10. Confident Faith, Radical Obedience Hebrews 11:1-22
HEBREWS CHAPTER 11 VERSES 1-22
10. Confident Faith, Radical Obedience
10. Confident Faith, Radical Obedience Hebrews 11:1-22
While our modern world might distance itself from many Christian concepts, faith is not one of them. Our world loves to talk about faith (think Oprah Winfrey), and even sing about faith (think George Michael). As far as our culture is concerned, faith is a feeling—a positive outlook on life. Faith is great.
But what is that rosy view of faith based on? Often it means having faith in yourself. It is about becoming who you’re really meant to be.
That idea does not stand up to scrutiny. Faith becomes just something that you conjure up in yourself. It is something to add to the list of things that we need to do in order to be successful. And it doesn’t work with the reality of what people are like. After all, if true faith is all about looking inward and seeing how great I am, that is not such good news. I’m a mess!
The biblical definition of faith is radically different. It is not about being a positive thinker. Instead we are called to take our trust and place it in something outside ourselves.
Hebrews 11 is sometimes known as the Hall of Faith. It takes us through many Old Testament saints and reminds us of what God can accomplish through his people when they trust him. But the key lesson is not “Go out and do great things.” It is not about you or me and what we can achieve if we just have faith. Yes, it is a call to have faith; but it is really about the object of our faith: the person we are trusting in. The main theme of Hebrews 11 is Trust in God.
This leads straight into 11:1, which gives us a definition of faith.
The Certainty of Faith
“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (v 1)
Faith is not just a feeling. It is not just saying, “I hope it’s true.” It means being certain about something. Notice the two key words in this first verse: “assurance” and “conviction.” Faith is rock-solid trust that when God makes a promise, it is true and right. It is absolute assurance and confidence that God’s word can be relied upon.
In our day, if you claim to be certain that your religious convictions are true, you are likely to be condemned as arrogant. You can see why: if I claim that a religious truth is really true, then that means that I think someone else’s version of religion is not true. And that is not fashionable in our world today. The biblical definition of faith swims right against the tide of our culture.
Of course, a Christian is not always certain about everything. Doubt is a very normal part of the Christian life. But Christians should respond to doubt differently than non-Christians. People in our world today sometimes embrace doubt and uncertainty as things worth striving for in themselves; Christians, by contrast, believe that there are certainties, even though we may find it difficult to hold on to them. So, when we have those struggles with doubt, we fight them. We look for reassurance from God.
The Object of Faith
So, if faith is “assurance” about something, what is it exactly that we have this assurance about? Verse 1 highlights the two types of things that we know by faith. “Things hoped for” are things in the future that have not yet happened. “Things not seen” are things in the past—events that we were not there to see. Or, put simply, our faith is in what God has done and in what God will do.
Belief in what God has done in the past is illustrated in 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.”
You were not there to see God make the world. Nobody was. So how do you know he did it? You have to believe it by faith.
There are many other things in the past that we take on faith because we weren’t there to see them. Were you there to watch Noah build the ark? Were you there to see Moses lead the way through the Red Sea? Were you there to see Jesus die on the cross? These are all events that we embrace as true—by faith.
Is that faith groundless? Absolutely not. We have tremendous historical evidence that confirms what we know by faith. The stories we read about in the Bible are historical, and we can trust the books of the Bible as reliable. When we say we have faith in something we cannot see, we don’t mean that there are no good reasons to believe in it. It just means that we were not there to see it with our eyes.
Yet faith is not just about what God has already done but also about what God will do in the future: “things hoped for.” You cannot know about the future just by empirical evidence. You cannot see it. You have to trust God about what it will be like.
In the context of the book of Hebrews—particularly the later sections of chapter 11—there is no doubt that what our author is alluding to is the second coming of Christ. We look back to creation with faith in what we have not seen; but we also look forward with hope to a new creation, when Jesus will return to set all things right.
We have to trust God with what is coming. We have to believe that Jesus is real and that he is coming back. We also have to trust him with our lives and our own futures. There are probably a lot of things in your life that you are worried about, and it’s easy to wish you could see the future. But that is exactly where faith kicks in. You hope for what you do not see (Romans 8:24-25). Part of faith is trusting that God will provide for you, walk before you, and keep his promises to you as you go.
Faith either looks back at what God has done or looks to the future at what God will do. Either way—and this is key—faith is about trusting God. It is not faith in ourselves. It’s about trusting something outside of ourselves.
Here is where we can see what makes faith so powerful. What makes faith work is what you put your faith in, not how much of it you have. We often assume that what makes faith successful is how strong it is. But that is not true. What makes faith so powerful is the object of your faith.
I have my pilot’s license, and years ago I used to fly small single-engine airplanes. Every once in a while, I’d fly down to the coast of North Carolina and just look out across the Atlantic. I would wonder, “If I just flew off toward England, how far would I get?”
Imagine that on one of those occasions, I had become absolutely convinced that my little plane could make it all the way. Regardless of how much faith I had in that little plane, it wouldn’t have mattered. About an hour off the coast I would have run out of gas and had to ditch in the ocean. Even if my faith were as solid and strong as a rock, it would have been in the wrong object.
But imagine another person who is getting ready to board a 747. They are a nervous flier and they don’t have much faith that this plane will really get them across the ocean. But they eventually (albeit barely) get on the plane—and of course it makes it across the ocean all the way to England. Their faith may be small and weak, but it is in the right object.
That is the essence of faith. What matters is what you’re believing in. It is possible to gain a sense of certainty in our faith because it depends on something external, not on our own feelings and experience. Faith gets its assurance by focusing on its object—which for us, ultimately, is Christ.
Faith and Favor
Hebrews 11:2 reveals that faith is the key that unlocks everything in the Christian life. It is not simply about what we believe to be true. It is also about how we relate to God and receive his favor. “By it the people of old received their commendation.” We’ll see the same idea picked up in verse 6: “Without faith it is impossible to please him.”
We please God by faith. This has always been true for God’s people. It is only by faith that anyone, in any time, can be considered righteous in the eyes of God.
This was Martin Luther’s big discovery. He was reading through his Bible one day and came across the passage in Habakkuk which we saw quoted in Hebrews 10:37-38: “The righteous shall live by his faith” (Habakkuk 2:4; Luther was reading the quotation of this verse in Romans 1:17).
Luther had spent his whole life up to that point thinking that the way to please God was to outdo everybody around you with good works—in his case, to “out-monk” the other monks. But when he read that verse, something suddenly clicked. At that moment, Luther realized the truth: faith is the only means of salvation and the only way to please God. He wrote, “I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates” (Luther’s Works, Volume 34, p 337).
Of course, we must again be clear about what we mean when we say we “please” God by our faith. It is not as if faith is meritorious good work that God rewards. No, it simply means that faith is the sole means by which we receive the thing that saves: namely, Christ. And since God is pleased with Christ, he is pleased with us.
Faith in Practice
In the following verses, our author fleshes out his definition of faith with three examples. He goes back to Genesis and picks out three saints: Abel, Enoch, and Noah. Each of these examples highlights a particular aspect of faith—and a particular lesson that we need to hear.
The first lesson is that you don’t just put faith in God in a generic way; you always approach him through Christ. The story of Abel (Hebrews 11:4) teaches us that that is how it has always been.
“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.”
The story of Cain and Abel is told in Genesis 4:2-16. The two brothers both bring an offering to God. Cain brings grain or fruit, while Abel brings an animal and sheds its blood before God. God accepts Abel’s sacrifice but not Cain’s offering.
Since the narrative in Genesis 4 does not expressly tell us why God accepts one sacrifice and not the other, there has been disagreement among scholars about the reason. But when we look at the story from the perspective of the book of Hebrews—and the argument of the author up to this point—a good case can be made that Abel’s sacrifice was approved precisely because it included the shedding of blood. After all, our author just talked extensively in chapters 9 and 10 about the necessity of blood sacrifice to rightly approach God’s throne. Since the fall it has always been this way, so that “not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood” (Hebrews 9:18).
It is possible, then, that Abel recognized this reality, and so, when he made an offering to God, he brought an animal sacrifice. Of course, an animal’s blood could not take away sins. But Abel’s offering foreshadowed what Christ would do. Abel enjoyed God’s favor because he put his faith in the sacrifice.
You cannot approach God in just any way you want to. Cain tried that, and it did not work. You always have to approach God through the shed blood of the Savior.
The world still divides into Cains and Abels: those who approach God in their own way and those who approach God through Christ. Western society will tell you that each person gets to decide for themselves how to approach God. But the Scriptures say otherwise. In a sense, Abel’s voice can still be heard today: “Though he died, he still speaks” (11:4). This means the lesson of Abel’s life is still as applicable as ever: namely, that we must always approach God by faith through a blood sacrifice.
The second aspect of faith is found in the story of Enoch.
Enoch appears in Genesis 5:18-24. The main thing to realize about him is that he and God were close. We are told twice that he “walked with God” (v 22, 24). In fact, Enoch and God were so close that one day, “he was not, for God took him” (v 24). Hebrews 11:5 spells out what for us this means: “By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death.” Enoch went to heaven without having died an earthly death.
The reason is that “before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God. And without faith it is impossible to please him” (v 5-6). Like Abel, Enoch pleased God by faith.
Faith is inherently relational. It is the means by which we relate to God personally. The Christian life is not simply knowing things about God—assenting to intellectual truths. It is a personal, daily relationship with God.
This is what verse 6 is getting at: “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.”
Of course, this faith is not just a feeling or an emotion. As we discussed above, it has an object. It is faith in Christ. We need to remember that Abel and Enoch (and the rest of those celebrated in the Hall of Faith) all put their trust in the Messiah who was to come. While we look back on Jesus, they looked forward to Jesus.
As we will see below, Abraham is the ultimate example of an Old Testament saint trusting in Jesus. Jesus tells us plainly, “Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad” (John 8:56). And when Paul was searching for a classic example of justification by faith alone, he didn’t pick a New Testament believer. In Romans 4:1-12, he picks Abraham!
While faith starts with the cross, it doesn’t stop there. It continues on as a personal relationship with the Lord. God is not just a philosophical concept. He is a real person with whom you can have a relationship. Faith means drawing near to God and seeking him.
Does your faith lead to spending time in prayer and Bible reading on a regular basis? Are you investing time with God as you would with any other person? Faith is not just about ritual; it is not just about ideas in our head. It is about a personal relationship with God. Enoch illustrates that perfectly.
Third, we come to Noah, who teaches us that faith leads to obedience, even when things don’t make sense.
Noah was “warned by God concerning events as yet unseen” (Hebrews 11:7). If faith is “the conviction of things not seen,” there are few better examples than Noah. God gave him a command which made no sense on a human level—to build a boat, over five hundred feet long and over fifty feet high, in the middle of the dry land—and asked for his obedience. Noah obeyed “in reverent fear”—and saved his family.
Faith leads us into radical obedience, even in the face of things that do not make sense. The essence of faith is looking outside your own understanding and deciding to obey because you trust that God is right.
Indeed, we are told that by this radical obedience, Noah “condemned the world” (v 7). In other words, it showed that he believed God and not the hollow promises of the culture in his day. Since the rest of the world rejected God’s warning, they were left only with judgment.
But don’t think Noah was approved by God simply because of his obedience. No, the passage tells us plainly that Noah “became an “heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.” In other words, his righteous standing before God was not acquired on the basis of his good works but on his trust in a future savior. The same was true of Abraham. Paul tells us that “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Romans 4:3).
Even so, Noah’s faith led to amazing acts of obedience. And seeing such obedience should be an encouragement to us. At our core, we all tend to be skeptics when it comes to radical obedience. We tend to think that nobody really does obey God that way; it is not possible. But Hebrews 11 shows us that our skepticism is unwarranted. It is a long list of people who radically obeyed God when doing so made no earthly sense. Obedience is possible—but only by faith.