Text: Hebrews 11:1–7
Preacher: Pastor Brian Sauvé
On Being Weird
God willing, over the next four Sundays in this great eleventh chapter of Hebrews, we will learn about faith—what it is and what it does—through this great cloud of witnesses that chapter twelve, verse one tells us are the saints that have gone before us.
Over the last ten chapters, the author of Hebrews has been leveraging the Old Testament to make this one, controlling point for the book of Hebrews: That Jesus is better than all of his Old Testament forerunners and all of his rivals.
Now, in the eleventh chapter, he will move to telling us how we ought to respond to the glory and surpassing supremacy of Jesus—namely by faith. And so we need to know what faith is and what it looks like in the wild, what it does.
And the best way to see that is by seeing what it has looked like and has done. This is a chapter, then, of Bible stories. Especially those Bible stories we love to tell our kids.
We have a good instinct, it seems, when we reach for collections of stories from the Old Testament to read to our kids at dinner time and bedtime, from kids’ Bibles like the great one Catherine Vos put out some time ago.
That’s a good instinct; the mistake would be to stop reaching for those stories when we grow up. What makes us think that hearing of the great faith of the saints that have gone before us—who by their faith won kingdoms and suffered death rather than recant, saints who had the kind of faith that could handle both winning and suffering for the sake of the Lord—is only something that edifies children?
The author of Hebrews seems convinced that we need them, too. Look with me, if you would, at Hebrews 11, and we will make our way this morning through the first seven verses, God willing. This is the Word of the Living God:
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. 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.”
-Hebrews 11:1–7
We’ll handle these first seven verses in five basic chunks, and we’ll do so very simply. In the first two chunks, we’ll set up some prolegomena for the whole chapter—stuff we’ll need to know to handle these stories of faith properly. Then in the final three chunks, we’ll take a quick glance at the faith of our spiritual forefathers Abel, Enoch, and Noah, and see what they have to teach us about this life of faith.
Bible Stories
So, section one, starting in verse 1,
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation.”
-Hebrews 11:1–2
The author of Hebrews would have us go into this chapter with our basic terms defined. We’re going to talk about how the faith of our forefathers and foremothers worked itself out in glorious good works and great deeds—so we’d better start with an understanding of what faith is, right?
Faith, he’d have us know, is the assurance of things hoped for. That means that faith believes that what it hopes will be will be. It is, he says, the conviction of things not seen. That means that faith is something that precedes sight; it is what takes hold of and believes in some future hope while that hope is yet future.
Now hopefully you see it by now: That means faith is one of those transitive verbs we sometimes come across, right? Mere “faith” is no virtue, standing all alone by itself in a corner, trying to keep itself entertained. I can’t tell you whether your faith is admirable or asinine until you tell me what you have faith in.
What are those things you are hoping for, and why are you assured of them? Maybe, against all the many warnings of the Lord against trusting in wealth, you were hoping to be happy because you’d gotten a 20% return in the last year in the stock market. And you were assured of this hope, because of course, just look at the chart! That line just keeps trending up, right? Oops. The last three weeks happened.
Even if you had gotten your 20% for the next decade or two and cruised into retirement, it still would have been a vain hope to anchor your soul to—no merely mortal or created thing can hold up that kind of hope.
Our hope, the blessed hope, is the kind of hope that is not vulnerable to moth, rust, decay, or depreciation. Our blessed hope is not a hope which is vulnerable to thieves and robbers. Our hope requires no photoshopping or plastic surgery to keep it looking its best. Our hope is not vulnerable to death or disease—whether of the malignant tumor variety or the viral pneumonia variety or the car accident variety or the die-in-my-sleep-at-85 variety.
Our hope is an immortal hope—hope in the risen and reigning, the immortal High Priest of Heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ. By faith in that hope, the saints of old received their heavenly commendation. Our faith, Refuge, is in the blessed hope of everlasting life with the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Faith & Creation
Now, turning to the second chunk of the text, and the final piece of prolegomena we need to have in our tool-belts before we get to work in the lives of the saints. 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.”
-Hebrews 11:3
We’re Christians, and one thing that means is that our foundation for everything is a God who creates. We live in God’s spoken world; this changes everything, right? This fact, that everything from aardvarks to atoms to peaches to pine trees to black labradors to bald pastors (looking at you, Pastor Dan) is created, contingent, dependent—and so emphatically not autonomous, independent, self-sufficient, and self-sustaining.
Why do we need faith? Why live by faith? Because you are a created thing, a dependent thing. You are a breakable, mortal thing. Because you are not your own, but belong to God. And so you owe everything and are owed nothing. And so you can’t make even one hair on your head white or black. And so you are just not that big of a deal.
And so you are not the kind of thing in which one should put ultimate faith. This doctrine of creation changes everything. It is foundational to all of life. If our universe is not created, but simply is—then everything is meaningless. If that is the case, the world is simply colliding atoms and chemical reactions. Who cares if some of that matter can think? That’s just more chemical reactions.
But if the universe is a created universe, a created cosmos, then meaning and purpose is possible. If it is created, then it can be for something.
And so faith is our trust that God created this world with a purpose, and it is hoping in the promises of that purpose, that he is working every quark and atom and movement and thought and event towards the end for which he created all things—his glory and our good, his people.
Abel: Faith that Obeys
Let’s move now into the first vignette of what this faith looks like in action in our spiritual ancestors. Looking at verse 4, we see through our brother Abel that faith obeys God, and so faith is able to lay hold of the future promises of God.
“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.”
-Hebrews 11:4
Faith obeys, and so faith speaks into the next generations. Faith in God is life, and it pushes life downstream, even through the next several millennia. Remember, he ended chapter ten by exhorting the Hebrew Christians not to shrink back to the shadows of the Old Covenant, but to press on in faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And now he would have us see that this faith is no esoteric, abstract, theological thing. It is real, tangible, and very blue collar as it goes out of God’s people. He points back over his shoulder at Abel, all the way back in the first chapters of Genesis, where Abel and his brother Cain both offered sacrifices to God, but Abel’s was given in faith, while Cain’s was not.
People have argued about this: What made Abel’s offering acceptable and not Cain’s? Was it that Abel offered meat from his flock and Cain offered produce from the field? No. Here we have the divinely inspired, inerrant commentary of the New Testament on the Old telling us what it was—faith.
Abel offered in faith, meaning his sacrifice was given along with trust in God and his promises. Even then, one generation into the world, they had promises to lay hold of, right? Genesis 3:15, God would send the Seed of the Woman to crush the Serpent’s head. God would, in other words, redeem and renovate where the Curse of sin had enslaved and corrupted.
And through his sacrifice of faith, Abel left a lasting witness, a witness that speaks even to today. Listen, Refuge: You can do that. This is not extra-special, extra-faith-filled super-Christianity of super-saints, just because they’re in the Bible and you’re not.
No, the whole point of chapter 11 is the opposite of that. The point is that Abel and you are brothers. You’re made of the same stuff. If you present your body as a living sacrifice to God, if you offer yourself in faith to God, you too can speak, long after you’re dead.
Men, women, as you live in faith, you are pushing life downstream in history. You can, by the Spirit’s help and through the faithful fulfillment of the promises of God, speak life into your kids, your grandkids, to the men and women who will—God willing—be worshiping in this room long after we are dead and buried and waiting our resurrection. That’s what Abel teaches us.
Enoch: Faith that Pleased God
How about Enoch, a man from the very next chapter of Genesis? Look at verse 5 and 6, please:
“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.”
-Hebrews 11:5–6
Enoch teaches us something absolutely essential about life, something that we often get exactly backwards: That faith in God is ultimately in our self-interest—in fact, the life of faith is the only life that is truly a life of authentic self-love.
Let me explain, because that might sound wrong to you, and I get why it might. “Aren’t we supposed to avoid self-love? Isn’t self-love wrong? Isn’t self-love what Jesus was warning about when he told us that it is only those who lose their life who truly gain it?”
My answer, via Enoch, is kinda-sorta-but-not-really. In fact, if you look at what Jesus says in Luke 17:33 about the one who seeks to preserve his life versus the one who loses his life for Jesus’ sake, you find out that Jesus is also aiming to motivate us by way of our own ultimate self-interest.
See, we can tend to have this idea—an idea that sounds very spiritual, actually—that is actually massively wrong in the long run. It’s the idea that the life of faith is the most miserable life. It’s the idea that you will be able to tell who it is with the strongest faith by the self-flagellators, the self-loathers, the ones who would have you believe that they’re following God because it is the surest way of being miserable, and therefore the most spiritual.
Notice that that is not what Jesus is saying. In fact, he’s assuming that you want to have real, authentic, joyful, eternal life. He’s assuming that what you want is joy unending, your own good.
And so he’s saying, “Look, the life of faith in me looks up front like dying. You have to confess your sin and repent and give up all sorts of things. But trust me, it turns out in the end that those things are actually killing you. If you cling to them, you will die. But let them go and cling to me by faith, and you will live, and live abundantly and forever.”
See the difference? Enoch knew by faith that if he came to God, he was coming to his own good, even if coming to God meant letting go of things that looked good to him in the next ten minutes.
Noah: Faith that Fears God
Finally, we turn to the most well known of our three spiritual forefathers, our brother Noah. Look at verse 7, if you would.
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.”
-Hebrews 11:7
So we started in Genesis 4 with Abel, then Genesis 5 with Enoch, now we cover chapters 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 with Noah.
What we see through Noah is that faith fears God, and so obediently believes his warnings—and by that obedient belief condemns the world and inherits righteousness.
If you go back and read the story, you find that God warned Noah that he was going to flood the world due to the rampant wickedness of man—that the desires of their hearts were only evil all the time. And so Noah was to spend the next century building a boat to preserve mankind through the water judgment.
And he did. And though he preached of the coming judgment, that the world needed repentance and faith, none came. So he got on the ark with his family, and God preserved him through the judgment while the world was condemned.
Obedient belief inherits righteousness even as the world inherits judgment. This is what faith always does: It looks peculiar to a world that hates God and so loves death. And so the world hates it, mocks it, calls it names, kills it, wars against it.
But faith perseveres and keep looking weird until looking weird inherits the world and the world inherits death. This, Refuge, is what we are called to.
We are called to be a people who believe the whole Bible, refuse to blush at any of it or have any problem passages, but rather go out in jovial, humble, happy obedience to all of it. And listen, if we do that, we are going to look weird, and we are going to inherit the earth along with the great cloud of witnesses who are looking down on us. Ok?
So let’s look weird, ok?
So by faith, be weird about how you parent and raise and educate your kids. Be weird with your money—giving it away generously and saving it and not getting into debt and refusing to worship it.
Be weird with how you approach sex and marriage and gender—keeping sex in the sanctuary of the marriage bed, but being joyful and free and undefiled there. Refusing to pretend like boys are girls and girls are boys and that they’re really the same thing if you just squint your eyes and think hard enough about it.
Be weird with how you use your time and your stuff and your life. Give it away freely; live with an open hand. And what you’ll find is that God is good and that his promises are good. You’ll find, as Jesus promised, that with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.
And as you do so, don’t cringe and shrink in embarrassment when you look peculiar and different and weird. You’re supposed to. It’s a design feature, not a bug. We are Christians, and so we are supposed to look weird.
Amen? Let’s look to the faith of our forefathers and ask God for that same faith to live and sprout and bear fruit in us.