Sermons

Expository Sermon on Genesis and Ephesians
by Maylan Schurch
Bellevue Seventh-day Adventist Church 1/4/2025
©2025 by Maylan Schurch

(To watch this entire worship service, click the link just below.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzFfgZumeNg&t=5s

Please open your Bibles to Genesis chapter 5.

While you’re turning there, I’d like to tell you what I’m planning for a preaching series this year. Every few years, I try to read through my Bible, and preach through it, and give the congregation a chance to read along – and read ahead if they want to.

I hadn’t been planning to do this this year, but then I got an email from Kursten Patrick which contained a link to the Blue Letter Bible website. The link led me to a read-through-the-Bible plan, but this one was different from what I’d seen before.

With the usual plan, you simply start at Genesis and keep marching through the Bible books in order all the way to Revelation.

But this Blue Letter Bible plan is a chronological reading plan. What this means is that the Bible books are rearranged to fit the way the Bible events most likely occurred. For example, in this plan, you start with Genesis, and read the first 11 chapters – two or three chapters a day – but then suddenly you find yourself in the book of Job. That’s because Bible scholars generally agree that the events in the book of Job happened at about the time of Genesis, and that Job may have even been written by Moses himself. Then, once the book of Job is over, we go back to Genesis and carry along.

Then, along about the books of Samuel and Chronicles, we suddenly see Psalms inserted in the reading plan – probably Psalms written by David that most likely fit in with the events happening. And then in the New Testament, we read the gospel chapters, going from one book to another according to the order the events took place.

Anyway, that’s the plan I would like to follow this year. I didn’t make that decision in time enough to get a full-fledged promo into the bulletin today, because it’s been a busy week, but here is how you can find this reading plan. Take out your phone, righit now, and I’ll do the same with mine, and let’s go to our church website, bellevueadventist.org.

Once you’re at the website, click the menu (which on my Android phone is three little lines at the upper right corner of the screen), and there you will find a list of links. One of them says “Chronological Bible Reading Plan,” and there you have it.

If you look at the plan, you see that today is the day you actually start reading the book of Job. So what do you do since you haven’t known about reading Genesis 1-11 this week? You just leave it behind and start reading Job. You can go back later and pick it up.

Just a quick note about how to read the Bible. You’ve got several options. One would be to page through your comfortable, familiar paper Bible. Another would be to go to a website like Bible Gateway or Blue Letter Bible, and read the Bible there. Or you could download an app which has your favorite version, and read that way.

And if you prefer to use an audio Bible, that’s just as good. A lot of the letters of Paul – maybe all of them – were first read aloud to Christian congregations wherever they were sent. So the first way most people got acquainted with what Paul or Peter or James or John had written, was through their ears.

I would like to thank Kursten for sending me that link. And I did send it out on our church email list too. But you can always find it on the church website.

Anyway, pretty much each Sabbath I preach, I will be choosing a passage from somewhere in that week’s readings. So join me in the very important challenge of reading the Bible this year.

As I was reading along in Genesis this week, I decided to focus first on Enoch, the man who walked with God. As I studied the verses about him, and about Noah (who also walked with God), and then in a couple of verses in the book of Ephesians, I discovered that we can learn how to walk with God the way these and other Bible people did.

Is walking with God a good thing? Well, God walked in the garden with Adam and Eve before the Fall. In Genesis 48:15, Jacob said that Abraham and Isaac walked before God. And in Genesis 17:1, God expressed the wish that people would “Walk before Me and be perfect.”

So walking with God is a necessary thing. All the way through, the Bible talks a lot about walking with God.

Let’s find out more. (By the way, when you’re reading through the Bible, don’t skim to quickly over the genealogies, what the King James Version calls the “begats.” Because right here, buried deep in one of these genealogical lists, is the fascinating story of Enoch.

Genesis 5:18 – 24 [NKJV]: Jared lived one hundred and sixty-two years, and begot Enoch. After he begot Enoch, Jared lived eight hundred years, and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Jared were nine hundred and sixty-two years; and he died. Enoch lived sixty-five years, and begot Methuselah. After he begot Methuselah, Enoch walked with God three hundred years, and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.

If you’re not very familiar with Enoch, this news could be a little startling, maybe a bit sinister. “God took him?” What does that mean?

Well, Hebrews 11:5, 6 sets our minds at ease. It says, “By faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death, ‘and was not found, because God had taken him’; for before he was taken he had this testimony, that he pleased God.”

So, he walked with God, and this made God happy, it caused God to be pleased with Enoch. And in the Bible is loaded with evidence that if we decide to walk with God, this will give God pleasure too. Jesus’ famous prayer in John 17 is an almost heartbreaking expression of how unified God wants to be with us. “That they be one.”

So back here in Genesis 5, what does Enoch’s very brief bio tell us about how to walk with God? Let’s glance back at verse 21.

Genesis 5:21 – 22: . . . Enoch lived sixty-five years, and begot Methuselah. After he begot Methuselah, Enoch walked with God three hundred years, and had sons and daughters.

And one day, probably as they were walking together, God simply opened the door into another dimension, and He and Enoch walked through together.

You see, once Enoch started walking with God, he kept doing it. He wasn’t like some of those later kings of Israel and Judah who were righteous to start with, but then slid back into sin.

If you like to take down sermon points, let me give you what I think could be Sermon Point One:

What can Enoch teach us about walking with God?

Take the time.

This past Sunday I had the privilege of having a part in a memorial service for a friend of ours. Back in the 1980s, when Shelley and I were at the Shoreline church, Ed Eyestone was our head deacon. He was a faithful deacon, and a faithful Seventh-day Adventist Christian.

There at the Shoreline church on Sunday, the family had placed Ed’s Bible on display at the front of the church. This was one of those elegant maroon paperback It Is Written Bibles which some of you may have at home. This was the Bible that was given to people who attended George Vandeman’s It Is Written evangelistic series, which I understand is where Ed got his copy.

As I looked at that Bible leaning propped up on a little wooden stand, I could see that the cover was faded and worn by Ed’s hands. And not only that, as I looked down at the edges of the pages, they were fanned out, as though Ed had done study in lots of different Bible books.

And sure enough, when one of Ed’s daughters, Natalie, gave a life sketch about her father, she told how, every morning, without fail – and she repeated “Without fail,” Ed would get up early before heading off to work, and study his Sabbath school lesson and look the verses up in that same Bible.

By doing that, Ed was doing what Enoch did as he walked with God. Ed was doing this faithfully and unfailingly, and it showed. That Sunday’s service, person after person spoke about what a faithful, gentle, thoughtful, loving Christian Ed was. Ed worked at Todd Shipyards for many years, and took his quiet faith with him there every weekday.

So, what do I do now that I know Enoch’s secret to walking with God – taking the time?

First, find time, then take that time. Make that time. I have seen converted Christians like Ed grow into supremely mature and faithful Seventh-day Adventist Christians by prayerfully studying their Bibles with the Sabbath school lesson. Whether or not you follow our chronological Bible reading plan this year, make sure you find some regular, steady way to take the time to stay acquainted with God’s Word.

There’s another famous Bible person who along with Enoch made it into the Hebrews 11 Faith Hall of Fame. It turns out that he, too, walked with God. We meet him in the very next chapter.

He shows up not long after one of the most frightening verses in the entire Bible. This verse should send the chills down everyone’s spine. Because this verse tells how ugly and horrible sin’s results are.

Genesis 6:5 – 6: Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.

Notice two tragic conditions in these verses. First, people have come to the point where even their thoughts were “only evil continually.” Second, this caused deep sorrow to God. Can you imagine God’s agony? It says “He was grieved in His heart.”

But amid all this wretchedness and gloom, God found a bright spot.

Verse 8: But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.

Other Bible versions say, “Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.”

Why did God’s eyes find favor in Noah? Look at the next verse, verse 9.

Verse 9: This is the genealogy of Noah. Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations. Noah walked with God.

There is that same description we saw for Enoch. It’s the same Hebrew phrase, with the same Hebrew words. Both Enoch and Noah “walked with God.”

We found that Enoch “took the time” to walk with God. What can we learn about how Noah did this? Well, take a look at verse nine again.

Verse 9: . . . Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations. Noah walked with God.

Here comes what I think we could call Sermon Point Two. What can Noah teach us about walking with God?

Not only should we take the time, but we should take the righteous path.

Years ago in another church, someone began attending who had recently been converted to Christianity. Now that he had become sensitive to how God wanted us to live our lives, this man found that the people he worked with distressed him. He agonized over how they behaved, the words that they used, the jokes that they told.

This man told me a couple of times, “Boy, I wish I could work where I would be surrounded by Christians.” I gently mentioned to him that maybe the Lord wanted him to be a light in the presence of those godless co-workers, showing them what a true Christian was.

And from what we’ve just read, Noah’s culture must’ve been far more ugly and wicked than anything my friend had faced. But Noah was blamelessly righteous – he didn’t allow himself to take a vacation from being blameless and righteous. No matter what people said to him, no matter how they scoffed at his boatbuilding, he steadfastly continued to do what God told him to do.

In fact, if you know a little more about the story of Noah, you know that after the flood was over, and after there wasn’t that horrendous peer pressure to do evil, it was then that Noah let down his guard and got drunk. So even though the culture we see around us might make us frightened or distressed, maybe this can motivate us to keep on the righteous path as we move through our days.

And if you have tried to always take the righteous path in your life, you know that there are times when you stumble a bit, and you might tumble off that path. But the thing to do is to not be discouraged, but scramble right back onto that path, understand how serious your mistake was, and ask for God’s forgiveness and start fresh.

It’s been a while since I told the story I’m about to tell. Years ago, just after we came to Bellevue, our congregation went up to our Rosario retreat near Anacortes. It was Sabbath afternoon, and a group of us were taking a hike past Bowman Bay on our way to get to the little lighthouse.

I actually didn’t feel the need to go to the lighthouse, so I lagged behind the rest of the group. The tide was low, and we were actually walking on the tide flats next to a cliff which went underneath the trail that wound around above it.

As I was walking along, I looked up at the cliff, and I discovered it didn’t really seem to be that steep. It slanted upward at a pretty reasonable angle. Suddenly, though I don’t usually do this kind of thing, I decided to climb that cliff up to that trail.

I remember noticing that there were tall, jagged rocks at the base of the cliff. But I look for a good spot to start climbing, and I started scrambling my way up. This was a really dumb thing to do, because when I was two thirds of the way up the side of that cliff, I discovered that I could not find another foothold. My chest was even with a fairly level patch of grass, but there was nothing I could put my foot on to hoist me up there.

I glanced down over my shoulder and saw those jagged rocks. I couldn’t remember the footholds I used on the way up, and if I happened to slip, I could be badly injured and even killed on one of those rocks below.

I was praying pretty desperately at that point. My knees were turning to rubber, and I was more frightened than I had been in years.

I finally decided that I had one chance to struggle up to that little patch of grass. I put both my palms on that grass, and just heaved myself up. For one horrible instant, I was hovering without any footholds.
But then, just enough of my chest slammed down on that patch of grass to keep me from falling, and I was able to wriggle my way forward. And I used my rubbery knees and legs to pull myself up to the trail above.

I decided to go back to the Rosario campus, along that trail that I had ignored before. And you know what happened? As I walked along that trail, it was not a casual walk. I kept as far away from the edge of the cliff as I could. And I was so glad when I finally made down to level ground.

Maybe that’s something like the attitude we should have when we try to stay on the righteous path that Noah walked. Maybe he, too, was so frightened by sin that he simply did what he had to to be that “just man, perfect in his generations” walking with God.

Let’s move over to the New Testament for one more lesson in how to walk with God. Let’s go to Ephesians 5.

Ephesians 5:1 – 2: Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.

What is another way we can walk with God? Enoch showed us how to take the time for Him. Noah showed us how to take the righteous path.

And here, Paul shows us a third way.

Walk in love.

That’s exactly what verse two says: “walk in love.” And notice how in these verses, we are surrounded by God and His Son. The verse first says to be imitators of God, and after it says to walk in love, it shows Christ being the example of this.

But how do we really walk in love? Paul does not leave us clueless about how practical this is. He gets really specific:

Verses 3 – 11: But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not be partakers with them. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.

In a nutshell, that’s part of what “walking in love” is. It’s taking the time to “find out what is acceptable to the Lord,” as Enoch did. It’s taking the righteous path, as Noah did. It’s walking in love.

I think that these are three great new year’s resolutions, don’t you? Would you like to ask the Lord to give you the motivation and the strength to walk more closely with Him this year? If that’s your desire, raise your hand to vote for it.