Hebrews chapter 11 and reading
from verse one. Now faith is the substance of
things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it
the elders obtained a good report. Through faith we understand that
the worlds were framed by the word of God so that things which
are seen were not made of things which do appear. 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. By faith, Enoch was translated
that he should not see death and was not found because God
had translated him. For before his translation, he
had this testimony that he pleased God. But without faith it is
impossible to please him, for he that cometh to God must believe
that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek
him. By faith 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. By faith, Abraham, when he was
called to go out into a place which he should after receive
for an inheritance, obeyed and he went out, not knowing whether
he went. By faith, he sojourned in the
land of promise. as in a strange country, dwelling
in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of
the same promise. For he looked for a city which
hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Through faith
also Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered
of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful
who had promised. Therefore sprang there even as
one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky
in multitude, and as the sand which is by the seashore innumerable. These all died in faith, not
having received the promises, but having seen them afar off,
and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed
that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they
that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful
of that country from whence they came out, they might have had
opportunity to have returned. but now they desire a better
country, that is unheavenly. Wherefore God is not ashamed
to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city. By faith Abraham, when he was
tried, offered up Isaac, and he that had received the promises
offered up his only begotten son. of whom it was said that
in Isaac shall thy seed be called, accounting that God was able
to raise him up even from the dead, from whence also he received
him as a figure. Amen. May God bless to us this
reading from his word. Our Lord Jesus Christ, in his
own ministry, spoke often of faith. He spoke on some occasions
about great faith, which he discerned, he discovered in the lives of
individuals. And he spoke of little faith.
He spoke of faith that could move mountains and faith the
size of a mustard seed. He spoke of faith that could
make a sinner whole. By these things we discover that
faith can be powerful and it can also be very weak. and it ebbs and it flows in the
same person to different degrees at different times and under
different circumstances. Perhaps it's because of sin or
unbelief. Perhaps because of the attacks
of the devil. perhaps because of the weakness
of our own flesh or the providences of God that he sets before us,
but undoubtedly we each discover in our own personal life's experience
that our faith can at times be strong and at times be very weak. And how do we know if our faith
is strong? or if our faith is weak? How
is it that we can tell? It's a very personal thing, faith,
a very intimate thing. How are we to know if our faith
is strong or if our faith is weak? Well, I suspect the answer to
that question is not one which we readily receive or take great
pleasure in, because I suspect that we only know the strength
of our faith when we find it tried and tested to the point
where we think it's not going to stand up. It's not going to
withstand the trial that I'm going through. And the irony
is that at that point, when we feel our faith to be at its most
slender, almost stretched to the point where it is going to
snap upon us and break and be lost completely, that it is actually
at its strongest, that we only know in retrospect that the Lord
has been gracious to us in gifting us his help in that moment of
our need and supplying sufficient grace, sufficient faith to see
us through the trial, that at the time of the trial, we felt
it was going to be too much and it was going to overwhelm us. Faith is always present in those
whom the Lord is pleased to save. And that's one of the wonderful
things about faith. Once granted, it will never be
taken away. Yes, it might be weak. Yes, it might appear to fail. Yes, it might sometimes feel
like we've lost our faith. or that our faith is not strong
enough to withstand the trials that we face. But the testimony
of Scripture and the faithfulness of God have attested that our
faith once given will never be lost. And it is the faith of
the elect, it is the faith of the Lord's people that gives
them an interest in the comfort and the goodness and the kindness
of God to sustain them and help them through the trials of this
life. Faith is the receiving means
of God's grace and God's goodness to us. And it is amongst the
earliest blessings that we will ever experience in our Christian
life. That faith that comes to us,
that gift of faith, that grant that is bestowed upon us at a
time when we begin to feel the weight of our sin, at a time
when the Lord is pleased to open our eyes and our ears to understand
the things that he has said, the promises that he has made,
the accomplishments of the works which he has effected on the
part of the Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of his people.
That faith therein bestowed, what we sometimes talk about
as our regeneration or our awakening or our calling, whereby the Lord
is pleased to make us willing in the day of his power to acknowledge
him and to believe in him, that faith, Though it ebbs and it
flows and it comes and it goes, we'll never be lost because it
is the work of God in the life of his people. And he grants
it to us as an early blessing and an early experience of his
goodness towards us. He gifts it to the hearts and
minds of his people and his church. those that he delights to save. Robert Hawker is a man that I
like to read and I guess I read him often with respect to some
of the things that he says in his commentary. He has a commentary
called The Poor Man's Commentary and he has a dictionary called
The Poor Man's Dictionary. And you can get both of those
online. They're freely available and
they are worth their weight in gold. And he has a lovely definition
of faith, which I want to just leave with you. He says this,
this is Robert Hawker. Faith is no more than the sincere
and hearty assent and consent of the mind to the belief of
the being and promises of God, as especially revealed to the
Church in the person and redemption work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Belief in these blessed truths
of God is called faith because it is the giving credit to the
testimony of God and relying upon his faithfulness for the
fulfilment of them. Isn't that lovely? I'll cut and paste that onto
the church website and then you can find it there sometime when
you're looking for it. Faith is no more than the sincere
and hearty assent and consent. I had to look up the difference
between assent and consent because I kind of felt as if it was pretty
much the same thing. But what I discovered was assent
is agreement to. consent is subjection to. If you were going to have an
operation, you would consent to the surgeon doing that operation. You might assent to the fact
that you need the operation done. but you consent to it being done
on you. So there's a lovely distinction
there between assent and consent. And he says that it is the sincere
and hearty assent. We agree, we believe it to be
so. and consent, we subject our heart
to it. We subject our heart and our
mind to the belief of the being and promises of God, as especially
revealed to the church in the person and redemption work of
the Lord Jesus Christ. So our faith is focused upon
the promises of God which we believe, but especially as those
promises relate to the work, the redemptive work of the Lord
Jesus Christ upon the cross. And belief in these blessed truths
of God is called faith because it is giving credit to the testimony
of God. It is saying we believe what
God has declared, we believe what God has revealed. This testimony
of Scripture, this revelation which has been granted to us,
we believe it to be True, and we believe it to come from the
one who cannot lie, who is himself the personification of truth,
who is all true. We give credit to the testimony
of God, relying upon his faithfulness for the fulfilment of them. And he continues. immense and
unspeakable blessings are promised by God. It is not the greatness
of the blessings which demands our faith, but the greatness
of the being promising. Okay, do you get that? He has
promised great and unspeakable blessings, immense and unspeakable
blessings are promised by God. But it is not the greatness of
the blessings which demands our faith, but the greatness of the
one who promises. We take God at his word. We take him at his word. We believe
what he has said. We believe in the promises that
he has made. Brothers and sisters in the Lord
Jesus Christ, we are called by God the Holy Spirit to believe
the promises of God. We are called to trust. We are called to faith. We are
called to trust in the wisdom of our God. We are called out
of this world, out of the pursuit of the values of this world,
to rely rather upon the faithfulness of God and the testimony of God. We are called to accept the revelation
of God. And these things we do at the
behest of God, at the request of God, at the work of God in
our lives as he makes us willing, as he commands and enables his
people and brings us into that place of willingly believing
in the things which he has declared. And from those revelations and
from those promises of God rises an objective body of truth. So we have our personal faith,
we are called to give assent and consent to the promises of
God. But those promises bound up together,
those immense and unspeakable blessings which God has promised,
when they are bound up together, when they are set in place, when
they are revealed as it were all fitting together as a body
of truth, it becomes the doctrine of our faith. It becomes the
objective truth that we believe in. So it is the testimony of scripture. Jude, the little book, the little
letter at the end of the scripture, just before the book of Revelation,
Jude calls it the faith. once delivered to the saints. That body of truth. Luke, the
gospel writer and the writer of the book of Acts, he calls
it, the things most surely believed among us. That's a lovely phrase,
isn't it? The things most surely believed
amongst us. There's not a redundant word
in that little phrase. The things most surely believed
amongst us. Sometimes the scripture calls
it the word of faith. Sometimes it is called the faith
of the gospel. Sometimes it is called the mystery
of faith. Or the most holy faith. Or the common faith. because
we believe it together. We believe it as a community
of his people, as the church of God. We believe these things
together. These are the things most surely
believed among us. And sometimes it is simply the
faith, the faith, the faith only. It comprises the whole scheme
of the evangelical truth, the promises of God for his people,
secured by the Lord Jesus Christ, that we are called upon to believe. So here we see that there is
faith, that is our faith, our personal faith, and there are
those truths which are called in scripture the faith and we
believe the faith. The writer to the Hebrews has
another way, another way of putting it. He gives another aspect to
these things. And in verse one of chapter 11,
here he says, now faith is the substance of things hoped for,
the evidence of things not seen. And this is a definition which
the Holy Ghost has given us. So it's good for us to think
about this also for a moment. The Holy Ghost here calls faith
the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not
seen. Meaning, I think that a believer's
faith, the faith that we have as believers, not originating
from natural things, not being worked up by ourselves, not being,
as it were, the derived conclusion of a period of study or of simply
being tutored in some set of doctrines perhaps from a child
whereby we just accept and believe that this is the truth, but rather
faith in a believer having been supernaturally created, having
been implanted by God the Holy Spirit, being nurtured through
that mysterious application of the gospel as it is preached
to our souls week by week on a regular basis and sustained
in the midst of this world surrounded as we are with all of the problems
and the pressures and the trials that we have. This idea of that being a substantial faith,
a faith that has a power behind it, a supernatural power, such
that the believer's faith garners in and collects together and
discovers and discerns the hand of God at work in our lives,
in the life of the church, in the life of his people and in
his people's life in this world. So we get, as it were, tokens of God's
support, his assistance, his grace, his kindness, his goodness,
And we interpret that as the hand of God at work in our lives. So that what an individual might
say, well, that was lucky. We say, thank you, Lord. And we see a substance to this
faith. We see an evidence to this faith
that isn't just a random collection of events, but rather speaks
of God providing signs, discernible signs, by which we are able to
say the Lord is at work in this situation. The Lord has done
this. This is God's doing. We have
proofs. Proofs which if we take them
sometimes individually and hold them up to a light and say to
someone else who doesn't see these things, look at what the
Lord has done, they'll say, that's just wishful thinking. but to
the church, to the believer. We see, no, no, that's not just
random chance. That's God at work in my life. That's God at work in this church's
life. These are the proofs. These are
the evidences of truth. And it goes beyond physical,
and it goes beyond natural verification. and we just know it to be true. We just know it to be the work
of God. And I think that's what Paul
is talking about when he says to Timothy in his epistle to
Timothy, I'm not ashamed for I know whom I have believed and
I'm persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed
unto him against that day. I just know. And isn't that something
that we all resort to in our Christian experience? We talk
about our faith. And we know that it rises and
falls, it comes and it goes, it ebbs and it flows. Sometimes
it is great faith and sometimes we have to search around for
it like that little mustard seed and we think it's gone, it's
gone, it's fallen down through a crack and I'm never going to
find it again. And we know that there is that
which is preached to us, that gospel message, which is the
testimony of the church. It has been handed down through
the generations. It is that received faith which
we lay our faith upon. And we know that that's the faith.
But there is this element also, where faith is the substance
of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, where we
say, no, I know this to be true. And you know what? You could
take me and you could examine me and you could endeavour to
change my mind and convince me otherwise. But the reality is
that I know this to be true. And don't ask me to prove how
I know. I just have the substance of
this faith in my soul. I have the evidence of this truth
in my heart and I know whom I have believed and I'm persuaded that
he is able to keep that which I've committed unto him against
that day. We speak, don't we, of our five
senses. I looked this up as well and
apparently there are lots of other senses too, but we keep
the five senses that we kind of are familiar with and are
common everyday way of thinking about things. Our sight and our smell and our
sense of touch and our hearing and our taste. And we say, I know this to be true because
of one of these senses. Because one of these senses tells
us that it's true. I know it's there. I saw it. Is it there? Yes, it's there
because I saw it. And we're absolutely certain
it is there. How many times has a mum said
that to a child? or a wife to a husband. It's
there. I saw it. It definitely happened. I heard
it. It definitely happened. I heard
it. So faith informs and convinces
our mind. to become perfectly assured of
the existence and the reality of these supernatural things. It's as if we've seen them for
ourselves. We believe it as emphatically
as that because the Lord has taught us. How do you know that
this is true? I just know it is. because I've
got the substance and I've got the evidence of these things
in my heart and in my soul. This is faith. This is the I
know of Paul. And it's in this sense that the
substance of things which are at a distance, which are beyond
the natural, which are yet at a distance, things hoped for,
nevertheless, are perfectly alive to our souls. as though they
were present in some bodily sense. And in Hebrews chapter 11, we
encounter a catalogue of men and women who possessed faith,
who have this testimony of faith, and they knew what they believed. We're told by the writer to the
Hebrews, I imagine it to be Paul, but he's not named. I've said
that to you before, but we're told by the writer to the Hebrews
that these men and women, these individuals, they received a
good report. And that just means that they
obtained a witness something that they knew to be true. The Lord Jesus Christ, the promises
of God, they had a view of the Lord Jesus
Christ, even although the Lord Jesus Christ had never yet come. They had an understanding of
the promises of God granted to them. They received a good report
with respect to these things. They had the same object, the
Lord Jesus Christ, the person of Christ, the work of Christ,
they had the same object in view before that happened as we have
as we look back upon the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. So
those that were there in the world before Christ, these elders
as they are spoken of here, they look forward to the coming of
Christ as we look back to the fact that Christ came. And that's what report means.
If you were at school and the teacher gave you a report slip,
do you talk about report cards? Yeah, teacher gives you a report
card. And what were you supposed to
do with that report card? Hide it from your parents? On
the contrary. You were carrying back the evidence
of the things that had happened. That was the report. It was carrying
back Carrying back, I think it's maybe a French word or something,
but to carry something that's portable is carried. And report
is to carry back. So the fact that these people
had received a good report means that it was carried back to them. Not only did they believe, but
they got a confirmation of that belief. They had a verification
of the legitimacy of that belief, of the appropriateness of that
belief, about the fact that that belief was sound and grounded
and true. And so they received a good report. Just as real as if they had tasted
it, or touched it, or heard it, or felt it. or saw it with their
own eyes. And the lovely thing about the
testimony of these men and these women is that they still speak
to us today, down through the centuries. These people still
speak to us today. That is a reference there in
verse four, concerning Abel. He being dead yet speaketh. But that's true for all of these
men and women. Though they have passed this
scene of time, though they have left this world and gone into
the other world, the spiritual dimension, yet their testimony
still speaks to us. Because here we are, all these
years later, in this little building, in this cold night in January,
in Great Falls, Montana, we are hearing the echoes of that report. A gun has a report, hasn't it?
When it fires, you hear it. And so we hear that report continuing. They're yet speaking to us, these
people. And that's a lovely thing about
the testimony of the church and the testimony of the Lord's people.
These people speak to us today of the faith that they had, the
things in which they believed, and the personal trust they had
in those truths which had been revealed to them by God. What did we discover? It's a
narrative. It's quite straightforward. Beautiful
phrases in this chapter of the way in which the writer, the
apostle, describes the faith. But it's quite easy to understand. Abel, we are told, offered unto
God a more excellent sacrifice. Enoch, he was translated. so that he should not see death. Noah, he prepared an ark to the
saving of his house, the saving of his family. Abraham, he went
out not knowing whether he went. He sojourned in the land of promise
as in a strange land with Isaac and with Jacob. And Sarah herself
received strength to conceive seed when she was past age. These elders, as they're here
described, they all trusted God. In the light that they were given,
in the light that they had received from God, in the promises that
they had been given, they trusted him. They exercised faith upon
those promises of God. They looked forward to a fulfilment
yet to come on which their hope, their trust, their confidence
was fixed. And they received word back that
it was a legitimate thing for them to do. I want to just very
briefly touch upon the things that we're able to draw from
this testimony of faith that we're given. Because I want to
show you, and I suppose what I'm saying here is that I'm providing
a little bit of a foundation for another few thoughts on another
occasion. But just to show you how the
things that these men and women received and believed in their
own faith, have become that body of faith which we now hold to
be true. And how we see, even in these
earliest days of the Lord's revelation amongst men and women, the testimony
of our evangelical faith having its earliest manifestation, its
earliest revelation. Abel, for example, Abel understood
the necessity of a blood offering in his approach to God. He understood
that. I don't exactly know how he understood
it. Perhaps it was, and I find this
a satisfying explanation, perhaps it was that Adam explained it
to him, that Adam showed him that when he had been found naked
in the garden, the only way that he had a life from God was because
something had to die that his nakedness should be covered.
And there the skin was taken from an animal, as it were a
sacrifice was made, the life of one was given up for the covering
of another. And there is a picture, embryonic,
I grant you, but there is a picture of grace being shown, but grace
that wasn't without price, because something had to die for that
covering to be secured. Blood had to be shed. And out
of that, perhaps Abel grasped something about his approach
to God. Perhaps there was also in Abel's
part a particular and peculiar revelation and illumination by
God the Holy Spirit. But Abel looked through the sacrifice
that he made to the sacrifice of Christ. He brought a lamb. He saw in that lamb a picture
of Christ. He saw the Lord Jesus Christ
embodied in that firstling of his flock. Now the firstlings
of the flock means the best of his flock. And he brought the
firstling because he was testifying to the need for excellence in
that lamb. it was the best lamb of his whole
flock. And just as it was the best,
most excellent, so he saw in that lamb that one who was excellent
would have to come if he was going to have access into the
presence of God. Thereby we believe that Abel
saw himself as a sinner and he looked for acceptance on the
basis of the blood of Christ. He did that by faith, and God
witnessed to him that he was righteous. Cain, on the other
hand, approached God merely as his creator, and he approached
him without a sense of need, without a sense of sin. And I
dare say that we could continue that theme in many, many ways,
not least to say that still in this world today, there are two
forms of approach to God. There is the one that says, I
come as a sinner and I stand before God only on the basis
of shed blood of an excellent one. or I come to God without
a sense of sin, offering him the works of my hand, offering
him the things that I have produced and created. And that's what
religion is. You either come before God as
a sinner on the basis of the shed blood of Christ, or you
come offering him the works of your own hand. Enoch, we're told, walked with
God and Enoch pleased God. How does a man please God? Well,
Galatians, I hope, has taught us some lessons and given us
some answers as we've worked through those passages from that
letter to the Galatians. Faith alone in Christ alone. That's how God is pleased. Faith alone in Christ alone. So if Enoch walked with God and
pleased God, then Enoch had faith alone in Christ alone. Abel showed us the need of a
blood sacrifice. And Enoch speaks of a personal
relationship with God, a relationship based upon justification. God is pleased. God is satisfied. God looks upon Enoch and he enters
into a personal relationship with Enoch. He walks with Enoch. And that is based upon God being
placated, God being pleased. And so we have two things coming
together. We have Abel and we have Enoch. Now, Abel was first generation
from Adam. Enoch, we're told, is seventh
generation. But here, between the second
and the seventh generation, we see an unfolding of revelation. We see that not only is there
a necessity of blood sacrifice, but that that blood sacrifice
pleases God and enables a personal relationship to take place. And
so the body of faith is beginning to form. The body of doctrine,
which is those things most certainly believed amongst us, is beginning
to take its form. And these individuals of faith
are showing us, the church today, what these things truly are. Enoch's walk with God opened
up the prospect also of a life without death. Because Enoch
was translated, he walked with God and he was not, for God took
him. He didn't die. And how do we
understand that now with our spiritual understanding of the
Lord Jesus Christ? He tells us that the just shall
live by faith. and it speaks of the resurrection
of the Lord Jesus Christ and the fact that we have a hope
of eternal life and that we will not die. We might have to give
up this fleshy body, but that's only dust and ashes anyway. but
there is a life which is transcending of these limbs and physical features
and it is that which goes on. Enoch spoke of that because he
spoke of a life which did not die. Noah learned of judgment
upon the wicked and he received salvation as he and his family
were securely shut up in the ark. The ark being a type, a
picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. Noah was a sinner. All the world
was sinful. Noah was a sinner as all men
and women are. There was a common wickedness
which was part of the legacy of Adam, the heritage that Adam
passed down to all his children. And yet it is said of Noah that
he found grace in the eyes of the Lord. He found grace in the
eyes of the Lord. A sinner who finds grace. And
here we see the sovereign purpose of God. Here we see God's goodness,
not because of works, because this man was a sinner, but because
he found grace in the eyes of God. We have grounds of saying
that he was justified before God. So by faith, these individuals
Abel knew about blood sacrifice and foresaw Christ in that symbol. Enoch enjoyed a personal relationship
with God and he had a close walk. with the Lord Jesus Christ, because
it's the Lord Jesus Christ who appeared in the Old Testament
to these men and women of faith. Noah saw judgment flooding in
upon this world because of sin, but he found deliverance through
the grace of God. And these very principles from
the earliest times in history show us that faith continues
to be that great underlying principle by which God deals with men and
women in this world. To Abraham was revealed such
truths, the truths that had been learned in previous generations
and more that were granted to him exclusively. As that faithful
man followed God, he went out to a better place. He followed
God to a place of promise. Abraham believed God. Promises
were made to him. Covenants were established with
him. Assurances were granted to him. The Lord said to Abraham, fear
not Abraham, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward. And Abraham believed him. Abraham
believed that God was his shield and his exceeding great reward. The episode with Isaac and Mount
Moriah was typical of the Lord Jesus Christ at Calvary. A loved son, a sacrifice, an
obedient death and resurrection. And Abraham received Isaac, as
it were, from the dead. That's what the writer to the
Hebrews tells us, that Abraham knew that this gift of Isaac
back to him was a picture of the fact that there would be
a resurrection. The New Testament writers draw
upon these pictures of Abraham with great frequency because
that man grasped something of the true nature of salvation
and the great work of redemption. For example, we find in Hebrews
that the relationship between Abraham and Melchizedek is used
to speak about the priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ. The
fact that Hagar and Sarah both speak to us of law and grace,
and the Apostle Paul picks this theme up in the book of Galatians.
And here these deep foundational truths, which are the beginning
of a true gospel understanding, are found in this man, Abraham,
and in his experiences. And that blessed man speaks of
the believer's glorious hope in heaven. Because Abraham was
looking for a city whose builder is God. And he reveals to us
that as Abraham travelled through the desert lands of his day,
he was a stranger in a strange country. He dwelt in tents with
Isaac and Jacob. And he thereby is a picture of
the Lord's people in this world, strangers in a strange land,
dwelling in tents, not building ourselves mansions, not establishing
our roots in this world as if we're going to be here forever,
but aware that at any moment we might be asked to give these
things up. And we're ready to do that because
they're just tents. We don't put great stock in them. We don't say that this is our
legacy or this is our wealth or this is our riches. No, these
things can go easily. We let them go because we are
looking for a city that has foundations, who's builder and maker is God.
And this is our hope. This is our glory. This is our
aspiration. This is the object of our faith. And Sarah too illuminates our
understanding as her own doubts. She laughed, remember, when the
Lord said that she would have a child, she laughed. But thereby
she teaches us that our doubts disappear in God's faithfulness,
in the fulfilment of his promises. Her body that had grown old,
nevertheless bore a child of promise. Imagine what she must
have thought having laughed when she started to feel her tummy
getting bigger. I don't know whether she got
morning sickness after all those years, but she knew that something
was alive in her belly. And that foreshadowed the church
of Jesus Christ. It foreshadowed the great congregation. That child of promise was the
promise that was made to Abraham that there would be a nation
that would be as numerous as the stars in the sky. And we're
not talking about the children of Israel. We're not talking
about the national people that live in a particular country
in the Middle East. We're talking about the children
of faith. We're talking about the children
of Abraham. true people of Jacob. We spoke about that the other
day. This is the general assembly
of the Church of the Firstborn, which are written in heaven,
the Church of Christ, numerous as the stars of the sky. So here is the history of faith.
Here is the history of faith in the lives of God's people. Here are early views of the Lord
Jesus Christ set forth in type and picture and metaphor and
symbol. Here we see the faith beginning
to form, beginning to take shape. that faith that was once delivered
to the saints. Building, building up the church,
building up believer upon believer, truth upon truth, so that the
testimony of God's faithfulness upon which our own faith is fixed
is settled and sure and dependable. John chapter 8 verse 56 says,
Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day and he saw it and
was glad. Who said that? The Lord Jesus
Christ said that. The Lord Jesus Christ told his
enemies, told his detractors, told these Pharisees He said,
your father, you claim Abraham as your father. You would rejoice
if Abraham truly was your father. You would rejoice to see my day
because that's what Abraham did. And the Lord Jesus Christ might
have said, Abel, Enoch, Noah, or Sarah, or any one of those
elders that are accounted here for us in the book of Hebrews
chapter 11. Any one of them, because they
all rejoice to see the day of Christ. a promised child granted,
a holy nation begun, a sacrifice of blood that gained access into
the very presence of God, grace in the midst of torrential rain
and judgment, a city with foundations, translated to be with Christ
in glory. This is the testimony of faith. This is the truth of God. This is the gospel. It's the gospel in the Old Testament,
just as much as we have the gospel in the New Testament in these
days. May the Lord grant us all to have such a report. May the
Lord grant us all to see in the testimonies of these dear saints,
the precious examples of faith that we might follow and that
we might emulate. May He reveal to us the object
of their faith as the object of our faith. the Lord Jesus,
a saviour in whom to trust, one to believe and depend upon, whose
cleansing blood and perfect righteousness is all we require to please and
walk with God. The Apostle Paul says in Romans
chapter 1 verse 17, for therein is the righteousness of God revealed
from faith to faith. As it is written, the just shall
live by faith. Amen.