Antediluvian Exemplars of Faith (Hebrews 11:4-7)

What is the faith to which the Bible calls us? What is Biblical faith? What is saving faith? Or does it even matter what kind of faith you have? Maybe just as long as you have some flavor of faith, is that all we need to have? These are questions which are squarely confronted in the eleventh chapter of the book of Hebrews. In particular, this chapter shows us that it matters what you believe, and it matters how you believe. It matters because, as we are told in the sixth verse, Biblical faith is the only faith that pleases God. And the reality is that God is the only one that matters when it comes to how we evaluate our faith. You may be pleased with your faith, but if God isn’t it, that’s not going to matter in the long run.

What we are going to see in the following verses is that faith believes certain things and faith does certain things. It believes certain things: it believes that God exists (6), that his promises are trustworthy and true (1), and that he is the rewarder of those who diligently seek him (6). But it also does certain things: it brings an offering to God (4), it walks with God (5), and it heeds the warnings of God’s word (7). Faith also receives certain things, one of the most important of which is the righteousness of God. Those who trust in God’s saving promises are accounted as righteous, like Noah, who was an “heir of the righteousness of God by faith” (7), and like Abel who “obtained witness that he was righteous” (4).

The key verse in this part of Hebrews 11 is, I think, verse 6: “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” Brothers and sisters, we should want, above all else, to be people who please God. The problem is that so often we end up seeking to please men instead of God. But God is really the only one for whom this matters in any ultimate sense. What does it matter if the whole world stands against you if God is for you? In fact, as the apostle Paul puts it in Romans 8, if God is for you, no one can be against you in any lasting or meaningful way (Rom. 8:31-33). So we should want to please God, not the world. We shouldn’t want to be a friend of the world, for to be a friend of the world is to be the enemy of God (Jam. 4:4).

But how do you please God? Well, Heb. 11:6 gives us a necessary condition: “without faith it is impossible to please him.” Let that word “impossible” land on you the way it ought. You cannot please God, no matter what else you do, apart from faith.

But again, at this point it is a temptation to pour into that word “faith” what we want it to mean. For some people, “faith” is just an optimistic attitude about life. For others, faith is believing in yourself, a confidence that you will be able to overcome whatever obstacles life puts in your way. And then there are those who think that faith is just some vague spiritual feeling that we are dependent somehow on some force or power outside of us.

That is not what we see here, however. That is not the faith that pleases God. The fundamental and primary feature is that Biblical faith is centered on God, not on ourselves. Moreover, Biblical faith takes God at his word. In other words, there is a God-centeredness about the kind of faith that is celebrated in the Scriptures that sets it apart from its imitators. We will see this as we look together at the first three examples here in the Faith Hall of Fame: Abel, Enoch, and Noah. What we will see in these three men is that faith secures God’s approval, it seeks God’s fellowship, and it submits to God’s word.

As we look at the lives of these men and the faith they displayed, my prayer is that we will be encouraged to imitate their example. For that is the purpose of this chapter, isn’t it? Let us beware of thinking that

Biblical figures are superheroes that we can admire but not imitate. They are not. They are like Elijah, who the apostle James tells us “was a man subject to like passions as we are” – in other words, he was just like us (Jam. 5:17). And just as the example of prayer in the life of Elijah was meant to be an encouragement to pray, so the life of faith here exhibited through Abel, Enoch, and Noah, is meant to be an encouragement to live a life of faith just like they did.

Abel: faith securing God’s approval (4)

In verse 4, we read, “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh.” This verse is a commentary on the history of Abel recorded in Genesis 4:3-5, which reads, “And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.”

There have always been two questions that people have asked of this text. First, why was Abel’s offering accepted by God when Cain’s wasn’t? And second, how did they know that God accepted Abel’s offering but not Cain’s? Starting with the second question, a tradition developed that the way the brothers knew whose offering God accepted was that fire came down out of heaven and consumed Abel’s offering while Cain’s offering was left as it was. Of course, the Biblical record doesn’t say this, so it’s speculation, although God did do this very thing at the tabernacle, Solomon’s temple, and with Elijah’s sacrifice on the top of Mount Carmel. Perhaps that’s where the tradition came from, but we have to be content to simply say that the text doesn’t say. God did communicate to both of them in some way, however, and that’s apparently all we need to know.

As for the first question, it has long been conjectured that God accepted Abel’s sacrifice because it came from the flock, whereas Cain’s was from the fruit of the ground. The problem with this interpretation, however, is that in the Law of Moses God required food offerings as well as animal sacrifices. Again, we could speculate that Abel understood the need for a sin offering and Cain did not, and that’s what set them apart, but again we would just be guessing. However, we really don’t need to guess as to why God accepted Abel’s offering and not Cain’s. Our text tells us, doesn’t it? “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.” What set the two brothers apart was not so much what they offered but how they offered it. Abel offered his in faith. Cain offered his with a wicked heart: “Cain . . . was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous” (1 Jn. 3:12).

Faith is what set them apart. Now of course, this means that faith is more than a bare belief that God exists. We see from verse 6 that this is obviously necessary, but the faith that secures God’s approval is not a bare notion that God exists. Saving faith is more than not being an atheist. Devils know that God exist too, and they tremble (Jam. 2:19). In fact, Cain not only knew God existed, he talked with God!

Not only so, but Cain’s offering also shows that saving faith – I’m using this phrase to distinguish it from a dead and useless faith as James describes in his epistle (Jam. 2) – is more than just religious service. Cain was a religious man. Cain made an offering to God. But he was rejected, and Abel was accepted.

So what did Abel have that Cain didn’t? What was it that made Abel a man of faith and Cain not a man of faith? To answer that question, we have to understand what is at the essence of faith. It is this: it is to put your trust in God, rather than in yourself. Trust is at the heart of true Biblical faith. I like to illustrate this sometimes with John 2:23-25, where the gospel tells us that many people believed in the name of Jesus when they saw his miracles, but that Jesus “did not commit himself unto them.” To “commit” in verse 24 is the same verb as “believe” in verse 23. Some translations have it as “entrust.” That’s what it means to have faith in God: it means to commit oneself whole and entire to God and to his mercy and grace. It means to look outside of myself for salvation and hope and to God and his grace alone.

Cain didn’t have faith, which means that he must have believed at some fundamental level that he didn’t need God. Yes, he would offer something to him to get him off his back, but he didn’t really believe that God was the great need of his soul. The Bible makes it plain that he was a wicked man, that he murdered his brother because he couldn’t stand to be around a righteous man. He didn’t want to submit his life to God. He wanted to be his own God. He didn’t have faith.

What was the outcome? What is the author of Hebrews holding out for us as the incentive to live lives of faith? It is this: Abel was accepted by God; Abel received God’s approval. You see it in the words: “more excellent sacrifice.” It was more excellent, not because of anything in the sacrifice itself, but because this is what God thought of it. It’s God’s opinion, not ours, that makes a religion true or false. You also see it in the words, “by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying to his gifts.” Who is the witness here? It is God. Who is the one testifying to Abel’s gifts? It is God. And in fact the word “witness” and the verb “testifying” both carry the connotation of divine approval. The ESV translates it like this: “he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts.” It is by faith that Abel obtained God’s approval when Cain did not.

Of course, every now and then you will hear someone say that they don’t care what God thinks. They don’t care whether they have his approval or not. Well, it is easy enough to say that now. But there is coming a day when there are going to be a lot of people who realize too late that it’s only what God thinks that ultimately and eternally matters. God’s approval matters. God’s commendation matters. Nothing else does in the final analysis. It doesn’t matter how many ribbons you have on your wall, how many trophies, or how high you are in the company. What matters is God’s approval. Are we pleasing him? The only people who please him are those who entrust themselves to the God who reveals himself in the Bible, as the Triune God: Father, Son, and Spirit. It means approaching him, not on the basis of the spoiled fruits of your past and present or on the unripe fruits of a promised future, but on the basis of his grace alone through Jesus Christ. It means laying down your quest to be Lord of your life and surrendering that to Christ.

By the way, note the last words of verse 4; they are important: “and by it he being dead yet speaketh.” God approved of Abel, but Cain didn’t. He killed his brother. Just because God loves you doesn’t mean the world will also love you. In fact, the Bible teaches that if God loves you and you love God, it is almost certain that the world will hate you. Our Lord put it this way to his disciples: “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (Jn. 15:18-19). It follows that there are not always happy endings in this world even for those who live by faith. But Cain’s revenge was not the end of the story. Abel to this stay speaks to us and encourages us to live by faith. And the reason you want to listen to his words is because his physical death was not the end of his story. Abel lives on in glory and in the presence of God. We need to remember that. This is, in fact, a very important aspect to our next character, Enoch.

Enoch: faith seeking God’s fellowship (5)

In the next verse, we read: “By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.”

Enoch shows up in Genesis 5, in the midst of a long list of names in a genealogy starting with Adam and going on to Noah. In verses 21-25 we read this: “And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah: and Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters: and all the years of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years: and Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.” The only other place in Scripture that we can glean more information about this mysterious man is in Jude, where we read, “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these [false prophets], saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him” (14-15).

It is interesting to note that our author says that Enoch pleased God; the Genesis text says that he walked with God. Of course, one implies the other: you cannot walk with God if you do not please him – he wouldn’t allow it! What we learn from this is that Enoch was a godly man – he clearly hated ungodliness – who walked with God and sought fellowship with God. The words “walked with God” are exactly the words used to describe Noah in contradistinction from the world of the ungodly taken away by the flood: “Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God” (Gen. 6:9).

This is the impact of a life of faith. Do you want to know what a life of faith looks like? It is the kind of life that walks with God, that seeks communion with him, that knows what it means to have fellowship with God. And that means it is a life that seeks holiness, that hungers and thirsts after righteousness. For you cannot have fellowship with God in any meaningful sense apart from holiness. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Mt. 5:8). This is what the apostle John teaches us in the first chapter of his first epistle: “That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full. This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 Jn. 1:3-5). John goes from inviting his readers to have fellowship with God to telling them that God is light and has no fellowship with darkness. He goes on to say, “If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (6-7).

Those who live lives of faith, who walk with God and please God show that they are the children of God. Of course, I am not saying that we commend ourselves to God on the basis of our works. That is not possible. Any good works are the result of the grace of God in our lives (Eph. 2:10) and God gets the credit, not us. If we are holy, it is because of the sanctifying work of the Spirit of God who is communicated to us on the basis of the redemptive work of Christ for us. The one who glories, let him glory in the Lord.

But good works are evidence of grace. And it separates the people of God from the world. In the case of Enoch, God did something that set him apart from literally everyone else. For we are told that God translated him: God took him out of this world and into the next without death intervening. This is the explanation of our text: “Enoch was translated that he should not see death.” Enoch is one of only two people that Scripture tells us did not see death. The other guy was Elijah, who was taken up into heaven in a chariot of fire. What makes this especially remarkable in terms of Enoch is that in the fifth chapter of Genesis, every other person listed there is also said to have died. “And he died” is a recurring phrase in Genesis 5: with the exception of Enoch.

What was God doing? What was being communicated to us in Enoch’s translation? Well, I think one of the things being communicated to us is the significance of walking with God. Enoch is also the only one in this list of whom it is said that he walked with God (with the exception of Noah, of whom it is recorded in the next chapter). And the author of Hebrews connects this to faith. By faith Enoch walked with God. And God is giving us a preview, so to speak, of the future resurrection in the translation of Enoch. What Enoch experienced is what all God’s people will experience when Christ returns: “Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:17). Those who trust in God are those who will be resurrected in the last day. Our Lord put it this way: “Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die” (Jn. 11:25-26). In other words, those who by faith look to Christ will experience resurrection life, which is what Enoch was given without having to experience death.

Noah: faith submitting to God’s word (7)

In verse 7, we read, “By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.”

Here we note the connection between the description of Noah’s faith and the definition given in verse 1: “Faith is . . . the evidence of things not seen.” Thus it was by faith that Noah was “warned of God of things not seen as yet,” namely, the flood. Noah believed God’s word, seen by his being “moved with fear” so that he “prepared an ark to the saving of his house.” In doing so, he “condemned the world,” who obviously did not believe that this would happen. The ungodly refused to believe that God was going to destroy the world with a flood. Nothing had ever happened like that before; I’m sure they mocked Noah the entire time he was building the ark. Why spend so much time preparing for something that was not going to happen? It sounds a lot like the mockery of the wicked today. They mock us for living in light of eternity. The apostle Peter himself draws the same connection:

Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless. (2 Pet. 3:3-14)

I want you to note in particular the connection that Peter makes between the word of the Lord spoken to Noah and the word of the Lord spoken to us: it is the same word (see verse 7). And just as Noah believed and submitted to God’s word, so it befits us to believe and submit to God’s word. At the same time, we can expect the world to mock us for believing it. They will say there is no evidence that a final judgment is going to happen; that it is all just wishful thinking, pie-in-the-sky type stuff. But the reason for believing it is that it is the word of God. It doesn’t matter if what God tells us is going to happen has never happened before. God does not do things according to statistics. We believe it because God said it. His word is faithful and true and sure.

And though Noah I’m sure had many good reasons for believing God’s word, we have even more. We look back on the flood, on the judgment against Sodom and Gomorrah, on the judgment against Jerusalem. We also look back on all the promises of God that he has fulfilled. Most of all, we look back on the resurrection of our Lord. We are not left with a paucity of reasons to believe but with a panoply of reasons to believe.

That’s what faith does. It believes and submits to the word of God. Not an empty, intellectual believing that has no effect upon the life, but a living faith that transforms the life.

One more thing: I want you to notice that phrase, that Noah “became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.” As one commentator put it, this is almost Pauline and strikes a note that that apostle sounds again and again in his epistles. Noah received the righteousness of God by faith; so do we. We inherit God’s righteousness; it is given to us by grace so that the only appropriate way to receive it is by the open hand of faith. Would you be right with God? Well, you don’t become right with God by being good enough. Now of course we ought to live righteous and holy lives, but that is not the point here. We are not justified before God by our righteousness, but solely by the righteousness of Christ, a righteousness which he performed and purchased on our behalf through his perfect life and sacrificial death, and which he gives to all who trust in him. “Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD” (Gen. 6:6), and that grace was communicated to him through faith on the basis of the future work of Christ. It is the same way for all of us.

What is it that compels faith to act in these ways?

You may have noticed that although I said that verse 6 was the key and central verse, I still haven’t come to it to deal with it in depth yet. That is because it seems to me to stand behind the faith of these three men (and including everyone else mentioned in this chapter), and so I wanted to wait until we had dealt with all three so we could see how the realty spoken of in verse 6 motivated the faith and faithfulness of

Abel and Enoch and Noah. What was it exactly that motivated Abel to seek God’s approval, even when it cost him his life? What motivated Enoch to seek God’s fellowship in a world that was increasing alienated from him and hostile to him? What motivated Noah to endure the reproach of sinners against himself as he prepared an ark for the saving of his house? Verse 6 gives the answer.

Verse 6 flows from verse 5, of course, which says that Enoch had this testimony that he pleased God. Then we read, “But without faith it is impossible to please him, for he that cometh to God must believe that he is and that he is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” What we see from this verse is that Biblical faith produces a life rooted in the conviction that God is our incomparably great reward.

It’s important that we see that faith is not about seeking God as a means to an end. We don’t seek God so that we can get some reward from him. We seek God for God’s sake. If we read the verse carefully, we can see that. For whom or what does faith come to? It comes to God. God is not the rewarder of those who seek him for a reward outside of himself, but he is the rewarder of those who seek him diligently. Faith sees God as its shield and its exceeding great reward (Gen. 15:1). Faith speaks in the language of the psalmist: “Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever” (Ps. 73:25-26).

And so you can see why Abel was willing to risk his life for the sake of seeking God’s approval. God was more precious to him than life itself. As Paul would say many years later: “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21). And you can see why Enoch sought the fellowship of God. For if God is your reward, if you treasure him above all things – and that is the only way to properly honor him – then you will desire to walk with him more than all the praise and riches and power that this world can offer. And you can see why Noah would heed God’s words, despite the ridicule and the persecution. If God is your treasure, his words will be your treasure too. In fact, you can tell just how much one treasures God by how much they treasure his word. You see this over and over again in the 119th Psalm. When you see that God is blessed you will want to learn his statutes (Ps. 119:8). When he is your portion, you will keep his words (Ps. 119:57). “The law of thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold and silver” (Ps. 119:72).

God is pleased – indeed, he cannot be pleased in any other way – when we find him to be our reward and our treasure. Because that is what he is. God is not a cosmic killjoy. He is not out there to destroy true joy but to uproot out of our hearts false pleasures that kill us in the end. The world can give you a high; there is no doubt about that. But that high will addict you and enslave you and will finally destroy you. On the other hand, “The blessing of the LORD maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it” (Prov. 10:22). And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. . .. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (Jn. 8:32, 36). There is everlasting joy and eternal pleasures at God’s right hand (Ps. 16:11).

So brothers and sisters, the fight of faith is a fight for joy. It is a fight for the true and better and lasting reward. Though we are called to deny ourselves, self-denial is not ultimate. We are simply denying ourselves lesser and destructive pleasures for the sake of better and life-giving and eternal pleasures. May we therefore imitate these examples of faith, and like them seek God for his approval, his fellowship, and his word.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for (Hebrews 11:1-3)

This chapter is well-known and well-beloved by Christians. It has been called the “Faith Hall of Fame,” for it is filled with example after example of those who lived “by faith.” In fact, the word faith occurs 24 times in this one chapter alone. Now the question is: how does this fit into the overall narrative? Why spend so much time on these examples of faith and faithfulness?

To understand the significance and function of this chapter in the book of Hebrews, let us begin by remembering where we are at in the development of the argument of the epistle. We have argued that in 1:1-10:18, the author is developing the main theme of the epistle, that Christ is better: better than the angels, Moses, Joshua, Aaron, and the Old Covenant along with the entire Levitical sacrificial system. He is doing this because his audience had been tempted to go back to a Christless Judaism. His argument is essentially this: you are going back to the shadows, going back to the types, and which all pointed to Christ. By abandoning Jesus, you are actually in a worse position than the OT saints, who by their faith in the Promised One had what essentially was a gospel faith. By consciously rejecting the reality to which the shadows pointed, these folks wouldn’t even have that.

And along the way he is warning them that this change would not be a slight tweak in their theology, but one which demonstrated that they were not saved to begin with. This is a serious thing, not a mere difference in theological perspective. There is no salvation for those who reject the salvation which is in Christ alone.

But now that he has finished the burden of his argument for the supremacy of Christ’s person (as the only begotten Son of God) and the sufficiency of Christ’s redemptive work (as the only true high priest who brings us into God’s presence), he is now urging them to apply these realities to their lives. This is what he begins to do in 10:19, with the words, “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus.” And he continues to press the application up to the end of this epistle in chapter 13.

However, here’s the problem: doctrine is never applied in a vacuum. We are not called to believe merely on an intellectual level. A faith that does not make its way into the particularities of our lives is not a real faith. A faith that just says, “Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful for the body; what doth it profit?” (Jam. 2:16). Indeed, it does not; it is a devil’s faith and no more (Jam. 2:19). But the faith we are called to exercise is faith in a world that does not share our faith (2 Thess. 3:2). It is a world that will use persecution or pleasure to woo the Christian away from Christ. It is a world that is fallen and where things do not always work out the way we would like them to. It is a world in which we are exposed to a million things that can stretch and weaken and threaten our faith: cancer and viruses and depression and loneliness and rejection and wayward children and chronic pain and loss and abandonment and joblessness and financial woes and many other things too numerous to list. The question is, how do you live by faith in those kinds of situations? How do you live by faith when it’s not easy to live by faith?

As we noted last time, these Hebrew Christians were not living in the best of circumstances. They had been persecuted for their faith. They had endured the loss of property, reputation, and freedom. And apparently things were still hard because they were thinking about abandoning the Christian faith, most likely because identifying with Christ brought with it all kinds of problems.

So how do you motivate people in this condition to stay true to the faith? Well, we’ve noted several methods the author has used to do this up to his point, including warning them of the danger of apostasy on the one hand, and holding up the promises of God before them on the other. But another way to do this is by helping them to see that they are not alone. They needed to see that what can seem like the long and lonely life of faith to which they were called is something to which God’s people have been called in every age. And they needed to see that they weren’t the first to have to go through hard times in living out their faith in Christ. In other words, they needed a “great cloud of witnesses” to help cheer them on (Heb. 12:1), and that’s exactly what he gives them in this chapter.

We too need this. Here we come to the importance, and indeed the necessity of, Biblical history. That’s what this chapter is: it is an inventory of people and events in Biblical history. And I think it is important before going further to consider how important this is for us. And not just Biblical history, but the history of God’s people in every age. In writing this chapter, our author also demonstrates the importance of the history of God’s people in every age, including that of the church since the book of Acts. In particular, I want us to consider three things. First, I want to look at the importance of church history for the people of God. Second, the importance of people in the plan of God. Third, the importance of faith in the pursuit of God.

The importance of church history for the people of God

The history of the church is so important for many reasons. Let me give you four reasons, though this is certainly not an exhaustive list. First of all, it helps us to keep things in perspective. It helps us to see that we’re not the first to have gone through hard times, and that in fact others have been through much worse than we have. It keeps us from the tyranny of the present. It keeps us from believing that the church has never been worse than it is right now. In fact it has, and the reality is that God has brought the church through many, many times that were far more serious (both in terms of doctrinal error as well as persecution) than anything we have seen. And the church still lives and thrives.

Church history also helps us to stay balanced in terms of doctrine and practice. One of the things you will notice is that modern heretics are almost always resurrecting an ancient heresy, although usually in a way more acceptable to their modern audience. C. S. Lewis once said that for every present-day author you read, you should read three other authors from an older generation. And his reason was that if we only read from our generation, we will never get past the blind spots of our times. Older generations can help you think from a different point of view; they didn’t share our blind spots, even though they certainly had their own. However, the point is that it is usually easier to spot their blind spots than it is ours, and they can help us to see ours.

There is another advantage to reading the history of the church, especially when you read broadly. And that is, it will help you keep from becoming a theological or a denominational snob. It will help you to see how God has worked through believers in different traditions and places and times. It will widen your understanding of the church in healthy ways. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t be careful and circumspect in our definition of what constitutes faithfulness to Christ and his word and worship. But sometimes I think we draw the circle around ourselves too tightly, and like Elijah are wont to think we are the only ones left in this world, when in reality God has seven thousand knees (previously unknown to us) who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal. The history of the church – that is, of the whole church – can help to correct this misperception and help us to see those seven thousand knees that have not bowed the knee to the false gods of ours or past ages.

But perhaps the most important reason that we should read church history is that it is flat out enjoyable and courage-building and hope-inspiring. Martyn Lloyd-Jones used to say that when he felt spiritually dull, he would go to the eighteenth century. By that he meant the history of the great revivals in America and England during that time. He found them to be refreshing and invigorating, and he said that apart from theology, church history was the important important thing a preacher should read. But don’t think that this just applies to preachers: we can all benefit in this way from the reading of the history of the church.

Biographies of godly men and women can help us to realize that we have settled for much less than what is possible for those who put their faith in Christ. Recently, Sarah and I read the biography of Amy Carmichael by Iain Murray. I haven’t been more convicted and inspired in a long time. But there are so many, and like the author of Hebrews we have to say, “And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me” to speak of all the men and women of faith who have made a definite mark upon my own heart and soul for good. I remember when I got to the end of Arnold Dalimore’s biography on George Whitefield, I wept. It created in me such a hunger and a thirst for the outpouring of the Spirit as he experienced in his own ministry and life. I am so thankful for the impact of the biographies of John Calvin and Martin Luther and Martyn Lloyd-Jones and William Carey and Charles Spurgeon and many others have had upon my life.

So can I encourage you to take up a good biography or a good history of the church, and read? If you need recommendations, I am ready to help! Of course, the very first place to start is simply to know Biblical history and the history of the men and women of the Bible. Read your Bibles! Know its history. There is a reason why the Bible is not just a series of doctrinal books. It is full of the history of God’s acts through his people, both Old and New Testament. We are meant to know the doctrines, yes; but we are also meant to know its history, too. In some ways, doctrine is nothing more or less than God’s interpretation of Biblical history. So read it! And of course, one of the best places to start is with this chapter, Hebrews 11.

The importance of people in the plan of God

There is another very important thing that chapters like this can teach us, and that is the role that individuals play in God’s plan for the church. People are important to God. He doesn’t do his work on earth apart from us; he does it through us. Not that he needs us, but because he wants to bless us in allowing us to be “laborers together with God,” as Paul put it to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 3:9). So when we look through the verses of this chapter as it unfolds, what we see is a list of people. God does not work out his plan for the church in history apart from real people who live in real places and do real things. What this means is that as God’s people, our lives are never insignificant. Now that doesn’t mean the world will recognize you. You probably won’t get a movie made about you, or books written to celebrate your life. You probably won’t be given any rewards by the important people in our culture. But that doesn’t matter. Noah was mocked by his generation, but they perished and Noah’s name endures. My friends, let’s not go for the praise of this world, but let us live for the kingdom of God, let us seek first his kingdom, for in this way we really make our lives matter.

Another thing to notice about the people who are listed is the fact that while some of the names are unsurprising, others are very surprising. I think this may be like a preview of heaven: we may not be surprised at some folks who are there, very surprised that others are there, and maybe the most surprised about some who aren’t. Here in Hebrews 11, Samson is listed, along with Rahab (the harlot) and Gideon and Barak, none of whom were exceptionally great role models, to say the least. All of them made tragic choices in their lives, and yet here they are, listed alongside the great examples of men of God like Abraham and Moses and David. It tells us that they are not listed because they had the best record or because they made the fewest mistakes.

Nor again are they listed for the relative impact they made. Enoch, for example, has very little written about him in the Biblical record. Neither does Abel; the only two things we really know about him is that his sacrifice to God was accepted and that he was killed by Cain his brother. All this begs the question: why put them here, then? What kind of individual is the author of Hebrews wanting to set before us? And here we get to what’s at the heart of this chapter.

The importance of faith for the pursuit of God

The thing that all these people here in Hebrews 11 have in common is faith. God does his work through people of faith. But more than that, the reason that these folks are on display is not only because they had faith, but because of what faith is and does. The author of Hebrews wants his readers (and us) to see what kind of life faith inspires because he is calling us to that kind of life. He wants us to endure, he doesn’t want us to be among those who fall away to perdition, but to be among those who believe to the saving of the soul (10:38-39). So how do you endure? You endure by faith.

And it’s important for us to see how faith does this. In other words, we not only need to see that the Bible says that faith is necessary, but also how the Bible says that faith works. That is what Hebrews 11 is all about. It’s about how faith enabled generations of godly men and women through hard times and trials. Sometimes you will hear the phrase “perseverance in the faith.” Well, we might as well say, “perseverance through the faith,” because it is by faith that we endure to the end.

But how does this work? To answer that question, let’s turn directly now to the first three verses of Hebrews 11. In these verses, which function as an introduction to the rest of the chapter, we see three things. We see that faith looks to the promises of God (1), that faith looks to the approval of God (2), and that faith looks to the power of God (3).

Faith looks to the promises of God

In verse 1, we read, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Though this is not meant to give an exhaustive definition of faith, it does say something very important about it. In this verse, the author of Hebrews is really saying the same thing twice. “Substance” is parallel to “evidence” and “things hoped for” is parallel to “things not seen.”

Let’s start with “things hoped for” and “things not seen.” These two phrases point to the fact that faith is future focused. The apostle Paul makes a similar point about hope in his letter to the Romans. There, he says that “hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we will patience wait for it” (Rom. 8:24-25). Hope is centered on the unseen, but not unseen in the sense of fairy tale or something that just doesn’t exist. Rather, the unseen is something that you must wait for – it is real, but it is future. That’s also the point of Heb. 11:1. The faith that God is calling us to looks to that for which you must wait.

In other words, faith is centered on the promises of God. The promises of God point us to the future fulfillment of his redemptive promises. Now, a big point here in Hebrews 11 is that the people here were not even in as good a position as we are. They all lived before the first coming of Christ. They had not yet seen the fulfillment of God’s promise in terms of the one who would come and bruise the serpent’s head by his death upon a cross. They were not in the position of knowing that Christ had not only come but also had risen from the dead. Think about Abraham, for example. He lived over four hundred years before the Exodus. Most of the miracles in the Bible occurred long after he lived. And yet when God made a promise to Abraham, he believed it. The things God promised to him were all unseen. It is well for us to consider that many of the things God promised to Abraham we have seen. Yes, there are still unfulfilled promises. We await the resurrection. We await the Final Judgment. We await the New Heavens and New Earth. And yet we are on the other side of the fulfillment of so many of God’s promises. Should we not also have faith? Do we not have even more reason to believe?

Then consider the words “substance” and “evidence.” What is communicated by these words? Well, they tell us how faith connects us to the promises of God. One false idea we need to dispel here at the outset is that faith is what makes God’s promises real. We must not say that because faith does not create spiritual reality. It is not what gives “substance” to the promises of God in the sense of bringing them into being.

Rather, the meanings of these words point us to the confidence that we have in the promises of God. The point is not that faith brings the promises of God into being, but that faith rests upon the faithfulness of God in bringing his promises to pass. In fact, the word “substance” is used several times in the New Testament for confidence and assurance. In 2 Cor. 9:4, it is used to translate the phrase “confident boasting.” In 2 Cor. 11:17, it is the word “confidence” alongside another word for “boasting.” In Heb. 3:14, it again translates the words “confidence.” So you see that is most likely the meaning here. Many other translations use the word “assurance,” which really comes to the same thing.

The word for “evidence” has a similar meaning. In the NT, it is used only here. The ESV translates this word as “conviction.” Faith looks at God’s word, at God’s promises, and is utterly convinced that God will bring his word to its appointed fulfillment. Philip Edgcumbe Hughes writes that this “is not a static emotion of complacency but something lively and active, not just a state of immovable dogmatism but a vital certainty which impels the believer to stretch out his hand, as it were, and lay hold of those realities on which his hope is fixed and which, though unseen, are already his in Christ.”i

Faith, in other words, means taking God at his word, and in particular his promises. It means banking on the faithfulness of God for our future. And it is an evidence of the new birth which gives us this faith that we do so. For the apostle John writes, “They [the false prophets] are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error” (1 Jn. 4:5-6).

It is important for us to see that the reason why people do not believe God’s word is not because there aren’t good reasons to do so. The reason why they don’t is because they don’t want to relinquish control of their own lives. To put your future into the hands of God, which is what faith does, means giving up control over your future. And in our sinfulness, we don’t want to do that. We want to say, at the end of the day, that we are the masters of our fate and the captains of our souls. And that is what is antithetical to faith. I want you to see that: it is not that people don’t believe because they have higher standards for the evidence required to believe. It’s that they will refuse any evidence that points in the direction of God’s right to rule over our lives. Faith, on the other hand, is willing to let God be God, and to put our souls and our futures entirely into his good and wise and holy and sovereign hands. Faith is the assurance that God will bring his hoped for promises to pass; it is the conviction that his yet-unfulfilled and yet- unseen promises will one day be completely fulfilled and truly seen.

Faith looks to the approval of God.

In the next verse, the author points us to this very important dimension of faith: “For by it the elders obtained a good report” (2). This is an example of what has been called a divine passive. In other words, it is understood that the one who gives the “good report” is God. The one who witnessed with favor the deeds of the elders is God. That is the point here, and it is taken up several times in the following verses. It is in this sense that Abel “obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts” (4), that Enoch “had this testimony, that he pleased God” (5), and of all the people of faith mentioned in this chapter, who “obtained a good report through faith” (39).

Faith has a certain focus. It is not focused only on the present, but on the future, which is the point of verse 1. But it is also focused on God and his approval instead of men and their approval, which is the point of this verse. In fact, our Lord himself put it this way to the Pharisees of his day: “How can ye believe, which receive honor one of another, and seek not the honor that cometh from God only?” (Jn. 5:44). You can either seek man’s approval or God’s approval, but you cannot seek both. As the apostle Paul put it, “if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ” (Gal. 1:10).

This is important because the life that faith calls us to is not popular with the world. We noted last time that these Hebrew believers had become a “gazingstock,” held up to mockery and reproach (Heb. 10:33). Christians have all along had to wrestle with misunderstandings from a hostile culture, even in times when our religion was more acceptable. For when the Christian religion was more acceptable, it was always a more formal version of it, rather than the living faith that God calls us to live out. Believers in Christ do not therefore look to this world for acceptance, but from God who promises to reward those who trust in him with everlasting life.

How much better it is to do this anyway, for how fickle is the opinion of men! They will often only grant you their approval so long as it is in their benefit to do so. But God is not like that. He does not turn his back on his people. Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ (Rom. 8:35). His own Son died for us when we were his enemies (Rom. 5:9-10), so we can be sure that, having reconciled us to himself, he will never stop loving and caring for his people.

Faith looks to the power of God (3).

Finally, in verse 3, we read, “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” We should connect this back to verse 1 and to the “things unseen” mentioned there. But we should also connect this to Romans 1:20, which says that “the invisible things of him [God] from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.”

So note that the connection between faith and the creation of the world is not meant to communicate a sort of blind faith, for that is the very opposite conclusion that Romans 1:20 is meant to lead to. In Romans, the apostle Paul is saying that there is plenty of evidence from the physical world pointing to God’s existence and power, so that people are without excuse when they reject it. Hence, we are not meant to take Heb. 11:3 as if it were saying, “Believe that God created the world, no matter what the evidence (scientific or otherwise) says.” Rather, it is pointing to the fact that the power which created the world is a power we can’t see with our physical eyes. (Also there is the obvious fact that no one was around when the world was created, and being a one-time event lies outside the realm of testable science.) God’s word is not a physical, material thing, but it is the reality which lies behind all physical and material things. “By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth” (Ps. 33:6), a reality testified to by the first chapter of Genesis and the repeated phrase, “And God said” (Gen. 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 22, 24, 26, 29).

We therefore take this on faith because God’s word is not a visible thing. Faith is that by which we see the unseen (Heb.11:1). But that is not the same thing as saying that faith is unreasonable. Faith in the power of God’s word is the most reasonable response to the fact of the universe. The fact that our universe is clearly not self-existent, that it had a definite beginning, and that the life that is here can only be properly explained by an intelligent designer, point us to the fact that someone outside our universe must be responsible for its existence and its continuance.

But note the principle here: it is the unseen that explains the seen, and it is by faith that we lay hold on this explanation. It is the unseen word of God that is the explanation for the created world of God. Just as God’s future promises are yet unseen, and by faith we lay hold of them and give them a sort of present substance, even so the word of God is invisible to us and yet by faith we are led to understand that what we see is explained by this unseen word of God.

In other words, it is by faith that we recognize that there is more to this world than the physical and material creation. We shouldn’t try to explain everything in terms of what we can see and touch. Rather, by faith we understand that there is a greater reality that gives us a better explanation to everything else, namely, the word of God. By faith we look to the unseen word of God to explain what we see. Hence in verse 3 we are given a parallel between faith and the word of God which created the world, and faith and the promise of God which defines the life to which we are called. By faith, we are not closing our minds to evidence, but opening our minds to the most satisfying and encompassing explanation to the facts of this world and our existence.

In all of this, faith lays hold of the word of God and the power of God. It is the power of God that framed the world. And it is the power of God that will bring about the fulfillment of God’s promises. Just as God’s word acted upon a world that was “without form and void” (Gen. 1:2), making it into a paradise, even so God word and power continue to act upon this fallen world, twisted and corrupted as it is now by human sin, so that one day it will once again be a paradise and a place where we will again enjoy uninterrupted and eternal fellowship with God.

How then does faith help embattled saints to persevere? It helps us because faith is focused on the promises of God. Those who believe God’s word of promise are precisely those who are assured and convicted that they are true. Faith gives present substance to the future promise of God. It reminds us that our present trials are not the final or ultimate reality. Our present sufferings will not have the final word: God will. We persevere because we believe that on the other side of affliction is the eternal kingdom of God.

Faith also helps us to persevere because faith is focused, not on man’s approval but on God’s. We aren’t living to make a splash in this world, but to please our Heavenly Father. By faith we are like Enoch and walk with God and before God. It is by faith that we live a God-centered life. Surely many of our problems are the result of living man-centered and self-centered lives. Faith turns our attention from ourselves to the only one who matters, and the only one in whom we are truly blessed, God.

Finally, faith helps us to persevere because faith focuses us upon the reality of God’s word and God’s power. It reminds us that what is seen is not the ultimate reality. The chaos that is this world will one day through the providence and salvation of our God lead to a new and eternal paradise. No matter how bad things get, nothing is outside the power of God to change.

And so we hope. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen. Our hope is not in ourselves, our wisdom or power or goodness, but in the wisdom and goodness and power of God. Those who have this hope endure. They do not draw back to perdition but believe to the saving of the soul (Heb. 10:39). Let us then be men and women of faith. And let us not be characterized as “little faiths” but as those with great faith, not in ourselves, but in God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

i P. E. Hughes, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews (Eerdmans, 1977), p. 440-441.

How heaven helps us to hold on (Hebrews 10:32-39)

Everything in this paragraph points to the last part of verse 34, and to the reality which had animated the lives of these Hebrew Christians in the past, and to which our author was calling them again: “knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance.” It is what they are called to remember (32), what they are called to cast not away (35), and that for which they are called to endure (36-37). It is a part of the future grace (to use a favorite phrase of John Piper) to which our faith is directed (38-39). It is the central thesis of the passage. It is around this reality that all the exhortations, either explicit or implicit, hang. Heaven helps us to put things in perspective, which is the burden of verses 32- 34. It strengthens and makes meaningful our confidence in Christ (35). It creates patience for the way (36-37). It inspires a faith that endures (38-39).

Note that our author keeps coming back to this. What he calls “heaven” in verse 34, he calls the “great recompense of reward” in verse 35, “the promise” in verse 36, and “the saving of the soul” in verse 39. All of these things are pointing back to this “better and an enduring substance.”

And they all tell us something very important about heaven. In particular, note those two words: better and enduring. We’ve noted throughout Hebrews that there is this running comparison throughout the letter showing that Christ is better than the angels, Moses, Joshua, the high priest, and the sacrificial system of the Levitical priesthood. But here it is heaven that is called better. Of course, it is better surely because Christ is there (cf. Phil. 1:23).

It is also called enduring. It goes without saying, that without the “better” part, the “enduring” part wouldn’t be good at all! But heaven is a place of eternal and increasing blessing and joy and happiness. When everything else has passed away, heaven will still be beautiful and glorious and breath-takingly wonderful. It will never grow old or become boring or desolate. There will always be a newness to it. It will never become a place from which you would want to leave. When I was in grad school in Texas, I knew of a guy who lived in Hawaii who desperately wanted a job at my school. At first I wondered, “Why would a guy in Hawaii want so badly to live in Texas?” I mean, I liked my town, but I couldn’t imagine why someone would want to change addresses from Hawaii to Texas! And then he explained: as great as Hawaii is, it is still a tiny island many miles away from the mainland, and eventually it wears on you. And he was far away from family and it was always a big undertaking just to visit. It underlines the fact that there is no place in this world that is like heaven. Eventually, some aspect of the fallenness of this world will catch up with you. But in heaven, the fall will be a long-forgotten memory.

In addition to this, this paragraph underlines several other important features of heaven.

Heaven is a reward (35). Now we shouldn’t take this to mean that we deserve heaven, as if heaven is given to those who merit it. Heaven is indeed a “great recompense of reward,” but not in the sense of “you earned it” (cf. Rom. 4:1-5). Nevertheless, that does not mean that we shouldn’t see heaven in terms of reward, since the Bible does this repeatedly. It refers to it in terms of the “prize of the high calling of God which is in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:14). The apostle tells Timothy as he is awaiting his death, that “there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing” (2 Tim. 4:8). Our Lord tells us in the Beatitudes, that when the saints suffer, they should “Rejoice and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you” (Mt. 5:12).

Heaven is indeed a gift of grace, but we must recognize that it is also a reward given to those who endure. We endure by grace as well, so in the end, it is just God crowning his own work. I think William Tyndale put it best, when he wrote, “All that I do and suffer is but the way to the reward, and not the deserving thereof.”i That is the way to look at it: the doing and the suffering of the Christian is the way to the reward, but not the meriting of the reward (cf. Acts 14:22). It is a reward in the sense that it follows the finishing of a life of faith, just as the crown follows the finishing of a race.

It is also called a reward in part because it is so desirable. It will be an eternally pleasing refreshment of the soul after life’s long combat with sin. It is called “rest” in Hebrews 4. It is worth enduring all that this fallen world throws our way, and with Moses, to choose “rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season: esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward” (Heb. 11:25-26).

Heaven is a promise (36). “In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began” (Tit. 1:2). In the next chapter, we read of the “heirs of promise” (Heb. 11:9) who “looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (10). Indeed, “now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city” (16). Unlike man’s promises, God’s are never characterized by deceit (heaven will be exactly what he says it will be) or by a failure to follow through (all to whom God promises heaven will get there). This means that heaven is not only a reward, but it is a sure reward.

Heaven is the place where our salvation will be finally realized. There is a real and true sense in which we can say that we have been saved (cf. Eph. 2:8). But there is also a true and real sense in which we can say that we are not yet saved (cf. Rom. 13:11). We are not yet saved in the sense of being perfected and in the presence of Christ in heaven. We are not yet glorified. This is the sense here. When we are told of them “that believe to the saving of the soul” we are meant to see this in terms of future and final salvation. One way to see this is the contrast between salvation and perdition in verse 39. In the Bible, perdition is used to refer to the end of Judas (Mt. 17:12). It is used to describe the non-elect, “vessels for destruction” in Rom. 9:22. In Phil. 3:19-20, Paul contrasts those whose end is “destruction” or perdition with those whose citizenship is in heaven. In 2 Thess. 2:3, it describes the end of the antichrist. So over and over again we see this word used in reference to final and eternal destruction. Hence, to be saved here is a reference to final and eternal salvation. Heaven is the goal of our salvation. God is bringing us to himself and that means bringing us to heaven where we will see his glory in ways that we have never yet experienced or can in this present mortal clod even imagine.

It is in light of this reality that we are called to live. There are four ways in this text that we are encouraged to respond to it.

Look at your sufferings in light of eternity (32-34).

He tells his readers to “call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were enlightened, ye endured a great fight of afflictions: partly, whilst ye were made a gazingstock both by reproaches and afflictions, and partly, whilst ye became companions of them that were so used. For ye had compassion of me in my bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance.” Here he is referring to their past, when, shortly after their conversion they had begun to endure a lot of suffering for the cause of Christ. They had suffered the loss of property and possessions. Things had been unjustly and unlawfully taken from them. And there was nothing they could do about it. Also, they had lost their reputations – they had become a gazingstock (“publicly exposed to ridicule” as translated by William Laneii). They were reproached. Like their Savior, they were despised and rejected by men. To lose your stuff is one thing, but to lose your name along with it is altogether another level of loss. But that was not all: some of them at least had suffered imprisonment.iii Think about what this means: many of them had lost their possessions, their reputations, and their freedom, at least for a time. This is not a little thing. And they had endured all this tremendous amount of pain and suffering as a result of their faith in Christ.

But note how they had endured all this: not with moaning and groaning, not with a “woe is me” attitude, not with a bitter and miserable and accusatorial spirit. With reference to themselves, we are told that they “took joyfully the spoiling of your goods”! (That seems very strange indeed!) But that is not all: with reference to others who suffered, there was this remarkable and admirable selflessness and caring, a genuine Christlikeness (the verb “had compassion” in verse 34 is the same used of Jesus in Heb. 4:15, to “be touched”) for they “became companions of them that were so used” and “had compassion” on those who were imprisoned. In doing so, they exposed themselves to further persecution and ridicule.

Contrast this with where they were at now. Like Job, the sufferings had worn them down. They no longer had this exuberant faith, and they were now willing to consider the possibility of leaving a commitment to Jesus for the comfort and security of another religion that would not expose them to any more persecution. So the question is, how do you take people that have gotten into this condition and turn them around?

The author does this, not only by warning them of the dangers of apostasy (see previous verses), but also by reminding them how they had held up in the past and by encouraging them to keep doing what they had already done (a “You can do it!” type of motivation): “knowing that in yourselves ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance.” They needed to regain a proper perspective, in other words; they needed to look at their sufferings in light of eternity. Whatever you might lose, you can’t lose heaven. And whatever you presently have or might have in the future here on earth, heaven is infinitely better. In other words, if you belong to Christ, people can take away your earthly possessions, but no one can take away your most precious possession, which is in heaven. No one can take away your life in Christ. No one can take away your place in heaven. No one can take away the love that the Father has for you. You can only lose that which isn’t going to last anyway. But you can’t lose that which will last forever and is infinitely superior to every earthly possession.

In the same way, we need to keep this eternal perspective. It is so easy to become focused on the hard things we are going through so that we forget all that God has promised to give us, and which will certainly be ours, not because of what we have done, but because of what Christ has done for us. Whatever we might gain or lose in this world, this is always true of the child of God: they have in heaven a better and an enduring substance.

Don’t cast away your confidence in light of the reward (35)

“Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward.” The confidence here does not mean confidence in ourselves, which is what our culture is constantly preaching at us to get and maintain. Now of course, I don’t mean to imply that a total lack of self-confidence is a good thing. Not at all. But self-confidence is not what you need to endure through the rough and difficult patches of life. What we need, when the bottom seems to fall out, and when all earthly hope is gone, is confidence in God and in his only-begotten Son. Go back up a few verses, to verse 19. The word “boldness” there is the same word as “confidence” here. But you will note that our boldness to enter in and to draw near to God is not based on who we are or what we have done, but completely on the basis of “the blood of Jesus Christ.” It’s not self-confidence that is commended here, but Christ-confidence.

So this not only tells us what the basis of our confidence is, but also what our confidence is in: it is in the fact that we have access to God through Christ. We don’t want to throw away that confidence, which is what we will do if we walk away from Jesus. Jesus is the only way to the Father. He is the curtain through which we enter into the Most Holy Place (cf. 20). He is the door of the sheep (Jn. 10:7). No one comes to the Father except through him (Jn. 14:6).

Now, we want to be careful that we don’t make faith somehow the ground of our salvation. We are not saved because our faith – even faith in Christ! – makes us worthy. We are saved totally on the basis of the righteousness of God in Christ. I think one of the most important passages in this regard is Rom. 4:5, that God justifies the ungodly. This is the reason for Martin Luther’s memorable phrase describing the Christian: we are simul justus et peccator (“at the same time just and sinful”). We are simultaneously righteous and sinful, except that the righteousness here is not ours but Christ’s, whereas the sinfulness is not Christ’s but ours.

Nevertheless, we don’t want to go into the other ditch, either. Saying that faith is not the basis of our justification does not warrant saying that faith has nothing to do with justification. The Bible says over and over and over and over again that we are justified through faith. Paul said that we believe that we might be justified (Gal. 2:16). Faith is not the ground, but it is the means by which we are justified. God is pleased, in other words, to justify those who believe in his Son. This is the reason why our Lord himself said, “He that believeth on him [on the Son] is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (Jn. 3:18).

Hence, what the author of Hebrews is saying here is that if you walk away from Jesus, if you tread him under foot and count the blood of the covenant an unholy thing, then you are casting away your confidence in him. And in doing so, the implication of the rest of this verse is that you don’t get the reward. You cannot have the reward if you don’t have Christ. And if you don’t have faith in Christ, if you consciously and purposefully reject the gospel, then you can’t have the confidence or the reward. There is no salvation for those who are unbelievers.

Of course, the motivation here is primarily positive: think of the reward! Those who trust in Christ will never be ashamed (cf. Rom. 10:11). Our confidence in him can never be misplaced. So don’t cast it away (cf. Heb. 3:6, 14).

Be patient in light of the promise (36-37)

“For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry.”

The patience to which we are exhorted here is not primarily a psychological state of mind. Rather, it is a lifestyle of endurance in obedience to God. That is what we need. We need to endure. Why? Because it is through enduring in a life of obedience and faith that we receive the promise, the promise of a city which has foundations whose builder and maker is God.

The promise is that which will come to fruition at the Second Coming. This is almost certainly what is being referred to here in verse 37. Who is “he that shall come”? It is Christ. When will he come? When he comes again, of course! We need to be like the Thessalonian Christians who were waiting “for [God’s] Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come” (1 Thess. 1:10).

Why can we wait? How can we endure? These questions are especially critical when we are going through the furnace of tribulation and affliction, especially for Christ’s sake. And the answer is two-fold. First, those who endure receive the promise. Like Abraham, of whom it was said, “And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise” (Heb. 6:15). In the same way, we are encouraged to “be not slothful, but followers of them who trough faith and patience inherit the promises” (12). Endurance is the path to the promise. The promise of eternal life and glory is attached to endurance through suffering – again, not in terms of merit but in terms of the way to it. As the apostle Paul put it to the Roman Christians, that we are “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together” (Rom. 8:17). And then there is the fact that the promise is worth whatever suffering we must go through to get there. If you keep reading in Romans 8, you get to the next verse: “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (18).

The second step to the answer is that the promise is sure. How do we know it? Because God keeps his promises. He has already brought his Son into the world to be the redeemer of sinful men and women. So we can be sure that the Coming One will come and will not tarry. Again, if you bank your life on the promises of God, who are not making a gamble. You will never be disappointed.

Live by faith in light of the saving of the soul (38-39)

In verse 38, the author quotes from Habakkuk 2:4 (he had just quoted from Hab. 2:3 in the previous verse). It is a text that the apostle Paul uses many times in his epistles in order to illustrate the principle of justification by faith. However, here the point is that the just, the saints, are characterized by lives of persevering faith. Those who have faith are also faithful. They live by faith; they are not “of them who draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe to the saving of the soul” (39). God is not pleased with those who draw back, who apostatize. As we will see in the next chapter, without faith it is impossible to please God (11:6). Note that this is not just saying that unbelief means that God is not pleased with what we do, but that he is not pleased with the unbeliever: “my soul shall have no pleasure in him” (10:38), something that is clearly not true of God’s children. Those who are united to Christ by faith are united to him of whom the Father said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Mt. 3:17). And being united to him, we also become in him those with whom the Father is well pleased.

And as we will also see from the next chapter, this faith is primarily future oriented. Now of course there is a very important past dimension to our faith. We look back to the cross. We look back to God’s purpose of redemption in eternity. We look back to God’s works in history. But, as it is put in 11:1, “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” That we walk by faith and not by sight (2 Cor. 5:7) does not mean that we live with our eyes closed to reason and evidence. All it means is that we are meant to live in light of God’s future promise, and that our faith is fixed on that. We don’t yet see it, but faith connects us to God’s promise now and gives present substance to that which is yet in the future. This is how we are to live. This is what is supposed to define and flavor our lives as Christians.

Again, it is important to point out that our faith terminates, not in ourselves, but in God and in his Son. In faith, we don’t look to ourselves. Faith is not a mirror in which we look back at our works and worthiness. Rather, faith is that by which we see the trustworthiness of Jesus Christ and rest in him. And God is pleased to create this faith in his elect so that by faith they taste and see the sufficiency and supremacy of Christ. For those who believe, who look outside of themselves to Christ, God is pleased to grant his own righteousness to their account so that they are no longer condemned but justified. And he is also pleased, not only to give them this faith, but to keep them in it. This is why the text says that we “believe to the saving of the soul.” Not because believing itself saves but because Jesus Christ sovereignly saves those to whom he gives this faith.

So faith looks to heaven as it looks to Christ. We don’t look to ourselves. We don’t glory in ourselves. We don’t trust in ourselves. We don’t boast or have confidence in the flesh. Let the one who glories, glory in the Lord (1 Cor. 1:31).

So the hope of heaven ought to create in us these four things: an eternal perspective, a prized confidence in Christ, patient endurance for the promise, and future-oriented faith and faithfulness. A Christian is not a person who lives for the present but a person who lives in light of his or her hope in Christ. The question is, do we? Do the decisions we take and the choices we make reflect the fact that we put greater value on eternity than on the present? That’s not to say that the present is unimportant. Of course it is. But the way we best use our time now is by living in light of heaven. Otherwise, we end up with a perspective whose horizons don’t rise above the sun, and in terms of Ecclesiastes, that’s a vanity of vanities perspective. Let’s hear what Hebrews has to say. Let’s live by faith in the promise. Let’s not allow the sufferings of the present to rob us of our hope and joy or to derail our patient endurance as we pass through this vail of tears. For on the other side is fulness of joy and pleasures forevermore at God’s right hand.

_______________________________

i William Tyndale, Prologue to the Book of Numbers, in Works, I (Cambridge, 1848), p. 434 [qtd. in P. E. Hughes, Hebrews (Eerdmans, 1977), p. 432].

ii William Lane, Hebrews 9-13 [WBC] (Zondervan, 1991), p. 274.

iii The KJV has “on me in my bonds” but the true reading is probably “on those in prison” (cf. ESV).