The Reward of Faith (part 2) – Obtaining God’s Favor
Hebrews 11:1-7 (5-7)
December 6, 2015
I know it has been a couple of weeks since we last looked into this wonderful book of Hebrews, so let me pull us all back into focus here.
You will remember that our writer is writing to a group of Jews
Who were experiencing a CRISIS OF FAITH.
• They were those who had made a public confession of Christ,
• But who were now facing such extreme opposition
• That they were contemplating defecting from Jesus and returning to Judaism.
Throughout the letter the writer has been expressing
What a grave mistake this would be.
1 reason this was a mistake is the enormous benefit of having Christ.
He is a High Priest like no other
He is a sacrifice like no other
• Only in Christ do we find true atonement and true security.
• Only in Christ is the veil removed.
• Only in Christ is God satisfied.
• Only in Christ do we have an eternal Advocate.
It would obviously be a major mistake to leave Christ.
The other reason it would be a mistake is because of the terrible penalty inflicted upon those who forsake Him.
More than once the writer has warned us about the danger of falling away.
Chapter 6 said people who do that are like ground that is “close to be cursed and ends up being burned.” He said it is impossible to renew people like that to repentance since “they again crucify to themselves the Son of God”.
Chapter 10 said people who “trample under foot the Son of God and regard as unclean the blood of the covenant and insult the Spirit of Grace” will fall into the hands of the living God and that is a “terrifying thing.”
So on one hand we have the benefit of Christ,
On the other we have the punishment for falling away.
Obviously the writer wants these suffering Jews to stick with Jesus.
And in order to do that, these Hebrews will need FAITH
Hebrews 10:36-39 “For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. FOR YET IN A VERY LITTLE WHILE, HE WHO IS COMING WILL COME, AND WILL NOT DELAY. BUT MY RIGHTEOUS ONE SHALL LIVE BY FAITH; AND IF HE SHRINKS BACK, MY SOUL HAS NO PLEASURE IN HIM. But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.”
In short, if you want to be found pleasing to Christ when He comes,
Then you had better be a person of faith, who doesn’t shrink back.
Have faith “to the preserving of the soul.”
And so literally these Hebrews are in a crisis of faith.
• Pressured from hostility on the outside.
• Pressured from conviction on the inside.
• Faced with the threat of persecution from the Jews.
• Faced with the threat of judgment from God.
• Offered temporary comfort if they will forsake Jesus.
• Offered eternal salvation if they will hold fast to Him.
And these Hebrews must decide which path they will choose.
Jesus said:
Matthew 7:13-14 “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. “For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”
And that is where these Hebrews are.
Might I remind you that every living being
Must also make this decision.
Jesus is the most polarizing figure in the history of the world.
You cannot be neutral with Him.
Matthew 10:34-39 “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. “For I came to SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW; and A MAN’S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD. “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. “And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. “He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.”
What was making this decision difficult for the Hebrews
Was the immediate and intense persecution that waited for them
If those chose Christ.
And you should know that we may all face such a decision.
It is happening in our world.
And it is beginning to happen even in our own country.
I’ve scrolled Facebook over the past weeks and like many of you I’ve seen a lot of Posts regarding ISIS and refugees and terrorism and shootings.
Typically the debate turns to guns.
Some want them gone, and some turn to them for their safety.
Both are really looking for the same thing, which is an end to the threat.
One thinks removing guns will stop the threat, one thinks owning guns will do it.
And I really don’t care which side of the issue you are on.
What I would tell you is that guns or no guns,
Persecution is promised for those who follow Christ.
2 Timothy 3:12 “Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”
Matthew 10:22 “You will be hated by all because of My name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved.”
The issue of Scripture has never been how to stop persecution. But it has always been the need to remain faithful in the midst of it.
This is a point of confusion for our world.
Maybe you saw the cover of DAILY NEWS this past week.
“14 Dead in California Mass Shooting: GOD ISN’T FIXING THIS”
• It put thousands up in arms immediately.
• It was written to address the common response to ask for prayer
• Apparently the editor of this magazine is fed up with that response, noting that
despite all the praying, God doesn’t seem to be intervening.
Look, saving people from persecution
Has never been God’s objective throughout Scripture.
Saving people from hell has been God’s objective.
And God uses persecution as a means to do that.
Persecution forces people to put their money where their mouth is.
Those who will endure persecution for the sake of Christ receive a tremendous assurance that their faith is genuine and their souls are secure.
1 Peter 1:6-7 “In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ;”
1 Peter 4:1-2 “Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose, because he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men, but for the will of God.”
What is my point?
Simply that as a believer your main concern
Should not be how to stop persecution.
Your main concern should be that
You have the type of faith which will endure it.
That is the call of the writer of Hebrews.
• He wants these people to examine their faith.
• He wants them to have faith and he wants them to exercise it.
And to make sure everyone understands exactly what he means,
He wrote what is commonly called “The Faith Chapter”
This chapter is meant to illustrate for us what saving faith looks like.
Now, I know it’s been two weeks since we looked at it so let me again refresh your memory about this chapter as a whole. (Bear with me as we recap a little here)
There are 4 main points to this chapter.
THE REWARD OF FAITH (1-7)
You see over and over again how men offered faith and thus were granted righteousness.
THE FOCUS OF FAITH (8-22)
Here the focus is on how people continually looked past what they could see and focused on what they could not see. They never took their eyes of the prize.
THE COURAGE OF FAITH (23-31)
See the references to overcoming danger and choosing not to fear
THE ENDURANCE OF FAITH (32-40)
Here we find a rapid fire list of hardships. Some were delivered, some were not, but all endured.
I also told you about some important THEMES
That continually resurface as you study.
FAITH & WORKS
It is easy to measure the faith of every person listed here because we see the verb that describes what they did. Their faith was not void of works, it was validated by their works.
SEEN VS UNSEEN
Continually we are told what these people never saw. In many cases they did not see physical fulfillment of the promises. But these people saw with eyes of faith and looked at the eternal fulfillment. They didn’t always see it here, but through eyes of faith they saw it in eternity.
RECEIVED VS NOT RECEIVED
They didn’t always get what was promised, but they did always receive God’s favor.
Now, last time we met we started looking at that first point:
THE REWARD OF FAITH (obtaining God’s Favor) (1-7)
And in these 7 verses we said there were two main points.
#1 THE NATURE OF FAITH
Hebrews 11:1-5
Here we saw what faith is and what faith does.
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
I told you that this verse represented a CAUSE AND EFFECT,
And that they were actually listed in reverse order.
Faith begins as “the conviction of things not seen”
The word “conviction” there comes from a Greek word
That means “to prove with a test”
And so we said that when a promise is made by God,
We have to “test” whether or not we think
God can and God will keep His promise.
This is what the people of faith throughout the Bible did.
Take Abraham for example:
Romans 4:20-21 “yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform.”
Abraham had tested God and believed God could and God would
So Abraham chose to believe even what he could not see.
He had a “conviction of things not seen”
This then leads to “the assurance of things hoped for”
When you become convinced that
God can and will do what He has promised,
You then receive assurance
Regarding the thing you presently are hoping for.
• We’ve never seen Jesus
• We don’t see Him now
• We’ve never seen heaven
But because we are convinced God takes care of the unseen,
We have assurance that one day Jesus will return
And take us to heaven to be with Him.
Faith starts as conviction and ends as assurance
And to illustrate that, the writer told us about creation.
(3) “By Faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.”
• We didn’t see God create the world.
• But we believe He did.
• Since we believe that without having seen it,
• Certainly we can believe other things that we don’t see.
That is what faith IS.
But the writer also wanted us to know WHAT FAITH DOES
And simply put: faith obtains God’s favor.
(2) “For by it the men of old gained approval.”
There has only ever been one thing that God wanted from man
• It wasn’t sacrifices
• It wasn’t ordinances
• It wasn’t songs or money or even deprivation
God wants faith.
That has never changed.
And to illustrate that the writer gave two examples.
The first was Abel.
(4) “By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks.”
• Genesis tells us that Abel brought the first of his flock to God.
• Genesis tells us that Cain brought the fruit of the ground.
The writer of Hebrews tells us why God accepted Abel and not Cain.
Abel brought his offering in faith, Cain did not.
If you were to compare the two offerings, there is no doubt that
Cain would have worked much harder to bring his offering than Abel did.
But God didn’t want works. God wanted faith.
And because of that Abel “obtained the testimony that he was righteous”
Now, that act of faith ended up getting Abel killed.
The writer reminding us that “he is dead” because of his faith.
But even in his death “he still speaks”
What do you suppose Abel would tell those struggling today?
He would tell them to exercise their faith! It is so worth it!
So Abel chose faith, and even though it cost him his life on earth,
It earned him God’s favor and eternal life.
Leaving Abel, let’s move on now to the second example: ENOCH.
(5) “By faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death; And he was not found because God took him up; for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God.”
There are those two all-important phrases again.
“he obtained the witness”
“he was pleasing to God”
Enoch was a lot like Abel.
He offered God faith and God was pleased with him because of it.
But as I said it is important to understand
The relationship of their faith and their works.
Abel’s faith was that he “offered to God a better sacrifice”
What was Enoch’s faith?
TURN TO: GENESIS 5
I hope you remember this from our study of Genesis,
But chapter 5 is a very important chapter in Moses’ preaching.
Moses is making an unmistakable point.
“The wages of sin is death”
The chapter details 9 generations from Adam
And about 8 of them Moses emphatically says “and he died”
But in glaring contrast Moses introduces Enoch.
Who of the 9 was the only one who did not die.
In fact, instead of death the Bible simply says that (24) “God took him.”
Enoch was raptured.
The obvious question:
WHAT DID ENOCH DO THAT ALLOWED HIM TO ESCAPE DEATH?
No one was escaping death, why Enoch?
(24) “Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.”
The writer of Hebrews described it like this:
“he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God.”
• Enoch lived a life that was devoted to God.
• Enoch lived in a pleasing manner.
Do you have any specifics?
Jude 14-15 “It was also about these men that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones, to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.”
Enoch was a preacher of righteousness and judgment.
He was clearly one who spoke against the corruption of his culture
And chose instead to seek God.
• Enoch sought God
• Enoch walked after God
• Enoch trusted God
AND HE DID THIS IN THE MIDST OF A CULTURE THAT DID NOT.
And Scripture says “he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God.”
That is what faith does.
Faith pleases God.
It actually allowed Enoch to skip death.
• Now that doesn’t mean if you will just have faith that you won’t die.
• We just covered Abel who died for his faith and said that it was worth it.
Keep your eye on the proper reward.
• The reward is not ease in this life.
• The reward is not some temporary pay off.
• The reward of faith is that God is pleased and He declares the people of faith to be righteous.
This righteousness allows them to dwell with God forever.
THAT IS THE NATURE OF FAITH.
• What it is – a conviction that leads to assurance.
• What it does – pleases God.
But the nature of faith is not the only thing the writer wants you to understand here.
#2 THE NECESSITY OF FAITH
Hebrews 11:6-7
After making the statement that Enoch, became pleasing to God
The writer wants you to understand what a big deal this was.
“And without faith it is impossible to please Him”
Please let that sink in for a moment.
Think of all the things that you could offer God.
Think of all the things people in pagan religions offered their gods.
• Bring Him an animal sacrifice…
• Bring Him even your firstborn…
• Bring Him your crops…
Or perhaps it’s a specific behavior.
• Maybe you could take a vow of poverty.
• Maybe you could take a vow of chastity.
• Maybe you could treat your body severely with markings and cuts.
• Maybe you could make some sort of difficult voyage in God’s name.
• Maybe you could go on some sort of mission.
• Maybe you could fly an airplane into a building.
• Maybe you could go to church every Sunday.
• Maybe you could read your Bible daily.
• Maybe you could be baptized.
• Maybe you could fight for your country.
• Maybe you could adopt orphans.
• Maybe you could give to charity.
• Maybe you could cure cancer.
• Maybe you could feed the hungry or clothe the naked.
Surely if you did those things God would be pleased with you.
And the answer is “without faith it is impossible to please Him.”
None of those things please God if they are not united in faith.
Listen to what Paul said about Israel.
(hands down the most religious people ever)
Romans 9:30-33 “What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, attained righteousness, even the righteousness which is by faith; but Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, did not arrive at that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as though it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone, just as it is written, “BEHOLD, I LAY IN ZION A STONE OF STUMBLING AND A ROCK OF OFFENSE, AND HE WHO BELIEVES IN HIM WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED.”
All God wanted was faith and all they offered was works.
(Go back to the illustration of Cain and Abel)
If you don’t come to God in faith you will not please Him.
Why?
“for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”
What the writer lists there is
The most absolute and basic principles of faith that there are.
• To believe that God “is”
• To believe that God “is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”
And I do want to speak to that a moment.
Today sometimes faith gets a little misconstrued in our culture.
Our “name it and claim it” friends
Have done a great disservice to what faith actually is.
They seem to think that faith is when you tell God what you want
And you believe He’ll give you what you want until He finally does.
• They see faith as some sort of magic formula that somehow strong-arms God
into giving you what you want.
• They seem to think that God wants you to claim the impossible and put Him to
the test until He does it.
That is not what the writer mentions.
According to Hebrews God simply wants you to believe that “He is”
• Like when the world is clamoring that God is not real.
• Or like when your circumstances feel like God is absent.
• Or like when you’re having difficulty seeing His presence in your pain.
At those moments God is simply asking you to believe “that He is”
You know the “conviction of things not seen”
And then God wants you to believe that in following and seeking Him that there is a reward; “that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”
• He’s not asking you to name your reward.
• He’s not asking you to claim your reward.
He’s asking you to trust that the reward He has for you will be worth it.
You know the “assurance of things hoped for.”
The writer here is NOT telling these suffering Hebrews
That they need to rise up and claim a victory
And believe that God will deliver them from peril.
He is telling them that in the middle of their peril,
When it feels like God is absent or silent,
That they still need to believe that He is God
And that trusting Him will be worth it.
That is faith.
That is what God requires.
In fact, if you don’t offer Him that, you won’t be able to please Him at all.
And you will never become and heir of the righteousness you need.
Believe that God is and that God is a rewarder.
And to further emphasize that truth the writer again gives an illustration.
Enter the man we know as NOAH.
(7) “By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.”
Noah was also a key figure in Moses account of Genesis.
• Moses used Abel to demonstrate how to avoid God’s displeasure.
• Moses used Enoch to demonstrate how to avoid death.
• Moses uses Noah to demonstrate how to avoid destruction.
And again the answer is “By faith”
In Noah’s day God had finally had enough.
Genesis 6:5-8 “Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. The LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.”
So the whole world is so corrupt that God has decided to destroy them all,
And yet one man was found to be pleasing to God.
Moses was obviously putting a magnifying glass on Noah.
You are supposed to read that and ask, “Why was Noah so pleasing?”
Genesis 6:9 “These are the records of the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God.”
There it is again.
That’s the same thing Enoch did (walked with God)
Apparently Moses is making a point.
• Abel, Enoch, and Noah all lived in a day of sin.
• Abel, Enoch, and Noah all faced scorn from those around them.
• And yet, Abel, Enoch, and Noah still believed that God was real and if they would reject their culture and strive to please God that they would be rewarded for it.
They didn’t know how, they just believed.
And God was pleased with this simple faith.
And if you want to see Noah’s faith, it is really quite remarkable.
The writer says that he was “warned by God about things not yet seen”
In short, Noah had never heard of a global killer.
Noah had never seen rain.
But God said it was going to happen.
Genesis 6:11-14, 17 “Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence. God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. Then God said to Noah, “The end of all flesh has come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence because of them; and behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth. “Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood; you shall make the ark with rooms, and shall cover it inside and out with pitch…”Behold, I, even I am bringing the flood of water upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life, from under heaven; everything that is on the earth shall perish.”
God told Noah the earth was wicked and He was going to flood it
And Noah should build a boat.
Genesis 6:22 “Thus Noah did; according to all that God had commanded him, so he did.”
The writer of Hebrews said that Noah “prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world”
And incidentally the word there means that Noah “cautiously prepared that ark”
He was meticulous and careful
In short, he really believed he would need it.
It took Noah 100 years to build that ark.
Do you think he caught a little flak from the corrupt work around him?
• “Hey Noah, how much rain did you get last night? Bahahah”
• “Hey Noah, seen the forecast lately?”
But Noah kept right on building and the decision proved wise
For Noah saved his family from the flood.
But listen to the writer.
The reward of Noah’s faith was NOT that he didn’t drown.
The reward of his faith was that he “became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.”
Sure God saved Noah from the flood,
But even more than that God saved Noah from sin.
God declared Noah righteous.
AND THIS IS THE POINT OF THE WRITER OF HEBREWS.
GOD REQUIRES FAITH.
• He requires you to believe He’s there even when you don’t see Him.
• He requires you to believe serving Him will be worth it even when you don’t see how.
Today we have more revelation and we understand that
The specific faith God wants
Is for you and me to trust in the saving work of His Son Jesus.
John 3:16-18 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. “He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
And that is what the writer wants these Hebrews to understand.
YOU MUST HAVE FAITH
• Not so that the hardships will stop.
• But so that God will be pleased with you.
I don’t know if your circumstances will change.
Maybe the will, maybe they won’t.
Enoch and Noah were both spared, Abel wasn’t.
Read the chapter.
Some get delivered from peril, some don’t.
That’s NOT the reward of faith.
If you think faith is a tool to create positive circumstances in your life, you’ve listened far too much to the preachers on TV.
God wanted faith that believed regardless of the circumstances.
And the people who brought that kind of faith…
God gave them righteousness.
That is actually how the writer sums up the whole chapter at the end.
Hebrews 11:39 “And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised,”
They didn’t get what they wanted, but God was pleased,
And they did obtain righteousness.
That is the CRISIS OF FAITH these Hebrews are facing.
It’s the crisis everyone eventually faces.
Will you determine to trust God even when you can’t see?
Will you “believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him”?
If you will, then do like these men
And put your money where your mouth is and seek after God.
That’s what all three of these men did, they sought God in a culture that did not.
And God responded by giving them righteousness.
Hebrews 11:6 “And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”
