Text of a sermon on Hebrews 11:4-6 “Living by Faith”
If you have brought your Bibles today, please turn with me in the book of Hebrews, to Hebrews chapter 11. Today we will look at verses 4 through 6. I will read beginning in verse 1, we’ll read from verse 1 on through verse 6. Just to remind ourselves of the context of what we are looking at, what we are studying today, as we begin looking through these people from the Old Testament who lived by faith. And so please follow along if you have your Bible with me as I read beginning in Hebrews 11 chapter 1, or verse 1.
Hebrews 11:4-6
“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man when God spoke well of his offerings, and by faith he still speaks even though he is dead. By faith Enoch was taken from this life so that he did not experience death. He could not be found because God had taken him away. For before he was taken he was commended as one who pleased God, and without faith it is impossible to please God because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”
Let’s pray. Our God and Father above, this is your word that we have read and this is your word that you have called me to expound upon and this is your word that you have promised that your Holy Spirit will use to change the lives and the hearts of those who are called children of God. And so today may we be attentive to these words and may your spirit be here to open my mouth and to open our ears so that we might see you, so that we might hear you, so that we might love you more, so that we might rest upon you more. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Introduction
These verses that we have read and on throughout the rest of chapter 11 are part of an entire section of the book of Hebrews. It is typical in our day and age as we go through chapter 11 to look at either each person individually or even as I’ve done today maybe to group a couple of them together. But it’s important for us, even as we separate out each of these people, it’s important for us to remember that this is one section of the book of Hebrews. That helps us to understand what the author is saying.
One of the ways in scripture that we can tell that this is one complete section is if we start counting in Hebrews 11 chapter 3 or verse 3 and count on through the end of Hebrews 11, we will see that the phrase by faith or through faith shows up 22 to 23 times depending upon your translation throughout this passage. It marks this passage off as its own section, but it also tells us what the author is trying to teach us.
The author is not trying to teach us to give better sacrifices. The author is not trying to teach us to try to walk harder with our God, try harder to walk with our God. This author is not trying to tell us to go out and build a big boat in the middle of the wilderness.
The author is teaching us to live by faith. And so that is what we will consider today. What does it mean to live by faith? And then we will look at the faith of Abel and the faith of Enoch.
Living By Faith
First, what does it mean to live by faith? Well, the author gives us a hint in verse six. He says, “without faith, it is impossible to please God because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” We’re going to we’re going to see here a little bit about Abel and Enoch, how they pleased God.
And the author is very clear that neither Abel nor Enoch nor anyone else who has lived or will live upon this earth can please God except by living according to or by faith. And he tells us what that faith entails in this verse as he expands on what he taught us in Hebrews 11, verses one through three, where we saw that faith is the title deed of those promises that we know are certain. And it is the evidence that we need in order to walk by faith and not by sight.
And today he expands on those as he tells us, number one, that those who live by faith must believe that God exists. Now, you and I need to be careful with this because a lot of people believe that God exists. But we need to ask the question, which God? I’ve been listening lately to some interviews with scientists who began their scientific career with a concrete faith in the theory that time plus stuff plus random chance equals everything that we see in our world today.
But as they have studied, as they have dived deeper into the scientific complexity that exists within our world, they have come to a conclusion. They have come to a conclusion that something or someone created billions of years ago and then wandered off to other endeavors, just kind of winding everything up like a clock and setting it in motion. We call this deism or we call it theism, the belief that someone or something began everything but is no longer involved in the universe.
That’s not what we’re talking about when we say that those who walk by faith must believe that God exists. Other scientists who have been interviewed have actually moved all the way from an evolutionary viewpoint to a belief that the God of the Bible has created and they are now Christians. When the biblical authors talk about believing that God exists, they are talking about believing that the God who has revealed himself in Scripture to be the creator, to be the redeemer, to be the judge of this earth.
It is that God that exists. Many times you may have spoken to people, I have spoken to people, and you ask them, you begin to ask them spiritual questions and they say, oh everything’s okay, I believe that God exists. What’s a good follow-up question to that? Well, which god? Is it a god that you have created in your own image or is it the God who has created you in his image and calls you to walk humbly with him through the work of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ? So to walk by faith first means to believe that the God of the Bible exists.
Secondly, the author of Hebrews tells us that to walk by faith means that you believe, you have faith that God rewards those who pursue him. Now, how does God reward those who earnestly seek him? Well, first is by the grace of salvation. In Ephesians chapter 2, beginning in verse 8, we hear these words, “For it is by grace that you have been saved through faith and that this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
The first time you diligently or earnestly seek God according to the prodding, the pushing, the life-changing work of the Holy Spirit, God rewards you with salvation. He rewards you by covering your sins with Christ’s righteousness.
He rewards you by giving you the promises of life and life eternal at that moment. He rewards you by setting you apart, making you no longer a rebel and a traitor against the God of the universe. But now a beloved child, loved by the Father, guided by the shepherd; he first rewards those who earnestly seek him by giving them salvation.
Secondly, God rewards those who earnestly seek him by providing sanctification for those that he has made his children. Philippians chapter 2, verse 13 says, “For God, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.”
For the child of God, the command is there to be holy as God is holy, not because God is going to save you once you hit a certain level of holiness, not because God is going to deny you salvation if you stop pursuing holiness. But we are called to be holy as a glorious and worshipful response to what God has done for us in giving us a new heart that has the law and the love of God written upon it. And yet God says that he is the one who is working out in your heart that sanctification, that holiness as you pursue it. Yes, we are called to work with reverence and awe for that holiness, but it is actually God who is working in you so that you can want to and actually act according to his good purpose.
And then thirdly, God rewards those who diligently seek him with the promise that everything that we suffer today are light and momentary troubles, light and momentary troubles that are, as Paul still tells us from what we read earlier, light and momentary troubles which are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. God rewards those who diligently seek him with the future glories of heaven, the new heavens and the new earth.
I encourage you at some point to read through those first seven verses of Revelation 21 and those glorious promises that are there. No more tears, no more pain, no more sickness, no more death. Those promises are ours now, even as we struggle with those things. The weight of this world is nothing compared to the infinite, eternal weight of glory that belongs to those who diligently and earnestly seek God.
And so as we walk on this earth, we are called to walk by faith. And as we seek to live in such a way that we may be commended like Abel was, is, that we may be commended as Enoch or Noah or Abraham or David or Rahab are, we seek to walk by faith, pleasing God by walking by faith. We can’t please God in anything that is within us, but we walk by faith that we have been changed, are being changed, and will ultimately be changed by the work of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
We pursue a life pleasing to God by living by faith. That leads us to consider the first two people that the author of Hebrews brings to us as examples of people who have been commended for living by faith. And the first one that we come to is Abel.
The Faith of Abel
We meet Abel in Genesis chapter four. Following Adam and Eve’s sins, following their expulsion from the garden, they continue the work of filling and subduing the earth and they have children. Now we’re told that Cain is born first and then Abel is born later.
We’ll see later on as we go through this that a third son, at least a third son, as long as Adam and Eve lived, there were probably likely more than just the mere three children there. But we are focusing on Cain and Abel as we go through this. And as Cain and Abel grow up, we begin to see that they are bringing offerings to God.
We don’t know the nature of these offerings, but we see that they are bringing offerings to God. And it is declared in Genesis chapter four that Abel’s offering was acceptable to God, while Cain’s wasn’t. How does Cain respond to this? He does not respond well.
He calls his brother out into the field, saying that he wants to talk to him, and he murders his brother Abel and is ultimately sent into exile with a mark of protection upon him by God. And our focus in this passage is on the life and the death of Abel. And three times in our passage, the author of Hebrews tells us that Abel lived by faith.
The first time he tells us that it is by faith that Abel offered God a better sacrifice. On its own, Genesis chapter four does not tell us much about what made Abel’s sacrifice more acceptable than Cain’s. Some people look at this and say, well, Abel brought sheep and Cain brought plants, and so God was happier with the blood sacrifice than he was with the sacrifice of the crops.
As I mentioned before, we do not know the nature of this offering. But if we were to compare in Exodus and throughout that there are offerings that require blood, there are offerings that require produce from your crops. So we don’t know which one this is.
So we can’t definitively say that God was happy because Abel brought a blood sacrifice. Some commentators have even gone on to say that one part of Genesis 4.3 that is typically now translated “in the course of time,” but used to be translated in a different way, pointed to the fact that Abel prepared ahead of time and Cain squeaked in at the last moment, just kind of grabbing what he could on his way out the door.
But we don’t know for sure, but we also do not have to guess. The author of Hebrews, guided and inspired by the Holy Spirit, tells us that faith was the difference in the offerings. Now, what would Abel have had faith in since Jesus would not come for another several thousand years? He had faith in God’s promise.
Genesis 3.14. “So the Lord said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals. You will crawl on your belly. You will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head and you will strike his heel.” That promise of the ultimate defeat of sin and Satan is what Cain would have had faith in. He would have had faith in the promises of God to sustain him and to provide rescue from sin and Satan. And so Abel gave a better sacrifice by faith.
Secondly, Abel was considered righteous by faith.
Righteousness is a combination of right rule keeping and restored relationship. God calls us to live according to his law. We have the Ten Commandments as a summary of that law. The further summary of the Ten Commandments is to love God with everything that you are and to love your neighbor as yourself. You and I cannot do that on our own. We can neither keep God’s law on our own and we cannot restore the broken relationship because of our sin with God.
But Jesus took care of righteousness for us. He kept God’s law. He kept God’s rules perfectly.
And he did so with a perfect relationship with the Father that was never broken by sin or rebellion. And by faith, that righteousness is placed upon us so that when God sees us, he sees the righteousness of Christ. He sees the restored, reconciled relationship that can only come through the work and the blood of Christ. And so by faith, Abel was considered righteous. And by faith, you and I can be considered righteous as well.
And the third thing that Abel did or does by faith, the author says, is that his blood still speaks today.
God told Cain that Abel’s blood cried out for justice. Today, Abel’s blood cries out in testimony that God is pleased with people who live and walk by faith in the promises of God. We talk about offerings today.
We took up tithes and offerings earlier today. How much or how should we give? Is 10% the standard or is there some other standard? Well, God’s standard is threefold.
First, we should give generously. God blesses us so that we can be a blessing to others. Next, we should give joyfully, knowing that this is an opportunity through the tithes and offerings to show God gratitude, to worship God, who gave infinitely more than you and I could think or imagine for our salvation. But most importantly, we should be giving faithfully. We should be giving in faith that God will take what we have given, that he will be honored and glorified by it because of the work of Jesus and that he will use it for his glorious purposes. God is pleased by those who give by faith, whether time, talents or treasures.
And so we see first that Abel lives by faith.
The Faith of Enoch
Secondly, we are told that Enoch lived by faith. We meet Enoch a couple of pages after we meet Abel. And that long genealogy where many of us kind of get lost, our eyes glaze over, roll back in the back of our heads because we hear someone was born, someone whose name we really can’t pronounce because, you know, they named their kids weirdly back then.
We read that they were born, they had a kid, they lived another few years and then they died. And we have this cycle of they were born, they lived, they had children, they died. They were born, they lived, they had children, they died. They were born, they lived, they had children, they died.
And then we come to Genesis 5, 21. “When Enoch had lived 65 years, he became the father of Methuselah. And after he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked with God 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Enoch lived 365 years. Enoch walked with God and then he was no more because God took him away.”
The first thing we should notice is that Enoch is described doing something similar to what Adam and Eve did in the garden. We’re told in Genesis chapter 3 that Adam and Eve walked with God in the cool of the morning and in the cool of the evening. And we see in Genesis chapter 5 that Enoch walked with God.
Did Enoch walk with God because he never sinned? No.
Did Enoch walk with God because maybe he was a better dad than anybody else? No.
Enoch didn’t even walk with God because he had a cool haircut.
Enoch walked with God by faith. And it was because of that walking with God by faith that Enoch is commended to us.
We don’t know whether God had expanded on his revelation to humanity at that point. We do know that Enoch had the same promises from God that we just read that Abel had, that one day the seed of the woman, the descendant of the woman, would crush the head of the serpent, would strike the head of the serpent when the serpent struck the heel of the seed of the woman. And so we knew that we can know that as long as Enoch had faith that God would do that, if he believed God, he could be commended to us by God. It was Enoch’s faith, not his personal righteousness.
Enoch’s faith is what caused him, allowed him to walk with God and is what commended him to us. Now, Enoch’s faith was rewarded by not tasting the pain of death. And we don’t know what this looked like.
Did it look like the fiery chariot that came from for Elijah? Did it look different? The biblical authors don’t tell us, but we do not. But we do know that Enoch did not taste death because of his faith. God rewards those who earnestly seek him, who walk with him by faith.
And Enoch lived by faith.
Conclusion
The call on you and I from this passage today and from the rest of the people that we will consider, the call is to live by faith, to believe that the God of the exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. A couple more takeaways.
First, I think it’s important for us to notice and to consider even briefly that faith in the promises of God has always been the only way to please God. There is a temptation to think that faith is a New Testament phenomenon. The Old Testament people had of God had the law and the sacrificial system and the church has faith.
But by taking us all the way back to Abel and to Enoch, the author of Hebrews is telling his his audience faith is and always has been the only way to please God. The sacrificial system should have pointed the people of God forward to look for that perfect sacrifice that was coming to look for that descendant of Eve that would crush the head of the serpent. But instead, they took the sacrificial system.
They took the law. They made it a system of do’s and don’ts that as long as the as long as you did more of the right things than the wrong things that God would accept you as righteous. The only way to please God has always been by faith.
Secondly, we looked at the fact that those who have faith believe that God will reward those who earnestly seek him. And we need to keep in mind the distinction between earthly rewards and heavenly rewards. Think about the major difference between Abel and Enoch.
This might sound a little shocking, but I’m going to summarize these verses for you. By faith, Abel was murdered and by faith, Enoch avoided the horror and pain of death. If we only see the God’s rewards as earthly rewards, it’s hard to see how Abel was rewarded for his faith.
But by faith, Abel stored up treasure in heaven in the same way that Enoch did. Even if each of us have the same level of faith, we will not all have lives that look the same. Some of God’s children will reap financial rewards in this life because they live by faith.
Others of God’s children will live in poverty and struggle also because they live by faith. The things of this earth do not matter. Not only are the struggles and pains of this earth light and momentary, so are the successes, so are the earthly joys, so are the earthly rewards.
Some of those things will be purified and we’ll see them again in the new heavens and the new earth. But in reality, you can amass all the money, all the power possible in this world. And yet those earthly rewards will pale in comparison to the infinite glory that awaits us in the new heavens and the new earth.
The rewards of this world do not matter in light of the eternal weight of the glory that waits for us in those new heavens and new earth. How then should we live, brothers and sisters? We should live by faith. Let’s pray.
To the God and Father above, thank you for the faith that you have given and for anyone in here who may not have that faith, we ask that you would change their heart and gift it to them today. For those of us that are your children, for those of us that are called, wholly chosen, and beloved by you, grow our faith so that we might walk more closely with you, so that we might love you more, and so that we might find our hope and our peace in you and in you alone. We pray this in Jesus’ name.
Amen. But as you go this week to your daily lives, to work, to play, to fellowship, take this blessing upon you. May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through.
The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.
We are told that he who testifies to these things says, yes, I am coming soon.
Amen. Come Lord Jesus.
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