We're going to be studying this week two chapters in the Bible. The main chapter we're going to be looking at is Hebrews chapter 11. This series is entitled, All About Faith. And it's a series that is built around Hebrews chapter 11 and chapter 12.
I actually preached this series in my home congregation. I had 14 lessons that dealt with this chapter. We only have six lessons. And so because of time constraints, we're going to be able to look at six of those. I do want to point out that it's important to understand, you know what faith is before you even begin and we're going to talk about the idea of walking by faith. But before we do I just want to kind of mention a couple of facts about it and some of the things we learn or can learn from in the scripture itself.
So the word, faith, occurs in the book of Hebrews more than any other book in the New Testament. That may surprise you, but it may not. In Hebrews chapter 11, it's a chapter in the Bible that has the word faith; 28 times. And so it has more about faith in that chapter, at least the word itself, I guess I should say than any other chapter that you'll find in the New Testament. And so, if we were to ask the question, you know, I want to learn about faith, where should I go? Well, how about the book that mentions it the most? You know, how about the chapter that has it the most times in it, in the Bible? I think what we learn from that is if we want to know more about faith, Hebrews chapter 11 can be a great help in our doing that.
Now what's interesting to me is that, if you look at Hebrews chapter 11, if you want to understand what faith is, it doesn't really come out with a technical definition of what faith is. It does give us a description of what faith does and how it works.
"Now faith is a substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." — Hebrews 11:1
It is just kind of a description of how faith works.
- Hebrews 11:3
And then in verse 3, tells you a little bit about what faith can do for you.
Why is Faith Important to Us?
- It's important because it gives us assurance of the thing we're confident in.
- It convicts us to be convinced of the things we cannnot see.
- Faith enables us to see things that happened in the
And so, you see basically three brief but important things that faith can do for each one of us. And so that's how the chapter begins. It begins with this brief explanation of faith, a description of faith, and some of the things that faith can do for us. The writer goes on from that to appeal to three great Bible examples of faith.
And basically, these are examples of men who lived before the flood, before the great flood, the Noahic flood. The first one that you'll read about there is Abel. I wish we had time to talk about Abel, a great worshipper of God. When you think about Abel, I always associate Abel with the idea of sacrifice and worship. And we also learned that he was the first person to be murdered in the Bible. The first person to be murdered was not an enemy. It was not, an antagonist. It was a faithful worshipper of God. So we learned a little bit about Abel.
Then two more men are mentioned. The second one is the one that we're going to talk about in this study this morning.
That is Enoch. The third one is Noah, and Lord willing we're going to look at him in our worship period lesson.
Enoch Walked by Faith with God
But I want us to think about Enoch and a little bit about how he walked by faith with God. And that's again what we're really focusing on. We're talking about this idea that if we want to be pleasing to God, we have to have the faith to walk with God. That's what made Enoch pleasing to God. That's what got him to heaven. And that's what's going to get us to Heaven too.
- Hebrews 11:5
Now it doesn't say a whole lot about faith, but If we go back to the book of Genesis.
- Genesis 5:23-24
But what we're going to learn in this study is for 365 years, Enoch lived in the most wicked world that the history of humanity has ever seen. How was he able to live in such a wicked world and be pleasing to God? The answer is faith. It was his faith. By faith, he was translated. By faith, it made his life pleasing and acceptable to God.
And so we want to think about this morning, how did he walk by faith? And how do we walk by faith? What does that mean?
1) Walking by Faith Means Having a Drive for Divine Things
You know, when it says that by faith, Enoch pleased God. And so we're going to talk about how he walked by faith and we can walk by faith today. Three things, I guess, four things we want to look at, time permitting. The first thing that we're going to point out is if we're going to have the faith to walk with God, that means that we're going to have to have a drive for divine things.
- Genesis 5:23-24
We have this storyline in the Bible, where God wants to have a relationship with us. God wants a relationship with humans. He wants a relationship with us. As individuals, that relationship has to be based upon certain things in order to be pleasing to God.
One of the things that this relationship has to be based upon is faith. If our relationship with God is not based upon faith, we don't have a relationship with God. It's one of the fundamental principles that revolves around having a right relationship with God.
Well, what does that mean? When we read about in the Bible having faith in someone or having faith in something What does it mean? It simply means we believe; we have the utmost confidence. We have utmost trust in the person we're talking about or in the things that we're reading about. And so, we have to have faith in God. We have to trust God.
We have to have confidence in him whenever He tells us something, and that's what Enoch had. And what it's talking about here.
What does it mean he walked with God? Well, it's talking about this life, this lifestyle that he lived. He had this relationship with God, and when God told him something, he trusted him, he put his confidence in him, and he believed what he said. And that's how he had a right relationship with God, and that's what it means to walk with God.
There are only really two kinds of lifestyles that we can live according to the Bible.
- Romans 8:5-8
Did you notice the contrast between the two lifestyles? There are only two ways that we can live. We're either living a fleshly life. Or we're living a spiritual life. And that's the only two choices that we have.
So the question for us is what drives us? What motivates the kind of life that we're living here on this earth? Are we living a fleshly lifestyle? Are we motivated and moved by physical things? Or are we living a spiritual lifestyle? Are we motivated and moved by things that we cannot see? Things that are beyond this world?
What we learn about during the days of Enoch is that almost every other person was living a fleshly lifestyle. That's what the world was like. That's what they were motivated by. That's what they were driven by. Enoch was living a spiritual lifestyle. He was moved and he was motivated by spiritual things. And so, the Bible tells us about this idea of walking with God. It's a lifestyle that he was living. He was moved by and motivated by divine things.
He was occupied with spiritual things, while everybody else around him was dwelling upon the physical. And so we have this testimony about his life.
- Hebrews 11:5
Why did he please God? It's no wonder that he pleased God with the lifestyle that he was living. And it's not just, that he thought about spiritual things, and he was motivated by spiritual things but it's also what he did toward others because of that.
- Jude 1:14-15
He not only thought about spiritual things, he not only was moved and motivated and did spiritual things, but he also openly spoke to other people about spiritual things. That's what it means, to live through, to live by the spirit, or live in the spirit, or to be spiritually minded. It's not just something that you keep to yourself, but it's something that you talk about to other people too.
He not only thought about spiritual things but was also moved and motivated by spiritual things. He worked to convince others of such things. Jude mentions that Enoch prophesied to other people.
- The coming of the Lord
- The judgment day
- The hard speech they used
So, if we're going to walk by faith, we're going to have to be like Enoch and have a drive for divine things.
2) Faith Has a Desire to be Delivered from Death
The second thing that we read about, or I want to point out about Enoch, and this is something that it takes to walk by faith, you have to have a desire to be delivered from death. Enoch's death situation is pretty interesting, and I even hate to use the word death because he really didn't die.
But it's one of the interesting stories that you read about in the pages of God's Word.
- Hebrews 11:5
The word translated literally means taken up or transported. What the Bible is telling us is that when God was ready for Enoch to go to heaven, He just picked him up from off the earth and took him into Heaven. The Bible says he didn't even die. He didn't have to experience physical death like all of us as men today have to go through.
Why did He? Why did God do that for him?
The Bible says; that because he pleased God. And how did he please God? He pleased God by his faith. It was his walking by faith that led to him being pleasing to God and ultimately led to him getting to Heaven.
And if I can liken it to something in the Bible, the only thing that I can think of, I guess there are two things that are kind of similar in nature. But one of them would be what's going to happen to living Christians whenever Christ returns.
- 1 Thessalonians 4:17
Those Christians who are still alive whenever Christ returns are not going to die physically. The Bible says they're just going to be picked up from off the earth, they're going to be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye, they're going to meet the Lord in the heaven, or in the air, and they're going to go to dwell with the Lord in heaven for all of eternity. And so they're not going to have to experience physical death.
And that was what happened to Enoch. Enoch was literally picked up by God and transported into Heaven without ever having to die. The reason that he made it to Heaven in that manner, he was delivered from death, is because he walked by faith.
- Hebrews 11:5
After it tells us what happened to Enoch, it simply says these, three words, "and was not found." I guess that's four words. What does that mean? Do you think anybody went looking for Enoch after he disappeared? You know, I imagine there were search parties that were sent out. I imagine there were people who were like, he's got to be laying dead out here somewhere.
But you know what they never found? The body of Enoch. And you know why? Because he was literally transported into Heaven. The Bible teaches us that in the end when the words of Christ are spoken the dead will come out of the graves, the body will rise, be changed, reunited with the spirit, and transported into his spiritual world.
But nobody could find him because the Lord had literally transported him or transferred him into heaven. And so his body was not there.
I think about the story of Elijah in the Old Testament.
- 2 Kings 2:11, 16
And Elijah went up by a whirlwind, Elijah is another one of those individuals who did not see physical death. Whenever it came his time to go to Heaven, God literally picked him up from the earth and just transported him into Heaven. Now, the interesting thing about Elijah here is a lot like what we read about in Enoch's case.
Enoch's body was not found. And do you remember what happened after Elijah disappeared?
- 2 Kings 2:16-18
All these sons of the prophet, these in the school of the prophet, they get together and they go to Elisha and they say, Let us go out here and look for Elijah's body. You know, maybe the Spirit of God picked him up, and, you know, he threw him on top of a mountain somewhere, he's laying in the bottom of a ravine somewhere, and we need to go find his body and pay respects to it.
Elisha told him, and he said, Don't go, because you won't find the body. And they just kept on and kept on, and finally, Elisha said, Okay, you're not going to give up, you go ahead and you go search. And the Bible says for three days, they searched high and low, but guess what they never found? Do you know why? Because he was literally transported into heaven. He did not die physically. The body was not left behind like all of us leave our bodies behind when we depart from this earth.
It's interesting to me, and I kind of think, you know, is that the way God intended for death to work for us? In the beginning, there wasn't physical death. There wasn't physical death until sin entered into the world, but that would be the way to go, wouldn't it? I mean, think about the fiery chariot and horses and a whirlwind, that sounds a lot better than dying, doesn't it? It sounds a lot better than your body being put inside of the earth, but literally being transported into heaven whenever our time comes.
Well, that's what's going to happen to Christians who are still alive whenever Christ returns. What do we learn from all that? We learn that he was delivered from death because he walked by faith. And because he walked by faith, he was pleasing to God. And the same thing that can be said about him, that he was delivered from death, can be said about us too.
Now, not in the physical way that he was spared from death, but in a spiritual way. In fact, the Bible teaches us that there are at least two deaths that are possible for us.
- Revelation 20:6, 14
What is he talking about, the second death? Well, if you turn, or if you go down to verse 14, if you underline or highlight things in your Bible, you might want to do this, it's a little helpful for me.
So what is the second death? The second death is the lake of fire, isn't it? The second death is eternal hell, Gehenna, that we read about in the scripture. And we can be delivered from that second death.
Now, probably all of unless Christ returns, are going to experience the first death. That's the separation of the soul from the physical body. But we don't have to experience the second death. Because of what Christ has done for us, we can be delivered from that death, we can be pleasing to God just like Enoch was pleasing.
How, what's it going to take? It's going to take walking by faith. If we want to walk by faith, we can be delivered from death, spiritually speaking, just like Enoch was delivered from physical death.
3) Faith Has no Doubts in the Existence of Deity
Hebrews 11:6; Romans 1:20; Hebrews 3:4
The third thing that I'll point out about Enoch and his faith to walk with God. If you're going to have faith to walk with God, it means you have to have no doubts about the existence of deity.
- Hebrews 11:6
That's the first one that I want us to concentrate on. If we're going to walk by faith, what does it mean to walk by faith? It means you have no doubt that God exists. You believe in deity. Enoch believed that God was reality. All these great men and women of faith that you read about in Hebrews chapter 11, there were no doubts in their minds when it came to the existence of God.
And what we learn about, it is stated negatively by the writer there, in verse 6, "without faith, it's impossible to please God." We might say it in a positive manner, only with faith is it possible to please God. And so, it means that we have to listen to Him. We have to confide in Him. We trust in Him when He tells us something we believe in Him. And that's going to be essential because the Hebrew writer says if you want to be pleasing to God, you must believe that God exists.
I remember a number of years ago and I was trying to think how long it's been, time passes more and more quickly for me with every year, but I was thinking about a commercial that I'd seen several times around Christmas. It's an M& M's commercial and I don't know if you remember it or not, but you know, Santa comes down the chimney, the M&M's are standing there talking and He just appears on the scene and all of a sudden they go, He does exist! And they pass out. And then Santa sees them and he goes, They do exist! And he passes out.
Well, I got to thinking about that, and I think that's how some people are when it comes to the existence of God. You know, there's this idea, Well, yeah, maybe I believe in Him, maybe I don't. And then one day they're gonna say, Whoa, God does exist. But a person who walks by faith, there's no doubt in their mind that God exists. There's no question in His existence, in His power, in His eternal nature. And only with that type of faith, only with that type of confidence and trust in God can we be pleasing to Him.
- Romans 1:20
Paul was talking about the Gentile world and how there was no way that they could logically deny the existence of God. And he puts it a couple of different ways here in this passage.
The first thing that he talks about, he says, we can see from the things that are made, the invisible characteristics of God. Well, what's he talking about there?
All of us understand, when we look around the world in which we live, that things don't make themselves, right? We're smart enough to understand. I've never seen anybody, outside of the realm of the origin of the universe, ever look at something and say, I think that thing made itself. You know, nobody would look at these communion trays this morning and say, well, I think they made themselves. Nobody would look at these pews and say, I think they made themselves. Nobody would look at our songbooks and our Bibles and say, I think this is just a product of time and chance. We understand from the things that we can see that there's an invisible Being behind all this world in which we live. And notice what Paul says about this invisible Being in verse 12. We understand by the things that are made two things about the character or the nature of God.
- Romans 1:12
First of all, He's powerful. I understand that as humans, we don't really make things. We take materials that have been given to us, and we fashion, and we form, or we fuse those materials together, and then we say, well, I made this. And so, we can look at things in our world. We can look at things like those communion trays, I can't, but there may be somebody here who says, I can make that. Or we might look at those pews and there might be somebody here who could say, I could make one of those pews, you know? Or they might look at our songbooks or our Bibles and say, Well, it might take a little time, but I could make one of those.
Do you ever say that about a tree? Do you ever say that about, a waterfall? Do you ever say that about an ocean? Or a seashore? Or the clouds? Or the sun or the moon? You see, we understand we can't make those things, don't we? We're not powerful enough. And so Paul says what we understand by looking at the things that are made, we understand that a powerful Being, somebody beyond us, somebody above us, made those things. And so, we understand His eternal power.
The second part of that is, that not only do we understand His power, but we understand He's not human. We understand the Godhead, is how He describes it. The Divine nature of the one who created these things. No human can create the sun. No human can create the moon, the universe, the world in which we live. It takes somebody more powerful than a human in order to accomplish that.
And so you have this narrative that Paul has written here in Romans chapter one. Are there any doubts that God exists? I mean, you can look around you and see by the things that are made that there is a higher being, somebody beyond humanity, somebody above humanity, somebody more powerful than a human being.
And that's the kind of faith that we have to have in order to be pleasing to God.
- Hebrews 3:4
How can we expect to establish a relationship with God if we doubt His existence? If we don't really know if He's there or not, or we don't really believe He's there or not. We have our doubts if He really exists.
God exists. And God created this magnificent house that we live in that we call the Earth. Every house is built by some man. It doesn't matter what else a person may do. It doesn't matter what else a person may believe. If he does not have faith in the existence of God, he can never be pleasing to God. And that's what the Hebrew writer is driving at there.
Enoch walked by faith. What does that mean? That means that he had no doubts when it came to the existence of Deity.
4) Faith Only pays Dividend to Diligently seek Him
The last thing that I want to mention here, is how Enoch walked by faith and how we walk by faith too.
- Hebrews 11:6
Not only do we have to believe that God is, but then it says this, "...and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." This is actually, the word seek there, is actually, is a strengthened form of a Greek word, ekzēteō. And so, the translators provided the word diligently to kind of reflect that idea. It's not just a regular seeking. That has to be done if we want to be pleasing to God. It has to be wholehearted. It has to be full bore that we're believing in God and that we're believing in the rewards that He has prepared for us.
But I want to emphasize the word diligently that what does that mean? Well, that doesn't mean sleepy-eyed, right? That doesn't mean half-hearted I have to believe that I have to diligently pursue God if I want to be rewarded. And how do you diligently pursue God by faith?
We'll talk a little bit more about knowing our example in the in next lesson. But we're just going to leave it at — that it's the idea of pouring out your whole heart and all your mind and all your soul and all your strength in your pursuit of God.
And that's what Enoch did. He didn't pursue God half-heartedly. He didn't pursue God sleepy-eyed. He poured his heart and his soul into following God. And so he knew and he believed that only those who diligently seek after God are going to be rewarded. We have to have that same kind of faith if we want to be pleasing to God and make it to heaven too.
- James 2:19
Faith that pleases God involves more than just believing that He exists, right? Do demons believe that God exists? Yes. Are they pleasing to God? No. Do you know why? Because they don't believe that He rewards those who diligently seek Him. It's more than just a mental acknowledgment. The devils mentally acknowledge the existence of God. You know, there are many in the world today who would tell us, Oh, I believe in God. You know, that's no big deal. I'm going to be saved or I'm going to go to heaven because I believe that deity exists. Well, so do the devils. But they don't do anything about it. And so just a mental idea or just the belief that a mental acknowledgment of the existence of God is going to get you to Heaven, that's not what we have to have. Verse 6 says you have to believe that He only rewards those who diligently seek after Him.
And so, it's just as equally necessary to believe that a diligent pursuit of God is necessary to be saved as it is to believe in the existence of God. We not only have to do it, but we have to put in a lot of effort.
The Bible says we have to work hard and strive. These are some words that are used by Jesus Himself. And that's kind of a segue, I guess, for our next lesson that we're going to talk about, Noah. Noah, the faith to work for God.
But I want you to think about what we've looked at in this hour. You know, faith has to be part of our daily walk with God in order to please Him. That's the example of Enoch. We must walk by faith. Well, how do we walk by faith? In other words, how can we be pleasing to God? Because that's how Enoch was, by walking by faith. It means you have to be driven by divine things. It's a lifestyle. A spiritual lifestyle that you choose over fleshly or physical.
You have to have the desire to be delivered from death. We don't want to die that second death. We don't want to be eternally separated from God. That, that desire is necessary in us, for us to be pleasing to God.
We have to have no doubt when it comes to the existence of Deity. There's no question that God exists, that He has a divine nature, that He's more powerful than we are.
And then we have to believe that we're only going to be paid dividends by diligently seeking after God. If we do all those things like Enoch did we will have the same thing said of us at the end of our lives, we pleased God and we walked by faith.
If we can assist you in coming to a place where you can walk by faith. Please contact us.
