Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The characters and stories of the Old Testament form a rich tapestry, revealing both the best and worst of the human condition—and, most importantly, how God relates to us.
Based on the Living Covenant book series, this podcast explores the sometimes messy lives of those who lived under God’s first covenant, asking what these blessedly unsanitised saints can teach us about living out our faith in relationship with a God who promises never to leave us or forsake us.
Welcome to the Living Covenant Podcast, where we journey through the messy human stories of the Old Testament explore what it means to live in covenant with a promise keeping God. I'm your host, Zanita. Let's dive in.
hello everyone. We are here today with Daniel Kuberek. Daniel is a former writer by profession, so you can trust that his piece in this series is gonna be a good one. But Daniel, tell us where your life has taken you since your writing days. What are you up to now?
Well, I don't know if I was a professional writer. I mean, I used a lot of, uh, allegedly a lot of, things that coat your work in other people's opinions. I guess, these days I run a video production business based in Sydney, so generally working with corporate clients, large corporate clients to deliver generally internal messagings. Everything from like letting other employees of the company know what they're up to in areas like sustainability and stuff to, yeah, just general, this is how the business is going, this is what we're up to, that sort of thing. Yeah.
Very cool. Well, something I learned about you after reading your piece for this series is that you and I'll quote, are oddly fascinated by lost or posthumous Works of art. Posthumus, for anyone who doesn't know basically means it appeared after the death of the creator or the artist. Um, can you tell us a bit more about this fascination of yours?
Yeah. To be honest, I don't really know where it started. I think. Even things I don't really take, like a huge interest in. If there's a rare quality to something, then it just grabs my attention way more than probably things that are readily available would. An example is high school we had to study To Kill a Mockingbird, which you know, is probably not the first book I'd pick up and read nowadays, but, you know, it was interesting enough back then. And then it was around, actually I think a decade ago that, there was another book released by Harper Lee, the author of Tequila Mockingbird. Now, she won a Pulitzer Prize for Tequila Mockingbird. It became like this absolute. Classic that is studied in all schools and stuff.
And then she never wrote another book again. She maintained a very low profile. So it was kind of fascinating that when she was already quite old at that stage. I think she was in her late eighties or early nineties in 2015 when they released this new book from her which was based on old manuscripts that were lost before even she even had written To Kill a Mockingbird.
Turns out that the book was actually early manuscripts for Tequila Mockingbird. Um huh. But yeah, like, you know, that sort of thing just kind of grabs my attention even though maybe at times it's not my particular area of interest. But even in music, when you have like artists who pass away and then after they have passed away the record label finds that there's a whole bunch of unreleased songs and they start patching them up and releasing them. So one of those is, Michael Jackson. Uh, no, very controversial figure. I don't want to comment on the allegations made against him, but there were two albums that, first of all, he's got a whole stack of songs that have just never been released.
And if you go online, some of those get leaked every now and again, and there's some really good songs in there. But yeah, there were two albums that were released after he died of songs that were recorded before he passed away. And that in of itself is a controversial thing because, it kind of raises question about did those songs meet his standard, that would he ever release them if he was still alive and had the choice?
Is that robbing the choice away from him? And also because of that, it's also like an interesting insight into his creative process. Like, why did these songs never get released to the public? Why did Michael Jackson choose not to pick these songs? You know, it's an afterward in some ways because it's like he's speaking from beyond the grave.
So, yeah, there's a lot of, facets to it that make it just mysterious and intriguing. But yeah, all those kind of combine and it just kind of grabs my attention a little bit.
Hmm. So a way to keep the artists alive once they've gone, if you've got things that they've left or things that they haven't released.
Yeah. When I was growing up there was, a lady in the church, she used to make really nice cakes for church lunches. And, she unfortunately tragically passed away and it was a few years later that her daughter came over our house and this lady had like this one favorite recipe, like one really classic recipe that she used to make.
And she had told my mom over the phone what the recipe was. She had never written it down, but she told my mom over the phone and my mom wrote the recipe down. So when the daughter came over a few years later, my mom just brought it up in conversation and for her daughter, this was like a big deal because it was like a piece.
Of her mom that had supposedly been lost in time, but was now recovered because my mom had just happened to write it down and have it on a piece of paper in the pantry. And it was like, you know, that kind of piece that had been recovered.
That's really special. That's really cool. Um, tell us how this all links in with Enoch. What is kind of the link between these old undiscovered things and the story of Enoch?
Well, it was, um, so when the record came a few months ago to like the, obviously doing this series, um, exploring Old Testament Bible characters and trying to make it personal. Uh, so I was given a list of, um, old Testament Bible characters and there was like a few better known, uh, ones in there.
I think, um, Moses or Noah was on the list.
Yeah,
but then there was a few more obscure characters that I even, I hadn't thought about. And then there was Enoch and I had the choice between going with the more obvious Bible character or Enoch. And I was just kind of looking at the name Enoch, like, why do I want to write an article about Enoch?
And I couldn't fully like, understand why. So then I started digging a little bit more into, Enoch and realize that the first thing that came to mind, which is probably not the obvious thing, but the first thing that came to mind was that there is a hidden book of the Bible or a number of hidden books of the Bible written by Enoch, which are not considered canon.
So essentially they're not considered to be part of the books of the Bible that are, accepted to be divinely inspired. And look, I've never read any of the books of Enoch. I've heard like fables and, you know, sort of words passed along by other people about how wacky the books of Enoch are. So I started having a bit of a read, and it is indeed wacky.
I also started having a read about why it's not considered to be in generally in the Bible. Like there are a few religions who, do consider it to be one of the books of the Bible, but generally most Protestant dominations don't, uh, Roman Catholics also don't. So I was trying to like, understand why, why we don't.
Yeah. And look, it's not a simple answer because first of all, the reason, the obvious reason why it's not part of the Bible is because it's the part of the grapher, which is where, essentially Jewish authors around Bible times wrote a book. Using the name of a well-known Bible character. So the books of Enoch were not actually written by Enoch.
In fact, they were written thousands of years after he was no longer on Earth. Wow. Which get to,
yeah.
So that was like the first thing. So it uses his name but doesn't have anything really to do with him. However, pretty
SAS that it's written 3000 years after as well.
Yeah, exactly. So that's like a very obvious, and there's also questions about, who wrote it, and any like kind of context around these particular sets of books.
What, however, does kind of lend credibility to the fact that it's not a forgery or a fake or something else, is the fact that I think the books of Enoch were found amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls, first of all, which is interesting. Which obviously shows that there were an authentic text circulated around that time, like the Dead Sea scores are one of the big pieces of evidence in favor of the Bible being an authentic text in that they were found.
I think it was, correct me, was it in the sixties or the fifties?
Hmm. I actually thought it was the late forties, so people might have to Google that one, but sometime in the forties, fifties or sixties.
So they were found there and, yeah, obviously authenticated that the Bible was a text, that existed back in Bible times. So there's no doubt about the book of books of Enoch and existing. In fact, the Apostle Jude directly quotes the books, one of the books of Enoch in Jude.
Which means that during Jesus time, these books existed. So there is this kind of like complicated debate. Yeah. I guess around them, but on the balance of play, yeah it's accepted generally by Christianity that they're not divinely inspired. So there's a lot of stuff that is said in there that contradicts other parts of the Bible. There's a lot of also additional wacky stuff in there that We don't have confirmation on really.
Yeah. Okay. So there's some quite compelling things and then some rather non-comp compelling things in that. From what we do know about Enoch, just in the classic home Bible that we have, what do we know about his life?
From my understanding, there's not that much mentioned about him at all. But in that small amount, what do we know?
Yeah. The whole Books of Enoch thing kind of kickstarted off the question, which is, who is Enoch? You can pretty easily skim through everything that's written about him. It's gonna take you less than three minutes, honestly.
Genesis five actually talks about, there's genealogies in there and it mentions Enoch had a son at the age of 65. And then, there was a bit of a transformation that happened when he was 65 as a result of having a son. And he walked with the Lord for another 300 years.
And then Genesis five says that he walked faithfully and then he was no more because God had taken him away. Now, I mean. That kind of may sound like he had died. Um if you just base it off of Genesis five, but it is then when you go and read what else we know about Enoch, which is in Hebrews that it says that, he did not die because God had taken him away.
And that's pretty much all we know about him actually.
Yeah. Crazy.
And yeah, so he did not experience death, and I guess by just what we know in the Bible. That means he is the first person to have been taken by God and not experienced human mortal death, and to be taken directly to heaven.
Yeah.
Yeah. Which is, it's kind of wild to think because we obviously know of, Moses and Elijah who also went to Heaven . But both of those characters are like huge heroes of faith in the Bible. Like there's so much on their lives, there's so much on their stories in there, walks with God.
And then Enoch, it's just like he walked with God faithfully. He made it to 365 or something like that, which is quite young for someone back then. And. That's all we know, which is, it's just so interesting.
Well, yeah, like , the Moses and Elijah thing, like there's a, it kind of, there's a lot in there.
First of all, Moses and Elijah kind of become the two main Old Testament characters that link the Old Testament to the New Testament in that they physically appear in both. Like obviously God is in both.
Mm-hmm.
We're talking about humans that appear in both and like you mentioned Moses he was, he experienced death, but then he was taken to heaven. Yeah. Whereas Elijah was taken up in a fiery chariot to heaven in a pretty miraculous display. And like you said, both of these characters are heroes of faith. Moses obviously leading the Israelites. Elijah also, you know, fighting against, paganism and, uh, both of these, like they perform miracles and all these kind of crazy things that happened in the Old Testament.
And then, they appear alongside Jesus, the Mount of Transfiguration. The Old Testament makes their journey to heaven, I guess, a little bit more obvious and then we see them again, uh, in their form in the New Testament alongside Jesus. So, I think that kind of makes it even more fascinating as to why wasn't Enoch one of those that appeared because we do know of three characters, Moses, Elijah, and Enoch, and Moses and Elijah appeared with Jesus. Why didn't Enoch appear, with Jesus? I guess it's a question I guess we'll never know. Maybe changed his mind. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I think there's a lot to be kind of, compared between the three. But for me, the most significant thing was that Enoch was the first, which kind of is the way I kind of go in the article, which is to suggest that there is a reason why he was the first, that it was almost like Enoch and the fact that he was chosen for heaven is an example in some ways, or there was a message that was trying to be sent by God to us by that.
Mm-hmm.
Um, yeah. So to cut a long story short, essentially, I, I believe that, when you look at salvation, what salvation is, that all we need to do is accept Jesus, at the very baseline of everything and walk faithfully with God.
That was what God was trying to tell us from Enoch's story. The fact that that's all it took for him to be taken to heaven. Like there wasn't any miraculous displays that are recorded that we know that he did. There wasn't any, you know, he didn't do so in the face of oppression like maybe Moses or Elijah did.
He just walked faithfully with God, you know? Mm-hmm. We know of Moses and Elijah being the ones that are in heaven because obviously the way their kind of lives ended was in some ways quite dramatic. But I guess it comes down to like the thing about spiritual gifts, right? Not everybody is made to be up the front, you know, prophesying or like, you know, um,.
Not everyone is meant to be like Moses in that they're leading a nation through the desert, but it's just that simple faith
yeah, like you, it just because you don't have a crazy testimony, let's say for example, does not mean that your faith is any less than that of another a person. I think this is what we're trying, what we're trying to like be taught through this.
Hmm. I think it also says he walked faithfully for 300 years and I, I don't know. We don't know much, so I guess we just assume, but I imagine that a lot of people have highs and lows in their faith journey, and I'm sure Enoch did as well, but it does kind of specify that for 300 years he faithfully walked with God.
Yeah, exactly. I mean. It is interesting that so little is said about it, right? Like, I mean mm-hmm. I think, there is a reason for that as well, potentially. But you're right. Like it doesn't mean that Enoch by our assumption, just based off of what isn't said, was perfect throughout those 300 years. But I think what's implied here is that he stuck true with the Lord the entire time.
You went on in your article to say that you've struggled with the whole concept of salvation for a long time, and given that there's very little in the story of Enoch, how has exploring that small part of your story helped you to understand or wrap your head around the idea of salvation?
Yeah, I think my kind of thing with salvation goes back a long time and I'm still trying to understand why it's potentially an issue or something that I struggle with when it's so simple. And I think again, that's where kind of the connection within Enoch comes in, where the Bible, shows us how simple salvation is and yet we can make it so complicated.
Certainly I have in my case. I remember when I was, getting baptized. Well first of all, in the lead up to my baptism, the moment that I understood that salvation wasn't something that, was meant to be earned was there was a sermon at the church that I was attending and actually I don't really know what the sermon was about and don't remember anything about it.
But what did stick with me was the song at the end, which was, uh, the Savior is Waiting, which is in the Adventist hymnal. And I, I don't remember ever singing that song inside a Church, but there were some words to that song, which like really grabbed me, which was, the Savior is waiting to enter your heart. Why don't you let him come in? And it was like, it was so simple. It's like Jesus is like knocking on the door of your heart. All you need to do is accept him in. And that was the moment that I decided that I would pursue baptism. Because salvation became very clear to me in that moment. So when my baptism day actually, rolled around, I remember actually getting baptized and then they lead you. Like the place where I was baptized was Adelaide City Church. You kind of have to exit and go around the church and then come through the back to greet everyone on the way out. Hmm. And so I was like walking just down that side passage and I was looking up and I just felt like this utter relief come over me because up until that point, salvation had become a whole bunch of things.
First of all, like this expectation that it needs to be earned. Second of all, I guess fear of whether or not I will be good enough, let's say when the end times come about and there are bad things forecasted or trials forecasted for people who follow Jesus. That, you know, growing up with a lot of like revelation seminars, a lot of like apocalyptic stuff.
Yeah,
as much as it's packaged in hope and stuff, as a kid you don't really understand this stuff and so it instills fear or an awareness of the future and you start to, to be afraid, I guess. Mm-hmm. So that took a lot of that burden off and look. I'm not saying that it's perfect, like even though I accepted Jesus that day, when I heard that song even when I made that public commitment at baptism, it's still it's a struggle.
It's an up and down, like you said, the assumption that Enoch's life would've been an up and down with God, but it's what you can keep coming back to is really the important thing, like having the basis in that.
Yeah, so the idea is simple, but it's been over complicated almost. I'm not sure if you can relate with this, but sometimes even when you hear this term, just believe that sounds really easy. But for many people that's really difficult because it's not like we are being asked to believe something that we can see, or that makes a lot of sense. Believing in having faith can be really difficult, especially I would say for some people who think very logically and deeply who like to see the facts and the evidence or maybe are confused with evolution and science and all of that.
Yeah.
And I don't know if you've ever listened to The Rich Role podcast.
I saw a snippet from his podcast on Instagram just this week, and he had this guest on named Rhett McLaughlin. He's a comedian and film producer, and he used to be a Christian. And he was talking about this topic and I thought what he said was really interesting.
He said, we created a religious system where love isn't the first thing. It's what you believe. Your faith becomes the measure by which God judges where you are going to spend eternity. But it's not how much you love. What if it was about how much you love? Why is the measure by which God determines whether or not you are going to hang in his hood for eternity? Why is it your capacity to believe something that is really hard to believe if you actually think about it?
And that's the end of his quote, but I thought he had a really valid point. Maybe he's missed the verse that said, faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love. But I still think that he has a really valid point. Like sometimes just believing is hard.
Yeah, the baseline is, is what's most important in all of this. And that's where we very often get it wrong. That's where I've gotten it wrong and when I continue to get it wrong, which is like the opposite side, which is that our lifestyle, there's an expectation as trans figuration by God before, you know, or I mean, I guess the false assumption is that it's before you even accept Jesus. You know, in my case, there was a certain standard that I had to reach before I was, you know, able to even , be considered for heaven in my head.
Um hmm. Whereas like, it's the opposite way around. That being said, like I don't want to also go down the pathway of saying that once you accept Jesus, then nothing really matters. It's just, it's locked in. And then by trying to become as close to Jesus as possible.
It's not a specifically an aspiration, and this is where the problem is. It's not an aspiration to become a certain way, it's just Jesus does transform us. The closer you become to Jesus, the more you become like him. And that's where people change, I guess.
And our idea is wrong in that we want to change, to become christ like of our own will, and that's where it's wrong. It's actually like, let's start at the baseline here, which is accepting Jesus, wanting to walk faithfully with him and then walking on that journey with him.
Hmm. Yeah. Making everything's in the right order, I suppose.
Yeah
i'd love to know what has really stood out to you in Enoch's story. You mentioned obviously that you've struggled with salvation and it's kind of helped you with that. Have there been any other nuggets of wisdom that you've found as you've written this article and explored Enoch and and his life.
Well, I actually, I preached about, Enoch a few weeks ago in, at Warunga and got a lot more personal, a way more personal, in fact, probably too personal. And not gonna really go into that here. I think the key takeaway for me is, is a couple of things.
First of all, like what I mentioned earlier, which was that Enoch wasn't the flashiest character, but he was the first, and he was the first, and all that's said about him is that he did walk faithfully with God. I guess what it's also brought to me is that it's taught me that as humans, we create our own barriers to entry, which, is essentially like, it's the stuff that I was mentioning about like reordering and having this false idea in our heads that it's harder than it should be.
It does not come from God. It comes from, I guess, our own sinful nature, which is our own doubts. So my key takeaway is exists that whenever those moments happen to draw closer to God and come back to the source of his promise rather than to linger on that is a very important thing.
Like, you know, salvation is everything, if you had to kind of sum up the one thing that we're supposed to get out of our walk on earth, it's not, status, legacy, career, money, none of those things matter because they're impermanent. The only thing that matters is the salvation of us, our own salvation, and then the salvation of those.
We love and care about. And then the salvation, of course, of people we don't know. So like, you know, actually three angel's message, which is going and sharing the gospel. So those are the real fundamental core of everything and that. You know, again, is another very simple thing to put out there, but yet it's so hard to make that a priority in a working life where, you have to kind of stay afloat.
You know, you have to make life work, I guess. And yet that's all that really matters. When Jesus comes back again how sad it will be. What a tragedy it is if i'm not part of the elect on that day because we didn't see that as the priority. And I guess that's another thing that I also come back to.
Hmm. Yeah. It's encouraging that it's, a simple faith to aspire to. But it's also, I feel like so many people struggle to simplify their lives. So in today's world, coming back to that simple faith is difficult, like you said, because there's so, so many distractions.
Yeah, exactly.
I like this line that you end on. You said that Enoch's life reminds us not to be discouraged when we don't come upon the opportunities to profess our faith in big ways. Because I think. Even in the Christian world, people compare themselves to these like modern day faith heroes who are preaching to the world, who are involved in all these things, who are, Instagram Christian influencers. It's still easy to compare ourselves to people who are doing mighty things. When in Enoch's case, the respectable thing to God was to just like be living his ordinary daily life and being faithful to him.
Yeah. I don't know if it's because I guess the careers that we're both in, even though you're a writer and I'm kind of making videos, but we spend a lot of time, not necessarily sharing our own story, but we spend a lot of time sharing the stories of others.
Mm-hmm.
And I think that naturally lends itself, maybe to comparison, I don't know how you are going, but definitely in my instance, a lot of times you, you, I guess get imposter syndrome, especially when you start to, to read stories about people who are so faithful and in the face of oppression and did wild and wacky things.
Not talking about Bible characters, talking about like people in Australia, for example. When I worked for the church, we'd be profiling people who like, were doing crazy things for ADRA and stuff, and then you kind of think about your own life and you're like, oh man, am I really like faithful at all?
Like, am I anything really in comparison to some of these people? But it comes back to yeah, what does God cherish and appreciate? As much as he appreciates that kind of thing. Let's say the modern day Moses and Elijahs who are out there. Running big programs who are up the front preaching, who are in the community doing all these wacky things. Those are all super important to God. In fact, if anything, they are important because those people are leaders like Moses and Elijah were. But that doesn't mean they're the only ones who are going to be saved. In fact, that's just like in, in some ways a nice, a bonus or an add-on or a very important kind of additional part to God.
But the baseline is. I walk with God. So even if you walk humbly with God and you know, contribute to church in a way that's not noticeable, maybe you never get a thank you at the front. Maybe nobody even knows what you do, but the fact that you do it consistently and humbly like Enoch did, is everything to God as important as the people who are up the front.
Absolutely. I think different seasons of our lives will look different as well, and I think it's important to remember that, you know, people often have micro moments in their lives where they do something amazing, but in reality, even the people who we admire and look up to and think are doing all these amazing things, probably much of their life is full of mundane day-to-day tasks and activities and living.
Yeah, exactly.
Now we spend a lot of time in these episodes talking about the Bible characters, which is awesome 'cause like you said, we've got some obscure names in that list and it's quite common for people to skim over the Old Testament 'cause it's kind of intense and just stick to the New Testament. So there's a lot of stories in there that people have never really heard of or dunno that much about, but I think what's also really important to do in this series is to talk about what we are learning about God. And I guess we've kind of brushed on this throughout this episode, but in reading Enoch's story, what have you learned about the character of God?
I think what I've learned is kind of along the lines of what we've been talking about, which is that it's so simple like salvation is, is there, for us to take. You know, we see so many promises in the Bible where God offers salvation to us. Like it's just a matter of what I assume would be reaching out to God in prayer and accepting his offer is really all it takes. , And then following through with that by, by trying to grow across to God by prayer and reading the Bible. It's so baseline and yet so difficult because, you know, let's say for example, just reading the Bible is, can be a difficult task in a world where, reading isn't really a thing.
Why would you read the Bible? Mm-hmm. You know, what once would've been such an obvious thing perhaps is now like a challenge it seems.
Um, so really just coming back to those things, I guess.
Awesome. I loved this line that you finished on. You said, the core of what God wants from us is faith holding strong to the belief that he exists, that his plan is just, and that one day he'll take us all to be in heaven. He used heroes of faith like Moses and Elijah, but he also used a man like Enoch, a man whose greatest achievement is simply holding true to the Lord.
Well, thank you again for your article, Daniel, and for coming on here and chatting to us some more. And thank you everyone who has listened to this episode. If you would like to read the story, it is titled Enoch, the Man Who Cheated Death. You can find that on the record website, or in the Living Covenant book with the rest of them. Thanks again, Daniel. It's been great to talk to you.
Cool. Thank you for having me.