Day 2269 – Hebrews-18 – Common People of Uncommon Faith – Daily Wisdom

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Welcome to Day 2269 of Wisdom-Trek. Thank you for joining me.
This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom
Hebrews-18 Common People of Uncommon Faith – Daily Wisdom
Putnam Church Message – 09/03/2023

Common People of Uncommon Faith - Hebrews 11:1-7

We continue our extended series through the book of Hebrews in the New Testament. Last week, we explored the right response: we should not neglect this opportunity to draw near to God … and come clean.

This week, we will study the ‘Application of Faith’ by Common People with Uncommon Faith.

Let’s read Hebrews 11:1-7 on page 1874 of your Pew Bible.

Faith in Action

1 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. 2 This is what the ancients were commended for.

3 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.

4 By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead.

5 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.”[a] For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. 6 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.

7 By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.

A Christian life of faith is an enigma in our modern world that is dependent on the senses, dominated by the sensual, and dissected by the sciences. In his book The Root of the Righteous, A. W. Tozer notes that a faithful Christian “feels supreme love for One whom he has never seen, talks familiarly every day to Someone he cannot see, … sees the invisible, hears the inaudible and knows that which passeth knowledge.” The more skeptical and materialistic our world becomes, the more outlandish the person of faith will appear. How strange it will seem to take God at His word, believe in the unseen, and invest in eternity!

In light of this, it’s easy to think that perseverance in a life of faith is an honor reserved for an elite league of heroic saints with seemingly supernatural abilities to discern the invisible, believe the incredible, and stand against the inevitable. Church history is marked by memorials of the remarkable “saints” whose names don churches, hospitals, universities, and even cities—Peter, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Moody, Scofield. With this lineup of legends, it’s easy to overlook the unsung believers who modeled the life of faith outside the...

Common People of Uncommon Faith - Hebrews 11:1-7

This week, we will study the ‘Application of Faith’ by Common People with Uncommon Faith.

Let’s read Hebrews 11:1-7 on page 1874 of your Pew Bible.

Faith in Action

1 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. 2 This is what the ancients were commended for.

3 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.

4 By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead.

Functioning somewhat like a Reader’s Digest, (Sample) condensed version of the Old Testament, Hebrews 11 recounts biblical history through the well-known and the lesser-known heroes of God’s epic story of redemption. Here, we find common men and women who exhibited uncommon faith—faith that perplexed the people around them but pleased the God above them.

11:1–3, 6

Before he documents the journey of the faithful throughout biblical history, the writer of Hebrews provides a simple but rich definition of faith (11:1–2). Faith isn’t a blind shot in the dark, positive thinking, arrogant presumption, or gullible naïveté. Faith is confidence in God, a firm conviction that what He says is true and that what He promises He will do. (Bulletin Insert)

In 11:1, in his definition of faith, the author places two lines in parallel:

FAITH IS …

The CONFIDENCE

The REALTY
In What We Hope For… (NIV)

Of What We Hope For… (NLT)

The ASSURANCE

The EVIDENCE
About What We Do Not See (NIV)

Of Things We Cannot See (NLT)

Confidence or Reality refers to the essence or substance of something that stands under something as its foundation or support. This word is partnered with these words: assurance and evidence. These things constitute the grounds for holding as true the invisible reality of spiritual things and the trustworthiness of God’s future promises: “Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.” (11:1). When building a structure the basic rule is, the taller the structure, the deeper the foundation must be. The foundation must go into the bedrock for tall buildings to stand firm. So it is with our life of faith, to have strong faith, it must be embedded in the bedrock of God’s Word. This dense definition, therefore, points to the state of faith—believing—and the activity of faith—being faithful.

Such faith isn’t simply limited to the things present but invisible, or the things future and unknowable (11:1). Faith is also necessary to take God at His word regarding things past and unobservable. Take, for example, God’s creation of all things out of nothing. Only by faith in God’s record of creation can we understand that God Himself is responsible for creating our incomprehensible universe (11:3). We can make philosophical arguments for the existence of a First Cause or point to scientific evidence for an Intelligent Designer, but ultimately, without faith in the Almighty Creator of Genesis 1:1, we’ll never grasp this foundational truth.

To complete our examination of the author’s definition of faith, allow me to do something I rarely do in my exposition of a passage: jump ahead a few verses to Hebrews 11:6. While describing the first three examples of faithfulness, the author inserts a line that further defines the life of faith by explaining how this faith works. A life of faith presupposes an attitude of humble dependence, which works itself out in three ways. (Bulletin)

First, by faith, we come to God (11:6). This suggests an acknowledgment that He is the great Source of everything there is … and of everything we need. We come to Him, as it were, with open hands and an open heart. He isn’t dodging us or hiding himself from us. He’s always there. We simply go to Him through faith.

Second, by faith, we believe that He is (11:6). This suggests that we set aside the need to see with human eyes or touch with human hands. We replace the “show me” and “prove it” attitudes of skepticism with the Christian attitudes of openness and trust.

Third, by faith, we trust Him to keep His word (11:6). He has promised to reward those who seek Him by believing in Him and coming to Him in faith. By faith, we know that, because of the nature of God (all-powerful and all-knowing) and His character (faithful and true), He is, therefore, trustworthy. We can depend on Him completely.

(Graphic in insert)

The person of faith, then, believes what God says without questioning and, therefore, does what God says without quarreling. In his journal, Dag Hammarskjöld, the second secretary-general of the UN, described a believer who exhibited that kind of living faith:

He broke fresh ground—because, and only because, he had the courage to go ahead without asking whether others were following or even understood. He did not need the divided responsibility in which others sought to be safe from ridicule because he had been granted a faith that required no confirmation.

That’s the type of faith that gains approval from God (11:2). From a natural perspective, such a life of faith may seem risky … even reckless. But in reality, the risk is nil because of the trustworthy character of God. Because of who He is, we can step out in faith, knowing He will embrace us like an attentive, loving mother reaching out to catch a toddler taking their first haphazard steps.

(Bulletin Insert)

FIVE FACTS ABOUT FAITH FROM Hebrews 11

1. Faith builds assurance and conviction (11:1). It drives out doubts about the past, insecurity in the present, and fear of the future.

2. Faith faces the future with confidence (11:1). It solidifies hope and stands firm amid the gale-force winds of trials.

3. Faith focuses on an invisible reality (11:1, 3). It perceives “things we cannot see,” which unbelievers will never accept.

4. Faith fulfills its purpose in pleasing God (11:2, 6). It can’t be substituted by good works, good feelings, or good intentions.

5. Faith fixes our lives fully on God (11:6). It takes seriously God’s promise of reward for faithfulness.

11:4–5, 7

With the definition of faith framing the canvas of Hebrews 11, the author begins to add brilliant colors to illustrate the life of faith. (Colorful Life) He launches his lineup of what we’ll call the “Procession of Faith,” not with Father Abraham or Moses the Deliverer, nor with King David or Elijah the Prophet. To illustrate his profound definition of faith with practical lives of faithfulness, the author of Hebrews begins with a shepherd, a preacher, and a builder—three common people with uncommon faith.

In 11:4, he introduces a shepherd named Abel. With the mention of this name, we enter into the midst of the most primitive era with the very first family on earth. Genesis 4 tells us Abel was a shepherd while his brother Cain was a farmer (Gen. 4:2). Though it’s not mentioned in the text, it’s implied that God had made known His requirement for the offering expected in authentic worship—an offering of blood (Gen. 4:3–7). Abel “did well” (Gen. 4:7) and obeyed by offering an animal sacrifice as God demanded. But Cain chose to do things his way by offering the fruit of his labors. You probably know the end result: God approved of Abel’s sacrifice offered in faith, but disapproved of Cain’s (Gen. 4:3–5). In a fit of jealousy, Cain killed his brother for doing what was right in the eyes of God. This first example demonstrates that faith—taking God at His word—involves trusting God and responding rightly to that belief. It also illustrates the painful truth that faithful obedience sometimes results in persecution—sometimes death.

It reflects our fallen human nature to try to come to God on our terms, offering Him things He didn’t ask for—good works, artificial rituals, sincere intentions. But God asks for simple trust and obedience—doing what He says even when we don’t understand why. It is possible that the author was drawing a subtle parallel between Cain’s self-willed offering and the obsolete animal sacrifices of the Mosaic Law on the one hand, and Abel’s faithful offering and the once-for-all shed blood of Jesus Christ on the other (Heb. 9:11–14).

The second example of a life of faith is Enoch (11:5). Because of his faith, exhibited in a life that was “pleasing to God,” this mysterious figure of the pre-Flood era was “taken up” by God without experiencing death. In the rest of the Bible, the biography of Enoch is, at best, only a sketch. The original account of his miraculous rapture to heaven is found in four verses in Genesis. We’re told twice that he “walked with God” and that he fathered children, and then we’re told that “God had taken him away” (Gen. 5:21–24). Besides this, Jude 1:14–15 tells us that Enoch was a prophet who foresaw the future judgment of God.

Another thing we do know is that Enoch lived in the closing generations before Noah’s Flood. He lived with righteousness and raised his children during an increasingly perverse and severely wicked world that would have scorned his life of faith. Enoch’s faith, which kept him in step with God and out of step with his generation, pleased God so much that he was taken from the earth before the judgment of the Flood.

Next, the writer of Hebrews turns the spotlight on a much better-known hero of the faith, Noah (Heb. 11:7). However, even though the book of Genesis spends six chapters on Noah (Gen. 5–10), Hebrews 11 distills the account of this giant of the faith to just one verse that focuses on his faithfulness amid a condemned world. When God warned Noah of the impending Flood—“things not yet seen” (Heb. 11:7)—he reverently built the ark in obedience to the Lord’s command.

Genesis describes Noah as a righteous man—blameless in his generation—who, like Enoch, walked with God and found favor in His eyes (Gen. 6:8–9). This is all the more remarkable when we realize the depth of depravity and the height of wickedness that the world had reached in his day. All of his contemporaries were wicked, with every intent of the thoughts of their hearts continually evil (Gen. 6:5). Talk about being out of sync with the world! I’m sure everybody around them ridiculed Noah and his family until the waters of the Flood swept them all away. Nevertheless, Noah trusted and obeyed (Gen. 6:22; 7:5, 8–9, 16). He put his faith to work, believing God’s word over public opinion.

Each of these men—Abel, Enoch, and Noah—exemplified the very definition of faith with his life. They lived in light of the invisible reality, in love with the invisible God, and in anticipation of an invisible future. And each of them, like all people of faith, received the reward of those who please God—not by works, but by faith alone.

APPLICATION: HEBREWS 11:1–7 Applications of Faith

(Bulletin Insert) Abel, Enoch, and Noah are all common men with uncommon faith. By faith, Abel approached God the way God desired and paid for it with his life. Enoch proclaimed God’s word by faith, and God rescued him from this world. Noah fulfilled God’s will by faith and became the deliverer of his family and all human and animal life on earth. These three very different outcomes of faithfulness illustrate that a life of faith will look different for each of us, just as it was different for each of them.

How about your life? Like Abel, do you obey God even when others don’t … even if it doesn’t seem to make sense … even if your own way seems “good enough”?

Do you simply trust and obey, paying the world’s price for obedience to God? Abel paid the ultimate price for his obedience—his life. Indeed, we can worship and serve our Lord by faith amid our wicked world, even if it means discomfort, ridicule, or persecution.

Like Enoch, do we walk with God, raising our families in the right way even when the very definition of the family is going the wrong way? If faith were the topic of conversation in your neighborhood, would our family come up as an example of Christ-followers? If somebody looked at us or our family, would they see people who stand out from the crowd or go with the flow?

Like Noah, do you invest your time, energy, finances, and skills to focus on what God’s calling and work is for you? Is your life and work impacting the lives of others by taking God at His word that the investment into the lives of others affects them for eternity? Or do you focus on your ambitions, priorities, and pursuits in this world, which is passing away?

Whether you’re making an offering to God, speaking out on His behalf, or obeying His Word, God looks for one thing—faith. A faith that’s willing to step out in faithfulness, a faith that is “reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.” (11:1).

Next week, we will continue to study Common People of Uncommon Faith, and include additional examples of “Faithful Walks Worth Following,” Please read Hebrews 11:8-22 to prepare.