Faith On Display - Hebrews 11:1–7

Have you ever felt the internal conflict of wanting to be in two places at once? Of course, you couldn’t be; you had to choose. Or have you ever had two things that needed to be completed, so you tried to accomplish both at once? Some people try to multitask, but you really can only focus your attention on one thing at a time. Or have you ever had two friends, one on each side of a conflict, and you were torn over which side to take?

It’s difficult to feel divided. But division is typical within the human heart. In Psalm 86 in the OT, King David asked God to unite his heart. He wanted to give his whole heart to God, his whole self, so he prayed that his heart would not be divided between love for God and love for other things.

Later on in their history, that was how the ancient nation of Israel is described in the prophecy of Hosea. God said of the Israelites, “Their heart is divided.” Their loyalty was split between the one true God and many false gods. You see, God demands all of you. Jesus famously said, “No one can serve two masters.”

But we are naturally divided in our hearts, aren’t we? This is one result of the sinful nature: our hearts are torn between God and the world, between goodness and evil, between holiness and sinfulness.

Yet the gospel tells us that God promised to give His people new hearts, hearts pleasing to Him, able to love Him and display our loyalty to Him. Because God has done this, we should desire to display this undivided loyalty to God. But how do we do that?

These first verses of Hebrews 11 give us insight. Last week, we were urged to walk by faith. Here, we learn what that means and how it looks. “Faith” can be defined differently depending on the context. Sometimes when we talk about faith, we are referring to Christianity as a system of belief and practice. “The faith.” Sometimes, “faith” refers to a person hearing the gospel and responding to Jesus with repentance of sin and trust in His righteousness. “By grace you were saved through faith.”

But other times in Scripture, “by faith” refers simply to trust in the promises of God: trusting that His ways are best, that His plans and purposes are good. That is the meaning here: trusting fully in God and displaying that trust, that faith, in Him.

How do we display complete trust in God? You can find an outline of the passage on page 6 in the WG. The quality of our trust, the caliber of our trust in God, the nature of it, is displayed in three ways that we see in these verses: by how we give to Him, how we walk with Him, and how we live for Him.

Verse 1 gives us a definition of faith. Faith is “assurance” or confidence that what we “hope for,” what God has promised, will certainly come to pass in the future; and faith is the “conviction,” being convinced, having an inward sense of proof that what we cannot see is, in fact, real.

The writer of Hebrews states that “the people of old,” literally the “elders” or “presbyters,” in other words, those pre-Christ forefathers of all believers who trusted in God’s promises, were declared righteous by God by faith in the promises of God which were clear to them at the time. They believed in the God of grace; they trusted the God who showed grace to Adam and Eve and promised grace to Adam and Eve’s descendants.

Notice verse 3: By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. No human was present at the creation of the world, not even the first man and woman. Faith is essential and basic to the human experience.

We understand that the physical world had a beginning. We have faith that the creation occurred. We were not there when God made the planet we live on or the air we breathe. We only see the result of that creation.

Every other theory about the origin of the earth and everything in it requires faith. No human was there! So faith is not foreign to us. We take a host of things on faith. And with this in mind, we can observe the faith displayed by these fathers of faith, so to speak, and we can think about how we can display faith in the promises of God.

I do want to point out that these people were all sinners. And yet through them God provides examples of trusting His promises. As these things played in history, their examples were not the primary purpose of God. First and foremost, God was working out his redemptive plan. So primarily we look for how each of these people led up to the coming of Jesus Christ and what they teach us about His person and work. But secondarily, their behavior and decisions help us understand faith.

So look at verse 4, “By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts.” Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve, both offered gifts to God, sacrifices of worship, but God did not view their gifts the same.

God looked with favor on Abel’s gift, but not Cain’s. “Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice.” Why? It seems that the difference was at the heart level. The Scriptures are clear that God desires not only religious actions but also reverent attitudes.

It’s not that Cain did not offer a gift altogether; rather, Cain had a sinful attitude toward God. The implication is that unlike Abel, Cain did not give the first and best of what God had provided for him. This is why, in Genesis 4, when God rejected Cain’s gift, he urged Cain to repent, to humble himself and reject his sin. God urges Cain toward faith.

But Abel’s testimony still stands. He is a father or elder of the faithful; Cain is a father of the faithless. And this is a fulfillment of God’s word in Genesis 3 that there will be among humans a seed of the woman and a seed of the serpent, these two groups against each other, one turning to God and one turning away.

It’s clear after what happened in Genesis 3, at the fall of man, that it is God’s grace that any would turn to God.So by grace through faith, Abel was deemed righteous in God’s sight. How he gave to God displayed the quality of his trust in God.

There’s a story of a mother who wanted to teach her little daughter about giving to God. She gave the girl a quarter and a dollar before the worship service and told her, “Put whichever one you want in the offering plate and keep the other for yourself.” On the way home, the woman asked the child which amount she had given. The little girl said, “Well, I was going to give the dollar, but just before they received the offering, the pastor said that we should all be cheerful givers. I knew I'd be a lot more cheerful if I gave the quarter, so I did.”

Perhaps that’s the lesson: that given the choice, our divided hearts hold back from God. You can probably relate. Rather than trusting God wholeheartedly to provide, we naturally trust more in what’s in hand.

What is the attitude of your heart when it comes to giving to God? What does how you give to God say about your faith in His promises? Does how you give to God display confidence in the power and faithfulness of God? Do you store up treasure in heaven by giving generously to the kingdom work of God here on earth?

The quality of our trust in God is also displayed by how we walk with Him. Notice verse 5 again. “By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God.” Genesis 5 mentions Enoch briefly, but he makes quite an impression. The Scripture says not once but twice that, “he walked with God.”

Evidently, Enoch had a personal relationship with God that stood in stark contrast to so many others around him. Wherever he went, he went with God. Enoch knew this closeness with God. He experienced the presence of God, even though sin had entered the world and Enoch himself was a sinner.

And as a reward, Enoch did not leave this world in the normal way, by death. Rather, God took him. That’s all we know, although his exit from the planet is reminiscent of how the Lord Jesus returned to heaven, and Enoch’s departure does seem to foreshadow how all believers will be delivered from death.

Scholars also point out that the way Enoch experienced God’s presence is similar to what God promised for His people in the tabernacle, when God told them in Leviticus 26, “I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people.”

Verse 6 is an interesting follow-up, look there once more. The writer of Hebrews says, “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” In the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the OT, they translated Genesis 5 as saying, “Enoch pleased God.” Throughout the book of Hebrews, we can tell that the writer used and often quotes the Septuagint translation.

Without faith, it is impossible to please God, impossible to walk with God. Why? Because God is not visible. He must be sought by faith. He must be worshipped by faith. We must talk to Him by faith. We pray by faith. We must trust that God is there and that His promises are true.

As you wrestle with this, at least consider that somehow you and all creation got here? How do you reckon that happened? The one true God is real: not visible, but real. There’s no indication that God visibly appeared to Enoch. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth.

The relationship between a believer and God is a spiritual relationship. To walk with God is to be always speaking to Him and listening for Him to speak to us by His Word and His Spirit. The Spirit of God will not tell you anything that is contrary to the Word of God, to the truth of God. Believers need both; we are promised both.

Does how you walk with God display that you trust Him? To our little ones in here, listen to me: the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Speak to Him anytime. He is available to you at all times. Even your mommy and daddy cannot always be there with you, but God will be.

The Scriptures teach us that God is omnipresent; in other words, He is everywhere. Adults, there should be no concern of your heart that you do not voice to God. There is no struggle or longing that you cannot tell God about. This is a key attribute of God: He is there. And we were created to walk with Him. How we walk with Him displays the quality of our trust in Him. And finally, how we live for Him displays this. The example given by the writer of Hebrews is Noah.

Look at verse 7, “By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.” The actions of Noah emphasized the wickedness of his peers. He took seriously the warning of God. Smart man. And his obedience to God served to magnify their disobedience.

Noah of course was instructed by God in Genesis 6 to build the ark and save his family from the coming flood through which God was going to judge the world because of sin. Noah lived for God in a world where men and women were living only for themselves. Like Abel and Enoch, his choice stood in contrast with others around him. So like those men, Noah was a father to the faithful, in contrast to the faithless around him.

It’s often forgotten that it took Noah 120 years to build the ark. That is a long time to endure the mocking and unbelief of wicked people around you. Perhaps you can relate. That is a long time to remain faithful among the faithless. How could Noah persevere? Simply put, the judgment of God was certain, but so was the deliverance of God. If the one true God has promised it, bank on it. It is a lock.

But neither the judgment or the deliverance was yet visible. And notice the end of verse 7 again: Noah “became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.” Noah was not a perfect man. There is none righteous, no not one. But by God’s grace, Noah was able to display trust in God.

Do you stand for God among the godless? Do you live for Him when the heat is on, when it’s not popular or cool? When someone urges you to bend the rules at work, will you remain faithful to God? When the temptations of this world present themselves to you,will you turn from them and trust in the ways of God? As your peers enjoy wickedness, will you cling to godliness? As others take pleasure in what is evil, will you find pleasure in what is good?

Perhaps you can answer ‘yes’ to some of these questions, but have you done all these things in your life? No you have not. None of us have. The truth is that our loyalty is split between love for God and other things all the time. None of us have done these things to perfection. If you think you have, you are deceived; and if you think your good choices make you better than other people, well then you’ve fallen into self-righteousness, which is a deadly trap.

The apostle Paul quoted the OT as he stressed the point that all people are sinners, all people fall short of God’s righteous requirements. He wrote, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”

This biblical doctrine is often referred to as “Total Depravity.” It doesn’t mean that all people are as bad as we could be, but it does mean that sin has affected us in totality: in our hearts, minds, bodies, and souls. Sin has infected every part of us. As a result, we have and will continue to ultimately fall short of God’s glory in how we give to Him, walk with Him, and live for Him. This was true of Abel, Enoch, and Noah as well.

And for that reason, they depended on the grace of God just as we must. They needed atonement for their sins just as we do. They needed someone to make them righteous before God. And this is what Jesus Christ has done. Consider how Jesus gave, how He walked, and how He lived. He is the perfect giver who walked closely with the Father and lived boldly for truth among the ungodly, and in doing so, He fulfilled God’s righteous requirements for His people.

Have you put your trust in Him? He alone can enable you to love Him and visibly display your loyalty to Him.

Let’s pray together.