Hebrews Lesson 176 October 15, 2009
NKJ Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding;
6 In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.
I was out at the conference in California at WHW, and yes I'm finally going to remember to say something about it. I get up here and I'm so focused on what I'm going to teach I just forget to say anything about it unless it's written down. Even then I don't look at my notes so why should I write it down? Last week as most of you know I went out to the conference in Los Angeles. It was better attended than last year. Last year because of the - probably the recession (the economy) attendance had fallen off. There were probably some other reasons as well, but that was a primary reason.
For those of you who don't know, this conference started twenty years ago. This was the 20th year for this conference. There were three men and their last names were Williams, Harris and Waddles. So that's where they get the WHW is from the initials of their last names. So it doesn't stand for anything spiritual or scriptural or anything like that. It's a very common basis for the naming of the conference.
They attended a conference that was here in Houston, Texas at Second Baptist Church. It was a conference on expository preaching. All of the big names were here: Chuck Swindoll and Ed Young and I don't know who… had Robinson. Earl Rodmacher…in which it was originally written so that is context and culture. The second thing is word studies; understanding the meaning of the words in the original languages. Then third was understanding the grammar, the syntax, the basic structure of the words and sentences in the Greek and Hebrew.
Well, R. A. Williams came out of that class. R. A. was talking to these other two men and said, "You know, we need to do this for a black preachers because they don't know how to do this and many of them have not had formal training."
So the next year they had a gathering here in Houston. It was their first conference. They planned for about five hundred and they had about forty-nine show up or something like that. From what I hear those early years they always planned for big numbers because many people said they would come and hardly anybody would show up. But it gradually grew, gradually increased to around five or six hundred.
Then in the summer of '98 Larry Harris died. He was a pastor of a church up in Oklahoma. Waddles was pastor of a church up in Chicago and is a major officer in one of the large black Baptist denominations. So he has a large group that he influences out of Chicago. Then Harris influenced a large group out the Ohio - Indiana area. Then of course R. A. is in Houston so he influenced a lot of people here which also gave them connections throughout the South: Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
So those have been the three broad geographical areas from which most of the pastors have come. That's one reason attendance has fallen off the last five years. If you think back to the summer of '04 there were a couple of hurricanes. I think one was Ivan or Hugo. I forget, but there were a couple of hurricanes that hit you know, Gulfport, Mississippi. Alabama was hit hard. Then we had Katrina I think was in '05. Then Rita and then we had Ike last year. So this really hit areas hard. In fact there are pastors from New Orleans and Gulfport, Mississippi and those areas that came every year up until they got hit with a hurricane. I haven't seen them in three, four, five years. Some of those men lost their churches lock, stock and barrel. Everybody left. The buildings got wiped out. So that's one of the physical reasons that the conference fell off.
Anyway, so they started this. In the summer of '98 Harris went to be with the Lord. He suddenly had a heart attack. He was a young man in his early fifties at the time and went to the Lord the end of July. Some of the men that had been with the conference from the very beginning here in Houston had been students of mine back at what is now the College of Biblical Studies in the early '80's – like '83, '84, '85, somewhere in there. So he had taught Greek grammar, sort of like a grammar for people who don't know Greek using rudimentary tools. Back then you'd have to put five different books out on your desk because no book had everything in it. So you'd have a Greek interlinear and you'd go from the English, figure out the Greek word. Then you'd have to go over here to a Greek analytical, find that Greek word again and then see the abbreviation underneath it that would give you a code as to what the part of speech was, parsing of the verb, the noun whatever. Then you have to go to some other tools just to get some kind of a handle on the grammar if you didn't know Greek. But it was difficult, cumbersome. And the first year I taught that's what we had. But low and behold computers and Logos hit the scene and we had LCD projectors and computer programs that combined all those tools into one. So by '99 it was just a whole new ballgame for teaching men rudimentary things related to grammar. So I've been doing that since '98, the fall of '98. Right after I went to Preston City. I moved up there at the end of April, got a call middle of September. One of the students had tracked me down. I hadn't seen him in about twelve years. He tracked me down and said, "Hey, can you do this, just like what you taught us years ago, same method?"
So that's how I got involved. So every year I do that. Now we've changed things up a little bit. I just take the men who have been coming four or five years so they get into little more advanced understanding of grammar. I do that in the morning. Then in the afternoon - I'll have anywhere from you know from fifteen to twenty five students, thirty five students sometimes. Then in the afternoon I teach sort of an elective class. I've taught through soteriology, doctrine of salvation and eschatology and dispensations and understanding free grace gospel.
This year I did a class on how to develop men leaders in the church because I had gone over here to one of my friend's churches, one of the black churches in town. I went to a big revival one night. I walked in late. I left here from Bible class, went over there and stood in the back of the church. I looked across the crowd and I saw about six pastors up on the platform. Outside of two men in the congregation, which was full (probably about 250 people there), those are the only men. It really hit me as I've talked with so many of these pastors that this is a major problem in black churches. The average in black churches is 85% women and 15% men.
Now that might make us feel like – well, we've got it a little better than that. But if you look around sometime on Sunday morning, we're probably pretty average. The average for America is 60% women and 40% men. Studies have shown that even as far back as the Puritan era, Cotton Mather was complaining about the fact that he could go to any church within an hours walk of his house in Puritan Massachusetts in the mid 1600's and there would be churches of three or four hundred in attendance and only 25% were men. That was in a society in a culture in a population that was predominantly men – had 50 to 55% to 60% men as opposed to women. There are a lot of different sociological reasons to explain it, but a lot of it is that in many churches… What's interesting and you look at statistics going back through 20th century that the more emotional a denomination or church is, the higher the split is between women and men – which is interesting. If you go Greek Orthodox Church, it's going to be more men than women. These are interesting facets. So there are things that are done in churches that make them more conducive to attracting men and things that are done that men just don't want anything to do with.
So coming out of our background that may seem a little odd, but I think it's important as I keep emphasizing and did that this last week. If you do things to attract men, women will come. But if you do things to attract women, the men will not come. The more you do things that are acceptable to women, the more women you will have and the fewer men you will have. So it's important to have an appeal to and understand what the Bible teaches about what masculinity is and what femininity is and do things to appeal to the biblical role of men as opposed to appealing to the old sin nature of men.
So we covered a lot of things there; and they're not unaware of this as a problem, believe me. They are really wrestling with it, especially when it comes to dealing with teenagers. We had some tremendous discussions and a lot of guys sharing some tremendous ideas of things that they're doing in their churches and in their congregations to try to build a sense of identity and community in the young men and why it is important to be a Christian man. So that is very important. The afternoon classes were very good and the morning classes were as well.
Then one of the things that we've done since about 2000 I think…I brought Wayne House in in '99 and then Wayne brought Mike Adams with Faith Seminary in 2000. We started putting together a curriculum with Faith that men who come to WHW could enroll in classes through Faith Seminary and get some credit for what they did at WHW but then they would take a number of other classes up in Tacoma. This took a while to get started, but it has really taken off. Every year there are about twenty, twenty-five men who get a master's degree and about ten or fifteen that get a doctor of ministry. This is just great to see that response among these men and these pastors and the impact that that's having on their congregations because they're able to study the Word. They understand issues in theology a lot better. They study the Word a lot better and it's always important to emphasize an educated trained clergy. That was the bulwark of theological education in this country was due to the influence of Calvinism and Presbyterianism.
The flag of orthodoxy was often carried by schools like Princeton back in the 19th century and various other schools that were pretty solid. They weren't of course dispensational but they were very solid. They stood their ground against the onslaught of liberalism for decades. The emphasis was on having an education.
Many times in the frontier days you would see an itinerant preacher would have his Greek New Testament, a Hebrew Bible in his saddlebags because he could read them. They were educated. Now we just don't believe in education any more. Back then everybody went to school, to grammar school, and the grammar they learned was Latin. That became the foundation for everything else. So it's important to bring people back to that standard and to support it. That's one reason were trying to get Chafer Seminary established and to maintain those kinds of standards. But we are truly swimming upstream against the current against all the trends today because number one you don't have an ecclesiological culture in Bible churches where men come out of Bible churches and want to go to seminary after they graduate from college. I just always understood that, that after you got out of college maybe work a couple of years but that was when you should go to seminary, at that time. To go to seminary meant that you're going to go across the country. You're going to move somewhere and you had to trust God to provide a job and money and all those other things.
Now what I hear so often is "Well, I waited too long" - which is very damning admission. "I waited too long. I'm married. I don't know how God's going to provide for me if I move across the country."
Well if you can't learn to trust God to take care of you to move across the country and go to seminary; then you will never know how to trust God to provide for a congregation when you get out into the pastorate. That's part of your education. It's not just books. It's not just Greek grammar and Hebrew grammar and theology. It's learning to trust God. It's learning to sit in a classroom and listen to a professor that you really don't agree with and have to think through your beliefs in such a way that you can defend them academically in a scholarly manner in a written paper. If you can't write, you can't really think critically and you can't think in detail.
There's a great statement. I don't know if I can remember it. Who was it that initiated the statement? Franklin had something similar to it. It was "A conversation makes a man ready; reading makes a man full." "Conversation makes a man ready and writing makes a man precise."
Learning how to write and being forced into that discipline of writing exegetical papers, writing theological papers, writing a theological papers to defend your position so that you can learn how to logically present, defend and support your views is crucial to being able being able to think and think clearly when you get in the pulpit. But we've lost that culture.
I hear this again and again. Men don't want to go. They don't want to move.
"Why can't we just do this on the Internet?"
Because we're not supporting lazy clergy.
I mean I just can't think that that's not part of it: that we're lazy in our faith; we're lazy in our trust and we just don't have the get up and go and the drive and the passion to be excellent any more in terms of men going to seminary. The old standbys that were there that were bulwarks of conservative theology thirty, forty, fifty years ago have all shifted and a lot of people don't understand that. A lot of pastors who are conservative don't understand that.
George was telling me this last year that when he was traveling through the Midwest, he went to a number of new churches, pastors he hadn't talked to in years. He communicated the trends that were going on at Dallas Seminary, at Western Conservative Baptist Seminary, at Denver Seminary just sweeping all the seminaries and they had no idea. They just thought that everything was just fine and dandy at these schools like they had always been. It's never that way. You know the garbage of the world always rolls downhill and that's the trend in every institution. So when a church culture can't produce men leaders and a church culture isn't trying to create that vision among the young people that they might have the gift of pastor-teacher and to pursue that with excellence; then you've got serious, serious problems.
So it was a good conference except that I woke up on Wednesday morning with laryngitis; but I muddled through anyway.
Hebrews 11:1 – great chapter for talking about what I've just been talking about, and that is the importance of faith.
NKJ Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Now what's important here is to understand that we're not talking about faith in relation to justification salvation, i.e. faith in Christ in order to be justified, to have eternal life and to enter into the royal family of God; faith for regeneration. We're talking about post salvation faith, faith that is important for spiritual growth and spiritual advance.
If you look at the last part of chapter 10 where we have the quotation from Habakkuk 2:3:
NKJ Hebrews 10:37 "For yet a little while, And He who is coming will come and will not tarry.
NKJ Hebrews 10:38 Now the just shall live by faith;
The point that we're talking about is those who are justified shall live by faith. It is not talking about therefore phase 1 justification.
You all have heard stories about things like that. One time I told the story about what some guys did to Pastor Thieme. One time I started coughing and choking up. I was up at Preston City. Jim Sexton brought me a glass of water. He had dumped half of a salt bottle into that glass of water. I really spewed that out.
This is important to understand here because I think that when you approach Hebrews 11 and think that he's talking about faith for justification; then you will end up with a lordship type of view of faith: that faith (real saving faith) is going to have evidence. And if you don't have the right kind of evidence, then how do you know you have saving faith? You know you have saving faith because you know you believe the gospel. You know and you can know what you believe for salvation. If you believe that Jesus died on the cross for your sins, you have eternal life and you can know that. Your assurance is not based on looking at your life and quantifying the fruit that's there. None of us has the knowledge to be able to do that. Yet in essence that is the problem with lordship salvation. It is this attempt to quantify fruit and to determine if it isn't the right quality to show that you have a real saving faith. If you don't have the right kind of works and then maybe your faith isn't saving isn't saving and you're not really a Christian. We've all slipped into that trap where we see somebody who has just made a real mess of their life and they have just been wallowing in the pig trough with the prodigal son and we look and see them and say, "You know, I thought he was a Christian."
See there's a horrible assumption there that a Christian really wouldn't do that. Let me tell you there's nothing that a Christian can't and won't do. I've been in the ministry long enough and some of you've been around a church long enough to realize there's a lot of people who aren't Christians that are a lot better at maintaining a consistent morality and ethic than Christians – unfortunately. But Christians can do just about anything. So that's why I took time last time to talk about "what is faith." I want to review this rapidly tonight. I don't want to spend as much time as I did last week mostly because I'll probably cough myself to death.
Okay, what is faith? Faith is understanding something and then accepting it to be true. We must have a grasp of the meaning of the statement that Jesus died for your sins. You may not understand all the implications and applications, but you understand basically that we are under condemnation for Adam's sin and that we are lost and we need to be saved at a level even a child can understand.
- So number one, I said that faith is a response to what is taught in the Bible. The object is biblical truth. Faith is a response to what is taught in the Bible. So faith grasps a statement of truth. It is always focused on a statement of truth, a statement that can be either verified or falsified. That's why we call it propositional. The term proposition has a very technical sense in logic that it is a declarative statement that can be proved to be either true or false. So we believe it to be true or we reject it as false. So faith is a response to statement.
- In the Bible it is an act of trust in something or someone or belief that something is true. So if a person says we are a rationalist like Plato or Descartes their belief is in human reason, they fundamentally believe human reason can grasp and understand reality and interpret reality without aid from any outside information. Or if you're an empiricist, the only outside information you get is information that you detect through your senses: what you hear, what you see, what you feel, touch, observe (the scientific method). But we also believe what an eyewitness tells us. If that eyewitnesses is God, then we can believe His report is true because He is true; He is the ultimate authority. So faith is an act of trust and something or someone or belief that something is true.
- Faith is an act of the intellect. We don't believe with our emotions; we believe with our minds. You have to understand it. We'll see that in a passage that we're looking at as we go through Hebrews 11.
- Biblical faith is not faith in itself. We're not saved because we believe; we're saved because we believe in Jesus. So faith is faith in a statement of Scripture, ultimately. That statement of Scripture directs us or says something about who the Lord Jesus Christ is.
- Faith is something anyone can do. Everyone believes any a number of things all the time. In fact there's a famous statement in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland in a dialogue interchange between Alice and I think it's the Queen of Hearts. She says, "I believe in any number of irrational things every day." So people believe all kinds of things. Just listen to the news sometime. Just read a Gallup poll some time. You'll be amazed at what people believe. But it is what we believe that is important. Savings faith is saving not because of the kind of faith but because of what we believe: that Jesus died on the cross for our sins.
- Faith also refers to a set of beliefs or a body of doctrine not just the act of trust but what is believed. What is that person's faith? Well, they're a Baptist. They're a Methodist. They're Episcopalian. What is their faith? What is their body of doctrine? What's their belief system?
- The last two points are the important ones for tonight. Faith can refer to phase 1, i.e. justification belief in Jesus as our substitute, or it can refer to the phase 2 trust in the promise, the power, the provision or the procedures of Scripture that we follow in order to grow spiritually. That's what Hebrews 11 is focused on. So the faith that we see in Hebrew 11:1 is not phase 1 faith, faith for justification. But it refers to that collection of phase two beliefs that motivate and propel us forward in our spiritual growth.
So we come to our verse.
NKJ Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
That's the Greek word hupostasis. It has to do with the substance of something, the essence of something, or it can refer to confidence or conviction of something.
So faith then is the conviction, the confidence of things hoped for. Hope is a confident expectation of future things. Now what is hoped for always throws us into the future. It is the evidence of things not seen. Evidence points to something else. So this is important to remember all the way through this study: that faith is the evidence of something else and it's evidenced by something.
Now when you're in a court of law and the lawyers are presenting evidence, that evidence is a testimony of something. It testifies to something. It witnesses to the crime or whatever it might be. Now that's important because one of the key words that we'll see going through Hebrews 11 is the Greek word martureo (which is where we get our English word martyr). But it is the word for testimony or for a witness. It can also mean confirmation or approval. It attests to something. Listen to that word attest. Attest testifies, gives a testimony. See they all kind of have the same root in the "test" word in English. So this is evidentiary. This is legal. This gives confidence.
God doesn't operate in a vacuum. There is always evidence of His work and He doesn't expect people to believe, just take a leap of faith. The whole term "leap of faith" comes out of Kierkegaardian existentialism and doesn't have anything to do with biblical faith. Biblical faith isn't a leap in the dark. It's a firm conviction based on certain knowledge that comes from the Scripture. So it is never a leap.
So in 11:2 we read:
NKJ Hebrews 11:2 For by it
The "it" there (the pronoun) is a feminine singular thus it refers back to faith. "By it" – by faith.
the elders obtained a good testimony.
Did what?
This is translated "obtained a good testimony." That's the key word we're going to watch as we go down through these various stories about the different people.
So this is a verb martureo, which has as its primary meaning taken right out of the Bauer Art Gingrich Danker lexicon to conform or to attest to something. That's what happens in a courtroom. You bring evidence that confirms or attests to what you are trying to demonstrate or prove. It confirms something or attests something on the basis of personal knowledge or belief. It bears witness to something and so what this is saying in verse 2 is that the elders' future hope attested or confirmed. That's what you can see. You could see the evidence of their life that they lived on the basis of the future unseen conviction. So their life that gave evidence to that unseen faith or trust in God.
That brings us to verse 3 where we start at the starting point which as I pointed out last time with creation. Creation is not just some interesting debate between "those weird fundy Christian creationists and the enlightened scientific modern man who knows that the Earth is billions of years old". It has to do with whether or not you believe that God meant what He said.
NKJ Hebrews 11:3 By faith we understand
Now faith is related here to understanding something. The Greek word here is based on noeo, which is the verb form. The noun form is nous which means the mind, that part of the soul that thinks, that comprehends that is able to put things together. So the verb has to do with grasping or comprehending something on the basis of careful thought. So Christians are not just superstitious ignoramuses who have some sort of mythical legend that they're leaping to because it's the opiate of the masses.
As Mark said, "They have given careful thought to what God has said."
So by faith we understand (we comprehend)…
that the worlds were framed by the word of God,
So let me see. I have a slide here on worlds. This is the Greek word aion. It can mean ages or worlds or can refer to the content of the world, so we have to see what the context indicates here. When it's used in the plural, it's a pregnant concept. It refers to both time and space in an interconnected manner: that you can't have time without space; you can have space without time. It refers to both as God's creation. So God has created space and time and He is the one in control of both space and time.
So this word sometimes (especially in the singular) has the idea of world. Or it can have the idea of age. So we think of world in a more static concept; but there it has a more physical sense. But it can also have the time sense. Sometimes it's translated ages and there it has the temporal idea. All of this is included in that word. It's a significant word that is used here that by faith we understand that the worlds (that is, the universe and the history of the universe) were framed (that is, were created by the Word of God.)
The Greek there is the word rhema not the word logos but rhema which is (excuse me) the spoken Word of God
So that the Word of God produced something.
so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.
That is indicated by the result clause.
This verse is the one of the few places in the Scripture where we have an exceptionally clear statement of ex nihilo creation. The Latin phrase ex nihilo means from nothing. One second there was absolutely nothing – no space, no time; there was just heaven. There was no space-time continuum at all. The next instant God spoke, and there is a space-time continuum. Then He began to fill that with the Earth so you had the heaven, which is just the empty space-time continuum. And you have the earth. But there's no mention of stars until the fourth day of restoration. There are no stars before the fourth day, no sun. You just have the earth and a lot of empty space.
What's interesting is some of the physicists who work with the Institute for Creation Research on the basis of utilizing principles from Einstein's theory of relativity, plus going into some of the passages in Scripture have set forth the hypothesis that when God originally created the universe it was very compact and ever since then it's been moving out. So this is why you get motion and other things. Beyond that it's way beyond my pay grade so we won't get into those things. But the point here is that Genesis 1:1 does not give you a clear statement of ex nihilo creation. It just says God created the heavens and the earth. But here it's very clear that the things which are seen were not made of things that are visible; they were made out of nothing.
Now one other verse that's important here going back to Hebrews 1:2 talking about the Son.
NKJ Hebrews 1:2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things,
So that puts us forward in the inheritance concept; forward to His ultimate role as the king of the earth.
through whom also He made the worlds;
So the Father through the Son makes the world. Same word there, aion in the plural indicating the space-time continuum both in terms of its temporal control as well as physical control.
NKJ Hebrews 11:3 By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.
Now faith is knowledge. Faith is a knowledge based on a revelation. God testifies in His Word that this is what happened. He was the eyewitness. So when we believe Him, we're not just leaping into a vacuum, we are believing an eyewitness account. There is nothing different in the knowledge that you have based on an eyewitness accounts than the knowledge that you have based on scientific experiment in a laboratory or that you have on principle of rationalism except you have the ultimate authority. But if you reject that prima facie as irrational, then you are left without anything to stand on. Everything really ends up being guesswork. This is what happens to man because of sin. Romans 1:18-20 describes this whole mentality.
NKJ Romans 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
In order to pursue righteousness, man has to reject, reshape, redefine truth because if truth is what God says it is; then man stands condemned. He is guilty as charged, and he knows it to the very core of his being. Everything in creation announces that to him and announces that there is a God.
The unbeliever that comes along and says, "I don't believe there's a God" has been stuffing the knowledge of God into a dark hole somewhere in his soul for years and years and years. What happens is that some Christian comes along and makes a statement like we ought to teach intelligent design in the schools. They just erupt in anger. Why? Because all of a sudden what you did by just saying that is you reached down with a little hook deep into their soul and you opened up the trap door. God popped out. They've been working for years to keep God stuffed down under that trap door. You let Him out. All the sudden they're guilty and they just can't stand that. There's this flash of light in the soul that just exposes all that darkness, and they immediately react in anger and stomp on that trap door. That's why you get these extreme reactions from people when you start talking about teaching creationism in the schools or intelligent design in schools or even in your own families when you try to talk to some of your children, some of you parents, some of your siblings about the importance of Christ and the importance of the Bible. They don't want to hear it.
As calm and as rational and as nice as you are in all of those conversations and I know you're just like I am and always just so wonderfully calm and nice! But many times we are. What happens is they just go ballistic because you just reached down with a little hook and popped open the trap door and God popped out and they just can't stand it.
So verse 19 says:
NKJ Romans 1:19 because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown.
That word manifest means it's revealed in them. Inside of them there is the voice of God.
it to them
That's external. There is external evidence. There's little sign that we all see that's hanging on every tree, every flower, every blade of grass, every molecule in the universe that says "Made by God." It doesn't say "Made in Japan" or "Made in China"; it says "Made by God."
Spiritually everybody sees it or knows it's there. I'm just speaking hyperbolically now. I don't want anybody taking this literally. But it's there. Augustine used the term "a god shaped vacuum in every soul." But there's something in the soul of every human being because we've made in the image and likeness of God that every time that we see that there's a connection that's made. In negative volition that connection has got to be stopped. It can't continue.
So what happens is – verse 20.
NKJ Romans 1:20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen,
They're manifest. What's invisible is clearly seen.
Madeline Murray O'Hare, you know, all of the Richard Dawkins, all of the other Christopher Hitchens, all of these so-called atheists, deep inside their soul know beyond a shadow of a doubt with as much certainty as you do that God exists. But they've been suppressing that truth in unrighteousness for years and years and years. The last thing in the world they want is for you to open that trap door.
being understood
There's that word again! Mentally grasped, comprehended. It's thought. It's intellection.
by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse,
This is the foundation for something like the intelligent design argument. The intelligent design argument doesn't necessarily take you back to God. It just says there had to be an intelligent designer. That doesn't necessarily have to be God. But that's what this is saying is that by looking at the complexities of the universe we know that the Creator had to be omnipotent. So that is understood: His eternal power in the Godhead so that they are without excuse. There's enough knowledge about God given evidence of in the creation to hold every single human being accountable if they reject God and reject Jesus Christ - accountable enough so that when the tribulation occurs and you have the sixth seal take place, when there are earthquakes and thunderings and the stars fall to the earth, and the kings of men hide in caves in the mountains, they will shake their fist against God and pray that the earth will fold in over them to save them from the wrath of the Lamb and the wrath of Him who sits on the throne. They know He's there; but they are never ever, ever, ever going to bow their knee. That is why they will spend eternity in the Lake of Fire. So that's the importance of creation. It's foundational.
Then we come to the first major event after the fall described in Genesis 4 so you might want to go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Genesis 4. We read in 11:4:
NKJ Hebrews 11:4 By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; and through it he being dead still speaks.
Now let's just sort of clarify a couple words in here.
NKJ Hebrews 11:4 By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which
Now to what does the "to which" refer? It could refer to the sacrifice because that's a feminine noun. But it most likely refers back to faith because this is the pattern we see all the way through these episodes. It is through faith or by faith that the testimony is given. So the "through which" should be "through faith He obtained witness or received commendation."
There's that word again, martureo that we're going to run into. We'll talk more about it probably next time.
that he was righteous
Now he was already saved so this isn't talking about justification righteousness; this is talking about post salvation righteousness that confirms his spiritual growth, his spiritual maturity that is the basis for rewards. So he obtained witness evidence that he was righteous.
God testifying
There is another form of that word again.
of his gifts; and through it
Through what? The "it" there has go to refer back to the faith. Again it has feminine noun reference. It would refer back to the faith through it (that is through the faith):
he being dead still speaks.
Through faith which stands as a monument throughout all of eternity to the grace of God. His faith still speaks.
Our faith (our spiritual life, our spiritual growth, the evidence of our spiritual life) stands as an eternal monument and will stand for eternity as testimony to the grace of God, the love of God in the angelic conflict. That evidence is never going to be destroyed or removed.
So we see a comparison here in the text.
NKJ Hebrews 11:4 By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; and through it he being dead still speaks.
So you have one word there, the comparative adjective pleona - more acceptable or superior. That's the idea. The sacrifice that Abel offered was superior to the sacrifice that Cain offered. It's not that Abel was superior to Cain; but that the sacrifice that he offered was acceptable. Cain's was not. It's a comparative term there. It was a superior sacrifice, a more acceptable sacrifice.
That raises the question: in what way was it better? Was it better because of the quality of Abel's faith? That Abel had a saving faith and Cain did not? Or was it because of the quality of the sacrifice?
Now I will tell you, when you go out beyond the doors of this church, you will find it in the last 50 years that the vast majority of writers on Scripture and pastors will say it is because of the quality of Abel's faith. They will base that on the view that the sacrifice that Cain brought was from the fruit of the field. We see later on in Scripture you have the first fruit offerings. The same word is used there. The Hebrew word is minchah. The same word was used to describe the first fruit offerings. So it can't be an issue they would say between Cain bringing the fruit of the field versus Abel bringing a blood sacrifice. That just can't be it. So it has to be their thought, their motivation. It was what was inside of them. But that doesn't really fit the evidence of Scripture.
So let's go back. We'll just touch, get into this tonight in Genesis 4. Go back to Genesis 4 and we read:
NKJ Genesis 4:1 Now Adam knew Eve his wife,
After the fall they have sexual intimacy, and Adam knew his wife. That is the circumlocution for describing sexual reproduction.
and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, "I have acquired a man from the LORD."
Now there's a Hebrew word qanah, which means to get, to acquire, to purchase or even to create. Cain is not from qanah, but it sounds like it. It's a pun and this is often how names are given. When you read the Old Testament, you read a so-and-so was named such-and-such a New Testament it meant thus and so. It's not really that an actual one-to-one correspondence with a name. The name sounds like this other word so that when you say the name Cain you think of qanah and that means to buy or acquire.
She says:
and said, "I have acquired a man from the LORD."
If you look at the text there, "the help of", or even "with the help of", isn't in the original. Literally it says, "I have gotten a man child, the Lord." I think that when God promised that her seed would defeat the seed of the serpent that when she has this first male child she is thinking this is the seed. This is the man-child, the Lord. She understands that the seed of man that's going to defeat the seed of the serpent is a God-man.
So she is saying, "I have acquired a man, the Lord." She thinks that this is the incarnate Messiah. It's not long probably before she realized that wasn't true, and that she was going to be living in a fallen environment for quite a while. Some time went by.
In verse 2 we read:
NKJ Genesis 4:2 Then she bore again, this time his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.
This is not a story about the farmers versus the ranchers. Truly there are people that think that's what this is all about. This is the farmers versus the ranchers, not even the farmers versus the shepherds. That's not really the focal point. The focal point is on the sacrifice.
So she has a son Abel. The name Abel comes from the noun or is related to the noun hebel, which means breath, vanity or vapor. So she's moved from thinking that "Oh, I've got a man child that's the Lord" to "life is vanity" (just like Ecclesiastes.)
NKJ Ecclesiastes 1:2 "Vanity of vanities," says the Preacher; "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."
Life is but a breath.
She's come to grips with the fact that she's living in a fallen world that is filled with problems and so there is a definite shift in her optimism from Cain to Abel.
In verse 3 we're told:
NKJ Genesis 4:3 And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the LORD.
Well, some time goes by; clearly enough time for them to at least to reach adolescence. Fifteen or twenty years go by before the episode. It could have been a good deal longer. It could be twenty or thirty years, maybe even longer because as we see in chapter 5 they lived to the ripe old age of 900 and something. So we don't know how time went by, minimum I think would be fifteen or twenty years and it could've been much longer. But Seth isn't born until after this and Seth was born when Adam's 120 years old. So we know that it wasn't longer than that. They had some time in the garden even if it wasn't a great deal of time.
NKJ Genesis 4:4 Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the LORD respected Abel and his offering,
The Hebrew word means he looked with favor on something. This is related to the word that's used in Psalm 66:18.
NKJ Psalm 66:18 If I regard iniquity in my heart, The Lord will not hear.
That has the idea of looking with favor on something. So the Lord looks with favor or has regard for Abel and for his offering.
Now we're really not told why in the Genesis account, but we do know when we just look at the details that there's an animal sacrifice at the end of chapter 3 because God clothes Adam and Eve in animal skins. That implies the shedding of blood and it implies death. Because they're bringing these offerings to God, there had to have been some sort of divine instruction about sacrifices and offerings and what was acceptable and what was not acceptable.
God just doesn't sit back and say, "Well, just bring something, whatever you want. It's okay. Just bring and offering. You define what it is. That'll be fine."
He never leaves it up to the creature to determine what is brought as the offering. He may give options within the category, but He defines it first.
Now when we get to Hebrews 11:4 (our passage) we're told that there was something qualitatively different about Abel's sacrifice than Cain's sacrifice.
In Hebrews 12:24 in the next chapter there's a reference to this, that Jesus the mediator of the New Covenant and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel. So again Abel's sacrifice is spoken of in high regard. But Christ's sacrifice (His death) is superior.
I John 3:12 also mentions this. Cain who was the wicked one murdered his brother. Why did he murder him? Because his works were evil and his brother's righteous. So it is not his attitude; it is not his motivation; it is his works. It is what he brought to the table that's defined as evil in I John 3:12. Abel's is defined as righteous.
So this is why the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering is because Abel is bringing a blood sacrifice because that is what he had been told to do. He is obedient.
Human viewpoint comes along and says, "I'm going to define what is acceptable to God and so I'm going to bring my works as opposed to relying upon God and what God says."
So there's always that conflict between human viewpoint and divide viewpoint and all religion always seeks to define that man can produce something that will garner God's approbation.
NKJ Genesis 4:5 but He did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell.
Now that's all we need to do to cover that and we're already out of time so we just have to come back to 11:4. Basically what 11:4 is going to say:
NKJ Hebrews 11:4 By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which.
Through his faith
he obtained witness
Remember faith is the evidence of something.
he obtained witness
Testimony or commendation
that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; and through it he being dead still speaks
God expresses that approval. We'll see when we get to Enoch that it's expressed as pleasing God. So God accepts the sacrifice. That's what is meant by that phrase "God testifying of His gifts." God approves the sacrifice and so that gives evidence of Abel's faith; and it is the basis for reward as we'll see when we develop the next couple of examples.
Let's bow our heads in closing prayer.
Illustrations