So we come now back to Hebrews
chapter 11. Hebrews chapter 11, examples
of the faith that pleases God. In chapter 10 and verse 38, we
read, chapter 10 verse 38, we read that The just shall live by faith. The just, meaning the justified
ones, shall live, how? By their faith. It's by their
faith that they shall live. And what is faith? We've already
seen it's God's gift to those he has united with Christ from
eternity. He justified his people, that
innumerable multitude. He justified them from eternity. in the Lord Jesus Christ, for
He, the Lord Jesus Christ, our God manifest, is the Lamb slain
from the foundation of the world. That's what Revelation 13a tells
us. But of course, in space and time, in this creation, he had
to come. He, God, had to come to purchase
his church with his own blood. How could he, a spirit, purchase
the church with his own blood, which is of flesh? He had to
become flesh. He was made flesh. He was made
flesh. Our God was made flesh. He came
so that he might die the death of the cross, the cursed death,
to redeem his beloved multitude, innumerable multitude, from the
curse of the law. And faith is that gift of God,
that revelation of God, that spiritual sight that he gives
to his people that they might apprehend, that they might grasp,
that they might own, that they might possess the reality of
God and his kingdom. You look around at the world
and you see If you are a child of God, you're often shocked
at the total lack of any sense that there is a God and his kingdom. But by faith, you apprehend the
reality of God and his kingdom. You apprehend the unseen things
of salvation and of eternity. And faith Isn't a work that you
do and God credits you, because you've been such a good person
and had this faith. No, it's not a work you do that God credits
you with righteousness for doing it. No, it's the God-given sense
by which you experience that you are made the righteousness
of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's the sense by which you come
to believe, you know, you experience, you possess the fact that God
has made you the righteousness that he requires in Christ. And
faith sees what the natural man, we quote it often, 1 Corinthians
2.14, the natural man doesn't receive it. Faith sees what the natural man
is unable to see, and faith acts upon what it sees. It lives differently. It prioritizes life differently.
It behaves differently. There are different things that
motivate and drive you, because you know where you're going,
as we're gonna see later in chapter 11. Like Abraham, you seek a
city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Not
here, not here. We look for a city, not this
one, but one which is to come. Faith leads to spiritual understanding,
not the other way around. It isn't natural understanding
and you logically work it out and it leads to faith. There
are some people who are very, good at questioning what's going
on in our world today. And interestingly, I listen to
one or two of them from time to time, and more and more I
discover that they're saying that they have become Christians.
They believe that having been of a totally atheistic disposition,
they now believe that the Christian gospel is the right gospel, or
their interpretation of it. But it's all because of their
superior intellectual situation. It's their understanding that
has led them to their faith, I fear. The truth is that God
gives faith, and it's that that leads to spiritual understanding.
By faith, as verse 3 of chapter 11 says, it's by faith that we
understand. Faith gives us the understanding
about creation. about providence, about salvation,
about the wisdom from God, which is Christ and his righteousness
and his sanctification and redemption. And without it, without faith,
people are going about in all sorts of ways, trying to please
God, because they know they're going to die and then face the
judgment. So they're trying to please God. But do you know something?
Verse six, without faith, it is impossible to please God.
Impossible. Cannot be done. It's impossible
to be accepted by him. Job's question, how should a
man be just with God? It's impossible without faith,
without faith to be just with God. Because the work of God
is that you believe on him whom he has sent. You believe on Christ. You have faith in Christ. And
that's the work of God that you do that, that you have that faith
in Christ. Romans 14 23 whatsoever is not
of faith which looks to Christ alone whatsoever is not of faith
is sin anything which is not of this faith is sin what all
my good efforts yes every single one of your good efforts is sin
condemned whatsoever is not of faith looking to Christ alone
is sin you can only please God in the one who alone pleased
God, and that was Christ. Only by faith, which reveals
your union from eternity with Christ, are you a partaker of
the divine being. Now, we have here, in verses
four to seven, three examples, and I'm not sure how far we'll
get. I intend to get to the end of all of them, but Let's see
how we go. So first of all, verse four.
These are examples of faith. And you may say, what on earth
are three characters right from the beginning of the Genesis
account, in the early chapters of Genesis? What on earth has
that got to do with us today? Shall I tell you, the more I
look at this, I can't think of anything that's more profoundly
relevant to the situation in which we live in these days.
There's such depth here. I doubt whether I'll even scratch
the surface, but I hope that some of these thoughts will set
you thinking and delving and praying that God might reveal
more of this. Look at verse 4. By faith, Abel
offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which
he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of
his gifts, and by it he being dead yet speaketh. Cain was the
second son of Adam and Eve. Sorry, Abel was the second son
of Adam and Eve. Cain was the first. Are these
literal people? You say, you know, if you just
come across this for the first time, you'll say, what's wrong
with this guy? Can he be real? He's talking about Adam and Eve
and Cain and Abel as if they're real people. Yes. Yes. If God's word says so, yes. God's word never proves false. If God's word says they were
real, well, you say, well, what about paleontology? We went on
a little trip down the Dorset coast this week. And it's known
worldwide as the Jurassic Coast because there's so many fossils
been unearthed and all sorts of stuff going on. And there's
a little museum there, which turned out to be very expensive
to go in and we wish we'd never gone in there. But, you know,
they've got this new skull that they've dug up from the Dorset
Coast near Kimmeridge. And you say, well, surely, surely
that proves that all of the Genesis account and Adam and Eve and
all that's total myth. It's just absolute nonsense,
surely. Let me tell you, the interpretation... of the natural
phenomena that we observe is determined by the paradigm from
which you start. You say paradigm, big word, don't
understand paradigm. The basic philosophy, your basic
philosophy. So for example, if you start
from a basic philosophy of I don't believe God, I do not believe
in God, then that paradigm of unbelief will lead you to interpret
those fossils on the Dorset coast as being undeniable evidence
of evolutionary billions of years, and that God who spoke in his
word and told us about Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel, there's
just a total myth. It's a myth of people made up
out of nothing. But actually, if you look at
it objectively, without that paradigm of unbelief, I look
at it, you know, by faith, I understand that God created all things.
Nothing inherently in what you see disproves God's account of
creation. There are books, they used to
be very popular in the 1970s, Wickham and Morris, The Genesis
Flood, and The World That Perished, and books like that. And there's
a lot more since creation society. I think we can spend far too
much time doing that rather than preaching Christ. But don't you
think for one second that the paleontological evolutionary
account of things disproves all of this. No. After the fall in
the Garden of Eden, God redeemed Adam and Eve. That's a bold statement
to make. Where did you get that from?
He clothed them. He clothed them with the skin of a dead animal.
That tells me that God redeemed Adam and Eve. Does it not echo
about that verse in Isaiah? He has clothed me with the garments
of salvation. They were expelled as sinners
from the Garden of Eden. Why? Turn back there to Genesis
chapter three. I know I go back often, but it's
so important. This is so important. Go back
to Genesis chapter three. And verse 22, in verse 22, the
Lord God said, behold, the man, Adam, is become as one of us
to know good and evil because of the fall. And now, lest he
put forth his hand, he's in the garden of Eden, and take also
of the tree of life and eat and live forever. God sent him out. The tree of life was in the Garden
of Eden. And Adam and Eve, before the
fall, had direct access to that tree of life. They had eternal
life. It was there in the midst of the Garden of Eden. It's symbolical
of the life of God, the inherent life of God. But God sent them
out from that garden. They're sinners. They've fallen. They cannot have direct access
to the tree of life. They, in their own sinful beings,
cannot access the eternal life of God, which is symbolized by
that tree of life. They cannot do it, so God drove
them out. Verse 24, so he drove, well,
he sent them forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground. Verse
24, so he drove out the man, and he placed at the east of
the Garden of Eden cherubims and a flaming sword, which turned
every way to keep the way of the tree of life. Or, as I prefer
it, I think it's Jameson, Fawcett, and Brown, their translation
of that verse is, So he drove out the man and he, God, dwelt
at the east of the Garden of Eden between cherubims as a shekinah,
fire sword, to keep open the way to the Tree of Life. They
couldn't get direct access to it in the Garden of Eden. No,
no, no, that was barred them. They're sinners. But he was there,
right there, at the east of the Garden of Eden, between the cherubims,
as a fire sword, as a... a symbol that this is something
you cannot cross. And the purpose was to keep open
the way to the tree of life. I thought you said you can't
get access to the tree of life. No, you can't, not by yourself,
in your own sinful state. but by the way that God has shown. To keep open the way to the tree
of life? What is the way to the tree of
life? What is the way? Show us the way, asked the disciples.
Jesus said, John 14, 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father, but
by me. Access to the tree of life, for
sinners is barred, except through the redeeming blood of God. Acts 20, 21, something like that,
Paul to the Ephesian elders, take care of the church which
God purchased with his own blood. How did God, who is spirit, purchase
the church with his own blood? He became man. He took upon him
flesh in the likeness of sinful flesh, yet without sin. Why?
So that he could die and shed his blood. God in the person
of Christ redeemed his people with his shed blood. So access
to the tree of life, access to that eternal life, to that paradise
of bliss, access to that is only through the blood of Christ,
which was pictured in the animal sacrifice that clothed Adam and
Eve. And eternal access to that tree
of life is attained by all whom Christ redeemed. Are you amongst
his redeemed? Have you the faith of God's elect? Do you know that Christ died
for you? Look at Revelation 22 and verse
2, and you'll see John's vision there given to him of the whole
church of God in the paradise of God. And there they are with
unrestricted access. Sinners cleansed from the curse
of the law. Sinners made the righteousness
of God in him. There they are in Revelation
22 and verse 2, and right in the midst of them, what is there?
The tree of life. Because through the blood of
the Lamb, they who are sinners have attained to the tree of
life, that eternal life. I'm sure, taught this to his
sons. And Abel believed what his father
taught him, but Cain doubted. So in Genesis chapter four, verse
three, it says this. There's a lot of time passes
in two verses, but there they are, these two sons, they're
sinners, because they're born of Adam, and they're sinners.
But verse three, and in process of time, it came to pass that
Cain brought the fruit of the ground, an offering to the Lord.
At the set worship time is what that means, at the end of days,
at the set worship time. Adam taught his sons that there
was a need to regularly worship God, that there was a need for
this. So at the set worship time, both Cain and Abel brought offerings,
seeking acceptance as sinners with God, seeking the way to
the tree of life. What did Cain bring? He brought
the fruits of his labors. He brought his own self-worth.
But look at verse five. And to Cain and to his offering,
God had no respect. And Cain was very wroth, angry,
and his countenance fell. God didn't respect it. Why did
not God respect the honest, sincere? Cain was a religious man. Don't
think he wasn't religious. He believed in God. But he thought
he could come to God and access the tree of life by his own self-worth. by the things he might do. And
if you look at religion, you look at Christian religion, the
vast majority of religion that calls itself Christian, look
at it, look at it. It's gone in the way of Cain.
It does the very thing that Cain did. It brings its own worth. Oh, it talks the words of redeeming
grace sometimes, but mostly It's its own self-worth and the things
it does and the cathedrals it builds and the pomp and circumstance
that it goes through. It brings all of this thinking
that God will accept this offering and God will not accept it. And
to Cain and his offering, God had no respect, and God has no
respect for any of that. And as Jesus said, many will
say to me in that day of judgment, many religious folks, many sincere
Christians will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, haven't
we done this in your name? And haven't we done that in your
name? And I will say to them, depart from me. I never knew
you. That's why he didn't respect
it. It didn't accomplish redemption,
blood redemption, from sin's curse. We know, as we've already
read in Hebrews, without the shedding of blood, there is no
remission of sins. Only by the shedding of the blood
of the Lamb of God is there remission of sins. But what about Abel?
In verse 4, Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock, and
of the fat thereof, and the Lord had respect unto Abel and his
offering. By faith, By faith, Abel, by
faith, by that gift of God, the sight of the soul to see and
to look to Christ, his offering of a lamb, one of his flock.
What was it? That lamb did not in any way
redeem Abel from his sin. It didn't. But what it did do,
was as a symbol and as a picture, it pointed to that alone which
would, which was Christ. Looking to what his offering
pictured, and seeing it by faith that the seed of the woman would
come, the Lamb of God, who would pay his sin debt, what does it
say? It says in Hebrews chapter 11,
quickly go back there, turning swiftly from one end of the Bible
to the other, Hebrews chapter 11, He obtained witness that
he was righteous. He obtained witness that he was
righteous. The natural man thinks that he
can come to God as he pleases, but no man, as John 14, six says,
no man cometh unto the Father, but by Jesus Christ. You try
and come any other way than by that way that God kept open.
To bar the access to the tree of life, he kept open the way
to the tree of life only through the blood of Christ. There is
none other name given amongst men under heaven whereby we must
be saved. People that tell you, oh, well,
there's this acceptable way and that acceptable way. It's a lie.
Before any, think about this, right back there, I don't know
how long before Moses and the law, I haven't worked it out,
certainly thousands of years, but before any Mosaic law, before
any temple in Jerusalem, before any priesthood able second son
of Adam and Eve, Abel obtained witness that he was righteous.
Is that not what you want? Do you want witness? You who
must die and face judgment, do you not want to obtain witness
that you are righteous before God? Righteous before God. Follow,
pursue holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord. Where
do I find it? In Christ and him alone, because
it is he that makes his people, the righteousness of God in him. Second one, let's come to this.
How are we doing? Yes, I think we might get through
them. Second one in verse five, Enoch, Enoch. By faith, Enoch
was translated that he should not see death. He was taken straight
into God's kingdom, straight to heaven, out of this world.
They looked for him. They looked for him to have a
funeral. They looked for a body. You know, we often hear of people
going missing, and there's a great search for a body. And sometimes
a body never turns up, but nearly always one eventually is found.
But he was not found. because God had translated him.
God took his physical body direct to heaven. For before his translation,
he had this testimony that he pleased God. Oh, he must have
been a good chap, mustn't he? He must have been such a good
chap. We read in Jude that he was the seventh from Adam. So
think about seven, you know, Adam, then his son, then his
son, then his son, and then Enoch, Enoch. And Enoch was on earth
for 365 years. And then he was translated. He
went straight to heaven. He didn't die. There was no grave.
He was immediately translated into eternity. The only other
one we read of like that is Elijah, Elijah. And it says of him in
Genesis 5, verses 22 to 24, it says that he walked with God. He lived in intimate communion
with God and he pleased God. How did he please God? Verse
six, through faith. through faith, without which
it is impossible to please him. He pleased him not by being this
super good person that religion portrays him as. He pleased him
through faith. He pleased him through what he
believed in. As I've said so often about Abraham,
Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.
It wasn't Abraham's believing that was accounted to him for
righteousness, but what Abraham believed in. He was looking,
by faith, with the sight of the soul, to the accomplishment of
redemption by Christ. He was maintaining Enoch walking
with God in the face of those around about him, his family
and the wider community. He was maintaining the flaming
sword of Genesis 3, 24. That sword that we just saw kept
open the way to the tree of life. He was saying, in Christ alone,
in Christ alone are you right with God. In Christ alone is
redemption from the sins curse. It wasn't that he witnessed in
his generation to God's existence, though no doubt he did. It wasn't
that he lived a sinless life, condemning sin in others, as
most religious folk portray him. That wasn't the reason he pleased
God, no. It was the revealed gospel way
of salvation that he preached. Look at Jude. There's only one
chapter, so Jude chapter one, verse 14. Enoch also, the seventh
from Adam, prophesied of these, I'll say what they are in a minute,
saying, behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints
to execute judgment upon all and to convince all that are
ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have
ungodly committed and of all their hard speeches which ungodly
sinners have spoken against him. There we see Jude, who was by
Holy Spirit inspiration, speaking of this man Enoch, who we're
considering now. And his prophecy of judgment
was against all, what, who live bad lives? No, against all who
distort, dilute, or add one drop of cyanide to that pure glass
of water That one gospel of pure sovereign grace. They distort it, they dilute
it, or they add to that one revealed way to the tree of life. What's
that one revealed way to the tree of life? What's that one
revealed? You say, oh, you're being ultra
simple. I can't be too simple with this. This is a matter of
eternal life and eternal death. What's that one way? It's the
Lord Jesus Christ and his death and his shed blood, which makes
his people the righteousness of God in him. That's what Enoch
prophesied against. all that distorted that, or strayed
from it. Religion, evangelical religion,
portrays Enoch as ranting against sin in mankind. It portrays Enoch
as somebody who is ranting on about those who profess to believe
and yet live antinomian lives. That's how most of evangelical
religion interprets the epistle of Jude. But no, the emphasis
is condemnation of those who distort the gospel. You say,
that's a bit harsh. What about Paul to the Galatians
about the Judaizers? All right, they've got their
own opinions, so let them have their own. Paul didn't say that.
Paul said, let him be anathema. Let him be condemned eternally.
He who adds one thing or takes one thing away from the gospel
of grace is exactly the same. Enoch, by faith, knew the only
way to the paradise of God, and he rejoiced in it, and he communed
with God about it constantly, and he testified of it, and he
warned against those who distorted it. Surely you might say, morally
good people who don't know and believe the gospel like you do,
they're accepted by God, aren't they? No, they're not. No, they're not. Hebrews 10,
verses 38 and 39, the just shall live by faith. If any man draw
back from that faith, my soul, God's soul, shall have no pleasure
in him. His justice won't be satisfied. But we are not of
them who draw back to lostness, perdition. but of them that believe
to the saving of the soul. God's true people live by faith. The faith, as Paul writes to
Titus, the faith of God's elect. And they keep on believing it.
They keep on living by faith to the saving of the soul. Thirdly,
I think we've just got time. Verse seven, by faith, Noah, Noah, being warned of God, of
things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to
the saving of his house, by the which he condemned the world,
and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. Turn back
with me to Genesis chapter six. Need to get the iron out onto
my Bible. So Noah was the great grandson
of Enoch. So if Enoch was the seventh,
then that makes Noah the 10th from Adam, I think. Somebody
will correct me. He was the grandson of Enoch
of the line that knew God and his salvation. And in Genesis
six, verse five, Genesis six, verse five, we read, God saw
that the wickedness of man was great in the earth. and that
every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And God looked upon the earth,
and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted his way
upon the earth. All of humanity in these, however,
10 generations down from Adam. They lived a long time. They
had many, many, many children. They multiplied. Some say, and
I don't know, I've no reason to doubt it. I have every reason
to believe that it's true. How many are we talking about
at the time of Noah? Some say hundreds of millions,
at least, possibly a billion or two of people on the planet. You know, the world was well
populated. And all of humanity except Noah
and his immediate family had done what it says in Jude verse
11, they had gone in the way of Cain. There was the gospel
presented to them, taught by Adam and Eve, believed by Abel,
believed by Enoch, believed by Noah, but the most of them had
gone in the way of Cain. And even among Noah's sons, was
the seed of Cain's error in Ham, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was
the one that went off and from him came Nimrod and the Tower
of Babel and on and on and on, all the empires that oppose the
kingdom of God because they're the kingdom of Satan. All humanity
had rejected the gospel of God's grace in Christ. Satan's efforts
to destroy God's kingdom, to establish his own, to wipe out
that line that believed God were at a peak. God could not allow
it to come to total fruition. He would justly destroy all. He would justly destroy all,
for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, except,
except, to fulfill his purpose from eternity. He must preserve
a line from which the promised seed of the woman, Genesis 3.15,
the promised seed of the woman would come. And when would that
one come? Galatians 4 verse 4, when the
fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his son, made
of a woman, made under the law, to redeem those who are under
the law, that they might receive the adoption of sons, to accomplish
redemption. So what happened? What happened? The whole of humanity, possibly
a billion people, maybe more, who have all gone in the way
of Cain, but God must preserve a line. What did God do? It says
in verse eight of chapter six, but Noah, compared with all the
rest, but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. But Noah
found grace and a line must be preserved in him. So he, his
three sons, even though one at least turned out to be utterly
reprobate in the line of Cain, them and their wives were preserved. By God-given faith, he saw the
truth, Noah saw the truth revealed by God. Similarly, we who believe
the gospel of grace, we who look for the kingdom of God, we who
stand alone against a hostile, God-hating world, waiting patiently
to, what it says in Hebrews 10, 36, to receive the promise, we,
are against, this world is against us. By faith and by God's direction,
Noah built an ark, and of course you know what that ark pictured.
The ark was the only way of salvation from the flood which God brought
upon the earth. The ark was the only way of salvation. That ark pictured Christ, who
is the only way of salvation. I am the way, the truth, and
the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. The only salvation
from the impending wrath of judgment. Subject to opposition. This is
Noah. God revealed it to him, gave
him faith. He saw it, and he stood out. He and his little
family stood out. And how much his sons believed,
you know, it's very doubtful. Ham didn't believe. But he was
saved for God's purposes, but they were subject to opposition,
to ridicule, building an ark in the middle of nowhere where
there was no sea. What are you doing that for? How stupid, what
are you doing all that? hated by the world. And all that
time, he preached God's righteousness. Peter tells us, the Apostle Peter,
2 Peter 2 verse 5, that Noah was a preacher of righteousness.
For how long? Well, in Genesis 6 verse 3, when
God had said that, my spirit shall not always strive
with man, for that he is also flesh. Yet his days shall be
120 years. And many think, and I'm inclined
to agree with it, that that's the time from God revealing to
Noah what he needed to do in building an ark, until that ark
being ready and the flood coming. God had said, this however many
hundreds, millions, billion of people are on the face of the
earth, gone in the way of Cain, and they're evil and they're
going to be swept away. They're only going to be there
for 120 years. you know in the days when people live for best
part of a thousand years they're only going to be there for a
hundred and twenty years and all that time noah maintained
the one way to the tree of life in the gospel of grace. He preached
righteousness while building the ark. And his faith was vindicated. God did exactly what he had said
he would do. And as we read earlier in the
service in Luke chapter 17, verse 26, as it was in the days of
Noah, You might wonder, why does it
spell it N-O-E there? It's because that's the Greek
New Testament, a translation from the Hebrew. So it shall
be, as it was in the days of Noah, so it shall be also in
the days of the Son of Man. When the Son of Man, when the
Son of God, when our Lord Jesus Christ returns in judgment, Society
was going on, they did eat, they drank, they married wives, they
were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into
the ark, and God shut them in, says that in Genesis, and the
flood came and destroyed them all, likewise as it was in the
days of Lot. Can you see it and believe it? This is the testimony that God
has given. Do you hear that this world is similarly coming to
a sudden end? as God's kingdom triumphs over
Satan's, because it is, it is. Where will you be on that fateful
day? Where will you be? Will you be
shut by God inside the ark which is Christ, by faith which pleases
God? Or will you be with the faithless
multitudes, as it says, to be all taken away? Think, meditate
and pray on these things. Ask God to show you the truth.