our lives knowing that when people we know die, it's all over. It's all over. God has come to them. And they have come to God. And there's a great goal fixed. And where they die, there they fall. What a savior. What a Saviour in the midst of all that. How serious is the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. How serious is it to declare His name because you can't be saved unless you call on His name. You can't know His name unless His name is proclaimed to you.

Enoch proclaimed the whole counsel of God. He preached like Noah, the Lord Jesus Christ and him crucified. That's what he preached. There was absolutely no reason to change the message. They had the Gospel preached to them. That was the Gospel that Abraham preached. That was the Gospel that Abraham believed.

That's the Gospel that all of them, they have just this one Gospel because there's one Saviour. There's one Saviour from sin and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. And there's one way of saving and that's on the cross of Calvary. And that's exactly what the Ark of God is about. The Ark of God is about the Lord Jesus Christ.

It's a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ, of the judgment of God falling upon the Lord Jesus Christ and all the people in him until God says enough. And that Ark was covered on the outside with pitch, which means a covering. It means propitiation and it was covered on the inside. They were clean on the inside and they were saved on the outside. What a glorious picture of the Lord Jesus.

That's what they were proclaiming every time there was a hammer blow. Every time, every time Methuselah coughed and sneezed, Enoch said, he's coming. Enoch walked for 300 years knowing the judgment of God would fall. Enoch's walk was a walk in which the impending judgment was falling, was promised, and it was imminent. He lived and prophesied in the present reality of the judgment of God falling. upon the people of this world.

He said, in the midst of all this, the Lord cometh, the Lord cometh. It's lovely. In fact, you could translate that verse, the Lord came. So sure is the Lord's coming that in the original language is put in the past tense. Just like Isaiah 53, you read Isaiah 53, it's in the past tense. So sure is the promise of God's judgement that it's in the past tense.

The certainty of the second coming. How often do we think of the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ? How often do we live in the present reality of that, of that coming? A present faith in a present saviour is the test, someone wrote. This is our hope. This is the blessed hope.

There is a day coming when all that is dishonouring to the Lord of glory and all the trial that his own go through as they hear his name so badly misused, all's going to be right. Don't worry. God is going to put it all right. Justice of God will be glorified. The law of God will be magnified. Christ will see that he and his own are vindicated. The wisdom of God will be glorious.

We walk, we walk with him knowing that he is coming. I love what he says just in closing. Behold, this is Enoch's prophecy, this is Enoch's preaching. Behold the Lord cometh with. He can't be separated from them. 10,000 of his saints. 10,000 was the biggest number they knew in those days. It's our word, myriads. It's like us saying trillions and trillions or something. The victory of the Lord Jesus Christ is going to be a monumental victory, brothers and sisters. Don't dare think that it might be a tiny little thing. It's going to be huge. But I love what he says, doesn't he?

10,000 of his saints. Behold, says Enoch, a coming Lord who cannot be separated from his saints. They're his by the gift of his Father. They're His by a covenant union. They're His by creation. They're His by redemption. You've been bought with a price. They're His by a ransom of His own blood. They are His by the conquest of His love. They are His in marriage. and he calls them mine. I'll just finish with a few words out of Thessalonians, 1st Thessalonians chapter 4.

For we believe All of us, all of the children of God, believe that Jesus died and rose again. Even so, also them which sleep in Jesus, God will bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent, not go before them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. So shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore, comfort one another with these words. Comfort you, my people. Comfort you, my people. Tell them their warfare is over. They've received double of the Lord's hand for all their sins. Let's pray.

Our Heavenly Father, we do thank you for the wonders of salvation in the Saviour, the one and only Saviour. We praise you, Heavenly Father. for what happened on the cross of Calvary. We praise you for his faithfulness, his faithfulness under death, which is our faithfulness before you. We praise you, Heavenly Father, that the Son of God loved us and gave himself for us. And may we, may we join with those in proclaiming the wonders of the glory of your dear and precious Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. You alone can make his blood precious. You alone can cause us to eat and drink in remembrance of his death till he come.

May the realities of this world and the realities of our Saviour be present and living realities in our lives, Heavenly Father, for your glory and for the good of your people. Bless our time together. Bless this meal that we have. Let us eat and drink. In faith, Heavenly Father, looking to your Son and nothing else, and no one else. We pray in Jesus' name and for his glory. Amen. Thanks, John.