Let’s take our Bibles together and turn to the Book of Hebrews. We are continuing our series today, “Christ Supreme in All Things.” We began our journey through this book in September of last year. And there are many memorable and recognizable portions of this book for Christians. But probably none more recognizable than Hebrews 11, the so called “Hall of Faith.” We’re going to look at the first seven verses of this great chapter today. 

And before we get into it, I want to show you how this particular passage functions in the context of the book of Hebrews. I want to make two points. First, this chapter is significant because it comes on the heels of one of the most terrifying warning passages in the Bible. Hebrews 10:26-39 is a disconcerting passage of Scripture. And it warns the church that some within their ranks aren’t truly converted. Some will love their sin more than Christ and apostatize. And the true nature of saving faith is that it is a finishing faith. That’s the author’s nod to Habakkuk 2:4. The righteous one shall live by faith and not shrink back! And that’s because saving faith is finishing faith. We call this the perseverance of the saints. So when the author says at the end of that warning passage in verse 39, “But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.” You can almost hear the anticipated questioned asked by the readers, “Can you give us some examples of those who through faith preserve their souls?” To which, the author of Hebrews writes a full chapter and lists sixteen men and women who had saving faith and preserved their souls.

The other question that a Christian Jew might ask in response to this author is, “What about the Jews of old? What about our ancestors? How did they save their souls?” And so it’s not an accident that this author doesn’t use Peter, James, and John or the NT book of Acts to speak of saving faith. This author knows where to go to argue his point. He goes to the OT. He goes to the OT to show that faith was always God’s plan for saving his people. Let me say it this way, sola fide is not an NT invention. When Paul says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith” (Eph 2:8-9), that’s not novelty. God has always saved his people by faith. 

And just to prove that point, look at the repeated refrain in Hebrews 11. “By faith” in verse 3. “By faith Abel” in verse 4. “By faith Enoch” in verse 5. “By faith Noah” in verse 7. “By faith Abraham” in verse 8. Nineteen times that’s used in this chapter— “by faith… by faith… by faith.” Nineteen statements like that for sixteen OT characters. The only exception to that is verse 3 where the subject is not an OT character but “we.” “By faith, we…” says the author of Hebrews. We’ll get to that in a second. 

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Here’s your outline for today, church. I want to ask and answer three questions from this passage. Let’s start with this one.   

1) What is saving faith that pleases God? (1:1-2) 

Why all this emphasis on faith in Hebrews 11? Why is this so central to Christian theology and to the Christian “faith”? Why aren’t “good deeds” central to Christianity like all the other religions of the world? 

Here’s why. Look at what the author says in verse 1.

1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Let me direct your attention to two words here: 1) assurance and 2) conviction. Faith is the assurance…  Faith is the ὑπόστασις, which means “trust, confidence, or being sure.” Faith is confident assurance of the things hoped for. What do we hope for as Christians? We hope in God’s promises. We hope in the fulfillment of God’s Word. And we put our faith in the things that God has promised us. That is absolutely central to the Christian religion.

“Pastor Tony, I believe that God is going to give me a Cadillac.” “I believe that God is going to give me a house in the Hamptons!” Okay, well you can “hope” for that till you’re blue in the face. But God hasn’t promised you that. That’s not biblical faith; that’s superstition. That’s a false hope built on an absent promise, and therefore you have a false faith. You have believed a lie, so don’t be surprised when your hope gets thwarted. 

“Pastor Tony, I believe that God saves me from my sins through Christ’s death on the cross.” Okay, now you’ve got something. Now you’ve got a good hope built on a true promise, and therefore you have sound faith. 

“Pastor Tony, I believe I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength—Philippians 4:13 says that! So I believe that I can play professional football even though I weigh 150 pounds and don’t have any athletic ability.” Okay, listen. That’s not what that passage of Scripture is promising. That’s a false hope built on an absent promise, and therefore you have a false faith. The context of that passage, Philippians 4:13, has to do with suffering. And God is promising his people that he will help them endure all suffering through Christ who gives them strength. He’s not giving his people a blank check to believe any crazy thing that they want and speak it into existence. 

“Pastor Tony, I believe that Jesus is coming back for me. I believe that I will receive a new resurrection body like his, and I will live with him in eternity in a sinless, permanent state.” Yes, I believe that too. Because that is built on God’s promises. That is built on God’s Word! And when we believe God’s Word, we have a good hope built on a true promise, and therefore a sound faith. Martin Luther said once that “faith is nothing else than a clinging to the Word of God.”

So faith is assurance of things hoped for. But it’s also conviction. 

1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Jesus said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Remember that from John 20? Jesus showed Thomas his scars. Jesus appeared to Thomas. Thomas said he wouldn’t believe unless he saw. Jesus, in his kindness and his goodness, met Thomas where he was at and allowed him to see. 

But let me state the obvious for you—Jesus hasn’t promised you that. None of us have seen Jesus’s resurrection body. Not yet. None of us had the privilege that Thomas and Peter and John and Mary Magdalene had so many years ago (see John 20:1-31). And that’s why Jesus said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). That’s why John wrote right after that, “these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31). John wrote that so that we might believe. We believe what’s recorded in God’s written word.

The Apostle Paul said, “we walk by faith not by sight.” He said, “So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5:6-7). This is the way Christians get saved. This is the way Christians live their lives. This is the way Christians anticipate the future. They do that by faith not by sight.  

You might say, “Seeing is believing, Pastor Tony.” Not according to the Bible, it’s not! Seeing is just seeing; that’s not believing. Belief has to do with God’s Word. And the nature of a “Word” is that it is heard, not seen. We believe what God has revealed in his Word. Faith is the conviction of things not seen. 

And that gives us appropriate guardrails for our faith. We don’t believe some unbelievable thing and try to sanction it before God. This is not Peter Pan, where we believe we can fly. Nobody promised us that. We believe what God has told us. We believe his Word. That’s the nature of Biblical faith. And we learn to trust the eyes of our heart filled with faith in God, not the eyes in these sockets. 

Martin Luther said about the Patriarch Abraham that he “went out with no knowledge of where he was going, with nothing for him to follow except the Word of God concerning things that were nowhere to be seen.” All Abraham had was the bare word of God to drive him. And he put his faith in that Word. And that’s what we put our faith in too.

And speaking of Abraham and the other people of old, look at verse 2. 

2 For by it the people of old received their commendation. 

What’s the “it” in that verse? The “it” is “faith.” By “faith” the people of old, i.e. the OT saints that he’s about to list, received their commendation. In other words, the OT saints weren’t commended for their resourcefulness. They weren’t commended for their self-sufficiency and their rugged individualism. They weren’t commended for their can-do attitude. No, they were commended, they were recorded in the Bible even, because they had faith in God and in his Word. 

And by the way, these “people of old” had failures too. Nobody in the Hall of Faith is without their foibles. Some of these people had massive character flaws. I mean “Samson” is in the Hall of Faith. “Samson! That knucklehead? Why is he here?” Because he had faith. Because he finished in faith. And by his faith, he received commendation. 

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Go ahead and write this down as a second question. 

2) What is an example of God-pleasing faith? (1:3) 

Before the author of Hebrews starts to list the heroes of faith in the OT, he gives an example of what faith looks like. And it’s the only “by faith we” statement in the whole chapter. Like I said, this chapter is “by faith, this guy” and “by faith, this gal” all the way to the end. Sixteen times! But here is the only “by faith we” statement. 

Look at verse 3.

3 By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. 

Now this is both a simple and complex argument. Let me walk you through both of those. It’s a simple argument because the inference here is to Genesis 1. How do we understand that the universe was created by the word of God? Well, to put it simply, because the Bible tells me so. How easy is that? I wish people were more convinced of the simplicity of that argument. 

But let’s deal with the complexity of what’s before us. Because theologians make a distinction between what’s called “general revelation” and “special revelation.” General revelation involves the things God reveals to everyone in the world. And the best example of that is creation. We see a tree. I didn’t create that tree. You didn’t create that tree. It wasn’t created in a test tube by some scientist. There must be a Creator. That’s general revelation. And we can derive that from trees or planets or galaxies or molecules or atoms or quarks or all the created things in our world. There is an uncreated creator who made these things. Aristotle called this “God” the unmoved mover. 

And to be honest, you don’t need faith for that—general revelation. There’s a tree. There must be a God who created it. That’s just empirical evidence. That’s easy. That’s why the Bible says, “A fool says in his heart there is no God” (Ps 14:1). It’s easy to derive the existence of God from creation. To be honest, you have to work really hard to deny the existence of God. The evidence works against you. Astronomers of old used to say that “an undevout astronomer is mad.” You don’t need faith, not really, to believe in God. You actually need to be willfully negligent of the evidence all around you to believe that God doesn’t exist. 

Now here’s what you need faith for. You need faith to understand that the universe was created by the word of God. This is what we call “special revelation.” Because we wouldn’t know God created the world this way unless we had his special revelation, i.e. the Scriptures. 

Without the Bible, we might surmise that God took thousands of years to build his universe by cosmic hands with cosmic tools. But that’s not what the Bible says. What does the Bible say? God spoke it into existence! “Let there be light!” (Gen 1:3). “Let there be… sun, moon, planets, fish, birds, people!” God spoke, and things were created ex-nihilo. That’s what the Bible teaches.

3 By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. 

Psalm 32 says, “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host… For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm” (32:6, 9). We know that God didn’t create the universe with his cosmic hands and his cosmic instruments. He didn’t pull out a huge protractor and calculate the size of the planets. He didn’t consult his architectural drawings to put everything together. No, he spoke, and the world was created. That which is seen was made out of that which is unseen. His invisible word did this. And we believe what our eyes can’t see. And we believe what cannot be verified by sight. We believe that which is heard and read and received as special revelation in the Bible. 

And by the way, let me clarify this as well. Our faith isn’t some irrational leap of faith in the dark. I hear Christians say this, and it’s cringe-inducing. We don’t just blindly and stupidly take a leap in the dark. “I sure hope it’s true! [fingers-crossed]” No, our faith is built on God’s Word. It’s built on what we hear and read. So yeah it’s a blind faith in the sense that blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed. But it’s not a crazy faith. It’s not like we just believe some unbelievable thing because we want to. Our faith is based on God’s Word. And it’s soundly backed by God’s truth. It’s not like Indiana Jones taking a wild leap of faith stepping out into a chasm. Get that out of your mind. 

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So get Peter Pan out of your mind. And get Indiana Jones out of your mind. Here, let me give you some better people to think about. Let’s answer this question:

3) How did the “people of old” exhibit this kind of faith? (11:4-7)

In Hebrews 11:2, the Greek word for “people of old” is the Greek πρεσβύτερος which we typically translate as “elders.” This is the word that the NT uses to talk about the leaders of the church— the πρεσβύτεροι or the “elders.” But the author of Hebrews is using this word differently to refer to OT saints—the patriarchs and the matriarchs of the Israelites. Those “people of old” exhibit a kind of faith that we should emulate. I’ll give you three examples today. 

First of all, there’s the faithful and fateful Abel. Secondly, there’s the cryptic Enoch. And thirdly, there is the famous Noah. Let’s start with Abel. 

a. Abel

And by the way, these are the first three of these sixteen OT saints in Hebrews 11. And these saints are presented roughly chronologically. The first three of these saints show up in the first few pages of the Bible. They are the antediluvian saints on this list, meaning they are the ones who predate the flood in Genesis 6-8. 

And Abel was the second-born son of Adam and Eve. He was a sheepherder. He gave himself to animal husbandry. And his older brother, Cain, gave himself to working the ground as a farmer. 

And when it came time for these two individuals to offer up a sacrifice to God, Abel brought the best of his flocks to God. And Cain brought some of his produce. And for whatever reason, God received Abel’s sacrifice and rejected Cain’s. Now, this was not a permanent indictment on Cain. Not yet. But it was an affirmation of Abel’s sacrifice. Abel’s sacrifice was better. It was acceptable to the Lord. Here’s how the author of Hebrews says it in verse 4.

4 By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks. 

How did Abel die? He was killed by his brother, Cain. It was the first murder recorded in the Bible. Things are spiraling out of control after Adam and Eve sinned in the garden. One of the results of that is that their son, Cain, kills their other son. 

It’s interesting because God told Cain after the unacceptable sacrifice, “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it” (4:7). God tried to talk sense into Cain. But it didn’t work. Interestingly, Eve had been talked into sin by Satan, but Eve’s son, Cain, couldn’t be talked out of sin by God. The corrupting effects of sin were increasingly taking effect on our world.

But this isn’t really about Cain. This is about Abel. This is about a man who doesn’t speak a word in the Bible. We don’t know anything about him other than the fact that he offered up an acceptable sacrifice to God. 

Why was it acceptable? Was it because it was a blood sacrifice instead of a non-blood sacrifice? Yes, I think that’s part of it. I think that’s significant in the way that blood points forward to Christ’s sacrifice. Was it because Abel’s sacrifice was more substantial than Cain’s? Yes, I think that’s part of it. It says clearly in Genesis that Abel offered up “the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions” (4:4). That’s significant in comparison to Cain. 

But the real issue is the issue of the heart. Abel offered up a gift in faith. God must have delivered a word to them, and Cain responded in faithlessness, and Abel responded in faith. And Abel’s faith made him “commended as righteous” before God. 

And notice the end of verse 4. 

… God commending [Abel] by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.

In other words, imitate Abel’s faith. Abel is the prototype of our saving faith. Cain is the foil. Cain rejected God’s Word. He rejected God’s correction. And he rejected God’s warning. His lack of faith was demonstrated in his actions.   

And here’s another OT saint for us to emulate. His name is Enoch. 

b. Enoch

Interestingly there’s almost as much written about Enoch in the NT as there is in the OT. In the OT, there’s just a few statements in the famous genealogy of Genesis 5. “When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him” (5:21:24). But here’s what’s significant about Enoch. His age wasn’t that significant. People lived longer than him during that time. His fathering Methuselah wasn’t that significant. Everyone else in Genesis 5 fathered someone else. 

What’s significant about Enoch… what makes him special is that he didn’t die. Because death is inescapable in that era. This is after the fall in Genesis 3 and death is demonstrating its power. That’s the refrain throughout that chapter. And he died… and he died… and he died. Adam died. Seth died. Enosh died, etc. Everyone died. That’s the pattern. But Enoch breaks the pattern. He breaks the rhythm of the genealogy. He didn’t die. He just “was not.”

The author of Hebrews says it this way, 

5 By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. 

Why did God just take him? What was the evidence of Enoch’s faith? Well, the author of Hebrews tells us. He says…

Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God. 6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

The Hebrew way of describing Enoch’s faith is by stating “Enoch walked with God.” In his OT commentary, Kenneth Mathews describes it this way, “‘Walked with God’ is metaphorical and indicates that Enoch had a lifestyle characterized by his devotion to God. The sense of ‘walk’ (hālak) in its verbal stem indicates a communion or intimacy with God.” This was said later of Noah. He walked with God. It was said of Abraham much later. He walked with God. The Israelites later were encouraged to walk with God (Lev 26:12; Deut 23:14). The book of Psalms later spoke of the joy and prosperity associated with walking with God (Pss 56:13; 116:9). Enoch’s walking with God was evidence of his profound faith.

By the way, just a quick clarification. Enoch walking with God didn’t mean that he removed himself from society and lived like a monk in the desert somewhere. According to Jude, Enoch was a preacher of righteousness (Jude 14). He didn’t try to escape society, he tried to reform it. And it’s not like Enoch’s walking with God was a flash in the pan. Genesis says that Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah for 300 years and had other sons and daughters. How many of you feel like your walk with God got a serious upgrade after you had children? That’s what happened to Enoch. Enoch walked with God for 300 years! And then God was like, “Enoch, just get up here. I’m bringing you into my presence.” 

What Enoch shows us in the post-Fall world is that even in a world surrounded by sin, even with the barriers between us and God that were erected after Adam and Eve’s sin, we can still have a meaningful, loving, personal, intimate relationship with God. We can still have a life-changing faith! 

And you know what? We have some advantages over and above Enoch. You know why? Because we have Christ; we live on this side of the cross. And we have the Holy Spirit residing within us. And besides that we have God’s Word. Everything that God communicated to Enoch came either by oral tradition passed down from Adam and Eve or by direct communication. But we have God’s Word right here. And we have the Holy Spirit inside us. 

And we live on this side of the cross, knowing in detail what Christ has done for us. Enoch and all the rest of the OT saints only had a misty notion of what was to come with the promise of a serpent-slayer. We know that serpent-slayer by name. His name is Jesus. And he has promised to return. So, like Enoch, we can walk with God. And like Enoch, we can have faith in his future promises. 

6 And without faith it is impossible to please [God], for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. 

Finally, here’s a third OT saint for us to emulate. 

c. Noah

Noah, of course, lived in an exceedingly wicked time when God decided to wipe out all humanity from the face of the earth other than Noah and his small family (see Gen 6:1-22). Noah was a righteous and obedient man. The prophet Ezekiel called him righteous (14:14). The Apostle Peter called Noah a preacher of righteousness, who was saved in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation (1 Pet 3:20; Pet 2:5). But Noah’s righteousness was born of faith not the other way around. 

The author of Hebrews says it this way:

7 By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, 

See the example there. He believed God’s word not his own eyes. He was the opposite of Thomas in John 20. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. That’s Noah. 

7 By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. 

Righteousness by faith? That sounds like Paul in the book of Romans! That sounds like something that Paul would say about Abraham! He does do that in Romans, and the author of Hebrews is going to talk about Abraham next in verse 8. But we need to know that Abraham wasn’t the only person reckoned as righteous before the Lord by faith. Noah’s faith was credited to him as righteousness. Enoch’s faith, his “walking with God,” was credited to him as righteousness. Abel’s faith was credited to him as righteousness. This is the way of salvation in both the OT and NT. We are saved by faith. 

Habakkuk said it this way, “the righteous shall live by faith” (2:4). Look, let me connect the dots for you, church. Your righteous status before God isn’t based upon your works. It’s not based upon what you’ve done. It’s based on faith. The OT saints had faith in God’s Word. They were saved by that faith. You have faith in God’s Word too. And whereas their faith in God’s Word anticipated a coming Messiah, your faith accepts the Messiah who has come and died for your sins. Your faith looks back, and it looks forward. It looks back at what Christ has done. And it looks forward to your hope in the future return of Christ. Because faith is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Right? That’s our faith!  

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I’ll close with this. Throughout my life there have been about ten songs that have radically impacted my life and helped shape me into the man that I am today. And probably six of those ten songs were written by a musician named Rich Mullins, who died when I was nineteen years old. Some of his songs I still can’t sing without weeping because they were so foundational to my faith formation as a kid. 

And probably at the top of that list of ten songs is a song called “Creed,” which is really nothing more than Mullins’ recapitulation of the Apostles’ Creed.

But the refrain that impacts me so powerfully is the following one from that song:

And I believe what I believe,

It’s what makes me what I am

I did not make it, no it is making me

It is the very truth of God 

and not the invention of any man

Along with that refrain, Mullins sings about God in that song “Creed.” He sings about Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son. He sings about the Holy Spirit. He sings about the church. He sings about Jesus’s crucifixion and the payment for sin. He sings about the resurrection, and the life that never ends. All of those components are part of the Apostles’ Creed, that we believe in. 

And I believe what I believe,

It’s what makes me what I am

I did not make it, no it is making me

It is the very truth of God 

and not the invention of any man

Listen church, Christianity is a religion of faith. It always has been. And our forefathers in the OT were saved by faith too. Without faith it is impossible to please God. And without faith it is impossible to be saved. We are saved by faith, and we walk by faith. But that faith is not some blind adherence to whatever we want to make up. It’s faith in the truth of God’s Word. It’s faith in the promises of God. It’s “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” That’s our faith.