We are made in His image. He walks and so should we. How much better would it have been if Adam and Eve had been walking with Him? But they were not, they were talking to a snake.
The next mention of walk in Scripture is a companion to the first one, is in Genesis 5:22. Moses relates to us there that Enoch walked with God 365 years. Boy, that really outdoes all of us, does it not? Now, this fact is repeated in verse 24. And in Genesis 6:9, Moses write that Noah also walked with God, and then we finally get into the book of Exodus in chapter 16, verse 4, where God gives Israel manna in the wilderness. And He tells Moses there that His reasons for doing this miraculous act, which He would continue for another 40 years, is a test to Israel whether they will walk in My law or not. That is, whether they will keep His law about the Sabbath or not. Because manna has everything to do with the Sabbath. It is not just the daily bread, but gathering twice as much on the Preparation Day so they do not have to work gathering it on the Sabbath.
So by the time we get to God leading Israel in the wilderness, we have walking established as an image or a metaphor of a progressive (not meaning Leftist, but meaning making progress), long-standing relationship with God in which keeping His law, or we could put it as faithfulness to His covenant or obeying His voice, however, you want to think of it, plays a major role. In short, our spiritual walk with God is about, when you think of all those different things, walking with God in the Spirit is about loyalty to Him and conduct. Loyalty and conduct.
We could call this, if you will, faith and works. Loyalty being the faith and conduct meaning works. It has been around since the beginning. The same ideas have been there. In the Old Testament, they are cloaked in practicality and in the very practical Hebrew language. And in the New Testament, it is in the very logical, very precise language of the Greeks, where we get a lot of our theology. So in the Old Testament it is practical. And in the New Testament, it tends to be theological, mental. And they go hand-in-hand because we can see an example in one and we can see the doctrine, the teaching about it, in the other.
Now when God was talking to Abraham, He said, Walk before Me. Enoch and Noah walked with God. Before Me means in front of Me. With gives the implication of beside Me. Remember, Abraham is the father of the faithful. He is in this sense our father in the faith. Abraham was to understand, and thus we too, his children, are also to understand that our conduct as God's children is ever within the gaze of the Great Almighty God. We are to understand that He is watching, and that everything we do is naked and open before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.
Now there is something very interesting here, and that is that we are to understand that there is no threat in this. It is in reality an assurance.
You might recall the Night to be Much Observed. The reason we are commanded to observe it is because God was watching. He was watching over Israel as they left Egypt. They were before Him, and His observation of them was so careful, so precise, that not even a dog barked as the two and one-half or three million people walked out of Egypt.
Now there's an escape. This one engineered totally by God. You see, there is a wide variety of kinds of escapes. Now we find in verse 13 of this same chapter:
We know from the testimony of God's own word that Enoch pleased God. God engineered an escape and then Enoch died wherever God took him on this escape.
In each of the cases that we've covered so far the person fled, or was taken because of the anger or the hatred - maybe the two of them combined - anger and hatred of others that threatened the life and limb of the servants of God. Now we're going to examine a somewhat different condition. Let's go to Noah in Genesis 6.
This is kind of the story of Enoch, in a way. We can use that as an early example of a righteous person taken away from trouble and allowed to go to his rest. If you want to look at his story, it is very spare, but it is in Genesis 5:18-24. A righteous man taken by God to escape evil, even evil that is in the future. But Enoch still perished, he still died. And so he qualified for the Hebrew 9:27 death at some point. He is not up in heaven, you know, drinking wine with Elijah. It is just not what happened. He was taken away from a very serious situation and allowed to die in peace.
Enoch's walk is described in Genesis 5:21-24. He began to walk with God when he was 65 years old and he was still walking with God when he was at the age of 365. God allowed him to die eventually and he had a three hundred year walk. I cannot even imagine that, a three hundred year walk with God. And that is what God calls us to do and be - walk our entire lives with God. We are to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God as long as we live - 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
