The Life of Faith | Hebrews 11:4-7
Brian Hedges | January 19, 2025
Let me invite you to turn in Scripture to Hebrews 11.
A few months ago, I had the privilege of going to California for a weekend. I was preaching at a men’s conference in the Sacramento area, and I went a day early just to avoid any problems with plane travel. So I ended up having more than twenty-four hours kind of to myself to be able to look around the area and see some of the sights.
So I drove a couple of hours to the Calaveras Big Trees State Park, which is there in California, where you have some of the sequoias, some of the largest and oldest trees in the world. I took some pictures. They don’t do justice to the magnitude of these trees. I mean, these are just some of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, great giants that just speak of the glory of God, and some of the oldest living things in creation.
Shortly after seeing those trees, I remembered the statement of J.I. Packer about the Puritan generation, where he said they were the “redwoods of the faith.” And then I remembered that I was going to be preaching on Hebrews 11 before too long, and I thought, you know, Hebrews 11 is giving us these redwoods, these sequoias, these giants of the faith, these figures in Scripture that stand so tall in their faith in God.
Today we’re continuing this series in Hebrews, in this segment of Hebrews that we picked up on last week, Hebrews 11-13. We’re considering for the first time now some of the specific figures who are mentioned in Hebrews 11 as being examples of the faith.
Now, there’s really no chapter like Hebrews 11 anywhere else in the Bible. It gives us, more or less, a chronological reckoning of some of the great heroes of the faith in the Old Testament. It’s been called the hall of faith, it’s been called the little book of martyrs, the galaxy of saints, the faith chapter. But it’s a chapter that points out how the Old Testament saints lived by faith in God. These are stories of men and of women of whom the world was not worthy.
I think it’s important for us just to remember as we begin to look at some of these specific stories the function of Hebrews 11 in the whole letter to the Hebrews. Remember, this is a letter that was written to Jewish Christians. They had believed that Jesus was the Messiah, that Jesus was the Christ, and because of their faith in Jesus as the Christ they were facing persecution for their faith. They were facing pressure and temptation to actually renounce Jesus and to go back to Judaism, to walk away from the new covenant inaugurated in the blood of Christ and to go back to old covenant worship.
So this letter is written to hold out the supremacy of Jesus Christ, to argue that Jesus is better, that Jesus is the fulfillment of everything that went before in the Old Testament, and then to encourage these saints to continue in the faith, to endure in the face of suffering and persecution, to draw near to God, and to not let go, not to pull back from God, but rather to hold fast to their confidence to the end. So Hebrews 11 is really written to encourage them by giving them many illustrations of Old Testament figures who lived by faith in God, who lived by faith in the promise, who lived by faith in what they could not see.
Last week we began by looking at the first three verses of Hebrews 11. In that message, we were just trying to establish the basic necessity of faith and the nature of faith and to remind us that faith in Scripture is not a blind faith. It’s not a leap in the dark, but it’s faith that’s based on the rational promises of God’s word; it’s faith that is oriented to the future, the promises that have yet to be fulfilled. So it’s not a health, wealth, and prosperity kind of faith. This isn’t “name it and claim it” theology. It’s, rather, living faithfully in the present as we wait for God’s promises that are yet to be fulfilled, and we saw that this faith is very personal. It’s a kind of faith that puts us into a personal relationship with God, and it leads to obedience and endurance and perseverance in our lives.
With that background, we now turn to Hebrews chapter 11:4-7. I’m going to begin by reading these verses to us, and then we’re going to notice three truths from this passage together. Hebrews 11, beginning in verse 4, says,
“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.”
This is God’s word.
So there are three primary truths that I want us to see in this passage, along with some kind of subordinate lessons that really flow from the examples of these three figures, Abel, Enoch, and Noah. The three truths I want us to focus on are these:
1. By Faith, We Offer Acceptable Worship
2. By Faith, We Please God in Our Walk
3. By Faith, We Obey God’s Word
Each one of those lessons, of course, corresponds with the three figures that we’re going to study this morning. So Noah as an example of obedience, Enoch an example of pleasing God in his walk, and Abel an example in worship.
1. By Faith, We Offer Acceptable Worship
Let’s look at the first of these: by faith, we offer acceptable worship to God. And look at verse 4. It says,
“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.”
This is the story of Abel, familiar to us from Genesis 4. You may remember that Cain and Abel were the first two sons of Adam and Eve. In the story of Cain and Abel, we have the first example of people offering sacrifices to God. We have the first example of sibling rivalry. We have the first murder in the Bible. Do you remember how the story ends? God accepts the offering of Abel, he rejects the offering of Cain, and Cain in his envy and his anger and his jealousy kills his brother.
But the reason that the author to the Hebrews brings this story to our attention is because Abel was an example of someone who worshiped God, and he worshiped God by faith. So what we see here is the pattern of worship in Scripture, and that pattern of worship is faithful response to God’s word. That’s always true in Scripture, that worship is to be our response to God’s revelation of himself in his word, and our worship is always to be through faith.
You really see this in that original story in Genesis 4. Let me read to you Genesis 4:3-5a. It says,
“In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard.”
Over the years, the scholars have tried to distinguish, what was it that made Abel’s offering acceptable to God while Cain’s was rejected? And you can see that there is a difference in their offerings. Cain brought the fruit of the ground while Abel brought the firstborn of his flock. So some scholars have speculated that maybe this was a blood sacrifice that God had already clarified to people that he was to be worshiped, but he can only be worshiped if there was some kind of a substitute, some kind of a sacrifice in their place.
Now, the text of Genesis certainly does not make that point, and that’s not the focus of Hebrews. In fact, when you read the rest of the Old Testament, it becomes really clear in the Torah, in the instruction in the Old Testament, that God would accept grain offerings and food offerings and meal offerings from his people, and he instituted those.
The real difference, it seems, is the attitude with which these two men brought their offering, and maybe the quality of the offering. Abel brought the firstborn of his flock with the fat portions—in other words, he was bringing the best of what he had to offer—while it seems that Cain was maybe just offering something like a token gift. But the real difference is in the motivation, because Abel worshiped God with faith, and Cain, it seemed, had no faith in his worship.
This shows us something really important. It shows us that a person can have a theoretical belief in God that is actually not a genuine faith. Because here’s Cain: he believes in God enough to bring an offering, but he doesn’t bring an offering with a right heart. He doesn’t bring an offering with trust in God. He doesn’t bring an offering with faith in God. He’s not looking to God, trusting in God, or looking to God’s promise. Abel, in contrast to that, does. Abel has faith in God, and the Lord, therefore, has regard for Abel and his offering.
It reminds us that we should worship God with faith in our hearts, with a sincerity before God, that we come to him, we respond to him, trusting in his promises, trusting in his word, and that we must beware of anything like hypocrisy or indifference in our worship of God.
But Abel is not only an example here of worship through faith, he’s also the first example we have in Scripture of someone who suffers persecution for his faith. In fact, he is the first martyr in Scripture. And Jesus even refers to Abel in just this way, not using the word martyr, but speaking about Abel shedding his blood along with all the other Old Testament saints and prophets who shed their blood. You see that in Matthew 23.
You have to think here about the situation of the Hebrews and how this would strike them. The author here is writing to people who are faced with the possibility of shedding their blood for the sake of Christ. They haven’t suffered that much yet, we learn in Hebrews 12, but they have already suffered the plundering of their property. They’ve lost some of their property and their goods because of their faith in Christ. They are facing opposition. They are facing pressure. And so the author here reminds them that it’s always been this way. It’s always been the case that sometimes faith in God and a loyalty to God and worshiping God can lead to suffering in this life. Abel is the first example of that.
Brothers and sisters, it’s a reminder to us as well that if we really worship God and if we really walk by faith, it may cost us something. Now, it’s not likely in our culture to cost us our lives, but it may cost you approval. It may cost you the esteem of colleagues. It may mean that you are scoffed or scorned or ridiculed by those who do not believe. It may mean if you are a believer but you’re coming from an unbelieving household that there’s misunderstanding and even conflict and tension with your family members. It may mean that you sometimes have to make choices in the way you will live your life that will cost you in some kind of personal way.
Certainly we see that in the history of the church. You think about those first few centuries of the church and the martyrs who shed their blood because of their faith in Jesus Christ. Some of the stories are just harrowing even as they are encouraging to us as we see the faithfulness of those who are willing to suffer.
I think of the martyrdom of those two young women, Perpetua and Felicitas. Perpetua was just something like twenty-two years old, a noblewoman in Carthage, and her servant, Felicitas. They became believers in Christ. They were catechumens. They were in this process of discipleship and training as they were waiting for baptism, but they were then captured, and they were commanded to offer sacrifices to the pagan Gods. Perpetua, even though she had a young infant child, even though her father begged her to have pity on her child and have pity on him, even though the governor just said, “Just make the sacrifice; just make the sacrifice so that you go free,” she would not do it because of her faith in Christ, her conviction that Jesus Christ alone was worthy of her worship. So she faced death by the sword and by the wild animals that were set loose on her.
These stories should remind us that faith might cost us something, but they should also remind us that if we truly believe and if we have a genuine faith and if we really believe that Jesus is the Christ that he is worthy of our worship.
2. By Faith, We Please God in Our Walk
Then in verses 5-6 we have another truth, another lesson that’s held out to us, this time from the story of Enoch. We learn here that by faith, we not only offer God acceptable worship, but by faith, we also please God in our walk. So if Abel is for us the example of someone who worships, Enoch is the example of someone who pleases God by the way he walks with God. You see it in Hebrews 11:5-6. It says,
“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.”
Now, when you read the original passage in Genesis 5, the language is a little bit different. It says there that Enoch “walked with God.” You can see that in Genesis 5:22 and again in verse 24. He walked with God.
But the Greek translation of the Old Testament, what we call the Septuagint, kind of glossed that language, interpreted that language not just as being Enoch walking with God, but the Enoch pleased God. And the writer to the Hebrews is using that Greek translation of the Old Testament, and so he says that Enoch pleased God and that God commended him for having pleased God.
Now, really, they amount to the same thing. It means that the lifestyle of faith is to be a lifestyle of walking with God so as to please him. Did you know that your life can please God, that you can honor God by the way you live? Now, of course, there’s a sense that outside of Jesus Christ, in our sins, there’s nothing we can do to merit favor with God. We have to be justified by grace alone through faith alone. But, having come to faith in Christ, you can live a life that pleases God, that gives pleasure to God, that honors God, that delights the heart of God.
That’s what Enoch did. Enoch lived a life where he walked with God and he pleased God by the way he lived.
It reminds us that Christianity is not just what we do on Sundays, it’s not just our worship in a public gathering, but Christianity is about the Monday through Saturday lifestyle, the walk with God that we have.
You might ask, What does that look like? What does it mean to walk with God in a way that pleases him?
Well, there’s another passage of Scripture in one of the prayers of Paul that uses this language, puts these two words together, walking and pleasing God. I want you to see this prayer, Colossians 1:9-12. He says,
“For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father…”
Now that’s a very rich prayer, and it’s a prayer that we would be equipped with the knowledge and the wisdom so as to please God by the way we walk, and he spells out what it means. It means being fruitful in every good work. It means that we are growing in the knowledge of God. It means that by God’s power we have the strength to live lives that are characterized by endurance and longsuffering, and that we’re joyful even in the midst of that. And it means that we live thankful lives that are characterized by giving thanks to the Father.
Every single one of us, if we say that we follow Jesus, should be seeking to live a life like this, a life that is fruitful, a life that is characterized by growth, so that we’re coming to know God better; a life in which we endure with joy, a life that is full of gratitude. As we do this, we are walking with God and we are pleasing God.
I can’t really read the story of Enoch without thinking about the Puritan Richard Rogers, who was known as the Enoch of his day, the Enoch of his age. He was very influential in the sixteenth century. He wrote a book called Seven Treatises where he really covered everything you could think of regarding the Christian life. It was a seven-part handbook for Christian living where he talked about what it means to be a true Christian, conversion, and assurance, what it means to walk with God. He talked about the spiritual disciplines or practices by which we can grow in holiness. And he talked about how to spend the day with God.
When you read the details of Rogers’ work (as well as many of the other Puritans), it shows just how the walk with God is meant to seep into every nook and cranny of our lives. It should characterize how we spend the day.
So Rogers talks about the duty of waking up in the morning with God and beginning the day with prayer and about walking with God when we are in company with others as well as when we are in solitude by ourselves, and how to behave ourselves when we are experiencing prosperity as well as how to suffer well when we face adversity, and how to worship God in our families, and how to end the day by thinking and reflecting on the day and how we walked with God through the day.
That’s characteristic of the Puritans. They were concerned with that lifestyle of faith, a lifestyle that’s characterized by pleasing God and walking with God. Enoch is a lesson for us in that.
But Enoch is also kind of a mysterious figure in the Old Testament, one of the most enigmatic figures of the Old Testament, because he’s one of just two figures in the Old Testament who seem to have escaped death. And the author here highlights that as well, where he tells us that God “took him.” He was not found “because God took him.”
It seems that Enoch in some way bypassed the normal human experience of death because of his walk with God, because of how he pleased God. The only other figure in the Old Testament that was like that is Elijah, who was taken to the presence of God in a chariot of fire, remember, in the whirlwind. So the author here holds Enoch out, I think as an example not only of someone who walked with God but someone who experienced deliverance from death.
Now, again, you have to think of how this would strike the original readers. It’s interesting here that these readers are facing the possibility of persecution, and the author here holds out, first of all, Abel—someone who did suffer death—and then he holds out Enoch as someone who is delivered from death. Really, the author is saying that both of these things are going to be true for us as Christians. There’s a sense in which we all face death, and sometimes we face death for faith in Christ. But because Jesus Christ has died and has risen again, when we die in faith, we die in hope of a better resurrection. Hebrews 11 really ends with that focus.
So it reminds us that there is the escape from death, the deliverance from death. Enoch experienced that in a unique way, but all of us through faith in Jesus Christ can have the confidence that we too will eventually be delivered from death. So by faith, we offer acceptable worship to God; by faith, we walk with God in a way that pleases him; and then there’s a third lesson for us in verse 7.
3. By Faith, We Obey God’s Word
Here we learn that by faith, we obey God’s word. And now the example is Noah.
Now this is a more familiar story, isn’t it? We know the story of Noah and the flood. We remember how Genesis 6 talks about the wickedness of that ancient world and how the world was so wicked that it grieved God’s heart, and he determined to destroy the land and to send this great flood.
But there was this one man, Noah, who had found favor in the sight of God, and so God warned Noah and told him to build an ark. And Noah then spent 120 years constructing this ark so that Noah and his family would be saved from the judgment of this flood when it came to the earth.
That’s the focus of Hebrews 11:7. Notice it says,
“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.”
Noah is an example for us as well in several ways. First of all, he’s an example of the obedience of faith. By faith Noah obeyed God, and he obeyed God when he could not yet see what would come to pass. Right? And you have that explicitly stated in verse 7. He was warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, and by faith he constructed this ark. He’s building a boat in the middle of dry land. They’ve never seen a flood like this. They’ve never experienced anything like this. And in spite of the mocking, in spite of the scorn that people would heap on him, in spite of the misunderstanding of all around him, Noah persisted in obedience to God.
It is an example of exactly the kind of faith that this writer to the Hebrews wants to encourage his readers to have. Remember, he already said in verse 1 that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen.” And here is Noah, who is acting with conviction in events that are not yet seen as he obeys God and he builds this ark.
It’s interesting that Noah is said here to have built the ark in reverent fear. And it shows us that one of the responses of faith is not only the response of assured trust and certainty in the promises of God, but it’s also the response of taking seriously the warnings of God. And so in reverent fear he heeds the warning of God, and he obeys what God says.
The old Puritan Thomas Manton said the difference between Noah and the rest of the world was that the people of the world didn’t tremble with fear until the water reached their rooftops, but Noah trembled in fear when God first spoke.
Again, it becomes something like a diagnostic test for us. Do we fear the Lord enough that we listen to the warnings of his word and heed those warnings in our lives? Noah did. He’s an example of the obedience of faith.
He’s also an example of someone who experienced salvation through judgment, by the grace of God. And, again, you see it in verse 7. “In reverent fear he constructed an ark for the saving of his household.” Remember, when those floodwaters came, they were the waters of judgment on the earth. But Noah was saved by going into the ark.
It’s one of the great pictures in the Old Testament of salvation through judgment, and it’s a picture that’s picked up in the New Testament. In fact, in 1 Peter you see that there’s a connection between the floodwaters that Noah passed through and the waters of baptism that we passed through, which are symbolic of the judgment of our sins that Christ has borne for us. And as we hide ourselves in Christ, as we take refuge in Christ, then we also are saved from God’s judgments by God’s grace.
Then another thing we see about Noah here is that he was a witness to the world around him. Now for Noah, it was almost entirely a negative kind of witness. The text says, “By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.” And the author here is using legal language. That word “condemned the world” literally means to render a guilty verdict in court. And it seems that Noah, this preacher of righteousness, by living in faith, it actually accentuated the wickedness of the world around him in contrast to his own righteousness through faith.
He becomes the heir of the righteousness that is through faith. It recalls the exhortation of Hebrews 6:12 which tells us to imitate those who through faith and perseverance inherit the promises. And we too, if we live as Noah lived, if we heed the word of God, if we obey God, if we believe in God and trust in God, we are also the heirs of the righteousness that comes through faith.
It reminds me of the words of Paul in 2 Corinthians, where he says that we are the aroma of Christ to the world around us. And for those who are perishing, it’s an aroma of death, but for those who are being saved it is the aroma of life.
Every single one of us as Christians should be living in such a way that our lives are a witness to those around us. And for those who believe, it’s a witness that leads to salvation. To those who reject the gospel, it is a witness that is ultimately their condemnation. By faith, we obey God’s word.
So we’ve seen these three things. We’ve seen that we offer God acceptable worship through faith, that we please God in our daily walk through faith, and that we obey God’s word through faith.
But I want to end in this way, by showing that Abel, Enoch, and Noah are not only examples of faith, but they also in their own unique ways are pointers to Christ, who is the object of our faith.
So, did you know there’s another reference to Abel in the letter to the Hebrews? And we haven’t come to it yet. It’s actually in Hebrews 12. And it’s in the context now where the author is calling the people of God to worship, and he’s reminding them that they don’t come to Mount Sinai to worship God, but they come to Mount Zion. And in verse 24, he says that they have come to “Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, into the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.”
Now isn’t that interesting? Having mentioned Abel and a sacrifice and the shed blood of Abel as he was killed by Cain, now he says that the blood of Jesus speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
To quote the Puritan preacher Thomas Manton again—he said, “Abel’s blood cried to the Lord, ‘Vengeance, vengeance, vengeance,’ upon murderous Cain, but Christ’s blood says something different. Christ’s blood says, ‘Pardon, pardon; Father, be merciful to these poor sinners.’” Abel points forward to the greater sacrifice of Jesus Christ by which we are pardoned. And it is through his sacrifice that this new covenant is inaugurated. He is the mediator of a new covenant, and it’s through that sprinkled blood that our hearts are cleansed and that we can come to God and we can worship him with faith that we will be accepted.
Enoch also, in a way, points to Jesus Christ. Here’s Enoch, a man who walked with God and escaped death, one of only two in the Old Testament to do so. But when we read about Jesus, here’s someone who was not worthy of death, and yet he did die, and Hebrews 2 tells us why he died. It tells us that Jesus tasted death for everyone and that as the captain of our salvation he was made perfect through suffering in order to bring many sons to glory.
You keep reading in Hebrews 2 and it tells us that Jesus through death destroyed the one who had the power of death so that he could deliver us who were in captivity to this fear of death. In other words, Jesus through death defeated death itself.
It reminds us that Jesus through his cross and through his resurrection has guaranteed for us the ultimate deliverance from death. We also will be delivered if we trust in Jesus Christ.
Do you remember those wonderful words of Jesus in John 11? He said, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.” And friends, there is confidence that we can have in the face of whatever we may experience in the way of suffering as we follow Jesus. Because Jesus Christ is risen, because Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead, we will be raised also. We have hope even in the face of death.
Then finally, consider Noah as a pointer to Christ. Here is Noah, who built this ark and whose obedience made a way for his family to be saved as they took refuge in the ark. They go through these floods of judgments, and then they emerge from the ark into a new world. It’s like a new creation. In a much greater way, Noah is a type of Jesus Christ, who is the true ark of our salvation. He is the one in whom we take refuge from the floods of judgment so that we are brought into the new creation that Jesus begins.
So what I want for us this morning is not only to learn the practical lessons from these saints, as I think we should, so that we worship God by faith and we live lives that please God in our walk of faith and we seek to obey God’s word. But not only do we do those things, but we do all those things with a deep confidence in Jesus Christ, who is the object of our faith. So look to Jesus this morning, brothers and sisters. He is the object of our trust, he is the captain of our salvation, he is the founder and the perfecter of our faith. Let’s pray together.
Father, we thank you this morning for the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. We thank you for what Christ has done for us in his death and resurrection to rescue us from sin, to rescue us from death, and to provide eternal life for all who believe.
So this morning, we affirm once again our faith in Jesus Christ. We want to look to him and trust in him and walk with him. And we pray that you would enable us to do that. Lord, this morning, as we worship you in song and as we come to the table, may we present ourselves before you as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God. This is the only reasonable worship in response to your great mercy. May we draw near to you today with true hearts and full assurance of faith as we remember what Christ has done as our priest and as our sacrifice.
And may we commit ourselves again this morning to a life of faithful obedience to you. May we seek to please you with our lives, to walk with you day by day, and to honor you in all we do as we obey you and follow your word. Lord, we ask you to draw near to us now as we come to the table and be glorified in our worship together. And we pray this in Jesus’ name and for his sake, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
