Address—C.D. Andersen
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I'd like to say a little bit about Enoch this afternoon.
We were reading on the 13th of John's Gospel.
What we have before us Teeth washing.
And we were certainly impressed with the need of having clean feet.
And the purpose of it, of course, is that we might walk through this wilderness scene in a way pleasing to God.
It was important for people to have clean feet physically. It's much more important for us to have clean feet spiritually.
And there's much to define the walk here in this world. And certainly we need the cleansing of the large forest.
And since we were talking about clean sleep this morning, I thought we might say something about the walk here this afternoon. That's what brought the forest in connection with Enoch.
In the 5th chapter of Genesis.
Starting with verse 18.
And Jared lived in 160 and two years, and he begot enough.
And Jared lived after he began Enoch 800 years and begat sons and daughters.
And all the days of Jared were 960 and two years, and he died.
And we not lived 60 and five years and begot Methuselah. And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah 300 years and he got friends 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.
Now, there's some references to Enoch in the New Testament.
And I believe I read them at this time. There's one in Hebrews.
11Th chapter.
Let's try.
By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death, and was not found because God had translated him, but before his translation at this testimony that he pleased God.
But without faith it is impossible to please him.
For he that cometh to God must believe that years, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him, and one is you.
I.
Verse 14.
And Enoch also the several from Adam from the side of the say.
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Behold, the Lord cometh with 10,000 of his Saints, or myriads of his Saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all the ungodly deeds, who said ungodly committed, and of all their heart species which ungodly sinners.
Have spoken against him.
There are two other references, at least made to Enoch in the Scripture.
But they're found. His name is found in the genealogy in the Old Testament and also in the New Testament in Luke's Gospel.
But these scriptures that we've read concerning Enoch are the ones that concern us this afternoon.
We find that Enoch, as Jude tells us, was the 7th from Adam, the 7th from Adam.
Coming down a ways in the history of this world.
And they lived a long time in those days.
So we found that Enoch comes down in time many years.
And.
Enoch.
Had had contact with Adam. In fact, Enoch lived most of his life.
I knew. Or it was possible, at least for him to have known, seen and talked without him.
Which is a remarkable thing. It's a very significant thing than Enoch could have had fellowship with Adam and they could have talked over the things that.
Took place in the very beginning of this earth's history, the history of mind. And Adam could have talked with Enoch about what God had told him about the sacrifices. How God.
Killed those animals and made coats of skin and clothe them.
This could have been told the Enoch by Adam. Well, it's not told us here in the scripture all of that detail, but it's very significant that Enoch had contact, could have had contact with Adam.
Well, perhaps there's a reason for that.
God's all wise, but what concerns us mostly this afternoon is just exactly what's said here about Enoch.
It says Enoch lived 60 and five years in the Jackmathus.
Now that was the first period of Enochs life. There were three. There were three periods in Enochs life. This is the 1St 165 years up until the time that he begotten Methuselah. Then it tells us that he lived 300 years after that and then God took it.
He was translated to heaven. So there's another period in Eunuch's life of 300 years.
And then when God took him.
That began another period, which we might call the eternal period.
3 periods and Enoch's life.
Now if you're saved here this afternoon.
You've gone through one period of your life, the unsaved part of it.
And I trust that there's no one in this room that still in that first period of your life in the unsaved park, I trust you've gotten out of that.
I trust, as you know, the Lord Jesus Christ is your Savior, and also that you're walking with God.
And if you know Christ as your Savior, and you are walking with God, and will be walking with God until the Lord comes.
You'll not only be saved and go to heaven, but you'll have an abundant entrance.
And then we'll come that third period of your life, eternal joy, with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Well, everyone comes into this world of scenery.
And you must need to enter into that first period.
Of his life.
But the Lord Jesus Christ said you must be born again.
And unless you're born again, you have not entered into the second period of life. May God be gracious to you this afternoon and help you to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior. That there might be a change from the old order of things into the new. That you might disconnect yourself from the old atom creation and become connected with the Lord Jesus Christ who is the head.
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Of new creation.
It's very necessary that you should be born again, the Lord said. He must be born again.
But it is enough simply to be born again.
To be saved? Is that all God wants? Is that his whole desire for us?
Well, I don't believe it was enough or enough. God wanted enough to have a change. There must come a change into his life, and he also wanted him to walk with him.
And because it's referred to in scripture twice.
That he walked with God, the Spirit of God, makes something of it. It's very important to walk with God.
It says that he walked with God after he begat Methuselah.
Now when he begat Methuselah.
The law had ordered things in such a way that Enoch became exercised.
He evidently got some word from the Lord, some revelation from the Lord that stirred him up.
Stir them up to walk with God from that point on.
Where we understand the name Methuselah means when when he dies, I'll send it.
Well, not least up with what we have in Jews.
Enoch knew something about judgment to karma.
And he prophesied, so evidently he was a prophet. And he said.
Behold the Lord come up.
We hold the Lord coming way back in those days.
A word had gone out about the coming of the Lord.
And he said he's coming with mirrors of his Saints. Let's thank our the revelation that had been given way back then, the days of Enoch. And he said he's coming with his Saints to execute judgment. But we have more details about that now, don't we? We have details about that in the book of Thessalonians and over in Revelation.
And we know that we who know the Lord Jesus Christ the Savior, are going to be associated with Him in His glory. We're going to be with him when He comes back to this world, to judge this word as it tells us in Revelation 19, to smite the nation and to rule them with a rod of iron.
What a glorious thing for Enoch to know. Oh, no wonder something happened to him. He knew judgment was coming. Oh, he didn't have all the details of it. I suppose that that we have. Perhaps you wonder how Jude knew about this. How could Jude know that Enoch was a prophet? Because we don't read anything about it in the Old Testament.
Well, it was given to you by inspiration. And when Jude wrote that little epistle, he was writing by inspiration. It was God himself that was giving him that information, and he was writing it down. That's how we know it.
And that's how we know a lot of things. Take, for instance, the thoughts of people that are recorded in Scripture. How could the writers possibly know what anyone was thinking?
It was only by the Spirit of God that they could write this down. It was written by inspiration. And those are some of the marks in the word of God that tells us that it is the word of God. Oh, it's a book that's different from all other books.
Men are old, wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
Isn't it wonderful to have a book like that in our hand?
Last night our brother in the gospel was telling us about Abel and how Abel was referred to several places in the New Testament.
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And telling us that.
If the critics of the Word of God are going to throw out the 1St 11 Chapters of Genesis, they'll have a lot of other things to throw out.
And we find that this man Enoch.
Is referred to and spoken out here in these first few chapters of Genesis.
And he also is referred to in the New Testament and what's written of him in the New Testament. If the first few chapters of Genesis are not the truth, the word of God, we'll have to throw out these other Scriptures and say that they're not the word of God either. And you know, if you begin that kind of a thing, it's a process and you wind up sooner or later with other things.
Without one word of this book.
And that is, of course, what is behind all of this kind of a scheme to get rid of a whole word of God. If one part of this Bible can be discredited, you can discredit the whole house. And what a solemn faith. May God give us grace to cleave to His word, honor His Word.
How can we keep the word of God?
How will we be able to have it in our hands to be sure that it's our home? By practicing it? By walking it?
You know, we have only as much as the word of God, really, as we walk in.
And we need grace from God to put into practice the whole truth of God's word.
It's only as we practice the truth that we can hold the truth. And if we are reluctant about practicing the truth, the truth is going to slip away from us. It's a solemn thing.
And.
We're living in a day, I suppose something like Enoch's day. Enoch lived just before the days of Noah.
And just before the days when judgment came upon this world, the judgment of the Flood.
And we are living in the days just before the Son of Man is coming.
In judgment upon this world, the time in which we're living, I believe, is similar to the time in which Enoch was living.
Perhaps you say, while it was easier for Enoch to walk with God, or wasn't really, was it really easy for him to walk with God? Here's a man that singled out as walking with God in that period of time.
I don't believe it was easy for him to walk with God.
Well, it's not easy for us, but God gave enough grace to walk with him, and he can give us grace to walk with God too.
This matter of walking with God.
Is a matter of going along with him and sweet communion and fellowship with him, not allowing anything in our lives that will put us at a distance from Him. So often that's what happens to us. Something comes into our life we've allowed through carelessness or something else. And I think it has gotten in between US and God, and we're at a distance from him. And so in a way, it can be said that we're not walking with God.
We're walking afar off. Peter was following the Lord afar off. And then Peter sat outside with the woolies and warned them South of the world's fire. What a sad thing it was for Peter to be as far off following the Lord afar off, not walking with the Lord, not being near to him. Well, I believe walking with God means that we're near to God.
And close fellowship and communion with Him without anything, without any cloud between US and Him.
Well, we heard this morning that full provision has been made for us that there shouldn't be any cloud between US and God so that we could go on in happy communion and fellowship with Him. Now God wants us to be happy for him, and the devil sees to it that we are unhappy.
Satan doesn't want us to walk with God. Satan doesn't want us to have happy fellowship and communion with God. He's not interested in that at power. He wants us to draw us away from him, But God wants us to be close to himself. He wants us to be happy because it's the only place of true happiness.
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She would like to see us walking a crooked pathway, moving from side to side and getting off into a bipath.
Wants us to make straight times for our feet.
That we might want a straight path for ourselves, and then that, and also that that which is lame be not turned out of the way we walk a straight path. We can be a help to others, but if we walk a crooked path.
We might be a hindrance to others.
It makes me think of what our brother Alicorn was talking about.
And when he told it, I remembered about my visits to Saint Vincent.
And he was telling us that when the donkey walks down the road, he goes from side to side. And when I stop to think about that, I remembered watching the donkeys down in Saint Vincent, how they were going to the field, down the path, down the road. They just wander off from side to side down the road. They couldn't walk a straight path.
Well, the scripture tells us not to be like the mule.
Or the donkey.
God wants us to walk a straight path, not be wandering from sight to sight.
Now it tells us here in verse 24.
God took it. He was not.
God took it.
It's not wonderful to be taken right to heaven. That might happen to us here today.
If the Lord should descend from heaven with Archangel voice, the trump of God, the dead in Christ should rise. We that are living here would be caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air.
And it could be said of us, then, that we're not.
God has taken.
Would not be a precious thing. The Lord would take us right up through this ceiling on up to glory.
I wonder if everyone would go up.
Would you go along?
Or would you stay behind?
Thinking about the coming of the Lord does something to us, John tells us in his epistle. He that hath this hope in him purifies himself.
Well, I believe that's what worked in Enoch's life. He got the Lord before him, the coming of the Lord, even though it was a matter of judgment that he was talking about. Yet he got the Lord's coming before him.
And it did something to his life Keep the Lord's coming before you. May God give us grace to do that, because it's a purifying hope.
If I'm thinking about the Lord coming right now, I'm going to be careful about my walk, what I'm doing, what I'm saying, where I'm going, what A and what I'm going on with.
All. There are many things that.
Satan has provided in this world of his.
For people, the large people to go on with and to be taken up with, to be occupied with all our statements provided many things to take up our time and our attention and our energy.
Oh, may the Lord give us grace to be occupied with him, and he's coming again.
And if it's a matter of judgment, we're thinking about the Lord coming in judgment, remember, and all of this, this scene is going to be judged. The Lord says now is the judgment of this world, now is the Prince of this world cast out. And that was just before he went to the crown.
This world is set for judgment. Judgment is coming.
And the Lord will take us home, and then you'll come back here to judge this world.
And what a solemn thing that will be for those who are left behind. What a solemn thing it was for those who were left behind in Enoch's day and went on into judgment of that flood.
The Lord was gracious to Methuselah. He died just before the flood came. He wasn't taken away by that judgment.
And there were others that weren't taken away by that judgment. But there were those multitudes that were taken away by that judgment of the flow. Or what a solemn piece.
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Now let's look at the scripture over in.
In Hebrews that we read.
Hebrews Chapter 11 and verse 5. By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death.
By faith, Enoch was translated.
Was it because of anything in himself that Enoch was translated?
Up to heaven? No. It was by faith. Faith in what? Faith in the word of God. Faith in whom? faith in God himself. His eyes were upon God. His confidence was in God. He was trusting in him. He wasn't trusting in himself all. There are many people today who are trusting in themselves and they think by by their own Ways and Means they're going to get to heaven. No Enoch was thrust in God by faith. He was translated.
That he should not see death.
And those of us who are going to be in the glory, we're going to praise him.
Because he is the one that has saved us and brought us there.
And we thank God that he's given us the faith to trust him.
And was not found to say.
They must have been looking around for Enoch.
I suppose when we're gone, there will be those that will be looking around for us.
What a glorious thing it will be for us to be with him, but what a sad thing for those who would be left down here looking around for me.
I suppose we might say that Enoch was the mystery man of that time. What happened to Enoch? Where'd he go?
Something like you like.
There were those who wanted to go out and look for him, but they had to come back without finding him. They didn't find Elijah.
It's a privilege for us to belong to that company.
That might be considered the mystery company.
Were not understood in this world now, and I believe the closer we walk with God, the more we'll be misunderstood and people won't be able to understand it. And maybe you're a little bit ashamed of that. Maybe that affects you.
And you don't want somebody to think that you're queer, strange. You want to be just an ordinary person in this world like everybody else.
All the pressures being put on today to make us conform, conform to the world in its ways, and we certainly need much grace from the law and wisdom.
That we might take our stand. That we might not be pressured into conforming, conforming to this world.
God is translated here.
It's been wonderful that we can leave all of this with God.
Knew how to take units to heaven, and God knows how to take us to heaven too. And we don't have to be worried about the details of this. We try to analyze it, look into it, but just trust the one who's going to take us home. Just keep our eyes fixed upon him. The occupied with him. He's taking care of our salvation. He'll take care of our translation too.
Now tells us in the end of verse 5, For before his translation he had this testimony that he pleased God.
Would you like to have a testimony like that? Would you like to have God say that about you? Just think this is in the in the word of God. And God has said heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall never pass away on this record here. This witness that God has given will never pass away. It will always be there.
Certainly we want that kind of a witness too, and we wanted record that we please God.
He pleased God.
Do you want to please draw? Is that your desire?
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But how did he please God? It says. But without faith it is impossible to please him.
With our faith, it is impossible to please him.
And what is faith?
Faith sets to its seal that God is true. In other words, it rests upon what God has said. You say you have faith. It means you're resting on what God has said. What God has said means everything to you.
You're all wrapped up and what God has said, that's the foundation on which you're standing. You've got. You have confidence in that.
You have faith in God and in his words.
But it tells us, for he that cometh to God must believe that he is.
He is Faith is a personal faith. Faith is confidence in the word of God, and faith is confident is confidence in the person himself and leaving that he is a person who loves them and cares for.
What's wrong with the world today, generally speaking?
They don't believe in God. They don't come to God.
If they had faith, they would come to God, frosting in him and in what he says.
You have to have to do with God.
In the Garden of Eden, doubt came in. Satan brought in doubt.
And said to Eve, ye hath God said.
Putting doubt into her mind as to the truth of the word of God. And then she said, You know that in the day you eat of this tree, you'll be like gods to no good and evil.
Next, he threw doubt into her mind as to the portion of God his goodness.
First doubting the word, then doubting his goodness.
Well, that's what's going on today. The enemy is still busy seeking to get you to doubt dark words and seeking to get you to doubt God himself, His person, His goodness.
And even after we're saved, perhaps we have believed the goodness of God in sending his Son to die for.
We received him as our savior, but Satan is still busy trying to make us God's goodness.
God wants you to walk a certain pathway down here, the pathway of faith. He wants you to please him.
And you know that in order to please God, it means that you have to be occupied with with certain things, and you have to give up certain other things.
And.
Perhaps there's something that comes before you and you, your conscience tells you and you feel that it's according to the word of God that this thing that you're going on with you ought to give up. But there's a battle there and you don't like to give it up. And perhaps you even go so far as to find a little fault with God and and expecting you to walk a straight path down here and wondering why God wouldn't allow you to deviate a little this way and go a little bit that way.
You're doubting God's gluten.
And that's a solemn thing to doubt God's goodness.
Don't you suppose that God desires the very best for you? Yes, you don't. He desires the very best for us as we're going through this world. And what is the very best for us to walk pleasing to Him?
It's a pathway of happiness, obedience, and happiness altogether. And if you obey the word of God and walk that straight path to please the Lord.
You will be supremely happy.
And if you if you're not happy.
Well then God's not true, but his Word is true, and you will be happy and you prove that God is good. Oh how good He is. But we're prone to doubt God's goodness to say, Oh well.
If I have to do this and walk this straight path, God's just expecting too much of me.
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Why? God surely doesn't expect us to just walk that straight and narrow path.
He wanted to have a good time, doesn't he?
What do you mean by having a good time?
Indulging the flesh, going in for the desires of the flesh, satisfying them. Is that really a good time? When you come right down to it and think about it, meditate upon Is that really having a good time?
Well, what happens after you've indulged the flesh? You've done those things that please yourself. You feel really happy? No, you don't.
If you're honest with yourself, you have to admit, well, no, that isn't the way of happiness. That isn't the way of peace and joy.
He that cometh to God was believed that he is and not he is a rewarder of them that diligently shake it diligently seek him out, or make him the object of their hearts. Affection. He is rewarded of this, as that tells us that God is good.
There's going to be a reward for those that diligently seek him out and make him the object of their heart's affection.
You know your conscience.
Peace because you believed and the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that puts away sin.
As far as your conscience is concerned, all is well.
But is that all God is interested in? Just giving a piece of conscience?
No, God wants us to have a satisfied heart too.
And you can't have a satisfied heart unless the Lord Jesus Christ is the object of your heart. He's the only one that can fill it. He's the only one that can satisfy.
Now let us look at that scripture over in June.
Now we were saying that Enoch lived in the days preceding the days of Noah, the days of the flood, the days of coming judgment.
And we're living in the same kind of days.
And the Lord said, as it was in the days of no, so shall it also be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man. So the days are similar, and we find it right here in June. Well, that that's the reason the Spirit of God is brought in there. This end here in the book of Jude, because Jude brings before us apostasy, and especially apostasy, as connected with holiness. A departure from holiness, not only departure from faith, but the holiness of faith.
And all dear young people.
Satan is attacking.
Not only the young people, but the older ones too. He's attacking us these days and he wants to drive us down and cause us to walk on unholy path through this world.
We find that there are two things in the book of Jude that are mentioned.
In verse 4.
Speaks of certain men who crept in, unaware, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness.
Turning the grace of our God into a seriousness.
Well, simply, I believe it means this.
All we say God is so good, He's not going to bring us into account.
For any sin that we commit.
Illusionist coming in an indifference as to to evil, sin, moral evil.
The thought is while God is not going to be too hard on us and we can go ahead and do as we please and indulge the flesh, turning the grace of God into lasciviousness.
But Titus tells us a different story about grace. Grace teaches us holiness.
Grace teacheth us to go on pleasing to him. Just because God is gracious doesn't mean that he's not going to judge siege. Perhaps we think about the unsaved when we think about God judging sin.
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Yes, we know they're going to be judged.
But a child of God if he's close and goes on with sin?
You'll be judged too.
Well, it's a solemn thing that sin must be judged.
Oh, May God give us grace, that we might be kept from walking an unholy path, turning the grace of God into vessel, abusing the grace of God, thinking, oh God is gracious, He, he won't make us give a count for what we've done. Well, yes he will. All things are naked and opened under the eyes of him.
With whom we have to do. And the next thing is denying the Lord, the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. That's another thing that's characteristic of this time, denying the authority of the law, not submitting to authority.
Well, if you're if you think it over, you can see just exactly what's going on today. That's what's going on, going on in an unholy way, disregardless of of of God and his goodness thinking, well, God is good, he won't, he won't judge it. And then on the other hand, not submitting to the accord of the Lord Jesus Christ, perhaps saying with the mouth that Jesus is lost.
But not really owning it down in the heart.
All important to this for us.
To watch these two things because we are living in days similar to the days in which Enoch lived, and we need grace to walk with God as he walked with God.
And remember.
That what Enoch said is still true. Behold, the Lord cometh with 10 thousands of His Saints to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all ungodly deeds which they've ungodly committed, and of all our heart speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.
Or perhaps you say, well, everybody is doing it, That's all right for me to do it.
Notice that expression in verse 15 among them.
We are among those in Christendom. We are part of Christendom.
We're among them.
But we're not to go on with what they're going on with. If they're going on with moral evil, it's not for us to go on with it. If they're going on with an insubmissive attitude toward the Lord Jesus Christ, we're not to go on that way. We're to be subject to the law and we're to have purpose of harping that will not allow ourselves to defeated, fired with the things of this world.
And.
Become entangled in the moral corruption that's ransomed on every hand today.
Now let us turn to 1St Thessalonians Chapter 4.
1St Thessalonians 4 This chapter has been called the Enoch chapter.
First of all, in the first part of the chapter we get what mentioned and how we ought to please God.
And then in the last part of the chapter we get the coming of the Lord. I suppose that's the reason it's called the Enoch charity. First there's the walk, and then there's the translation to glory, to be with Christ, as we see with the case of Enoch.
So in verse one of chapter 41, Thessalonians, we read. Furthermore, then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how you ought to walk, and to please God, so ye would abound more and more.
We were singing in our hymn about advancing.
Are we satisfied that we've reached a certain stage, a certain point in our Christian growth? Are we satisfied with that and think, well, I would just stay there should we ever be satisfied.
That we have reached as far as God wants us to reach in this seat. Never should we be satisfied.
To advance should be in our hearts and minds continually.
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Peter says grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
God doesn't want us to come to a certain point and stop there. He wants us to grow, continue to grow. And there's a lot of room for growth.
Well, Paul had already told these Thessalonians how they ought to walk and to please God.
It's a very necessary part of the Christian life.
Wonderful to be saved, nor our sins forgiven that we're on our way to heaven.
But how about walking to please God?
He says that he wants them to abound more and more, more and more. That's the exercise of our hearts. It should be to abound more and more in walking to please God.
How are you walking? How am I walking?
It says how you ought to walk, how you ought to walk.
And it's a good thing for us to ask ourselves, how am I walking? Am I wanting to please God?
That should be the exercise of our hearts every day. Every morning we get up and ask the Lord for grace and wisdom as to how to walk and that we might have strength to walk.
Now it goes on further down in this chapter.
And we might say that it brings before some shocking things.
And I'd like to connect this up with you that we've already referred to.
Because there seems to be something.
Some connection between the wall and these moral evils that are coming in today and dear young people.
You're going to have to look to the Lord for grace.
That you might stand aloof from these moral evils that are sweeping in.
Oh, the enemy is coming in like a flood. But it tells us in Isaiah that when that's the case, the Spirit of the Lord will raise up a standard against him. And if you cry to the Lord to keep you, He'll keep you. But if you become careless in your life and don't feel that you need to pray and ask the Lord for keeping you, don't express your dependence upon the Lord. Look out. You may have a fault. We can't keep ourselves. We can't trust ourselves.
Proverbs tells us he that trusteth in his own heart is a fool.
He, that trusteth in his own heart, is a tool. We can't trust ourselves. There's only one that we can trust. And as the Blessed One, the Lord Jesus Christ who has saved us.
We'll just read on down in that chapter and you'll be shocked to see what's there. And I trust the spirit of God will take it and apply it to your heart, and apply it to my heart too, because we're living in a wicked, evil world and we're not. We don't want to be disillusioned as to this. And the closer we get to the end, the more pressure state is going to put on us and he's he'll try his utmost.
To.
To work it out some way that there might be a fall into Sid in our lives, May God help us, but we might be kept in these last days.
We might look at another scripture that.
Brings before us the thought of pleasing the Lord.
Over in Second Timothy chapter 2.
Verse 4.
No man at war.
And tangled himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who has chosen him to be a soul.
Has the Lord chosen you to be a soldier? Well, if you're a child of God, you've been chosen to be a soldier.
And we're in a warfare down here.
And if you've been chosen to be a soldier, you know how it is in the army of this world.
The armies of the country in which you happen to live.
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When you're inducted into the Army, you're expected to stay there, and you're expected to to just give your whole time to the Army Service.
There's no thought that you can be in the army one week and back home the next week and so on. No, they want to you to sever your connections with things back whole.
And we know how some of the boys that went into the service, they, if they were farmers, well, they just had to have a sale and sell out everything and go off to the service. They couldn't be encumbered. They couldn't be entangled with those duties at home.
And so it is the Lord has chosen us to be soldiers, and He doesn't want us to be entangled with the affairs of this life.
With the affairs of this life, and I'm afraid that it's easier for us to get so taken up with the affairs of this life and things of ordinary living. I'm not talking about bad things now, but ordinary things. We get so tangled up in them that we don't have time for the law. We don't have time for his business. We don't have time to be occupied with him. We don't have time to read his word. We don't have time for prayer.
May the Lord give us grace.
To order our lives in such a way that there will be time for healing, time to please heal. Certainly prayer is something that pleases Him. Spending time with him in prayer, reading his word, is something that pleases him. Being at the meetings is something that pleases Him. We don't have to think about something difficult, perhaps going to a foreign field to do missionary work. That isn't what we're talking about. God wants us to please Him right here, where He has put us, and if we're pleasing Him, right where we are.
The Lord may open up other avenues for us to serve him, but the important thing is to please him, to be occupied with him in his state.
All that's what God wants.
And that's the way of happiness.
What a date was for Enoch. He walked with God, and he walked right into God's presence. And wouldn't it be wonderful for us to be walking with God, pleasing him, and all of a sudden be taken right into His presence, the one into the presence of the one that we've been trying to please down here? What an abundant entrance it would be for us. He not only wants us to have life, but he wants to have it abundantly. And may the Lord give us grace this afternoon.
To see that abundant entrance.