2 Peter 3:10,11; Genesis 5:21-23
The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness.
Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah: and Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters: and all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): Enoch lived in a very evil age. He was prominent at a time when sin was beginning to cover the earth. It was not very long before the earth was corrupt and God saw fit to sweep the whole population from off its surface on account of sin.
D. L. MOODY (1837-1899): I will venture to say that Enoch, in his day, was considered a most singular and visionary man—an “eccentric” man—the most peculiar man who lived in that day. He was a man out of the fashion of this world, which passeth away.
ROBERT HAWKER (1753-1827): Observe! at the age of sixty-five, Enoch is said to have “walked with God.” May not this be supposed to mean the period of his conversion?
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): He “walked with God after he begat Methuselah”—which intimates that he did not begin to be eminent for piety till about that time; at first he walked but as other men. Great saints arrive at their eminence by degrees.
JOHN GILL (1697-1771): He had walked with God undoubtedly before, but perhaps after this time, more closely and constantly: and this is observed to denote, that he continued so to do all the days of his life, notwithstanding the apostasy which began in the days of his father, and increased in his.
THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): Three hundred years was a long while to live thus in a wicked world―but he walked by faith, Hebrews 11:5.
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): What does “walking by faith” signify?
EDWARD PAYSON (1783-1827): The term walk, as used by the inspired writers, always signifies a continued course of conduct, or a manner of living, in which men persevere till it becomes habitual. Thus the phrase, “Enoch walked with God” evidently signifies that he did not repair to God occasionally, when want or affliction or fear of death impelled; he did not merely take a few steps in that path in which God condescends to walk with men, and then forsake it; but he pursued that path habitually and perseveringly; he lived with God, in contradistinction from those who live without Him in the world.
C. H. SPURGEON: It is implied also in this phrase, that his life was progressive, for if a man walks either by himself or with anybody else, he makes progress―he goes forward. At the end of two hundred years he was not where he began. He was in the same Company, but he had gone forward in the right way. At the end of the third hundred years Enoch enjoyed more, understood more, loved more, had received more and could give out more, for he had gone forward in all respects. A man who walks with God will necessarily grow in grace and in the knowledge of God and in likeness to Christ. You cannot suppose a perpetual walk with God, year after year, without the favoured person being strengthened, sanctified, instructed and rendered more able to glorify God. So I gather that Enoch’s life was a life of spiritual progress. He went from strength to strength and made headway in the gracious pilgrimage.
WILLIAM GURNALL (1617-1679): The sincere Christian is progressive, is not content with any measure of grace, never at his journey’s end, till he get to heaven, Philippians 3:13.
C. H. SPURGEON: Good men are never idle, and hence they do not lie down or loiter, but they are still walking onward to their desired end. They are not hurried, and worried, and flurried, and so they keep the even tenor of their way, walking steadily towards heaven; and they are not in perplexity as to how to conduct themselves, for they have a perfect rule, which they are happy to walk by. The law of the Lord is not irksome to them; its commandments are not grievous, and its restrictions are not slavish in their esteem…They do not consult it now and then as a sort of rectifier of their wanderings, but they use it as a chart for their daily sailing, a map of the road for their life-journey.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1899-1981): Very well, my friends, the question we ask ourselves therefore is this: Do we know anything about that? Do we know anything about “walking” with God?
A. W. PINK: It means that our thoughts are formed, our actions regulated, our lives moulded by the Holy Scriptures.
R. C. CHAPMAN (1803-1902): A careless reader of the Scriptures never made a close walker with God.
VERNON J. CHARLESWORTH (1839-1915): Rowland Hill, entering the house of one of his congregation, saw a child on a rocking-horse. “Dear me, he exclaimed, “how wondrously like some Christians! there is motion, but no progress.” The rocking-horse type of spiritual life is still characteristic of too many Church members in the present day.
C. H. SPURGEON: Some have said, “Ah, you cannot live as you like if you have a lot of children about you. Do not tell me about keeping up your hours of prayer and quiet reading of the Scriptures if you have a large family of little ones. You will be disturbed and there will be many domestic incidents which will be sure to try your temper and upset your equanimity. Get away into the woods and find a hermit’s cell—there, with your brown jug of water and your loaf of bread, you may be able to walk with God—but with a wife, not always amiable, and a troop of children who are never quiet, neither by day nor night, how can a man be expected to walk with God?” The wife, on the other hand, exclaims, “I believe that had I remained a single woman I might have walked with God. When I was a young woman I was full of devotion. But now with my husband, who is not always in the best of tempers, and with my children who seem to have an unlimited number of needs and never to have them satisfied, how is it possible that I can walk with God?”
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: Lift up your eyes, look to God, and you will receive strength from Him.
C. H. SPURGEON: We turn to Enoch, again, and we are confident that it can be done! “Enoch walked with God, after he begat Methuselah, three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.” Thus, you see, he was a family man—and yet he walked with God for more than three hundred years. There is no need to be a hermit, or to renounce married life in order to live near to God.
THOMAS COKE: Every true saint of God is known by his perseverance in the ways of God.
