Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: I've been waiting to get to this chapter in Hebrews. Having arrived at chapter 11, which is perhaps the most famous and most well-known chapter of all in this book of Hebrews, it has been a daunting task to know where to begin and to know which aspect of faith to talk about and all the rest of it. We're going to rush, unfortunately, through chapter 11. I hope that you're going to live there for a long time. I hope that you're going to come back to chapter 11 and begin to make it the basis of your living a life of faith in Jesus Christ.

Let's read a little bit of chapter 10 as we get prepared for chapter 11. We've been reminded that Jesus Christ is superior, is great, is Lord, is all in all. You've got to remember again who the writer of the book of Hebrews was talking to. We pick it up in verse 32 of chapter 10. "Remember those earlier days," says the writer, "after you had received the light, when you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering." That is the background to the book of Hebrews. People under persecution, people needing a strong faith in a strong God to survive at all.

"Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution. At other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You sympathized with those in prison. You joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions." Remember, these people had given up expecting anything good on Earth, but they knew they were going to get plenty good in heaven. "Do not throw away your confidence. It will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he's promised. For in just a very little while, he who is coming will come and will not delay."

"But my righteous one will live by faith, and if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him. But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved." It is interesting that God is not pleased with those who shrink back, with those who drift away from the moorings of their faith, which is where we began the study in the book of Hebrews. Have you ever met somebody that talks about keeping the faith? Has anybody said, "Now you've got to keep the faith" or "Have faith"?

Have you ever asked them, or do next time it happens, what does that mean? What do you mean, keep the faith? What do you mean you've got to have faith? You would probably get as many answers as there are people that use those phrases. Quite frankly, I would be very surprised if they could define exactly what they mean to you. Maybe they vaguely mean believe that God will see you through in the end or give you a special oomph or power to see it through, or calm you down or be nice to you. It can cover a measure of things.

Whenever anybody, a stranger or a friend, has used those words, I've asked them to define it for me. Christian faith, what does it mean? Christ is the object of our faith. But what does the faith mean? That's what this whole chapter is about. Faith is in essence believing and receiving what God has revealed. It's a trust in the God of the scriptures and in Jesus Christ whom he sent to be our savior. Faith is dependence. Faith is dependence on whom? On a God who is big and strong and true and good and just and right.

There are many uses of faith. We use faith for salvation. Faith is our personal trust. Apart from merit works, it's not what we do, but what we believe and what we trustfully believe God will do for us. Faith is that. Faith is exercised in prayer. Faith is the assurance we have in approaching God, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us, as 1 John 5:14-15 says. Faith is the assurance we have in God. When I get down to pray, who is there? My faith tells me God is there.

I cannot put that in a test tube. That's why I need faith. I cannot lay it out for people to feel and handle and touch. That's what faith is for. The use of faith is for salvation so I can trust myself to what God has promised me. He promises me that if I ask God to forgive my sins because of what Christ has done, I will go to heaven. I trust that. I have faith in what God has said. So faith, or the use of faith, is for salvation, for prayer, and for the dark unseen things of which the word speaks.

Faith is for the dark. Faith is what the people all around this country are going to need as the winter comes on because things are going to happen like snowstorms and mudslides and winter storms and people getting frozen to death and little children falling through ice and drowning. That's dark. Absolutely dark. We don't understand it. Faith is for when we do not understand. Faith is for the dark. Faith gives substance to these sort of dark things so that we can act upon the conviction of the reality of God that we find in them.

Faith is for the dark. Faith is for prayer. Faith is for salvation. Faith is a working principle of the Christian's life. In Hebrews chapter 11, the illustrations of people that walked in faith and lived in faith and overcame in faith and endured in faith are legion. We're going to be looking at some of those people and how they lived this life, this wonderful life of faith. The uses of faith are many: for salvation, for prayer, for the dark, for life itself. The possibility of faith, let's think about that.

The object of our faith is important, and my husband always makes a great emphasis on this. It's not the amount of faith that you have that's important. Sometimes we feel very insecure. Sometimes we feel, if only I had more faith. How many times have you said that to yourself or to someone else, or prayed it for someone? If only they had more faith. Is it the amount of faith that people have that makes the difference or what that faith is in? Now, this is very important.

For example, as Stuart would say, you can have an awful lot of faith in very thin ice and get very wet and drown. You can drown by faith. Because you've put all of your faith in something that is not worthy of your faith. On the other hand, you can have a little tiny mustard seed of faith in very thick ice and stay very dry and very secure and very safe. So it isn't the amount of faith. You can have two people exercising faith in the same situation. It's what you put your faith in.

That's why you can be lost by faith. You can put your faith in going to heaven in the wrong object. Perhaps by doing good things or going to church. You can put all your faith into being religious or joining a club or a church or a religion or a denomination. You can put all your faith in your own efforts, in your choir training or your Sunday school teaching. But the Bible doesn't promise that teaching Sunday school will save you. The Bible doesn't promise that even joining a church will save you.

The object of your faith is very important, and of course, the whole book of Hebrews keeps coming back to this. Christ is the object of our faith. He saves us. It's what he did for us, not what we do for him that is going to get us to heaven. The possibility of faith is available to all of us because all of us have faith. But the amount of faith you put isn't really important. It's the object that you put the faith in that's important. We have to trust Christ.

We have to ask him to take us home to heaven, not ask ourselves to get ourselves home to heaven. If we have faith in ourselves, we will not be in heaven. If we have faith in a Christ who can take us there, forgive us, make it possible for us to live in heaven with God, then we will go to heaven. Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to what he has done for us. Now, where am I going to find this faith, though? Even the little bit of grain of mustard seed, some of you are saying, "But I don't even have that much faith."

I want to know how to expand my faith, to explode my faith, to get more faith. Where does it come from? Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. It comes as we begin to see God revealed in scripture and get to know him. Faith can increase like that. But you say, maybe if I had something done to me, maybe if I had hands laid on me or somebody injected me with this religious faith that I need. Now, you know the biggest discovery that I ever made in my life was that there is no difference between religious faith and ordinary everyday stuff.

Everyday faith is the only faith we have to exercise. And you know, that was such a relief to learn. I had an idea that there was a sort of religious faith over here and an everyday faith over here. I had lots of everyday faith, like opening a carton of cereal and eating it without thinking about it, trusting and depending on somebody somewhere I've never met to have checked it and that there not be poison in there. I have plenty of that stuff.

I have all the faith in the world that the chair you're sitting on will hold you there until I finish. That's everyday faith. You didn't even think about it. How do you know the chair you're sitting on was checked in the factory and that it doesn't have two legs crooked that weren't properly hammered in there and you're going to collapse and have a back operation and end up a cripple? How do you know that? What faith you've exercised today. When you put that toothpaste in your mouth and cleaned your teeth.

When you turned the tap on and you didn't even think about the water coming out. You just expected it to do. All this everyday faith is the same faith you exercise in Christ, in the religious part of your life. And that sort of relieves us from thinking there's a whole other world out here called the religious world, and I need religious faith for it. Now, I can use that everyday faith that I know how to use for Christ. I can start and trust him without thinking. I can start and depend on him without believing he's going to let me down.

The possibility of faith is huge. Absolutely huge. If you start and think, I can use the faith, everybody's got faith, don't say I haven't got any faith, everybody's got faith, it's the same faith that you're going to have to exercise in Christ that you exercise in cornflakes. The possibilities are immense. God has given us this ordinary faith to use religiously if you like. God has given us everyday faith to use religiously or God-ward. So the uses of faith are many.

The possibility of faith, the object is important, not the amount. It isn't extraordinary faith you're looking for, religious type of extraordinary supernatural faith. It's ordinary everyday faith. Just trusting God the same way we trust people, the same way we trust things, inanimate objects, cars that we get in and drive. That sort of faith. It's when you exercise it in a God who's real and supernatural and you start and trust him to do things. Then it gets exciting.

The scope of faith, of course, is the subject of Hebrews chapter 11. It's the subject of the whole chapter. But it cannot possibly deal with everything in one chapter. And what Hebrews 11 does is narrow down the subject of faith and keep it in the context of the whole book of Hebrews. In other words, the faith that is talked about in Hebrews chapter 11 isn't particularly saving faith, the faith we need to come to Jesus. It isn't the faith that is just basic belief in who God is.

It isn't that sort of faith. It is the faith which endures. That aspect of faith only is the one that we'll be picking out, even though there are sidelines to faith all the way through this chapter. Basically speaking, Hebrews chapter 11 deals with the kind of faith which is necessary for those who endure. We read that in 10:36. Verse 39 says, "We are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe or who trust or who have faith, who depend and are saved."

Verse 36 of chapter 10 says, "You need to persevere. You need to endure so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he's promised. My righteous one shall live by faith." So let's look at faith at work in this chapter with those few thoughts to take us into the chapter. First of all, faith accepts God's Word. Faith accepts the Bible as the revelation of Christ, the living word. Faith accepts the Bible is inspired.

Faith accepts that God breathed into the minds and hearts and understandings of men his revelation of himself. Faith accepts the word of God. If you don't start there, I don't know where you're going to put your faith. Are you going to put it in what men say about the word of God, or are you going to put your faith in what he has said? Faith accepts God's Word. And of course, the chapter starts off saying faith is being sure of what we hope for, certain of what we do not see.

If you can see something, if you can feel something, if you can touch something, then what you need faith for, in other words? This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith, we understand the universe was formed at God's command so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. Now, that's quite a big statement. Faith accepts God's Word of the future. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Now, of course, we get into a little bit of science here, but the illustration that the Hebrew writer is using is very interesting. He's saying nobody really knows how the heavens were made. The Bible says God made the heavens. Now, how he made the heavens and when he made the heavens can be argued ad infinitum. Christians versus non-Christians, and even Christians versus Christians are arguing that one. The statement of scripture is very clear: he did it. All of us can accept that that are Christians at all.

Science tells us how the heavens go. The Bible tells us how to go to heaven. The Bible is not a scientific textbook. I've said that many times. But it does not mean that the Bible is unscientific. God is a scientist. He is omniscience, omniscient, all science. He created the laws. He keeps the whole thing operating. But God has revealed himself morally in his word. He is not telling us how he made the birds and the bees.

He is telling us how he made human beings, fitting into the whole of his creation to worship and bring glory to him. How the whole thing was messed up by man deciding they didn't want to go along with what God had planned. And then how God brought a result or a conclusion to the awful dilemma that he was then in. What should he do with this rebellious mankind that he had made that had turned its back on him? And he thought of a marvelous plan of coming himself in human form, in the very form that he had made man, one of his creatures.

Coming and doing something in that human body, the body of Jesus of Nazareth, that would make the difference and reverse the awful thing that had happened. So that in redemption, in buying us back from the stupidity and the willfulness of our sinfulness, he could find himself vindicated, and he could bring glory to himself so that the whole creation, man included, once more would honor and glory and bless the God who is worthy and worth glorifying and blessing.

Now, by faith, we have to accept that if we're believers, because the Bible tells us so. Jesus loves me, this I know. How do you know? For the Bible tells me so. There is no other way to find that out. Where are you going to find that out other than God revealing it in his word? The word that Jesus Christ said is true, can be trusted, is God's word to man. By faith, we are sure of what we hope for. We are certain of what we do not see because we are convinced the Bible is reliable and it reveals to us God's mind.

Faith accepts God's Word. Now, two illustrations of people accepting God's Word are given in the 11th of Hebrews. Well, of course, I could have chosen many, but I have chosen out of this chapter Joshua and Rahab. Joshua is an interesting character. He was the one who was left to take the people into the promised land. Moses kept them alive: million and a quarter people in a desert. That was a miracle that brought glory to God. But he was not allowed to go into the promised land.

Joshua was the one who was chosen by God. And at the beginning of the book of Joshua in chapter one, God says to him, "I am about to give all these people in Palestine to you. I will give you every place that you set your foot as I promised Moses." By faith, we believe what God has promised even though we have not yet seen it. Joshua stood on the edge of a huge country full of people. And God promised him again what he had heard he had promised Moses and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

"Now you go get it. Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon," he tells him all of this. "No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will never leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and courageous because you will lead this people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers. Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you. Don't turn from it to the right or the left so that you may be successful wherever you go."

"Don't let this book of the law depart from your mouth. Meditate on it day and night so you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Don't be terrified. Don't be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go." Now, if God had leaned out of heaven and said that to you, I'm sure you would have leaped into the promised land.

But there were giants and there were walled cities. All Joshua had to go on was God's word. That's all. Faith is to use at a time like that, when all you've got to go on is God's word. And I love the next verse: "So Joshua ordered the officers of the people: Go through the camp and tell the people, get your supplies ready. Three days from now, you will cross the Jordan here to go in and take possession of the land the Lord your God is giving you for your own."

And so they did. Starting with Jericho, one of the biggest and the most difficult to conquer of all. The whole thing looked impossible. And all Joshua had was the word of God. He had no assurances other than God's word. But what does faith do? Faith takes God's word and faith says, "I will believe even though everything looks to the contrary." Then, of course, not only did Joshua take this marvelous step of faith, believing God's word, but so did Rahab.

In chapter two, verses one to 21, we've no time to read the account. Rahab hid the spies that Joshua sent to see how good the land was once they got halfway in there. And the spies went to spy out the land. Remember, they came home with huge bunches of grapes that it took two of them to carry on a pole between them because the grapes were so big and so heavy. And they brought back this fruit to show what a wonderful land that God had promised them and to encourage the people to go in and possess the possessions that were already there.

Rahab hid those spies. She was a prostitute. She is here in this list of true heroes in Hebrews 11. By faith, it says, she didn't perish with those who were disobedient. She treated the spies well. She heard of Jehovah caring for Israel, and she believed the word that he was the true God. She said, "I know the Lord has given you the land." The Lord hadn't given him the land. She could have turned those people over.

She could have won a big reward. She could have taken immediate advantage. Why did Rahab put her neck on the line to hide those spies? Because she believed the word of God. And so here you have two huge heroes of the faith that said, "I will believe the word of God." Faith accepts God's Word. If you have trouble believing the Bible, you're going to have trouble with your faith. Your Christian faith is not going to work very well if you're doubting is this bit of the Bible true, is this bit reliable.

Who is going to decide which bit is true and which bit is reliable? I remember Stuart talking to a student years ago in Manchester University who could not accept the Bible as the word of God. And he used to just cut it to pieces with his tongue. One day Stuart gave him a pair of scissors and said, "I want you to go back to your room, and I want you to cut out everything you cannot believe from this Bible for whatever reason and come back when you've finished."

He said, "I couldn't cut the Bible with a pair of scissors." Stuart said, "What's the difference with cutting it with a pair of scissors and your tongue? There's no difference. Now go and do it." And so the young student did. He took a long time going from Genesis right the way through to Revelation, in all honesty, cutting out literally of the Bible everything that he couldn't accept as the word of God. And he came back with a little tiny bit of the Bible.

Stuart said, "Now what you've got is a God that you can understand, which means he isn't really a God at all if you can understand him." That's what you've got. There is all the parts of the Bible that you have cut out, most of which you're going to have to accept by faith because you haven't got the capacity, the infinite capacity to understand the infinite. You only have a finite capacity which cannot grasp the infinite.

But there is enough truth in the Bible for you to understand and grasp in your finite mind. The rest you have to accept by faith. And so faith is for accepting, not stupidly, but accepting the tenets of our faith that the Bible is the inspired word of God. Faith accepts God's Word. Faith pleases God. Faith like that pleases God. Look at verse six in chapter 11. "Without faith, it is impossible to please God because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him."

Anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists, that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. For example, in this chapter, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph are used in this way. Isaac in verse 20: "By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future." When did he do that? When they didn't look as though they had a future. When the land was not theirs. It took Joshua to go in and take the land and for the people to possess the possessions, for it actually to happen.

Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future. So did Jacob. When he was dying, he blessed each of Joseph's sons and worshipped God leaning on the top of his staff. By faith, Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. He gave instructions about his bones. He said, "Don't leave my bones in Egypt. Carry them with you." That's faith. Faith in what? Faith in a God who had promised to take them out of Egypt and into Canaan.

It hadn't happened. But three of the most mighty men of the Bible are used here as an illustration of exercising faith in God's word. God had promised Abraham, "Lift up your eyes, Abraham, see the stars. That's how many people will be your descendants." And this before he ever had a baby, ever had a child. Abraham was told, believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. Abraham was saved through faith.

He is the father of faith, and we, if we are Abraham's children as the New Testament teaches, are children of faith. We have to have that faith. And here we see Isaac and Jacob and Joseph exercising that faith. Faith that accepts God's word is faith indeed. Faith pleases God. When you believe God's word, that pleases him. Don't you want to please God? How important is it to you that you please God? Then you have to depend upon his word.

If you doubt his word, you are not pleasing God. Sometimes people think that we can please God by singing in the choir, by teaching a Sunday school, by being on a committee, by putting money in the offering plate, by being kind and good. But we can do all those things without faith. Just think about that. You can sing in the choir. You can teach like I'm teaching. I can do this without faith. You can put money in the offering plate.

You can do the job you're called to do in church. You can be kind and you can be good without faith. I know people that don't even believe in God that do all those things, don't you? None of those things please God. That's not faith. That's not being in the Christian faith, doing those things because you can do them all without depending on God. Pleasing God is believing what you haven't yet seen. For example, he promises, if you accept the Holy Spirit, you will be in heaven.

Do you believe it? Are you trusting that? Are you depending on it? That pleases God. You haven't yet got to heaven, have you? But you're trusting you will. That pleases God. That sort of faith in what hasn't happened yet pleases God. It's not stupid faith. You don't just dream up something you'd like to happen and have faith in God will do it. You have faith in what he's promised. That's the safe sort of faith to have, faith in what he has already said will happen.

If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us and he does it. Not something according to our will or imagination, but something he has already said. We exercise faith in a God who has given us his word. We have a high view of scripture. Faith accepts God's word as Joshua and Rahab did. Faith pleases God. The example we could take here would not only be Abraham but also Moses, verse 24. "By faith Moses, when he'd grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter."

That pleased God. He had family pressures, but he exercised faith and he said, "I know I'm destined for this throne, but there is another throne and I'll do without the earthly throne and I'll think about the heavenly throne." Just as Abraham thought about the heavenly city and lived in a tent all his life. Moses, who could have had the palace and the throne, chose to suffer affliction with the people of God. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time.

He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt because he was looking ahead to his reward. By faith, he left Egypt, not fearing the king's anger. He persevered because he saw him who's invisible. That's faith. You persevere, you endure because you see with the eye of faith him who is invisible. If he was visible, you wouldn't need faith. Jesus said to Thomas, "Blessed are those who haven't seen and yet have faith, yet they believe."

By faith, Moses kept the Passover, the sprinkling of blood so the destroyer of the firstborn shouldn't touch the firstborn of Israel. By faith, the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land. Moses is used as an expression of the faith that pleases God. God was pleased with Moses when he refused to go for the temporary moment because he had eternal values in mind. God is pleased with our teenagers when they refuse to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a moment because they have faith.

They have faith in a God who can satisfy them without the pleasures they see everybody enjoying temporarily, and they say, we'll go for the eternal things that are not ours yet and now, but will be. And they trust, they have faith, and God says, that pleases me. How much do you want to please God? Then you have to learn to depend and you have to learn to trust those invisible things that are not yet visible, those things that you do not enjoy that you will enjoy.

Faith pleases God. Faith accepts God's word. Faith holds hands with action. Faith, in other words, is obedient. Here we have to look at Abraham. By far the most verses take from eight through to 19 for the father of our faith. And that makes good sense, doesn't it? Because if we can't look at Abraham, who are we going to look at? Abraham obeyed when he was called. Genesis 12:1-4 tells us. He obeyed when he was called. That was a huge thing.

He had unwavering faith in the God who spoke. And life sprang out of deadness. He had faith that his wife who was old would conceive a child. He is a wonderful, wonderful example of faith, of saving faith, of keeping faith, of sacrificial faith. He put his son on the altar, these verses tell us. Look at this, verse 19: "He reasoned that God could raise the dead." Therefore he sacrificed Isaac. Have you ever wondered, how could he bind his son and take his knife to kill his son?

Because he believed God that in this son all those wonderful descendants that he'd been told about would come. Then how could he kill him? Because he believed that God could raise the dead. Why did he believe that? Because God had said it. So he believed God's word and he believed God. He didn't think the promises were all overturned. And when he heard God saying to him, "Don't withhold your son, your only son from me," he went to kill him, knowing and believing that God would give him back again.

He couldn't understand why he had to kill him so God could raise him from the dead and give that boy back to him again, but he obeyed. "It's through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned," God had said. He never stopped believing that. Abraham is a huge example of courageous faith for us and for all people. Persistent faith. He lived in tents because he looked for a city whose builder and maker was God.

He left fantastic home, riches, and wealth. He left his family, which was a huge thing in those days to do. Remember, Abraham was the father of the Jews. Abraham wasn't a Jew. He had no history behind him. Here he was in Ur of the Chaldees, which was a terrifically sophisticated town where he was living. They have dug up things like central heating pipes in Abraham's time. He left security and prosperity and prominence in that city.

He went out not knowing where he was going. And can't you just imagine Sarah saying, "Where are we going to move to?" "I don't know." "Or when are we going to go?" "Well, we're going to go now." "Well, what's going to be the other end?" "I don't know, God has just told me to go." It wasn't until Abraham got into the promised land that God gave him all the promises about the promised land. The only thing he knew is God said go and he went.

He wasn't sitting at home and God didn't say to him, "Now you go into Canaan. I'm going to give you this and I'm going to give you the fruit and I'm going to give you this, land of flowing milk and honey." Nothing. It wasn't until Abraham was actually living in a tent in the promised land that God gave him all the promises about the promised land. He had to go. He had to get there. So he didn't do it for reward. He did it because he obeyed.

Faith obeys without the concept of having to have a reward. "I'll do this God, if you'll reward me for it." "Well, I'll dare to take a step of faith, but I want to make sure what I'm getting at the other end." We know what we're getting in heaven. But in between heaven and now, there's not too much security. But we do know what we're going to get in heaven, and that's how Abraham endured. Look at verse 11: "By faith Abraham, even though he was past age and Sarah herself was barren, was enabled to become a father because he considered God faithful who had made the promise."

He considered God faithful who'd made the promise. The one who makes promises in the Bible is faithful to keep them. Faithful is he that calls you who also will do it. Faith holds hands with action. There's so many of these people that are now explained in this chapter that describe the action that faith brings forth that it's impossible to do anything more than point you to them for your own study. But look at Abel. We talk about Abel at the beginning of the chapter in verse four.

"By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man when God spoke well of his offerings. By faith he still speaks even though he's dead." What does Abel have to say to you and I this morning? Why does he still speak? Because he spoke of a faith that believed God's word. God said, "I want you to offer this sort of offering, a costly offering, a blood offering, a life must be given because sin has been sinned."

Abel believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. He did it God's way, and he obeyed God's word, and he gave costly worship. It cost him his life. To worship as Abel worshipped cost him his life. He was murdered by his brother. So Abel knew what it was to believe God's word to the shedding of his own blood. God leaned out of heaven and said the blood, to Cain, "The blood of thy brother cries to me from the Earth. What have you done?"

Why did Cain hate his brother so much? Because by faith, Abel was believing God's word, joining hands with action, putting it into costly obedience, taking the firstfruits of his flock, a costly gift. God looked down and said, "Oh, your heart, Abel, I see your pure heart. I see your motivation, and this is acceptable, and I'm pleased with this that you're doing it my way." What about Cain? Well, sin was crouching or couching at the door. He was subject to sin.

He gave God any old thing. He didn't do it God's way. He didn't believe his word, and then he got mad at God when God got mad with him. This was Cain. No faith. But Abel is an example or a result of that faith that holds hands with action and obeys God's word. Enoch. Enoch's one of my favorite people, and I'll tell you why. It says here that Enoch walked with God. Genesis 5:22 and 24 tells us the incident. You can read this.

Do you know what it says? It says that when he was 65 years of age, he walked with God. He did not walk with God always. He lived 65 years without walking with God. But as soon as he came to commit his life to the God who he could trust and depend on in faith, then the rest of his life, and it was a long life, in fact, he lived until he was 365 years of age in those period of the Bible where people were living to incredible ages.

He lived that long life depending on God, walking with God. Enoch walked with God. I wonder what'll be put on our tombstones. Will it be an epitaph like that: so-and-so walked with God? Well, Enoch did. The thing that intrigued me was it was after the birth of Methuselah that Enoch walked with God. And Hughes in his commentary brings the little thought to us that, was it the responsibility of parenting that forced Enoch to recognize his own special limits as a father?

Is this what forced him to faith in Christ? That's why I believe that every church should have a very viable ministry to young couples. It's amazing what happens when you have that first baby, isn't it? And the young parents wanting to parent correctly. Sometimes it can turn a couple who have had their backs to the church of Jesus Christ around and they can say, "I really want to be a good parent." And they begin to walk with God.

So it's a wonderful opportunity to have young couples groups and to have a very open-arm attitude and program for the young family in a church fellowship because it's at times like that perhaps as it was with Enoch. We don't know if it was linked to the birth of Methuselah. It does say in the Bible it was after the birth of Methuselah that Enoch walked with God. So something happened in his life. 65 years of age, the walk began, and he plodded his way through.

You know what happened one night? He walked with God and he walked with God and he walked with God and they talked together, like Adam did before sin ever came in the garden with God. And it was a wonderful life of faith and dependence and trust and communication. On and on and on it went. And one night as they were just talking as they did, God said to Enoch, "Enoch, why don't you come home to my house tonight instead of going home to yours?"

God took him and he was not. It was a miracle. He was one of the couple of people that were taken to heaven without going through death, like Elijah. So here we have Enoch. He was not, for God took him. God said, "Let's go home to my house tonight." Their communion, their walk had been so close. Enoch is used as a result of faith. He accepted God's word in the midst of people that were so hostile and living such dreadful, dreadful lives.

Faith pleases God, and faith holds hands with action, and Enoch's life had a consistent testimony. He had this testimony before he died, says Hebrews, that he pleased God, that he walked with God. Faith holds hands with action. Faith is obedient when everybody else is being disobedient. Consistent testimony. And Noah. The concrete way of proving that you have faith. What did he do? He built an ark. The example of Noah's faith is very simple. He got going, and it took a lot of blood and sweat and tears and hard work.

Sometimes it takes hard work to provide an ark for the saving of your household. Look at verse seven. "By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen," was going to rain, nobody'd ever seen rain, nobody'd ever seen a flood, never been a flood. He was warned by God. He believed God's word. Faith believes God's word. In holy fear, he built an ark to save his family. By his faith, he condemned the world who didn't have that faith in God's word.

They did not believe it was going to rain, there was going to be a flood. And he became heir of righteousness that comes by faith. We have many people in the Old Testament that were saved by faith. He didn't depend on his own efforts. He didn't say, well, God's going to save me because I'm building this ark and I'm doing this nice thing for God. God told him to build the ark. He depended on God. He did something that was apparently in the eyes of everyone else very stupid, but he wanted to save his family and he did.

Do you want to save your family? Then faith has got to be exercised that's going to be very practical. You're going to have to build an ark. I don't know what sort of an ark it's going to be. Maybe you're going to have dinner on Thanksgiving every year when it's not your turn. That's building an ark. That's building an ark. I hear so many family rows that go on. "Well, it isn't my turn. I always have it. Why should I have all that trouble? And we can't afford it anymore. It's so expensive to have all that, even if people help."

I heard this argument going on a plane I was coming back. Just a husband, wife really getting at each other because of this. And I thought about that. And I thought of somebody else that I do know who cannot afford it, but because they are the only Christian in that whole big family, they have insisted on having Thanksgiving even though it's a huge strain on their budget and it's a lot of sweat of work, but they're building an ark to the saving of their family.

Faith builds an ark. I don't care what it is. Faith does. Faith doesn't just sing about it. Faith doesn't just pray about it. Faith does. Joins hands with action. And Noah is a good example of that. Abel, Enoch, Noah. Costly worship, consistent testimony, concrete ways of providing that way of escape that people might come to believe as we believe in a God who is the God of salvation. Then of course, the chapter finishes up with the victory of faith.

Uses of faith, possibility of faith, scope of faith, faith at work, faith accepts God's word, faith pleases God, faith holds hands with action. All these things are in this chapter. But the results of faith, the sublime, the steady, the faith that endures. The end of this chapter deals with two groups of people, all of whom went through everything you can imagine that was horrendous. "What more shall I say?" says the writer. He's run out of examples.

Well, he hasn't run out of examples. He's run out of time to talk about the examples. "I don't have time," he says. That's what I feel like just at this moment. "I don't have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms and administered justice, gained what was promised, shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, escaped the edge of the sword, whose weakness was turned to strength and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. Others were tortured and refused to be released."

A change. Others were tortured and refused to be released so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, and still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned, they were sawed in two, they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted, mistreated. The world wasn't worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains and in caves and holes in the ground.

These were all commended for their faith. All commended. Those who were not delivered and those who were delivered. And that's a very, very important point in this day and age when I hear an awful lot of people saying things like God has promised that you'll be healthy, wealthy, and wise and nothing bad will ever happen to you. Then how do they face the book of Hebrews? All the people that have just been spoken about were commended for their faith.

Those who overcame their circumstances and those who lived under their circumstances. The list of sorrows that faith overcomes. Those who were not delivered from their troubles are here before us. God doesn't promise that faith is the key to all things bright and beautiful. Neither is faith the key to anything other than a clear testimony that brings glory to God whatever the weather. That's the point of faith. Maybe God will deliver us. Maybe we will conquer a kingdom, enforce justice, receive promises, stop the mouths of lions, quench raging fires.

We depend on God like the three men in the fiery furnace. They depended on God. They believed his word. They joined hands with faith and action. They would not do anything against the word of God. So they were thrown into that fiery furnace. They were delivered in it, and they were delivered out of it. Others were not delivered out of it, but they were all delivered in it. And faith is to endure, to persevere in persecution just as marvelously as faith is to be used to overcome and perhaps be delivered out of these situations that we in this worried and troubled world might find ourselves in.

There's a little book called the Apocrypha. It's writings that were not included in the canon of scripture. They give us a wonderful clue to what happened between the testaments. In those days, a group of people arrived or rose up called the Maccabees. There was a family, well, there were many, many people. It's very hard to read because it is so terribly graphic. But there was a family that I've thought about an awful lot.

There was a marvelous priest called Eleazar that went to his torture and death extremely bravely through faith. But the thing that always touches me is the story in the account in the Apocrypha that follows the story of Eleazar's death. And it's that of the martyrdom of seven brothers and their mother. The brutal tortures they chose to endure rather than renounce the truth and defile themselves by eating swine's flesh in order to gain their release included tearing out the tongue, scalping, mutilation, frying over the flames.

Each one of the children was just literally chopped in bits and put in a great big frying pan and fried to death. The instruments used by their interrogators in the attempt to break the spirit of these and other indomitable martyrs of this period were, the chronicle tells us, wheels, joint dislocators, racks, bone crushers, catapults, cauldrons, braziers, thumbscrews, iron claws, wedges, branding irons. Their expectation of a better resurrection was expressed in the words uttered by one of these brothers: "The King of the universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life because we have died for his word."

And in the manner in which the mother exhorted her sons as she stood by watching every single one of them tortured and die until it was her turn, exhorting them loudly to suffer and die without flinching. This is what she said: "The Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of man and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again." Also the youngest brother, when his turn came to suffer and die, confidently testified to Antiochus the king that his brothers now dead after enduring their brief pain, now drink of ever-flowing life by virtue of God's covenant.

This is the faith that the book of Hebrews ends with. These people that were overcome by their circumstances but were not overcome in their faith were all commended by God. Yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect. That apart from us, they wouldn't be made perfect. What does this mean as the chapter finishes? God didn't have one plan for them and one plan for us.

They looked forward with anticipation to the better plan, to the better covenant, to the high priest, to the superior Levitical order, to the sacrifice of bulls and goats, to the covenant, to the better covenant that they had enjoyed. To the superior experience of a relationship with God that they never had the advantage of in Old Testament times. But through faith, they looked forward to the culmination of this happening, to the Christ the Messiah coming, and for all of this happening, so that they with us would be made perfect.

God has one plan, and ours is the era of fulfillment. The day in which you and I live now is the era of fulfillment. And as we go out to tell the whole world this story that God has spoken, that he has revealed himself in Christ, that in these last days God has spoken to us in his son. As we go out to tell the message in mission, ours is the era of fulfillment. The thing that really struck me as I have lived in this chapter this week and thought about it and prayed about it and been challenged by it and been reduced by it, is this statement that I wrote in my own personal devotional book as I concluded this study: if they with so little accomplished so much, then how is it that we with so much accomplish so little?

If they with so little accomplished so much, then how is it that we with so much accomplish so little? I have to come to the conclusion that I need to get on my knees and say, oh God, how is my faith? My everyday faith that I should be exercising and depending in you, trusting you for the things I cannot see, for the things I need to do, for the promises you've given me. What's the matter with my faith? If they with so little accomplish so much, then how is it, Lord, that we with so much accomplish so little? Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, we stand amazed at these men. We look incredulously at people like Isaac and Joseph who believed that there was a land that you'd promised them. They told it to their children when they were in Egypt in bondage as slaves, and they believed it, and they took you at your word in simple faith, believing that you are a God who kept your promises, as Abraham said. You're faithful who promised. You'd do it. You'd follow through. Maybe we will never see it, but it will happen. Oh God, what's the matter with us?

We think of those Old Testament heroes. We think of Noah and we think of Abel, and we think of Joshua, and we think of Moses, and we think of Rahab, believing you, simply believing your word and acting on it, putting themselves on the line and proving you. And we think of the cost. We think of this chapter telling us that there were those that overcame, that were delivered from the mouth of the lions, but there were those that did not accept deliverance, that you chose to take home to heaven the martyr's route.

We think of the people that we have never even read about and heard about, that great company of martyrs who are watching us to see how we're going to do before we meet you face to face, Lord. Who are cheering us on, who are on the sideline saying, come on, come on, it's true, it's real, hang in there, endure, persevere. Lord, we think of how much you've given us to be able to endure, to depend on you, to trust you, to draw on your strength. Christ, you are our life.

For all of this, we need to face, for all the perseverance we need, we have Christ, we have the life of Christ within us. Lord, if there's anybody that ever endured to the end, it was Jesus, and for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despised the shame, and is sat down at the right hand of God. Lord, convict us of our lack of dependence on thee, for our doubts concerning your word, for the way we fiddle around not trusting you about anything, for the way we trust our own works and what we do. Teach us what it is to have the sort of faith these people had, and they with so little compared to our so much. Lord, speak in this silent moment as we speak to thee concerning these things.