Tracing the Amazing Wonders of the Personhood of God” Pt. 2
Study Guide, October 19, 2025
Pastor Clay Olsen
Last week we began an adventure of encouragement in what we called ‘Tracing the Amazing Wonders of the Personhood of God.’ And one of the premises for such an adventure is that it makes a great difference in how we relate to God and how we relate to others and how much we individually flourish all due to not only ‘what’ we think about our Lord and Savior, but also ‘how’ we think about our God. And the lion’s share of ‘how’ we are to think about our God comes from the revelations and insights and descriptions of how God Himself wants us to think about our God, the Lion of Judah. (That’s a little preview there about the Lion part…)
And although we are planning to mostly trace these wonders chronologically, every once in a while we’ll fast forward to some others, just because of how amazing the ‘Personal’ revelations of our God really are! For an example: We know that we are anxiously looking for the Blessed Hope of Jesus’ return for His Church in the Rapture of the Church. But in terms of ‘anxiously looking forward’ to this we need to include thinking about how much our Lord Jesus Himself is anxiously looking forward to it! What do we mean?
I remember having this pointed out by a Teacher in our Greek studies, who pointed out that the Greek has two different words for ‘air’. One is ‘aeros’, and the other is ‘aer’. ‘Aeros’ was used to describe the far regions of space, or the regions of the stars. ‘Aer’ was used when describing the lower atmosphere around the Earth…even as close as mountain heights. Now, which word do you think God had the Apostle Paul choose when describing Jesus’ return, or we should add…describing Jesus’ coming back from the Father’s house as the Bridegroom returning to gather His Bride, coming back for His Church, and then returning to Heaven? Right! The word that God had Paul record is ‘aer’! The amazing implication here shows us just how anxious Jesus is Himself to ‘catch away’ His church to be with Him in the Father’s house! He descends almost to the mountaintops when coming for His Church and to then take us Home! Jesus longs for His Church, His Bride, His children, His redeemed people, to be ‘Home’ with Him!
And right here, this character trait of God’s ‘longing’, of His ‘anxiously wanting’ His children to be with Him, is a stunning revelation of just how ‘personal’ is ‘the Personhood of our God.’ And that’s also another amazing reason of why it is so important to make sure that whatever ‘image’ you have of God…make sure that your ‘image’ is based more and more upon the ‘Image of God’ as God reveals Himself and wants to be better known and better understood according to His revealed ‘image’ of Himself!
And one of the great effects that this will have on us is that it will include us in those who are anxious for and longing for and will ‘love His appearing’, just as the Apostle said in 2Tim. 4:8- “…in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.” NASB The better you know the Personhood of Jesus Christ, and know Him in a ‘personal way’, the more you will long for and will love His appearing. And the more you long for the return of Jesus Christ the more you will live for Christ…live for Christ in such a way as that God will long to reward you with what Paul identified as “The Crown of Righteousness.” How like our God, to be so moved to such a degree that He wants to give special rewards to those children who are anxiously looking forward to Jesus’ return and thus are living their lives accordingly.
Speaking of Jesus’ return, and this will be a fun study sometime…for when it comes to ‘Rapture events’, the Rapture of the Church won’t be the first time someone was raptured. Actually, there are at least 7 Rapture type events in the Bible! And sometime we’ll do a walk through them. But when it comes to the ‘first Rapture’ event, that brings us to this remarkable Old Testament saint, which will also reveal another personal characteristic of the Personhood of God. Let’s look…
Gen. 5:21-24 – “Enoch lived sixty-five years, and became the father of Methuselah. Then Enoch walked with God three hundred years after he became the father of Methuselah, and he had other sons and daughters. So all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.” NASB What? A mere 365 years old? Oh yeah! Enoch was just in his prime of life at that time. Remember his son Methuselah was how old when he died? Right…969 years old. I can imagine him sometimes saying, “Oh, to be 800 again!” Of course, before the Flood, the longevity of humanity was much longer…much much longer. But how about Enoch getting to be the first person ‘raptured’ by God? ‘Rapture’ is a word that is used to describe being ‘caught up’ to Heaven. The New Testament Greek word for that is ‘Harpazo’. Of course, ‘Rapture’ sounds more like its Latin origin of ‘Rapturo’, which means a ‘snatching away.’ Actually, the Latin Vulgate includes the word ‘rapiemur’ in its Latin Bible Version, and it is translated as ‘snatched away’ in the English translation. But the English word ‘rapture’ is derived from this Latin word.
In our last study we noted the amazing experience of how the Creator of our first parents…the Creator being the Trinity of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, then manifested Himself to those whom He had created in what is described as a Theophany, or the Pre-Incarnate appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the intimacy of their experience was described as being ‘a walk’… “…the Lord God walking in the cool of the day” with Adam and Eve…indicating their previous and usual habit…God walking with them and them walking with God.
You ever notice how much God loves ‘walking?’ He doesn’t even need His 10,000 steps…God just enjoys walking, especially with His people. Jesus was continually calling people to ‘walk’ with Him. Of course, He deepened it by putting it in the form of ‘Follow Me’. Which, by the way, ‘Follow Me’ is, in fact, a descriptive way of saying, “Repent”… “Turn from following your own way to now follow God’s way.”
But what makes Enoch’s ‘walk with God’ so remarkable is that he found himself walking right off the Earth and right into Heaven. So what was it that moved God so deeply that God not only one day caught up with Enoch, but then caught Enoch up with Him right into heaven without Enoch even dying first?
Rapture generally denotes being escorted into Heaven apart from physically dying. We say ‘generally’ because remember Philip’s experience? Philip was walking on a road from Jerusalem to the desert area of Gaza and shared the Gospel from Isaiah with a court official of the Queen of Ethiopia. And right after he baptizes this new Ethiopian believer, it says: “When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; and the eunuch no longer saw him, but went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through he kept preaching the gospel to all the cities until he came to Caesarea.” Acts 8:39,40 NASB
The Lord ‘snatched Philip away’…and he found himself about 60 miles south of where he just was. That would be like you walking along the beach in Emerald Isle and all of a sudden you are now walking on the beach near Wilmington! Philip had never experienced that before! But he was ‘snatched away’, and guess what the Greek word was there in Acts? Right! ‘Harpazo’… ‘snatched away’… ‘caught up’… ‘raptured!’ It was like a Rapture preview!
But again, whenever the Bible describes someone as one who ‘walked with God’ it’s describing a particular trait that has a particular personal effect upon our very Personal God. For note what Heb. 11:6 reveals to us about that: “By faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death; and he was not found because God took him up; for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God.” Not only was Enoch ‘right with God’ through being saved by grace through faith and given the gift of God’s salvation righteousness, but Enoch was also pleasing to God through his daily walk with God, which consisted of how the Psalmist put it when he said: “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to You, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” Ps. 19:14
Like the Psalmist, Enoch’s daily intention and mindful practice was to think and to live with the purpose of pleasing the Lord each day in what he would do and in what he would say. And how did this affect God? Even though God is ‘omnipresent’, or God is ‘everywhere present’, still God was so enjoying Enoch’s personality and character that it was like, instead of God coming to Earth to walk with Enoch here, He caught Enoch up to Heaven to walk with God there!
Which is to point out another huge take-away…for not only did Enoch and the Psalmist and other faithful saints have the power to bring pleasure and joy to the very personal heart of their Maker and Savior…so do we…so do you! For our God is a very personal God and He can be deeply moved by our intention to live in such a way that we make it our goal to make the words of our mouth and the meditation of our heart and the conduct of our life be pleasing to our God! And the key to being pleasing to God is to first make it your purpose to be pleasing to your God, like Enoch’s purpose and David’s purpose and Paul’s purpose was each day. And by the power of the Holy Spirit we can each do that!
But wait…there’s more! So, was there anything else about Enoch that caused God to be pleased with Enoch to such a degree that He wanted Enoch to walk even closer to Him in Heaven than He could on Earth? There’s more about Enoch in the Bible and we find it in the single chapter Book of Jude. Take a look at this: Jude 1:14-16: “It was also about these men that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones, to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.” These are grumblers, finding fault, following after their own lusts; they speak arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of gaining an advantage.” NASB
Now, this prophecy of Enoch was not taken from the Apocryphal ‘Book of Enoch’, written by a different person, and written after the destruction of Jerusalem. No, this was an actual prophecy made by the actual Enoch of Genesis. And it was like God the Holy Spirit said to Enoch: “That was good Enoch…I’m going to have Jude record what you said, and that way it will be recorded for my Church and for all time.” …maybe something like that…anyway, God wanted Enoch’s prophecy included in the Bible…
But what a prophecy! This is actually a double prophecy, describing Jesus’ return in judgment after the Great Tribulation period, and also of the Judgment after the final rebellion at the conclusion of the Millennial Kingdom. And in just one verse four times Enoch uses the word ‘ungodly’…ungodly people, ungodly deeds, ungodly manner of their lives, and ungodly treatment of God Himself.
So we see here that Enoch not only pleased God in being a ‘consecrated servant’ of God, he also pleased God in being a ‘passionate defender’ of God! Enoch stood up for the honor, for the truth, for the defense, and for the glory of God. Enoch practiced what Paul would later instruct us in Eph. 5:8-11: “…walk as children of Light (for the fruit of the Light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth), trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them…” NASB As followers of Christ we are also to be defenders of His honor, defenders of His truth, and defenders of His glory. As we saw in Jesus’ own dealings with people: There are times to gently instruct and correct those who are honest seekers, but then there are also times to turn over the tables of those who are ungodly and dishonest scoffers! It’s like Solomon also pointed out in Eccl. 3:7,8, that there is: “A time to be silent and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate…” And we are to pray for discernment to know what time it is!
But note carefully: Part of what pleased God about Enoch was how much Enoch loved godliness and hated ungodliness…or hated sin. The word ‘hate’ usually throws people for a loop because they usually define it in an unrighteous way…as prejudice or bitter jealousy…or spite and malice and such. Certainly, that is an ‘unrighteous type of hate.’ However, there certainly also is a ‘righteous hatred’ that we see expressed by Enoch here and is defined for us in Prov. 8:13: “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil; Pride and arrogance and the evil way and the perverted mouth, I hate.” NASB Righteous hatred of sin and evil is part of what is included in what it means to ‘fear God!’
Remember this: You can measure your ‘fear of God’ by measuring your ‘hatred of sin and evil.’ You can also measure your passion for ‘godliness’ by measuring your passion against ‘ungodliness.’ Something the ‘fear of the Lord’ includes is – to hate evil…to hate sin. We are to be careful not to hate sinners, but we are commanded to hate sin… to hate the sin that is destroying them and others and to hate the sin that God Himself hates. That’s how you can measure how much you really do fear God…actually how much you really do love God, by loving the things God loves and hating the things God hates…ungodliness and sin! Plus, it’s how you can measure how much you really are committed to pleasing God…how much you really do want to ‘walk with God’ and be a ‘loyal friend’ to God.
Remember, Jesus revealed to His Disciples that He wanted them to include another layer to their relationship…for them to think of having not only a ‘Lordship’ relationship of ‘Master and servant’, but also think of having a ‘Friendship’ relationship of ‘Savior and Friend.’ Jn. 15:14,15 – “You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.” NKJV
Enoch walked with God thinking of God as his Creator, his Redeemer, and his Best Friend. And that was just the way God wanted it! And guess what? That’s just the way God wants it to be with you as well. And that’s just how ‘personal’ the Personhood of our God really is!