June 10, 2001 Gen. 5:21-24
“Being a godly father in an ungodly world”
INTRODUCTION
- celebrate Father’s Day a little early this year since I am going to be gone next Sunday
- How many of you dads remember the day that you first became a father? I don’t know what the circumstances were surrounding the delivery of your first child, but I know that it was a proud and scary moment. How many of you were in the delivery room with your wives? Things have changed a lot over the years. It used to be that husbands always waited out in the waiting room for news of what was going on with their wife and soon to be child. A group of expectant fathers were in a waiting room, while their wives were in the process of delivering babies. A nurse came in and announced to one man that his wife had just given birth to twins. "That’s quite a coincidence" he responded, "I play for the Minnesota Twins!" A few minutes later another nurse came in and announced to another man that he was the father of triplets. "That’s amazing," he exclaimed, "I work for the 3M company." At that point, a third man slipped off his chair and laid down on the floor. Somebody asked him if he was feeling ill. "No," he responded, "I happen to work for the 7-up company!"
- I am always hesitant to speak on the subject of parenting. Fear that someone will think that I think I am an expert on the subject or that I am a perfect parent. Neither of those is true. When I speak on this subject, I am speaking as a fellow traveler with you.
- It is a scary thing to bring children into today’s world. Many young couples enter into marriage questioning whether or not they will ever have kids. They have doubts about their ability to be parents. They don’t want to repeat the mistakes of their moms and dads when they were growing up. When Billy Crystal’s daughter turned 11, Billy was in New York filming a movie. He called her, apologized for his work schedule and said a package would be delivered soon. He then flew from NY to LA. Later that day when Lindsay opened the front door, a six-foot high carton greeted her and she began ripping it open on the spot. Dad was inside the carton. Billy said, "She hugged me for five minutes. It was unbelievable." He went on to say, "I missed 25 birthdays with my dad. I’m not going to let that happen with my girls." Billy was 15 when his father died of a heart attack.
- Those couples also have doubts about whether or not it would be right to bring children into a world as corrupt and evil as our own. Is it possible they ask – and we could ask this question right along with them – is it possible to bring up godly children in an ungodly world? I would answer a profound and loud “YES!!” to that question because I have seen in the pages of the Bible that it has happened over and over again. The most beneficial aid to this happening is that a child grow up with the influence of a godly parent.
- This morning, I want us to look at the life of a godly dad. His name is Enoch. The thing that made Enoch a godly parent was that every day, he walked with God. It was no easy thing for him to live a godly life. In Gen. 6:5, the Bible describes the society that existed just a short time after Enoch. It says that the thoughts of men’s hearts were evil all the time. Things had gotten so bad that it made God sorry that He had ever created man. In Matt 24:37-39, Jesus described the days of Noah – Enoch’s great grandson: As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. A happy-go-lucky kind of society where everyone can do what he desires with no thought of coming judgment. It was a pleasure-seeking, self-gratifying generation where the laws of God were a forgotten antiquity. Sounds familiar doesn’t it.
- In the middle of a crooked and perverse world like that, Enoch walked with God. And so can you, dads. So can you, moms. So can you, children. So can all of us because we have the same God that Enoch did. We can all walk with God. But that raises a question.
- What do I mean when I say that Enoch walked with God? What does it mean to be a godly parent in an ungodly world? Let’s take a look at what it meant for Enoch. We do not know a lot about Enoch. There are only three short references to him in all of Scripture. But if I was going to have anything written about me in Scripture, I would love to have written about me what is said about Enoch. His story is found in Gen 5:21-24, Heb 11:5-6, and Jude 14-15.
1. Walking with God means to go in God’s direction.
Not the direction that those around me are going
Not the direction that I want to go on my own
The essence of sin is choosing to go my own way and do my own thing rather than doing what God wants me to do. (Isaiah 53:6)
When Enoch was born, he was born into sin. But something happened that pulled him toward God. Could it be the birth of his son – Methuselah? Suddenly, he had responsibility. Suddenly, he had someone who would look up to him and follow in his footsteps. He was going in his own direction, but he turned around and headed a different way.
We call that repentance. Repentance is changing the way that we walk.
I was walking toward sin, but now I am walking away from sin and toward holiness.
Jn. 14:6 – Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life…”
2. Walking with God means to live by faith.
- faith the God is and that God is a rewarder of those who seek Him. Or another way of saying that is to say faith that God exists and that God is good.
- Faith that your kids have the potential of becoming great in God’s hands.
- Faith that God can take better care of your kids than you can. – imagine sending your kids to the school campus without the assurance that there is a God and that He is constantly watching over your kids!
- Faith that God can change you and can enable you to be a great dad
- Faith that God can provide for your family – when bills are high and funds are low, how do you react? Worry? Over-work yourself to the point that you have no time for your family, that you are cross with them, that you fall asleep when they try to talk with you?
- Faith to enable you to live in obedience to Him – giving of your finances, telling the truth when it is costly, sharing your faith with those who need to hear
3. Walking with God means to share His companionship.
- in the good times and the bad
- walking God’s way doesn’t mean that we follow behind Him in His footsteps tracing the same path that He traced long ago. It means that we walk with Him side by side, hand in hand.
- Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice…”
- Companionship is about talking and listening. We talk to God through prayer, and we listen to Him through His Word and His Spirit.
- Abraham was called “The friend of God”. The same could be said of you.
- Do your children see you actively pursuing your relationship with God?
4. Walking with God means to be a strong witness.
- because you see things the way that God sees them
- because you don’t care what other people think – you’ve got the God of the universe beside you
- at your job, you may be asked to go things that are wrong. You know that God is watching, but you also know that He’ll forgive you, so you are tempted to go along with what you’ve been asked to do. But what if you knew that your children could see you? Would you give them the opportunity to be proud of you for standing up for what is right?
- The strongest witness that you can have is to send out great kids into the world. How many of you dads want to have an impact on your world? Many of you dads, like me, are approaching that point in your life where you look back over everything that you have done and you ask yourself, “What difference have I made in the world? What or who has been changed by my presence here?” It’s a mid-life crisis. If you want to have a real impact on your world, do it through your kids. They are your arrows into the world. Psalm 127:5 says that you will be happy if you have your quiver full of arrows. They are what you shoot out ahead of you. They go where you cannot to accomplish what you cannot. Enoch had a son whose name was Methuselah who lived to be the oldest man ever – 969 years old. Methuselah had a son named Lamech, and Lamech had a son named Noah. Enoch’s great-grandson was used of God to rescue mankind from extinction. How’s that for impacting your world?
- When the father is an active believer, there is about a seventy-five percent likelihood that the children will also become active believers. But if only the mother is a believer, this likelihood is dramatically reduced to fifteen percent. - Keith Meyering, in Discipleship Journal, issue #49, p. 41.
- Do you have a strong witness before your children?
5. Walking with God means to leave behind your family sometimes.
- in order to go where God was, Enoch had to leave his family behind.
- Walking with God might require you to spend time with /God or doing what God requires instead of spending time with your family and doing what pleases them. Paul said that it is easier for a single man to serve God wholeheartedly than it is for a married man because a married man concentrates on pleasing his family.
- Getting closer to God is the best thing that you can do for your family.
- God didn’t take Enoch before his family was at the point that they could survive without him.
- Our job as parents is to get our children to the point that they don’t need us anymore. They can survive without us.
- We all like to be needed.
- The scariest day in the life of many parents is the day that their last child walks the aisle and leaves home – “Who’s going to need me now?”
- By spending time with God, Enoch had become the kind of parent who could train his children in their own walk with God so that when he was gone, they would be ok physically and ok spiritually without him.
- In recent years head coach, Jimmy Johnson, divorced his wife of 26 years when he left coaching a college team to become head coach of the Dallas Cowboys in the National Football League. He said he needed a wife while coaching on the college level for social functions and to show families that he would be looking out for their sons. In profootball, however, she was an unnecessary accouterment and a distraction to winning. He said winning football was his number one priority and his two sons second. How tragic!
In contrast to this, Tom Landry, former coach of the Dallas cowboys said,"The thrill of knowing Jesus is the greatest thing that ever happened to me ... I think God has put me in a very special place, and He expects me to use it to His glory in everything I do ... whether coaching football or talking to the press, I’m always a Christian ... Christ is first, family second and football third."
6. Walking with God means to arrive at God’s destination.
- Heaven?
- God’s power
- God’s presence
- “translation” in KJV – taking of a word in one language and converting it to a word in another language without changing the meaning.
- The best way for me to describe what happened to Enoch is with the words of a little who came home from Sunday School and described this event to her parents. She said, “ It seems that every day God would come by Enoch’s house and say ‘Enoch would you walk with me?’ And Enoch would come out of the house, do down to the gate, and down the road with God. He got tot he place in his life, he enjoyed it so much, he’d wait at the gate everyday. And he and God would go for a walk. Then one day, God came by and said, ‘Enoch, let’s take a long walk. I have much to tell you.’ So they were walking and talking and finally Enoch siad, ‘My it’s getting late in the afternoon. I’d better get back home!’ And God said, ‘Enoch, you’re closer to my home than you are to your home. Why don’t you just come home with me?’ So Enoch went home with God.”
- God’s ultimate destination for you is that you become like His Son, Jesus (Romans 8:29)
CONCLUSION
Gospel musician Hilding Halverson told of overhearing a conversation between his son and two other little boys. The youngsters were bragging about their dads. One boy said proudly, "My dad knows the mayor of our town!" Another said, "So, my dad knows the governor of our state!" Halverson’s son then came up with this touching comment, "That’s nothing -- my dad knows God!" Upon hearing this, Halverson quickly slipped away to his room and with tears in his eyes said, "O God, I pray that my boy will always be able to say, ’My dad knows God.’" He knew he had been paid the supreme tribute.
INVITATION
Christian, are you walking with God? Or have you been going your own way? Repent today. Turn around, take God’s hand, and start walking a different direction.
