Sermon Tone Analysis

This message is also based on the story from Patriarchs and Prophets chapter 6.

Introduction

Inheritance is a promise.

In most cultures you can expect that your parents will pass something on to you when they die—an inheritance.

Maybe it’s wealth or property.

Though, today, there’s a growing group of wealthy people who have decided not to pass on their wealth to their children.

Warren Buffet said,

“I still believe in the philosophy … that a very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing.”

Bill Gates, Mark Zukerberg, Sting, Elton John, Simon Cowell, Jackie Chan, George Lucas, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Joan Crawford, and many others have decided that their children should make their own way in life.

Some have pledged to spend all their money, while other’s have pledged to give up to 99% of their wealth away to charities before they die.

That’s all well and good in today’s economy, but imagine a time when all wealth came from the land, and all land was tied to a family.

Back in the time of Israel, God designed a cyclical economy where every family had a chance at wealth, and a chance at redemption if their parents or grandparents failed to produce wealth when they had the chance.

The Israelite economy was based on the land.

Each family would divide up the land they had been given by God among their children, and the eldest in the family would inherit the largest portion of the land and the responsibility of taking care of the rest of the family.

If the family got into a bind, they could sell a portion of their land to pay the debt, but every 50th year their debts would be satisfied and their land returned in the year of Jubilee.

It was a system that demanded hard work to become wealthy, that enabled limited generational wealth to be passed down, and that prevented poverty from being passed down through the generations.

In God’s system, an inheritance was a promise of security and safety.

It wasn’t an excuse for your children to do nothing.

On the contrary, it was an opportunity for your children to grow into leadership and to bless the family and the world.

Not only did you inherited land, you also inherited the family name.

It meant something to be a son of Jesse.

It meant something to be a descendant of Caleb, the giant killer.

One family, the Rechabites, inherited a commitment.

When offered wine, they said, “We will drink no wine, for Jonadab the son of Rechab, our father, commanded us, ‘You shall not drink wine, neither you nor your sons forever… that you may live many days in the land where you sojourn.”

(Jer 35:6-7)

There is one inheritance—one promise—that the Bible talks about more than any other and it begins with Adam’s son:

Genesis 5:1–4 (ESV)

This is the book of the generations of Adam.

When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God.

Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created.

When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.

The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters.

The inheritance that Adam passed down to Seth was promise and a responsibility.

The promise was the one God made to Adam and Eve after they sinned and it contained two parts, a promise of judgment and a promise of redemption.

The promise of judgment was made clear in Genesis 2:17 “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.””

The promise of victory was made after humans sinned in Genesis 3:15 “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.””

This promise was further explained when in Genesis 3:21 “the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.”

He clothed them in the skins of promise.

These were the garments made from sacrificial lambs when God showed them how to make an offering for their sins.

The promise of a child who would crush the serpent’s head was bound up in each sacrifice.

Seth inherited these promises of judgment and redemption.

He also inherited a responsibility to pass down these promises and faithfulness to God to his children.

Promises broken?

Were the promises real?

Seth told his son, Enosh about them, and Enosh told his son, Kenan about them.

Kenan told Mahalalel, and Mahalalel told Jared who told his son, Enoch.

An by this time 622 years had passed since Adam had received those promises.

The world was looking like a much different place than when Adam first told Seth about the promises.

For one thing, people were starting to doubt God’s promises of judgment and redemption.

And when people doubt God’s promises, things get bad.

Let’s be honest with ourselves.

We live a relatively short life.

Even the long lives of the pre-flood generations were relatively short compared to the history of the earth.

In contrast to us, God is playing a long game with millennia as his markers for time.

We calibrate our thinking based on our short-attention span of days or months.

Many determine that God’s promises are not real because we haven’t seen them fulfilled yet.

This is exactly what Peter describes in the third chapter of his 2nd letter.

Walking with God

We live in a day of scoffers, and so did Enoch.

Let’s read his story in Genesis 5

We don’t have a lot to go on to understand Enoch’s experience, we just know that the Bible says that he walked with God.

Some read Enoch’s story and they are inspired by what they perceive to be his sinlessness.

How else could Enoch “walk” with a perfect God? Someone said it like this, “Enoch walked with God and God enjoyed his walks with Enoch so much that He decided to bring him to heaven so He could walk with him more often.”

Was Enoch’s walk with God a life of sinlessness?

Or did he literally step out from his tent just before dawn, walk to the end of his sheep pen and meet up with God who was waiting for him there?

Did they stroll through the open forest and sit under tall, majestic trees?

Was his walk a physical, personal experience like you or I can have with a close friend?

Whether sinless perfection or a physical walk with God, for many of us, Enoch’s experience of walking with God seems out of reach.

His faith doesn’t seem normal to us.

We put him on a pedestal, way up there beyond what we are able to achieve.

And yet, I think Enoch’s experience was exactly the same as the experience you and I can have.

He was the inheritor of God’s promises, and we can be too.

Since we only have eight verses in the Bible to give us clues into Enoch’s life, we can only guess about his daily experience, but we do have enough clues to help us piece together a possible narrative.

The Story of Enoch

We already read Genesis 5 so let’s look at the other two passages in the Bible that talk about Enoch—Hebrews 11 and Jude.

Notice the operating principle in Enoch’s life—faith.

He believed God’s promises.

Now let’s turn to Jude and notice the contrast to Enoch’s experience.

These are the scoffers that Peter was talking about:

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From these few verse we find out four things:

Enoch walked with God

Enoch’s faith pleased God

God gave Enoch the responsibilities of a prophet

Enoch didn’t die, but instead God took him

Enoch most likely knew Adam because Adam was alive for another 308 years after Enoch was born.

Enoch’s great, great, great, grandfather was Adam’s son Seth, who the Bible suggests was faithful to pass along his inheritance to his children.

Seth was obedient to God and when Seth’s family began to grow they expanded into the hills to raise animals and farm the land.

Seth’s family lived in tents made from nature.

Enoch probably had a similar lifestyle, farming and herding and spending time with God.

Seth’s older brother, Cain, chose a very different lifestyle.

He fled the area near the garden of Eden after he killed his brother Abel and his family set up cities in the plains.

They became known for their industry, art, and music.

They built cities from metal and carved stone.

They were also known for their selfishness, cruelty, debauchery and idolatry.

They rebelled against God, and as the years progressed they began to deny that God even existed.

By the time Enoch became a prophet the children of Seth had moved close to the children of Cain, some of them even moved into the cities.

The closer they got the more alike they became until just before the Flood God could hardly find a person who trusted Him; He declared that the thoughts of the hearts of all people were only evil continually (Genesis 6:5).

As Enoch heard about God’s love from Adam and Seth and his father Jared, he contrasted that with the selfishness in the world around him.

More than anything else Enoch wanted to know God and be known by God.