An Interruption in the Funeral Procession Text: Genesis 5:21-24
Introduction: The Drumbeat of Death
The fifth chapter of Genesis is one of the most sobering passages in all of Scripture. It is a graveyard. It is a long, monotonous, and rhythmic funeral dirge. The drumbeat is relentless: "and he died... and he died... and he died." For nine generations, we are given the account of a man's life, his son, his remaining years, and then the final, unavoidable punctuation mark: death. This is the outworking of the curse pronounced in the Garden. God told Adam that in the day he ate of the forbidden fruit, he would surely die. And here, in the official family register of Adam, we see the receipts. The wages of sin is death, and this chapter is the ledger book showing that the payment was made in full, generation after generation.
We live in a culture that is terrified of this reality. We have banished death from our public squares and our private conversations. We hide it away in sterile hospitals and quiet funeral homes. We use euphemisms like "passed away" or "is no longer with us" to soften the blow. We pump our bodies full of chemicals and our minds full of distractions to pretend that the drumbeat is not for us. But it is. The secular man has no answer for death. For him, it is the ultimate absurdity, the final annihilation of the self, the great cosmic joke where the punchline is oblivion. All his striving, all his accumulating, all his posturing, is swallowed up by a hole in the ground.
But right in the middle of this bleak necropolis, this long line of hearses, God slams on the brakes. The drumbeat stops. The funeral procession is interrupted by a chariot of fire. One man, Enoch, breaks the pattern. In a chapter where the climax of every life is the grave, Enoch's life climaxes with God. This is not a minor detail or a curious anomaly. This is a thunderclap of hope in a world under the curse. It is a bright, defiant star in the deep darkness of the fall. Enoch's life and his departure are a sermon, preached by God at the dawn of history, declaring that death does not get the final word. The curse is potent, but grace is more potent. The grave is strong, but God is stronger. Enoch is the first great gospel interruption.
The Text
And Enoch lived 65 years and became the father of Methuselah. Then Enoch walked with God 300 years after he became the father of Methuselah, and he became the father of other sons and daughters. So all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.
(Genesis 5:21-24 LSB)
Life and Legacy (v. 21)
We begin with the simple facts of Enoch's life, which follow the established pattern of the chapter.
"And Enoch lived 65 years and became the father of Methuselah." (Genesis 5:21)
Like the men before him, Enoch's life is marked by the passing of years and the begetting of a son. This is the ordinary stuff of human existence. He was not some ethereal spirit who floated above the mundane realities of life. He was a man. He had a wife, he had a son, and as we see in the next verse, he had other sons and daughters. He changed the ancient equivalent of diapers. He provided for his family. He was embedded in the fabric of a real, historical, human life.
But notice the turning point. The text makes a point of telling us that his famous walk with God began after he became a father. Something about the birth of Methuselah appears to have catalyzed a profound change in Enoch. Perhaps the weight of fatherhood, the responsibility of raising a son in a fallen world, drove him to a deeper reliance upon God. Fatherhood is a sanctifying ordinance. God uses the weight of raising children, of being responsible for another soul, to drive men to their knees. It is in the midst of our ordinary, creaturely duties, not in escaping from them, that our walk with God is meant to flourish.
The Walk of Faith (v. 22)
Verse 22 gives us the defining characteristic of this man's life.
"Then Enoch walked with God 300 years after he became the father of Methuselah, and he became the father of other sons and daughters." (Genesis 5:22 LSB)
What does it mean to "walk with God?" This is not a description of a casual afternoon stroll. This is covenant language. It describes a life of faithful, obedient fellowship. To walk with someone implies agreement, as the prophet Amos asks, "Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?" (Amos 3:3). It implies a shared direction, a shared purpose. Enoch's life was oriented toward God. His will was submitted to God's will. He lived his life, not in defiance of his Creator, but in communion with Him.
The author of Hebrews gives us the divine commentary on this phrase. "By faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death... for before he was taken he had this testimony, that he pleased God" (Hebrews 11:5). Enoch's walk was a walk of faith. And what is faith? It is not a vague, sentimental feeling. It is believing God's promises and living as though they are true. In a world that was hurtling toward the judgment of the Flood, a world that Jude tells us was full of "ungodly deeds" and "harsh things" spoken against God (Jude 1:15), Enoch walked the other way. He walked with God. This was a polemical walk. It was a counter-cultural walk. Every step he took was an act of defiance against the spirit of the age.
And he did this for 300 years. This was not a short-lived spiritual high. This was a long obedience in the same direction. He persevered. For three centuries, while the world around him ripened for judgment, Enoch maintained his faithful communion with God. This is the essence of the Christian life. It is not a sprint; it is a marathon. It is the steady, consistent, day-in-and-day-out practice of walking in faith and obedience.
A Life Measured by God (v. 23)
Next, we are given the total length of his life.
"So all the days of Enoch were 365 years." (Genesis 5:23 LSB)
Measured against his peers, Enoch's life was short. His father Jared lived 962 years. His son Methuselah lived 969 years, the longest life recorded in Scripture. Enoch didn't even make it to 400. If longevity were the ultimate measure of God's blessing, Enoch would look like a failure. But this is God's way of teaching us that He keeps a different kind of scoreboard. It is not how long you live that matters, but how you live. A short life lived in faithful fellowship with God is infinitely more valuable than a long life lived in rebellion against Him.
The number itself, 365, is suggestive. It is the number of days in a solar year. His life was a complete cycle, a perfect year, measured not by the standards of men, but by the sun in the heavens which his God had created. His was a full life, a complete life, because it was a God-centered life.
The Divine Abduction (v. 24)
The climax of the passage, and the interruption of the entire chapter, comes in the final verse.
"Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him." (Genesis 5:24 LSB)
The phrase is stark and stunning in its brevity. "And he was not." One moment he was here, walking, talking, living. The next, he was gone. He did not get sick. He did not grow feeble. He did not die. The grim refrain that ends every other biography in this chapter is conspicuously absent. In its place is this glorious, divine passive: "for God took him."
This was a direct, physical removal from the earthly realm into the heavenly one. It was a divine abduction. God reached down into the muck and mire of a fallen world and simply took His friend home. This event is a powerful signpost. It is a declaration that the curse of death, while real, is not ultimate. God has a way to overcome it. Enoch's translation is a sneak preview, a trailer, for the resurrection. It is a promise that for those who walk with God, the grave is not the final destination.
This is a direct blow against the materialistic worldview that says this life is all there is. Enoch's body disappeared. It did not decompose. It was translated. This demonstrates that the physical realm is not a closed system. The God who created it can and does intervene within it. He is not a distant, deistic watchmaker. He is a personal God who draws near to His people and can, at His good pleasure, pull them right through the ceiling of the world into His immediate presence.
The Gospel According to Enoch
Enoch's story is not just an interesting historical footnote. It is a profound illustration of the gospel. Like Enoch, we are born into a world under the sentence of death. The drumbeat of "and he died" is the story of every man and woman apart from Christ.
But the gospel is God's great interruption. Just as Enoch's walk began with the birth of a son, our new life begins with the birth of the Son. Through faith in Jesus Christ, we begin to "walk with God." We are reconciled to Him. We are brought into fellowship with Him. The Christian life is nothing less than learning to walk with God again, just as Adam did in the Garden before the fall.
And what is the end of this walk for the believer? It is the same as Enoch's. "He was not, for God took him." For the Christian, death has been defanged. It is no longer a penal judgment, but a doorway. It is a translation. The Apostle Paul says that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:8). When a believer breathes his last, he is not annihilated. He is taken. God takes him.
Enoch's translation was a picture of what Christ would accomplish for all His people. Jesus Christ walked with God perfectly. He then entered into death, not because He had to, but in order to conquer it from the inside. He exhausted the curse. And then, on the third day, God "took Him" from the grave in the resurrection. Because He was taken, all who are in Him will also be taken. Some, like the generation alive at His return, will be translated without tasting death, just like Enoch (1 Thess. 4:17). The rest of us will pass through the waters of death, but we will not be overcome, because He has gone before us. Our end is not "and he died," but rather, "and he was not, for God took him."
Therefore, we are to live as Enoch lived. We are to walk by faith, not by sight. We are to be a prophetic voice to a crooked and perverse generation. We are to please God in the midst of a world that is displeased with Him. And we are to do it all with the confident hope that this world is not our final home. We are just walking, and one day, our walk will take us right into the presence of our Father. It's too far to go back, and He will say, "You had better come home with Me."