Hebrews 11:3-7
Please turn in your copy of God’s
holy word to the book of Hebrews to chapter 11. Our reading today
will be verses three through seven. Let me remind you, as
you’re making your way to Hebrews chapter 11, that what we are
considering is a long section in Hebrews that begins at the
end of chapter 10 and goes through early chapter 12. where the writer
of Hebrews, whoever he was, is encouraging his audience. He’s encouraging them. But now
throughout the ages, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he’s encouraging
us today to long for heaven and to look to Jesus while we are
on our way there. We’re longing for heaven. We’re
longing for an earthly or not an earthly city, but an eternal
city. And as we long for heaven, we look to Jesus, the author
and perfecter of our faith. And in chapter 12, he’s going
to tell us to run that race with endurance, to run it with perseverance,
to shed any weight, namely sin, that clings closely to us so
that we can run more efficiently and effectively. Now, as we find
ourselves in chapter 11, we are looking at a number of the old
covenant saints who had faith in God and the promises of God
were not delivered to them in their lifetime, yet they still
persevered in faith. And so the encouragement to us,
as the writer of Hebrews puts it, is don’t shrink back. Don’t
stop believing in God. No matter what hardship, what
suffering or persecution we face, we keep going, we press on, we
keep the faith. So let us hear from God’s word
from Hebrews chapter 11, beginning at 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. By faith, Abel
offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through
which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting
his gifts. And through his faith, though
he died, he still speaks. 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. 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. 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. Amen. This is God’s holy and
inspired and inerrant word. May he write all its truth upon
our hearts. Let’s pray together and ask for
his grace. Our God, we marvel at these words, that by faith,
by faith in you, by faith in your word, by faith in your promises,
we live. And so we ask, Father, that this
these next moments would strengthen our faith, that our eyes would
see more clearly, that our hearts would beat more deeply and that
our our lives as we go from this place today would live more faithfully
to you and all that you have promised and that by our labors
and the faith, we would land safely on Canaan’s shores. and
that we would lay hold of all that you have promised. We cannot
do any of this on our own. So give us eyes to see and ears
to hear and hearts that understand, but give us strength, give us
faith, give us endurance so that this may all come to pass for
us. We do pray in Jesus name. Amen. Have you ever wondered
what it would look like to travel back in time? Or have you ever
wondered what it would be like to read people’s minds, to know
what their thoughts are, especially what they’re thinking about you
when they’re staring at you? Have you ever wondered what it
would be like to travel into the future? Well, these are fantasies. This is the stuff of movies. We’ve all seen these things play
out on the big screen, but they are impossible in reality. They are not possible to be accomplished. But friends, the Bible tells
us in our passage, what it would be like, what it is like to live
confidently knowing the outcome of this world. and what the final
moments of human history will be like. You see, God tells us
in his word that he created the world and he made everything
that is in it and that human history is marching towards a
goal. And that goal is the glory of
the king of kings. If you want to answer somebody
this question, what is the Bible all about? One answer of many,
but maybe the best answer is this. It is a story about the
king of kings and the king of kings in his full glory. Where
is history headed? Where is humankind going? Well, the ultimate goal we read
in the beginning of the Bible, the middle of the Bible and the
end of the Bible is simply God’s covenant promise. I will be your
God and you will be my people and my dwelling place will be
with you. You see, God, the king of kings,
God, the king of glory, desires to gather his children into his
presence that he might delight in them and that we might delight
in him. You think of those wonderful
words from, I believe, Zephaniah, he will rejoice over you. with shouts of joy. Isn’t that
an amazing thought? One of the things that will take
place when we get to heaven is God will sing over us. But what would it be like to
live confidently in this crazy, crooked and strange and uncertain
world? What would it be like to live
confidently knowing the outcome of human history, knowing the
outcome of this world? Well, friends, it is not a fantasy.
It is a reality for it has been made known to us by God himself. Now, we don’t know every detail.
We don’t know what the stock market will do. We don’t know
whether our sicknesses will be healed and all the rest. But
we do know the final outcome. We know that human history exists
for simply this, the glory of God and the redemption of his
children. The word of God tells us about
some who’ve lived before us with eyes of faith. Hebrews chapter
11 is not necessarily about giving you heroes to imitate. It’s telling
you that you too can persevere in the faith because others have
done it before you. And we don’t necessarily want
to imitate how they lived life. We want to imitate what they
ultimately did. And that was they fixed their
eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of their faith. Chapter
11 is going to exhort us to do several things, but mainly this,
to continue in the faith, not to shrink back, to long for heaven,
to look to Jesus, and to press on. And as he shows us examples
in chapter 11, these old covenant pre-patriarchs in today’s passage
looked to Jesus and all the promises that were attached. They looked
at what could not be seen And they live their lives based on
these convictions. So I want us to consider four
things from these couple of verses today. Four things that by faith
we can do. By faith we can wonder, not wander,
but wonder. By faith we can worship. By faith
we can walk. And by faith we can work. Let’s look first at by faith
we can wonder. Let’s read verse three together.
Verse three says this. 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. We do not live in a closed universe,
as many will tell you, we do not live in a universe that always
has been and always will be. The scriptures tell us. That
God made the world and everything in it. The scriptures tell us
and help us understand what many in the world cannot understand
or believe. It simply tells us that what
we read about, what we hear about and what we’re told about in
Genesis 1 and 2 really came to pass, that God made the world
and everything in it. If you look back to your Westminster
creed, which we recited together this morning. It says God made
the world in the space of six days by the word of his power.
All very good. That’s what our catechism teaches
us. Our larger catechism expands those truths from Genesis 1 and
2. Our confession of faith says even more of it, that God made
the world and everything in it. Our scripture tells us that God
is the first cause. He is the prime mover, that all
that we see comes from the word of his power. Now, our resident
scientists in the room will tell us that the Bible tells us It
tells us the big picture, but science can help us unpack the
little details. If you go to a major campus in
our area, say Duke University, what will you find at the center
of the campus? You’ll find the chapel. For you
see, for centuries, it’s no longer true, but for centuries, religion
was the queen of sciences. And if you notice the architecture
and the layout of campuses, every discipline of academics was placed
architecturally and location-wise in submission to God. And that is no longer the case.
We have divorced all study in this world from the truth of
God. But we believe as Christians that all truth is God’s truth
and that we learn in submission to God. That does not, as some
people would say, hinder academics. No, Christian academia is some
of the strongest scholarship in the world, for we look at
the world in its fullness with more openness and with more ability
to interpret it because we interpret it as God does. But we understand
because of the scriptures that God made the world and everything
in it. He made it out of nothing. He
made it as the Latin phrase tells us, ex nihilo, out of nothing,
he made everything. He spoke and it exists. There
was not something which he turned into everything, but there was
nothing and he turned it into all that we see. How does Genesis
tell us that God created? God said, God said, God said
he spoke and it came into being. It says he took what he formed.
It was formless and it was void. And he both formed it and filled
it. If you read the tables of the creation days, God took what
was formless and he formed it and shaped it. He took what was
void and empty and he filled it. And so days one, two and
three, days four, five and six, God took what was formless and
chaos and he made a created order around it. And friends, we would
do well to labor in the sciences and to see and to study and understand
the world that God has made and everything in it. It will blow
your minds. It will it will show you the majesty and the power
and the beauty of our creator, his wisdom, his his smarts, as
we might say, to build. Now, why did God make the world
and everything in it? Theologically speaking, he created
a theater for his own glory. And he takes center stage and
on center stage is the main actor of the story of redemption. And
that is Jesus. And it is Jesus who Colossians
and other passages in the New Testament tell us was present
at creation that Jesus spoke and he created. And Jesus still
speaks and his creation that he spoke into existence is upheld
by the word of his power. And so God has made a place.
for the story of redemption to unfold that we might see it and
watch it and glorify him. But we understand, brothers and
sisters, we understand that the creation of this world is a miracle
and that God has done it. Look down at verse six, if you
will. It says, without faith, it is impossible to please God.
But for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists
and that he rewards those who seek him. You see, by faith,
we, We wonder not only at creation, but we wonder also at the fact
that there is a God and that he exists. It is necessary, the
writer of Hebrew says, if you’re going to draw near God, you must
draw near to the full reality of who he is and what he has
done. You cannot draw near to God and make up this God. You cannot draw near to God and
fashion and form an idol for yourself of things he might be
or may not be or the things you desire him to be. We can only
draw near to the God who is and to the God who has spoken in
his word and tells us who he is, what he’s done, what is it
like, and that we are made in his image. You see, Jesus is
God. God is God. The Holy Spirit is
God. He exists and he is great and
he is the ultimate reality. You cannot interpret the facts
of this world or the facts of life apart from almighty God. He is the answer. He is the glue.
He is the ultimate reality. And what is he saying to us in
this passage about? believing in creation and believing
in the fact that God exists. He’s saying that we are submitting
to the creator saying you are Lord, you are master, you are
creator and you are redeemer. You are the one who speaks and
gives life. and you speak and you take dead men and women and
boys and girls who are dead in their sins and trespasses and
you give them life again. The apostle Paul speaks of this
in Romans four, where he says, it is God who speaks and what
does not exist comes to being and what is dead is raised to
life. Think of Jesus at the tomb of
Lazarus. He simply said these words, Lazarus
come forth. raised him from the dead. Friends,
that is who we believe in. And as the apostle Paul told
the Romans at his speech to the Areopagus, it is in him, it is
in God that we live and that we move and that we have our
being. Now, I don’t have to tell you
that the world denies these two truths. We wonder at them and
they are wandering in The lack of truth, the world denies these
things, but people of faith believe because God tells us that the
world exists because he spoke and it was made. We believe that
God exists because he is here and he is not silent and he speaks
to us and we hear his voice and we know him and follow him. People
of faith are always under attack for being told that your faith
is a crutch. Your belief in God, your belief
in Jesus, your reliance on him is a weakness. And you know the
answer to that? Absolutely. For we were dead
and he has brought us to life again. The world may say, give
us proof. The world may say there’s evil.
How could there be a God if there’s evil in the world? The world
may say, we don’t believe in the supernatural. Or they may
say, look at the track record of Christianity and The Crusades
and all this other wickedness that people in the name of Christ
have have have injured the world. But friends, faith sees God,
faith takes God at his word. And what does God say? He rewards
those who seek after him. So by faith, we wonder, we wonder
at almighty God and his creation. But secondly, by faith, we worship. Look at verse four, it tells
us of the story of Abel. By faith, Abel offered to God
a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended
as righteous. God, commending him by accepting
his gifts, and though he, lost my spot here, and through
his faith, though he died, he still speaks. Have you ever asked
the question, what did I get out of church today? Let me just
tell you, that’s a terrible question because you have to ask this
question first. What did God get out of church
today? Now you can ask the first question
second, but the real question we got to ask is what did God
get out of me as I came to worship him? What did I bring and offer
him? And was it pleasing in his sight?
Of course, the other question is important. What did I get
out of church? Hopefully something, not a nap, but what did God receive
from the worshiper? What do we do on Sunday? Well,
we come into God’s house, we gather in his name and we offer
to him praises and adoration. We offer to him our confession.
We offer him our tithes, our offerings, our very lives that
we may serve him. So what does God get out of church?
Well, hopefully he gets thanksgiving. He gets the just. Gratitude that
is due him for his cleansing us of our guilt. for his being
the God of grace and mercy. So what do we do on Sunday? Why
is all this offering and all this back and forth between us
and God? It’s simply this, it’s a visible
expression of your faith. I always tell people, if you
don’t come to church for the right reasons, you might as well
go do what you really want to do. Might be golf, it might be
riding your bike, it might be sleeping in or reading the paper,
something else. For the only reason to come to church is this,
to visibly before the people of God and before God himself
to visibly express your faith in him. That’s why we come to
church. That’s why we do real physical,
tangible things in church. It’s a means they’re prescribed
in scripture, but they are means by which we can visibly and tangibly
express our faith before God. Well, this is a little story
of Cain and Abel. You know, Cain and Abel were
brothers. Cain and Abel were brothers,
and one killed the other. Cain’s sacrifice of vegetables
was offered to God, and God was not pleased with it. God did
not regard his offering, but Abel offered a firstborn from
his flock. Abel offered the fat portions
of his offering. Cain’s vegetables were rejected,
but Abel’s Firstborn from his flock were accepted. And you
know the story, Cain’s upset. And God comes to him and says,
why are you cast down? What is wrong with you, Cain?
You didn’t regard my offering. You regarded Abel’s, but not
mine. And he says to him, you be careful for sin is crouching
at your door. And brother and brother go off
in the field and they speak to one another. And Cain kills Abel. Brother kills brother. There’s vengeance for God regarding
his offering. And you can imagine what had
been going on in the Adam and Eve household. You can imagine
that they have not forgotten about chapter three of the serpent
who was more crafty, who came in and deceived them. And they
ate the fruit and they were thrown out of paradise and they were
living in the jungle. They went from the garden and
its pleasures to the jungle. and the uncertainty of it. And
here are their two boys. They’re trying to raise them
much like in the world we live in today. One follows God, one
does not. One is sullen and angry and sulking. And that rebellion in the garden
that was passed on from parent to child is evident in Cain’s
life. But by God’s grace, Abel loves
God and worships God. And his sacrifice is a visible
expression of his faith. And we don’t really know what
all is going on here, but we can we can surmise we can deduce
that Abel knew what pleased God. And he expressed pleasure to
God in his offering, but really in his heart. And the Abel was
checking the boxes. Abel was going through the motions.
Abel was or Cain was just in church because mom and dad dragged
him there. And so you see the tale of two
sons here. You see the results of sin in
the home. You can imagine that Cain says to Abel, you’re just
a goody two shoes. You’re a mama’s boy. You do everything
that mom and dad want. You’re the good one. I’m the
wicked one. What’s the result? It’s murder.
What is the result? It’s the first martyr of the
faith. That’s what we can say of Abel.
He was killed by his brother Cain and he was the first martyr
for having faith in God and pleasing God. And it brought on the hatred
of man, even one from his own home. And you see what Jesus
is saying when he says to us in the Gospels, if you’re going
to follow me, you must deny your father and your mother, your
brother and your family. You let the dead bury the dead.
For whoever will follow me must lose everything. Does God regard your worship?
Is your worship a visible manifestation of a true heart that beats for
Almighty God? A second question. When you’re
gone from this life, though you are dead. Like Abel, will your
life still speak? Will it say I loved God, I was
faithful to God, my worship was truly a visible manifestation
of my faith in him? Good questions. By faith, we
wonder at God. By faith, we worship God. The third area of this passage
shows us is by faith, we walk with God. And verse five tells
us of a strange story of Enoch. And it says in verse five, this
by faith, Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death.
He was not found because God had taken him. Now, before he
was taken, he was commended as having pleased God. There are
only two people in the Bible who did not taste death. And
both of their names start with E. There’s Enoch, Then there’s
Elijah. Remember, Elijah was taken up
in a chariot of fire after his faithful service to God as a
prophet in Israel. But they were taken up. They
did not see death. Or as the Hebrew euphemism states,
they did not taste death because they he was commended as having
pleased God, his faith in what he could not see. earned his
condemnation before Almighty God. Now, what does it mean that
he walked with God? I mean, Adam and Eve walked with
God in the cool of the evening of the garden. But what does
it literally mean? He walked with God. Well, if
you survey your old and new testaments, you’ll see that walking with
God is a phrase commonly used, a euphemism for serving God,
for following him, for living the Christian life. If someone
says about you, you walk with God, that’s a kind in a benevolent
and a gracious phrase. God was real to Enoch. Every
urge, every desire, every moment, his mind and his heart, like
David in the Psalms, beat for God and his word and his ways. And he said every waking moment
of his life, I will give my best to God. My every endeavor will
be to serve him as Lord and master and king. My affections are not
to the world, or to the fleeting pleasures, but my pleasures or
my affections are on pleasing God. We’re told that Enoch pleased
God. But if you noticed, we’re not
told how he pleased God. You know what we would probably
do if we were told how Enoch pleased God? We would probably
imitate it, thinking if we in a formulaic way did what Enoch
did, we would get what Enoch got. Well, Enoch did not taste
death, but you will taste death. Enoch did not go through the
hardship of death, but we will. So how is it that we will please
God? How is it that we can walk with God and it can be said of
us, we walked with God? Well, we know the ingredients
and the recipe or the final product may not exactly look like Enoch
or the way you please God may look a little different from
the way your neighbor does, how you have a quiet time, how you
worship. All those sorts of things are
different for a few people, but the ingredients are the same.
We dwell in the word. We labor in prayer. We come to
worship. We repent as often as necessary. We enjoy being in the company
of other Christians. We do these things in our own
way and the way our personality works out. We do it in the ministry
of the church and in the context of the family and before the
watching world. And it can be said then of us that we have
walked with God. Friends, I want to tell you and
encourage you this. The Christian life is not rocket science. You go into the Christian bookstore
these days and there are thousands and thousands and thousands and
thousands and thousands of titles of books that you do not need.
OK, I’m going to get in trouble for that. That’s anti-advertising. If you have a Bible in one hand
and a prayer light on your knees and you submit to the work and
the labor of the church, And you repent often, you’re going
to grow in grace. And maybe an outside book on
prayer or walking faithfully will be of benefit to you. But
friends, it is not rocket science. And you can fill your books with
shelf upon shelf or fill your shelves with book upon book from
all these authors and never read your Bible and never depend on
worship, never pray in fellowship together. And those are the simple
ingredients that God says will help you walk with him. Take what I’ve just said and
walk down to the ministry fair. And ask yourself this, how can
I serve and how can I be served for you serving the church and
the church serving you is how you will land safely in heaven. It’s what will get you home in
one piece. So let me encourage you with
all my heart, the church, the Christian life is not rocket
science. We make it hard. We make it confusing. We make
it complicated. But the bottom line is this.
We give our best to God, our whole life devoted to know him
and to make him known. And we will please him. So by
faith, we wonder by faith, we worship by faith. We walk with
God. This fourth point is our last. And it’s simply this. By faith,
we work. Look at what the story is here.
It’s of Noah. By faith, Noah being warned by
God concerning events as yet unseen and reverent fear constructed
an arc for the saving of his household. By this, he condemned
the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes
by faith. We have many in our congregation
here who had long careers at the same place. Many of them
had long careers at Western Electric. We don’t find people who work
long careers any longer. We give up, we transfer, we get
bored, we move on. The world is a little more dynamic
and shifting and changing. Company loyalty is not what it
used to be. But look at Noah. Noah most likely
labored or worked by faith to build an ark to save his family
from a flood, which God told him about beforehand, for about
100 years. He hammered and he nailed and
he sawed and he made pegs and he made beams and he cut timbers
and did all this for ages upon ages upon ages, simply because
God in some divine appointment came to him and said, there will
be a flood and it will destroy all sinful mankind from the earth.
But if you want to be saved, your family, Noah, you and your
three sons, you will be a remnant. And I, after the flood, will
create a new humanity through your family and the earth will
then be filled again with righteousness through you. And you see, Noah
had the faith to believe God’s warning. He had the faith to
believe God’s promise. He had the faith in the midst
of a dry and parched land where there was not a ship building
operation in sight to build a massive ship for the saving of his family
and the firstborn of all livestock. And it says simply this, he did
so out of a holy fear, out of a holy reverence. Oh, it was
a bizarre operation. It was a strange command God
given him. But he said, I want to save my
family and do it God’s way. And he believed he believed the
art could save his family. He believed that if he worked
and he labored, no matter what the world said to him, no matter
how crazy they said he was, that he would labor and he would judge
and he would condemn those around him. But he would be an heir
of the new humanity. We have this children’s book
about Noah and his ark. Everybody has those in their
home. But this one’s not the ordinary one. This one’s by a
Dutch artist named Peter Speer, and it’s just pictures, no words.
And the pictures tell the story. And there’s picture after picture
of Adam and his family building this ark. And surrounding the
ark, there are glimpses of the wickedness around. Things are
on fire. There are men who are fighting. They’re in the state
of drunkenness. And yet there’s Noah. He’s hammering. He’s building.
He’s gathering. He is preparing for the flood
that God is promising to send and judge the world. And at the
very last of the book, as you get to the last stages of before,
God puts the family in the ark and shuts the door. You see that
while Noah is being righteous, the world is being unrighteous.
And you can imagine that for these hundreds of years, for
age after age after age, Noah has said, I’m building an ark
to save my family from the judgment that is to come. And friends,
that is the same message that we are called to proclaim. Yes, we hide in the ark of Jesus.
And yes, we are believing in Jesus and helping build his kingdom
while the world around says you’re crazy. There is no judgment coming. There is no God. There is no
penalty for sin. In fact, there is no sin. Let
everybody live and let live and do as they please. And so we
see that by faith. Noah believed in God, he built
an ark for salvation and in the baptism that came upon this earth
as the world was flooded and as Wickedness was washed away
that through one man and his faith and his family saved in
the ark, a new humanity post flood came into being. God saved a remnant. And we come
from that family of Noah. So how about you? You’re in the
same shoes as these. You’re not in the ancient Near
East. No, you’re not a patriarch or a pre patriarch. You’re not
building an ark for 100 years. But you are a lone man, a lone
woman, a lone family, a lone church walking with God. Maybe
you have a child who’s converted and one who’s not, one who worships
and one who doesn’t. And you have that worship war
like Cain and Abel in your house as well. You’re a Christian,
you believe in creation and you live in the midst of a world
of atheists and skeptics. Here’s the challenge, brothers
and sisters, may you keep seeing what God has given us in his
word. And you keep your eyes on that until he gets you safely
home. Keep your eyes on his word and
on Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith. Think
of Jesus in this way. He is the creator. He is the
one who worships. He is the one who walked with
God and his walk with God was regarded as righteous to the
saving of our souls. And finally, this Jesus is the
arc of our salvation. You put your faith and your hope
and your trust in him. And God will save you in a greater
salvation than the way he saved Noah and his family. We put our
eyes and trust in Jesus. Let’s pray together. Our gracious
God, our Heavenly Father, we thank you for this word to us
that encourages our very souls to keep our eyes on Jesus. Though
the world may say different, we want to do as you say. Give
us grace. Give us help. Give us blessing.
When we falter, when we become weak, lift us up again and help
us in this as we live the Christian life. May we be found walking
faithfully with you. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.