Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, proof of things not seen. For by this, the elders obtained testimony. By faith, we understand that the universe has been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen has not been made out of things which are visible. By faith, Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had testimony given to him that he was righteous, God testifying with respect to his gifts; and through it he, being dead, still speaks. By faith, Enoch was taken away, so that he wouldn’t see death, and he was not found, because God translated him. For he has had testimony given to him that before his translation he had been well pleasing to God. Without faith it is impossible to be well pleasing to him, for he who comes to God must believe that he exists, and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him. By faith, Noah, being warned about things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared a ship for the saving of his house, through which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. By faith, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out to the place which he was to receive for an inheritance. He went out, not knowing where he went. By faith, he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a land not his own, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked for the city which has the foundations, whose builder and maker is God. By faith, even Sarah herself received power to conceive, and she bore a child when she was past age, since she counted him faithful who had promised. Therefore as many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as innumerable as the sand which is by the sea shore, were fathered by one man, and him as good as dead. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and embraced them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own. If indeed they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had enough time to return. But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed of them, to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
By faith, Abraham, being tested, offered up Isaac. Yes, he who had gladly received the promises was offering up his one and only son, to whom it was said, “Your offspring will be accounted as from Isaac,” concluding that God is able to raise up even from the dead. Figuratively speaking, he also did receive him back from the dead. By faith, Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau, even concerning things to come. By faith, Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, and worshiped, leaning on the top of his staff. By faith, Joseph, when his end was near, made mention of the departure of the children of Israel, and gave instructions concerning his bones. By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw that he was a beautiful child, and they were not afraid of the king’s commandment. By faith, Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to share ill treatment with God’s people than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a time, considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he looked to the reward. By faith, he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible. By faith, he kept the Passover, and the sprinkling of the blood, that the destroyer of the firstborn should not touch them. By faith, they passed through the Red Sea as on dry land. When the Egyptians tried to do so, they were swallowed up. By faith, the walls of Jericho fell down, after they had been encircled for seven days. By faith, Rahab the prostitute didn’t perish with those who were disobedient, having received the spies in peace. What more shall I say? For the time would fail me if I told of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked out righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, grew mighty in war, and caused foreign armies to flee. Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, not accepting their deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. Others were tried by mocking and scourging, yes, moreover by bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned. They were sawn apart. They were tempted. They were slain with the sword. They went around in sheep skins and in goat skins; being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated— of whom the world was not worthy—wandering in deserts, mountains, caves, and the holes of the earth. These all, having had testimony given to them through their faith, didn’t receive the promise,
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 38, 39 1. Now faith, etc. Whoever made this the beginning…
1. Now faith, etc. Whoever made this the beginning of the eleventh chapter, has unwisely disjointed the context; for the object of the Apostle was to prove what he had already said that there is need of patience. He had quoted the testimony of Habakkuk, who says that the just lives by faith; he now shows what remained to be proved — that faith can be no more separated from patience than from itself. The order then of what he says is this, — “We shall not reach the goal of salvation except we have patience, for the Prophet declares that the just lives by faith; but faith directs us to things afar off which we do not as yet enjoy; it then necessarily includes patience.” Therefore the minor proposition in the argument is this, Faith is the substance of things hoped for, etc. It is hence also evident, that greatly mistaken are they who think that an exact definition of faith is given here; for the Apostle does not speak here of the whole of what faith is, but selects that part of it which was suitable to his purpose, even that it has patience ever connected with it. Let us now consider the words.
He calls faith the hypostasis, the substance of things hoped for. We indeed know that what we hope for is not what we have as it were in hand, but what is as yet hid from us, or at least the enjoyment of which is delayed to another time. The Apostle now teaches us the same thing with what we find in Romans 8:24; where it is said that what is hoped for is not seen, and hence the inference is drawn, that it is to be waited for in patience. So the Apostle here reminds us, that faith regards not present things, but such as are waited for. Nor is this kind of contradiction without its force and beauty: Faith, he says, is the hypostasis, the prop, or the foundation on which we plant our foot, — the prop of what? Of things absent, which are so far from being really possessed by us, that they are far beyond the reach of our understanding.
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The same view is to be taken of the second clause, when he calls faith the evidence or demonstration of things not seen; for demonstration makes things to appear or to be seen; and it is commonly applied to what is subject to our senses.
Then these two things, though apparently inconsistent, do yet perfectly harmonize when we speak of faith; for the Spirit of God shows to us hidden things, the knowledge of which cannot reach our senses: Promised to us is eternal life, but it is promised to the dead; we are assured of a happy resurrection, but we are as yet involved in corruption; we are pronounced just, as yet sin dwells in us; we hear that we are happy, but we are as yet in the midst of many miseries; an abundance of all good things is promised to us, but still we often hunger and thirst; God proclaims that he will come quickly, but he seems deaf when we cry to him. What would become of us were we not supported by hope, and did not our minds emerge out of the midst of darkness above the world through the light of God’s word and of his Spirit? Faith, then, is rightly said to be the subsistence or substance of things which are as yet the objects of hope and the evidence of things not seen. Augustine sometimes renders evidence “conviction,” which I do not disapprove, for it faithfully expresses the Apostle’s meaning: but I prefer “demonstration,” as it is more literal.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 37, 39 An excellent description of faith by the effects, because…
An excellent description of faith by the effects, because it representeth things which are but yet in hope, and setteth as it were before our eyes things that are invisible.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–39 1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped…
1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Ver. 1. Now faith is the substance] Having mentioned the life of faith, Heb 10:38, and the end of faith (or the reward of it, 1Pe 1:9), the salvation of the soul, Heb 10:39, he now descends to the description of this glorious grace, Jas 2:1, and saith that it is the substance or subsistence or basis and foundation of things hoped for. It is the same that our author had called confidence, Heb 10:35. Polybius, speaking of Horatius’ keeping the field against the enemy’s forces, saith, that the enemies more feared his υποστασις (the word here used), his confidence binding upon the victory, than his strength. Faith is the vital artery of the soul (saith one), Hab 2:4, and by the eye of it, through the perspective glass of the promises, a Christian may see into heaven. Faith doth antedate glory; it doth substantiate things not seen. Faith altereth the tenses, and putteth the future into the present tense, Psa 60:6. It is reported of the crystal that the very touching of it quickeneth other stones and puts a lustre and beauty upon them. (Gul. Parisiens.) This is true of faith; it makes evil things present, far off; and good things far off, present.
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The evidence of things, &c.] The index, ελεγχος, or the clear conviction by disputation, or by making syllogisms from the word. Indeed it is the word (to speak properly) that is the convincing evidence of things not seen; but because the word profiteth not further than it is mingled with faith in the heart, therefore that which is due to the word is here ascribed to faith.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1–39 Now faith: the Holy Spirit proceeds in this chapter…
Now faith: the Holy Spirit proceeds in this chapter to strengthen the counsel he had given these Hebrews to continue stedfast in the faith of Christ, to the end that they may receive their reward, the salvation of their souls, Heb 10:39; 1Pe 1:9; and so beginneth with a description of that faith, and proves it to be effectual to this end, by instances out of all ages of the world before them, wherein the Old Testament believers had found it to be so. The description of it is laid down, Heb 11:1; the proof of it in both parts, Heb 1:2,3; and the illustration of its power by examples, Heb 11:4-40. The particle δε shows this is inferred as a discovery of that faith, which is saving or purchasing the soul; which that none of these Hebrews may be mistaken in, he describeth from its effect, and not from its form and essence. Faith is here a Divine fruit of the Spirit, given and wrought by it in his elect, and is justifying and purchasing the soul to glory, Joh 12:38; Rom 5:1; 2Co 12:9; Eph 1:19,20; 2:8.
Is the substance of things hoped for: υποστασις, in 2Co 9:4, notes confidence of boasting; Heb 1:3, personal subsistence; and Heb 3:14, confidence of faith. Here it is a real, present, confident assent of the soul of a believer to the promise of God, (which is the basis or foundation of it), by which the spiritual good things to come, and which fall not under sense, yet with a most vehement and intense desire urged for, are made to have a mental, intellectual existence and subsistence in the soul which exerciseth it, Rom 8:18,26; Joh 3:36.
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The evidence of things not seen: ελεγκοι is a demonstrative discovery of that which falleth not under sense, such as is scientifical, and puts matters out of question to a man; and therefore is styled by logicians a demonstration: here it notes faith to be that spiritual space which by God’s revelation demonstrates or makes evident all things not seen by sense, or natural reason, without it, as matters of spiritual truth, good and evil in their several kinds, both past, present, and to come, Joh 17:6,8; Eph 1:17,18.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 30, 31, 32, 36, 39 Observe here, 1. The thing described, or the subject…
Observe here, 1. The thing described, or the subject spoken of, and that is faith; that faith whereby the just man lives, the apostle here speaks of, though not as justifying, but as it is effectually useful in our whole life, especially unto constancy and perseverance in the Christian profession, which was the great duty urged and enforced in the foregoing chapter.
Observe, 2. The description itself, it is the substance of things hoped for.
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1. That is, it is a confident and firm expectation of the good things which God has promised, giving the good things hoped for, a real subsistance in our minds and souls.
2. It is the evidence of things not seen; that is, it evidences the reality and certainty of future things, it realizes the invisible realities of another world unto our minds, and causes us to believe them as strongly as what we see with our bodily eyes.
Learn hence, That a lively faith gives such a reality, certainty, and present being to things hoped for, and yet to come, as if they were visibly seen and actually enjoyed.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 32 Here we have, I. A definition or description of…
Here we have, I. A definition or description of the grace of faith in two parts. 1. It is the substance of things hoped for. Faith and hope go together; and the same things that are the object of our hope are the object of our faith. It is a firm persuasion and expectation that God will perform all that he has promised to us in Christ; and this persuasion is so strong that it gives the soul a kind of possession and present fruition of those things, gives them a subsistence in the soul, by the first-fruits and foretastes of them: so that believers in the exercise of faith are filled with joy unspeakable and full of glory. Christ dwells in the soul by faith, and the soul is filled with the fullness of God, as far as his present measure will admit; he experiences a substantial reality in the objects of faith. 2. It is the evidence of things not seen. Faith demonstrates to the eye of the mind the reality of those things that cannot be discerned by the eye of the body. Faith is the firm assent of the soul to the divine revelation and every part of it, and sets to its seal that God is true. It is a full approbation of all that God has revealed as holy, just, and good; it helps the soul to make application of all to itself with suitable affections and endeavours; and so it is designed to serve the believer instead of sight, and to be to the soul all that the senses are to the body. That faith is but opinion or fancy which does not realize invisible things to the soul, and excite the soul to act agreeably to the nature and importance of them.
II. An account of the honour it reflects upon all those who have lived in the exercise of it (Heb 11:2): By it the elders obtained a good report - the ancient believers, who lived in the first ages of the world. Observe, 1. True faith is an old grace, and has the best plea to antiquity: it is not a new invention, a modern fancy; it is a grace that has been planted in the soul of man ever since the covenant of grace was published in the world; and it has been practiced from the beginning of the revelation; the eldest and best men that ever were in the world were believers. 2. Their faith was their honour; it reflected honour upon them. They were an honour to their faith, and their faith was an honour to them. It put them upon doing the things that were of good report, and God has taken care that a record shall be kept and report made of the excellent things they did in the strength of this grace. The genuine actings of faith will bear to be reported, deserve to be reported, and will, when reported, redound to the honour of true believers.
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III. We have here one of the first acts and articles of faith, which has a great influence on all the rest, and which is common to all believers in every age and part of the world, namely, the creation of the worlds by the word of God, not out of pre-existent matter, but out of nothing, Heb 11:3. The grace of faith has a retrospect as well as prospect; it looks not only forward to the end of the world, but back to the beginning of the world. By faith we understand much more of the formation of the world than ever could be understood by the naked eye of natural reason. Faith is not a force upon the understanding, but a friend and a help to it. Now what does faith give us to understand concerning the worlds, that is, the upper, middle, and lower regions of the universe? 1. That these worlds were not eternal, nor did they produce themselves, but they were made by another. 2. That the maker of the worlds is god; he is the maker of all things; and whoever is so must be God. 3. That he made the world with great exactness; it was a framed work, in every thing duly adapted and disposed to answer its end, and to express the perfections of the Creator. 4. That God made the world by his word, that is, by his essential wisdom and eternal Son, and by his active will, saying, Let it be done, and it was done, Psa 33:9. 5. That the world was thus framed out of nothing, out of no pre-existent matter, contrary to the received maxim, that "out of nothing nothing can be made," which, though true of created power, can have no place with God, who can call things that are not as if they were, and command them into being. These things we understand by faith. The Bible gives us the truest and most exact account of the origin of all things, and we are to believe it, and not to wrest or run down the scripture-account of the creation, because it does not suit with some fantastic hypotheses of our own, which has been in some learned but conceited men the first remarkable step towards infidelity, and has led them into many more.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–38 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for,....…
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for,.... The "faith" here spoken of is not a mere moral virtue, which is a branch of the law; nor a bare assent to anything revealed, declared, and affirmed in the Gospel; nor a faith of doing miracles; nor an implicit one; nor a mere profession of faith, which sometimes is but temporary; nor the word or doctrine of faith; but that which is made mention of in the preceding chapter, by which the just man lives, and which has the salvation of the soul annexed to it: and it does not so much design any particular branch, or act of faith, but as that in general respects the various promises, and blessings of grace; and it chiefly regards the faith of Old Testament saints, though that, as to its nature, object, and acts, is the same with the faith of New Testament ones; and is a firm persuasion of the power, faithfulness, and love of God in Christ, and of interest therein, and in all special blessings: it is described as "the substance of things hoped for"; and which, in general, are things unseen, and as yet not enjoyed; future, and yet to come; difficult to be obtained, though possible, otherwise there would be no hope of them; and which are promised and laid up; and in particular, the things hoped for by Old Testament saints were Christ, and eternal glory and happiness; and by New Testament ones, more grace, perseverance in it, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal life. Now faith is the "substance" of these things; it is the ground and foundation of them, in which there is some standing hope; in which sense the word is used by Septuagint in Psa 69:2. The word of promise is principal ground and foundation of hope; and faith, as leaning on the word, is a less principal ground; it is a confident persuasion, expectation, and assurance of them. The Syriac version renders it, the "certainty" of them; it is the subsistence of them, and what gives them an existence, at least a mental one; so with respect to the faith and hope of the Old Testament saints, the incarnation, sufferings, and death of Christ, his resurrection, ascension, and session at God's right hand, are spoken of, as if they then were; and so are heaven, and glory, and everlasting salvation, with regard to the faith and hope of New Testament saints: yea, faith gives a kind of possession of those things before hand, Joh 6:47. Philo the Jew (e) says much the same thing of faith;
"the only infallible and certain good thing (says he) is, that faith which is faith towards God; it is the solace of life, , "the fulness of good hopes", &c.''
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It follows here,
the evidence of things not seen; of things past, of what was done in eternity, in the council and covenant of grace and peace; of what has been in time, in creation, and providence; of the birth, miracles, sufferings, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ; of things present, the being, perfections, love, &c. of God; of the session of Christ at God's right hand, and his continual intercession; and of the various blessings of grace revealed in the Gospel; and of future ones, as the invisible realities of another world: faith has both certainty and evidence in it.
(e) De Abrahamo, p. 387.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39 The definition of faith given in this verse, and…
The definition of faith given in this verse, and exemplified in the various instances following, undoubtedly includes justifying faith, but not directly as justifying. For faith justifies only as it refers to, and depends on, Christ. But here is no mention of him as the object of faith; and in several of the instances that follow, no notice is taken of him or his salvation, but only of temporal blessings obtained by faith. And yet they may all be considered as evidences of the power of justifying faith in Christ, and of its extensive exercise in a course of steady obedience amidst difficulties and dangers of every kind. Now faith is the subsistence of things hoped for, the evidence or conviction of things not seen - Things hoped for are not so extensive as things not seen. The former are only things future and joyful to us; the latter are either future, past, or present, and those either good or evil, whether to us or others. The subsistence of things hoped for - Giving a kind of present subsistence to the good things which God has promised: the divine supernatural evidence exhibited to, the conviction hereby produced in, a believer of things not seen, whether past, future, or spiritual; particularly of God and the things of God.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39 A definition of faith, 1, 2.
CHAPTER XI.
A definition of faith, 1, 2.
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What are its immediate objects, 3.
What are its effects, instanced in Abel, 4
In Enoch, 5, 6.
In Noah, 7.
In Abraham, 8-10.
In Sara, 11.
In their righteous posterity, 12-16
In Abraham's offering of his son Isaac, 17-19.
In Isaac, 20.
In Jacob, 21.
In Joseph, 22.
In Moses, 23-28.
In the Israelites in the wilderness, 29.
In the fall of Jericho, 30.
In Rahab, 31.
In several of the judges, and in David, Samuel, and the
prophets, 32-34.
The glorious effects produced by it in the primitive martyrs,
35-40.
NOTES ON CHAP. XI.
Verse 1. Faith is the substance of things hoped for] Εστι δε πιστις ελπιζομενων ὑποστασις· Faith is the SUBSISTENCE of things hoped for; πραγματων ελεγχος ου βλεπομενων·. The DEMONSTRATION of things not seen. The word υποστασις, which we translate substance, signifies subsistence, that which becomes a foundation for another thing to stand on. And ελεγχος signifies such a conviction as is produced in the mind by the demonstration of a problem, after which demonstration no doubt can remain, because we see from it that the thing is; that it cannot but be; and that it cannot be otherwise than as it is, and is proved to be. Such is the faith by which the soul is justified; or rather, such are the effects of justifying faith: on it subsists the peace of God which passeth all understanding; and the love of God is shed abroad in the heart where it lives, by the Holy Ghost. At the same time the Spirit of God witnesses with their spirits who have this faith that their sins are blotted out; and this is as fully manifest to their judgment and conscience as the axioms, "A whole is greater than any of its parts;" "Equal lines and angles, being placed on one another, do not exceed each other;" or as the deduction from prop. 47, book i., Euclid: "The square of the base of a right-angled triangle is equal to the difference of the squares of the other two sides." ελεγχος is defined by logicians, Demonstratio quae fit argumentis certis et rationibus indubitatis, qua rei certitudo efficitur. "A demonstration of the certainly of a thing by sure arguments and indubitable reasons." Aristotle uses it for a mathematical demonstration, and properly defines it thus: Ελεγχος δε εστις ὁ μη δυνατος αλλως εχειν, αλλ' οὑτως ὡς ἡμεις λεγομεν, " Elenehos, or Demonstration, is that which cannot be otherwise, but is so as we assert." Rhetor. ad Alexand., cap. 14, περι ελεγχου. On this account I have adduced the above theorem from Euclid.
Things hoped for] Are the peace and approbation of God, and those blessings by which the soul is prepared for the kingdom of heaven. A penitent hopes for the pardon of his sins and the favour of his God; faith in Christ puts him in possession of this pardon, and thus the thing that was hoped for is enjoyed by faith. When this is received, a man has the fullest conviction of the truth and reality of all these blessings though unseen by the eye, they are felt by the heart; and the man has no more doubt of God's approbation and his own free pardon, than he has of his being.
In an extended sense the things hoped for are the resurrection of the body, the new heavens and the new earth, the introduction of believers into the heavenly country, and the possession of eternal glory.
The things unseen, as distinguished from the things hoped for, are, in an extended sense, the creation of the world from nothing, the destruction of the world by the deluge, the miraculous conception of Christ, his resurrection from the dead, his ascension to glory, his mediation at the right hand of God, his government of the universe, &c., &c., all which we as firmly believe on the testimony of God's word as if we had seen them. See Macknight. But this faith has particular respect to the being, goodness, providence, grace, and mercy of God, as the subsequent verses sufficiently show.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 37, 39 Heb 11:1. Knowing that the believing Hebrews had been,…
Heb 11:1. Knowing that the believing Hebrews had been, and still were exposed to persecution on account of the gospel, and fearing lest they should be thereby cast down, and moved from their steadfastness, the apostle had endeavoured to support them in their adherence to Christ and his cause by suggesting the declaration whereby the prophet Habakkuk had directed and encouraged the Jews on the approach of the Chaldean invasion, namely, the just shall live by faith. He now proceeds to illustrate and improve that saying, by bringing into the view of these Hebrews examples from their own Scriptures of persons who, by a strong faith in God and in his promises, resisted the greatest temptations, sustained the heaviest persecutions, were preserved in imminent dangers, performed most difficult acts of obedience, and at length obtained a distinguished reward. This beautiful discourse, therefore, may be considered as an animated display of the triumphs of faith over the allurements and terrors of the world. But first, to prevent all mistakes, and to show that the noble grace which he speaks of is attainable by men in every age and country, he gives a concise but clear description of it in the following words.
Now faith — As if he had said, Now that you may understand what the faith is of which I speak, and may be encouraged to exercise it, and to persevere in so doing, consider its excellence and efficacy. It is the substance of things hoped for — The word υποστασις, here rendered substance, is translated confidence, (Heb 3:14,) and may be rendered subsistence, which is its etymological meaning, and also ground, basis, or support. The meaning of the clause seems to be, that faith is a confidence that we shall receive the good things for which we hope, and that by it we enjoy, as it were, a present subsistence or anticipation of them in our souls. It also gives a foundation or ground for our expecting them; because by it we are justified, adopted into God’s family, and born of God’s Spirit, and, therefore, being his children, are heirs of the things for which we hope; namely, of happiness with Jesus immediately after death, of the glorious resurrection of the body at the time of Christ’s second coming, of acquittance and a gracious reception at his judgment-seat, and felicity and glory with him in the new heavens and new earth for ever. The evidence — Ελεγχος, the conviction, persuasion, or demonstration, wrought in the mind; of things not seen — Of things invisible and eternal, of God and the things of God; giving us an assurance of them in some respects equal to that which our outward senses give us of the things of this visible and temporal world. “The word ελεγχος,” says Macknight, “denotes a strict proof, or demonstration; a proof which thoroughly convinces the understanding, and determines the will. The apostle’s meaning is, that faith answers all the purposes of a demonstration, because, being founded on the veracity and power of God, these perfections are to the believer complete evidence of the things which God declares have happened, or are to happen, however much they may be out of the ordinary course of things.” The objects of faith, therefore, are much more numerous and extensive than those of hope: the latter are only things future, and apprehended by us to be good; whereas those of faith are either future, past, or present, and those either good or evil, whether to us or others: such as “the creation of the world without any pre-existing matter to form it of, the destruction of the old world by the deluge, the glory which Christ had with his Father before the world began, his miraculous conception in the womb of his mother, his resurrection from the dead, his exaltation in the human nature to the government of the universe, the sin and punishment of the angels, &c. All which we believe on the testimony of God, as firmly as if they were set before us by the evidence of sense.” The reader will easily observe, that though the definition of faith here given, and exemplified in the various instances following, undoubtedly includes or implies justifying faith, yet the apostle does not here speak of it as justifying, or treat of justification at all, but rather shows the efficacy and operation of faith in them who are justified. Faith justifies only as it refers to, and depends on Christ, and on the promises of God through him; in which light it is represented Romans 4., where the apostle professedly describes it. But here is no mention of him as the object of faith: and in several of the instances that follow no notice is taken of him or his salvation, but only of temporal blessings obtained by faith; and yet most of these instances maybe considered as evidences of the power of justifying faith, and of its extensive exercise in a course of steady obedience amidst trials and troubles, difficulties and dangers of every kind. Before we proceed to the particular instances of the power of faith here recorded, it may be proper to remark, that it is faith alone which, from the beginning of the world, under all dispensations of divine grace, and all the alterations which have taken place in the modes of divine worship, hath been in the church the chief principle of living unto God, of obtaining the promises, and of inheriting life eternal.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1–39 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for…
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for - On the general nature of faith, see the notes on Mar 16:16. The margin here is, “ground or confidence.” There is scarcely any verse of the New Testament more important than this, for it states what is the nature of all true faith, and is the only definition of it which is attempted in the Scriptures. Eternal life depends on the existence and exercise of faith Mar 16:16, and hence, the importance of an accurate understanding of its nature. The word rendered “substance” - ὑπόστασις hupostasis - occurs in the New Testament only in the following places. In 2Co 9:4; 2Co 11:17; Heb 3:14, where it is rendered “confident” and “confidence;” and in Heb 1:3, where it is rendered “person,” and in the passage before us; compare the notes on Heb 1:3. Prof. Stuart renders it here “confidence;” Chrysostom, “Faith gives reality or substance to things hoped for.”
The word properly means “that which is placed under” (Germ. Unterstellen); then “ground, basis, foundation, support.” Then it means also “reality, substance, existence,” in contradistinction from what is unreal, imaginary, or deceptive (täuschung). “Passow.” It seems to me, therefore, that the word here has reference to something which imparts reality in the view of the mind to those things which are not seen, and which serves to distinguish them from those things which are unreal and illusive. It is what enables us to feel and act as if they were real, or which causes them to exert an influence over us as if we saw them. Faith does this on all other subjects as well as religion. A belief that there is such a place as London or Calcutta, leads us to act as if this were so, if we have occasion to go to either; a belief that money may be made in a certain undertaking, leads people to act as if this were so; a belief in the veracity of another leads us to act as if this were so. As long as the faith continues, whether it be well-founded or not, it gives all the force of reality to what is believed. We feel and act just as if it were so, or as if we saw the object before our eyes. This, I think, is the clear meaning here. We do not see the things of eternity. We do not see God, or heaven, or the angels, or the redeemed in glory, or the crowns of victory, or the harps of praise; but we have faith in them, and this leads us to act as if we saw them. And this is, undoubtedly, the fact in regard to all who live by faith and who are fairly under its influence.
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Of things hoped for - In heaven. Faith gives them reality in the view of the mind. The Christian hopes to be admitted into heaven; to be raised up in the last day from the slumbers of the tomb, to be made perfectly free from sin; to be everlastingly happy. Under the influence of faith he allows these things to control his mind as if they were a most affecting reality.
The evidence of things not seen - Of the existence of God; of heaven; of angels; of the glories of the world suited for the redeemed. The word rendered “evidence” - ἔλεγχος elengchos - occurs in the New Testament only in this place and in 2Ti 3:16, where it is rendered “reproof.” It means properly proof, or means of proving, to wit, evidence; then proof which convinces another of error or guilt; then vindication, or defense; then summary or contents; see “Passow.” The idea of “evidence” which goes to demonstrate the thing under consideration, or which is adapted to produce “conviction” in the mind, seems to be the elementary idea in the word. So when a proposition is demonstrated; when a man is arraigned and evidence is furnished of his guilt, or when he establishes his innocence; or when one by argument refutes his adversaries, the idea of “convincing argument” enters into the use of the word in each case.
This, I think, is clearly the meaning of the word here. “Faith in the divine declarations answers all the purposes of a convincing argument, or is itself a convincing argument to the mind, of the real existence of those things which are not seen.” But is it a good argument? Is it rational to rely on such a means of being convinced? Is mere “faith” a consideration which should ever convince a rational mind? The infidel says “no;” and we know there may be a faith which is no argument of the truth of what is believed. But when a man who has never seen it believes that there is such a place as London, his belief in the numerous testimonies respecting it which he has heard and read is to his mind a good and rational proof of its existence, and he would act on that belief without hesitation. When a son credits the declaration or the promise of a father who has never deceived him, and acts as though that declaration and promise were true, his faith is to him a ground of conviction and of action, and he will act as if these things were so.
In like manner the Christian believes what God says. He has never seen heaven; he has never seen an angel; he has never seen the Redeemer; he has never seen a body raised from the grave. “But he has evidence which is satisfactory to his mind that God has spoken on these subjects,” and his very nature prompts him to confide in the declarations of his Creator. Those declarations are to his mind more convincing proof than anything else would be. They are more conclusive evidence than would be the deductions of his own reason; far better and more rational than all the reasonings and declarations of the infidel to the contrary. He feels and acts, therefore, as if these things were so - for his faith in the declarations of God has convinced him that they are so - The object of the apostle, in this chapter, is not to illustrate the nature of what is called “saving faith,” but to show the power of “unwavering confidence in God” in sustaining the soul, especially in times of trial; and particularly in leading us to act in view of promises and of things not seen as if they were so. “Saving faith” is the same kind of confidence directed to the Messiah - the Lord Jesus - as the Saviour of the soul.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 17, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27, 30, 37 All this chapter is a commendation and recommendation of…
All this chapter is a commendation and recommendation of faith, which is the substance [1] of things hoped for, giving as it were a substance in our minds to such things as we are in hopes and in expectation of hereafter, and making them present to us before they come to pass. --- It is also a sure conviction [2] of things that appear not. For when God has revealed things, and we believe them upon the divine and infallible authority of the revealer, we have a greater certainty of them than any demonstration can afford us. By this virtue of faith, they of old, our forefathers, obtained [3] a testimony from God that their actions were pleasing to him. (Witham) --- Faith is the basis, the foundation supporting hope; for unless there be faith, there cannot possibly be any hope. (Menochius)
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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]
Substantia, Greek: upostasis, subsistentia.
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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]
Argumentum, Greek: elegchos. Convictio, ostensio. It does not seem well translated evidence, as by the Protestants and Mr. N. because faith is an obscure knowledge, though it be the most certain, because of the infallible authority of God, who has revealed those obscure mysteries.
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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]
Greek: Emarturethesan, testimonium consecuti sunt. This expression, which is repeated ver. 4, 5, and 39, signifies an approbation or commendation.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
John Nelson Darby 1862 · Public Domain On v1 Hebrews Chapter 11
Hebrews Chapter 11
It is not a definition of this principle, that the epistle gives us at the commencement of chapter 11, but a declaration of its powers and action. Faith realises (gives substance to) that which we hope for, and is a demonstration to the soul of that which we do not see.
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There is much more order than is generally thought in the series given here of examples of the action of faith, although this order is not the principal object. I will point out its leading features.
1st. With regard to creation. Lost in reasonings, and not knowing God, the human mind sought out endless solutions of existence. Those who have read the cosmogonies of the ancients know how many different systems, each more absurd than the other, have been invented for that which the introduction of God, by faith, renders perfectly simple. Modern science, with a less active and more practical mind, stops at second causes; and it is but little occupied with God. Geology has taken the place of the cosmogony of the Hindoos, Egyptians, Orientals, and philosophers. To the believer the thought is clear and simple; his mind is assured and intelligent by faith. God, by His word, called all things into existence. The universe is not a producing cause; it is itself a creature acting by a law imposed upon it. It is One having authority who has spoken; His word has divine efficacy. He speaks, and the thing is. We feel that this is worthy of God; for, when once God is brought in, all is simple. Shut Him out, and man is lost in the efforts of his own imagination, which can neither create nor arrive at the knowledge of a Creator, because it only works with the power of a creature. Before, therefore, the details of the present form of creation are entered upon, the word simply says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Whatever may have taken place between that and chaos forms no part of revelation. It is distinct from the special action of the deluge, which is made known to us. The beginning of Genesis does not give a history of the details of creation itself, nor the history of the universe. It gives the fact that in the beginning God created; and afterwards, the things that regard man on the earth. The angels even are not there. Of the stars it is only said, “He made the stars also ;” when, we are not told.
By faith then we believe that the worlds were created by the word of God.
But sin has come in, and righteousness has to be found for fallen man, in order that he may stand before God. God has given a Lamb for the sacrifice. But here we have set before us, not the gift on God’s part, but the soul drawing near to Him by faith.
By faith then Abel offers to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain-a sacrifice which (founded on the revelation already made by God) was offered in the intelligence which a conscience taught of God possessed, with regard to the position in which he who offered was standing. Death and judgment had come in by sin, to man insupportable, although he must undergo them. He must go therefore to God, confessing this; but he must go with a substitute which grace has given. He must go with blood, the witness at the same time both of the judgment and of the perfect grace of God. Doing this, he was in the truth, and this truth was righteousness and grace. He approaches God and puts the sacrifice between himself and God. He receives the testimony that he is righteous- righteous according to the righteous judgment of God. For the sacrifice was in connection with the righteousness that had condemned man, and owned too the perfect value of that which was done in it. The testimony is to his offering; but Abel is righteous before God. Nothing can be more clear, more precious on this point. It is not only the sacrifice which is accepted, but Abel who comes with the sacrifice. He receives from God this testimony, that he is righteous. Sweet and blessed consolation! But the testimony is made to his gifts, so that he possessed all the certainty of acceptance according to the value of the sacrifice offered. In going to God by the sacrifice of Jesus, not only am I righteous (I receive the testimony that I am righteous), but this testimony is made to my offering, and therefore my righteousness has the value and the perfection of the offering, that is, of Christ offering Himself to God. The fact that we receive testimony on God’s part that we are righteous, and at the same time that the testimony is made to the gift which we offer, (not to the condition in which we are), is of infinite value to us. We are now before God according to the perfection of Christ’s work. We walk with God thus.
By faith, death having been the means of my acceptance before God, all that belongs to the old man is abolished for faith; the power and the rights of death are entirely destroyed - Christ has undergone them. Thus, if it please God, we go to heaven with out even passing through death. (Compare 2Co 5:1-4.) God did this for Enoch, for Elijah, as a testimony. Not only are sins put away, and righteousness established by the work of Christ, but the rights and power of him who has the power of death are entirely destroyed. Death may happen to us-we are by nature liable to it; but we possess a life which is outside its jurisdiction. Death, if it come, is but gain to us; and although nothing but the power of God Himself can raise or transform the body, this power has been manifested in Jesus, and has already wrought in us by quickening us (compare Eph 1:19); and it works in us now in the power of deliverance from sin, from the law, and from the flesh. Death, as a power of the enemy, is conquered; it is become a “gain” to faith, instead of being a judgment on nature. Life, the power of God in life, works in holiness and in obedience here below, and declares itself in the resurrection or in the transformation of the body. It is a witness of power with regard to Christ in Rom 1:4.
But there is another very sweet consideration to be noticed here. Enoch received testimony that he pleased God, before he was translated. This is very important and very precious. If we walk with God, we have the testimony that we please Him; we have the sweetness of communion with God, the testimony of His Spirit, His intercourse with us in the sense of His presence, the consciousness of walking according to His word, which we know to be approved by Him -in a word, a life which, spent with Him and before Him by faith, is spent in the light of His countenance and in the enjoyment of the communications of His grace and of a sure testimony, coming from Himself that we are pleasing to Him. A child who walks with a kind father and converses with him, his conscience reproaching him with nothing-does he not enjoy the sense of his parent’s favour?
In figure Enoch here represents the position of the saints who compose the assembly. He is taken up to heaven by virtue of a complete victory over death. By the exercise of sovereign grace he is outside the government and the ordinary deliverance of God. He bears testimony by the Spirit to the judgment of the world, but he does not go through it. (Jud 1:14-15) A walk like that of Enoch has God for its object, His existence is realised-the great business of life, which in the world is spent as if man did everything-and the fact that He is interested in the walk of men, that He takes account of it, in order to reward those who diligently seek Him.
Noah is found in the scene of the government of this world. He does not warn others of the coming judgments as one who is outside them, although he is a preacher of righteousness. He is warned himself and for himself; he is in the circumstances to which the warning relates. It is the spirit of prophecy. He is moved by fear, and he builds an ark to the saving of his house. He thus condemned the world. Enoch had not to build an ark in order to pass safely through the flood. He was not in it: God translated him-exceptionally. Noah is preserved (heir of the righteousness which is by faith) for a future world. There is a general principle which accepts the testimony of God respecting the judgment that will fall upon men, and the means provided by God for escaping it: this belongs to every believer.
But there is something more precise. Abel has the testimony that he is righteous; Enoch walks with God, pleases God, and is exempted from the common lot of humanity, proclaiming as from above the fate that awaits men, and the coming of Him who will execute the judgment. He goes forward to the accomplishment of the counsels of God. But neither Abel nor Enoch, thus viewed, condemned the world as that in the midst of which they were journeying, receiving themselves the warning, addressed to those who were dwellers therein. This was Noah’s case: the prophet, although delivered, is in the midst of the judged people. The assembly is outside them. Noah’s ark condemned the world; the testimony of God was enough for faith, and he inherits a world that had been destroyed, and (what belongs to all believers) righteousness by faith, on which the new world too is founded. This is the case of the Jewish remnant in the last days. They pass through the judgments, out of which we, as not belonging to the world, have been taken. Warned themselves of God’s way of government in the earth, they will be witnesses to the world of the coming judgments, and will be heirs of the righteousness which is by faith, and witnesses to it in a new world, wherein righteousness will be accomplished in judgment by Him who is come, and whose throne will uphold the world in which Noah himself failed. The words, “heir of the righteousness which is by faith,” point out, I think, that this faith which had governed a few was summed up in his person, and that the whole unbelieving world was condemned. The witness of this faith before judgment, Noah passes through it: and when the world is renewed, he is a public witness to the blessing of God that rests on faith, although outwardly all is changed. Thus Enoch represents the saints of the present time; Noah, the Jewish remnant. [32] The Spirit, after establishing the great fundamental principles of faith in action, goes on (Heb 11:8)to produce examples of the divine life in detail, always in connection with Jewish knowledge, with that which the heart of a Hebrew could not fail to own; and, at the same time, in connection with the object of the epistle and with the wants of Christians among the Hebrews.
In the previous case we have seen a faith which, after owning a Creator-God, recognises the great principles of the relations of man with God, and that onwards to the end upon earth. In that which follows, we have first the patience of faith when it does not possess, but trusts God and waits, assured of fulfillment. This is from Heb 11:8-22. We may subdivide it thus:-first, the faith which takes the place of strangership on earth, and maintains it because something better is desired; and which, in spite of weakness, finds the strength that is requisite in order to the fulfillment of the promises. This is from Heb 11:8-16. Its effect is entrance into the joy of a heavenly hope. Strangers in the land of promise, and not enjoying the fulfillment of promises here below, they wait for more excellent things-things which God prepares on high for those who love Him. For such He has prepared a city. In unison with God in His own thoughts, their desires (through grace) answering to the things in which He takes delight, they are the objects of His peculiar regard. He is not ashamed to be called their God. Abraham not only followed God into a land that He shewed him, but, a stranger there, and not possessing the land of promise, he is, by the mighty grace of God, exalted to the sphere of His thoughts; and, enjoying communion with God and the communications of His grace, he rests upon God for the time present, accepts his position of strangership on earth, and, as the portion of his faith, waits for the heavenly city of which God is the builder and the founder. There was not, so to speak, an open revelation of what was the subject of this hope, as was the case with that by which Abraham was called of God; but walking closely enough with God to know that which was enjoyed in His presence, and being conscious that he had not received the fulfillment of the promise, he lays hold of the better things, and waits for them, although only seeing them afar off, and remains a stranger upon earth, unmindful of the country whence he came out.
The special application of these first principles of faith to the case of the Christian Hebrews is evident. They are the normal life of faith for all.
The second character of faith presented in this part is entire confidence in the fulfillment of the promises- a confidence maintained in spite of all that might tend to destroy it. This is from Heb 11:17-22.
We next find, the second great division, that faith makes its way through all the difficulties that oppose its progress. (Heb 11:23-27.) And from Heb 11:28-31 faith displays itself in a trust that reposes on God with regard to the use of the means which He sets before us, and of which nature cannot avail itself. Finally, there is the energy in general, of which faith is the source, and the sufferings that characterise the walk of faith.[33] This general character belongs to all the examples mentioned, namely, that they who have exercised faith have not received the fulfillment of the promise; the application of which to the state of the Hebrew Christians is evident. Further, these illustrious heroes of faith, however honoured they might be among the Jews, did not enjoy the privileges that Christians possessed. God in His counsels had reserved something better for us.
Let us notice some details. Abraham’s faith shews itself by a thorough trust in God. Called to leave his own people, breaking the ties of nature, he obeys. He knows not whither he is going: enough for him that God would shew him the place. God, having brought him thither, gives him nothing. He dwells there content, in perfect reliance on God. He was a gainer by it. He waited for a city that had foundations. He openly confesses that he is a stranger and a pilgrim on earth. (Gen 23:4) Thus, in spirit, he draws nearer to God. Although he possesses nothing, his affections are engaged. He desires a better country, and attaches himself to God more immediately and entirely. He has no desire to return into his own country; he seeks a country. Such is the Christian. In offering up Isaac there was that absolute confidence in God which, at His command, can renounce even God’s own promises as possessed after the flesh, sure that God would restore them through the exercise of His power, overcoming death and every obstacle.
It is thus that Christ renounced His rights as Messiah, and went even into death, committing Him self to the will of God and trusting in Him; and received everything in resurrection. And this the Hebrew Christians had to do, with respect to the Messiah and the promises made to Israel. But, if there is simplicity of faith, for us the Jordan is dry, nor could we indeed have passed it if the Lord had not passed on before.
Observe here that, when trusting in God and giving up all for Him, we always gain, and we learn something, more of the ways of His power: for in renouncing according to His will anything already received, we ought to expect from the power of God that He will bestow something else. Abraham renounces the promise after the flesh. He sees the city which has foundations; he can desire a heavenly country. He gives up Isaac, in whom were the promises: he learns resurrection, for God is infallibly faithful. The promises were in Isaac: therefore God must restore him to Abraham, and by resurrection, if he offered him in sacrifice.
In Isaac faith distinguishes between the portion of God’s people according to his election, and that of man having birthrights according to nature. This is the knowledge of the ways of God in blessing, and in judgment.
By faith Jacob, a stranger and feeble, having nothing but the staff with which he had crossed the Jordan, worships God, and announces the double portion of the heir of Israel, of the one whom his brethren rejected-a type of the Lord, the heir of all things. This lays the ground of worship.
By faith Joseph, a stranger, the representative here of Israel far from his own country, reckons on the fulfillment of the earthly promises.[34] These are the expressions of faith in the faithfulness of God, in the future fulfillment of His promise. In that which follows we have the faith which surmounts every difficulty that arises in the path of the man of God, in the way that God marks out for him as he journeys on towards the enjoyment of the promises.
The faith of the parents of Moses makes them disregard the king’s cruel command, and they conceal their infant; whom God, in answer to their faith preserved by extraordinary means when there was no other way to save it. Faith does not reason; it acts from its own point of view, and leaves the result to God.
But the means which God used for the preservation of Moses placed him within a little of the highest position in the kingdom. He there came to be possessed of all the acquirements which that period could bestow on a man distinguished alike by his energy and his character. But faith does its work, and inspires divine affections which do not look to surrounding circumstances for a guide of action, even when those circumstances may have owned their origin to the most remarkable providences.
Faith has its own objects, supplied by God Himself, and governs the heart with a view to those objects. It gives us a place and relationships which rule the whole life, and leave no room for other motives and other spheres of affection which would divide the heart; for the motives and affections which govern faith are given by God, and given by Him in order to form and govern the heart.
Verse 24-26 develop this point. It is a very important principle; for we often hear Providence alleged as a reason for not walking by faith. Never was there a more remarkable Providence than that which placed Moses in the court of Pharaoh; and it gained its object. It would not have done so if Moses had not abandoned the position into which that Providence had brought him. But it was faith (that is to say, the divine affections which God had created in his heart), and not Providence as a rule and motive, which produced the effect for which Providence had preserved and prepared him. Providence (thanks be to God!) governs circumstances; faith governs the heart and the conduct.
The reward which God has promised comes in here as an avowed object in the sphere of faith. It is not the motive power; but it sustains and encourages the heart that is acting by faith, in view of the object which God presents to our affections. It thus takes the heart away from the present, from the influence of the things that surround us (whether they are things that attract or that tend to intimidate us), and elevates the heart and character of him who walks by faith and confirms him in a path of devotedness which will lead him to the end at which he aims.
A motive outside that which is present to us is the secret of stability and of true greatness. We may have an object with regard to which we act: but we need a motive outside that object-a divine motive- to enable us to act in a godly way respecting it.
Faith realises also (Heb 11:27) the intervention of God without seeing Him; and thus delivers from all fear of the power of man-the enemy of His people. But the thought of God’s intervention brings the heart into a greater difficulty than even the fear of man. If His people are to be delivered, God must intervene, and that in judgment. But they, as well as their enemies, are sinners; and the consciousness of sin and of deserving judgment necessarily destroys confidence in Him who is the Judge. Dare they see Him come to manifest His power in judgment (for this it is, in fact, which must take place for the deliverance of His people)? Is God for us the heart asks-this God who is coming in judgment? But God has provided the means of securing safety in the presence of judgment (Heb 11:28); a means apparently contemptible and useless, yet which in reality is the only one that, by glorifying Him with regard to the evil of which we are guilty, has power to afford shelter from the judgment which He executes.
Faith recognised the testimony of God by trusting to the efficacy of the blood sprinkled on the door, and could, in all security, let God come in judgment-God who, seeing the blood, would pass over His believing people. By faith Moses kept the passover. Observe here that, by the act of putting the blood on the door, the people acknowledged that they were as much the objects of the just judgment of God as the Egyptians. God had given them that which preserved them from it; but it was because they were guilty and deserved it. No one can stand before God.
Verse 29. But the power of God is manifested, and manifested in judgment. Nature, the enemies of God’s people, think to pass through this judgment dry-shod, like those who are sheltered by redeeming power from the righteous vengeance of God. But the judgment swallows them up in the very same place in which the people find deliverance-a principle of marvelous import. There, where the judgment of God is, even there is the deliverance. Believers have truly experienced this in Christ. The cross is death and judgment, the two terrible consequences of sin, the lot of sinful man. To us they are the deliverance provided of God. By and in them we are delivered and (in Christ) we pass through and are out of their reach. Christ died and is risen; and faith brings us, by means of that which should have been our eternal ruin, into a place where death and judgment are left behind, andwhere our enemies can no longer reach us. We go through without their touching us. Death and judgment shield us from the enemy. They are our security. But we enter into a new sphere, we live by the effect not only of Christ’s death, but of His resurrection.
Those who, in the mere power of nature, think to pass through (they who speak of death and judgment and Christ, taking the Christian position, and thinking to pass through, although the power of God in redemption is not with them) are swallowed up.
With respect to the Jews, this event will have an earthly antitype; for in fact the day of God’s judgment on earth will be the deliverance of Israel, who will have been brought to repentance.
This deliverance at the Red Sea goes beyond the protection of the blood in Egypt. There God coming in the expression of His holiness, executing judgment upon evil, what they needed was to be sheltered from that judgment-to be protected from the righteous judgment of God Himself. And, by the blood, God, thus coming to execute judgment, was shut out, and the people were placed in safety before the Judge. This judgment had the character of the eternal judgment. And God had the character of a Judge.
At the Red Sea it was not merely deliverance from judgment hanging over them; God was for the people, active in love and in power for them. [35] The deliverance was an actual deliverance: they came out of that condition in which they had been enslaved, God’s own power bringing them unhurt through that which otherwise must have been their destruction. Thus, in our case, it is Christ’s death and resurrection, in which we participate, the redemption which He therein accomplished, [36] which introduces us into an entirely new condition altogether outside that of nature. We are no longer in the flesh.
In principle the earthly deliverance of the Jewish nation (the Jewish remnant) will be the same. Founded on the power of the risen Christ, and on the propitiation wrought out by His death, that deliverance will be accomplished by God, who will intervene on behalf of those that turn to Him by faith: at the same time that His adversaries (who are those also of His people) shall be destroyed by the very judgment which is the safeguard of the people whom they have oppressed.
Verse 30. Yet all difficulties were not overcome because redemption was accomplished, deliverance effected. But the God of deliverance was with them; difficulties disappear before Him. That which is a difficulty to man is none to Him. Faith trusts in Him, and uses means which only serve to express that trust. The walls of Jericho fall down at the sound of trumpets made of rams’ horns, after Israel had compassed the city seven days, sounding these trumpets seven times.
Rahab, in presence of all the as yet unimpaired strength of the enemies of God and His people, identifies herself with the latter before they had gained one victory, because she felt that God was with them. A stranger to them (as to the flesh), she by faith escaped the judgment which God executed upon her people.
Verse 32. Details are now no longer entered into. Israel (although individuals had still to act by faith), being established in the land of promise,furnished less occasion to develop examples of the principles on which faith acted. The Spirit speaks in a general way of these examples in which faith re-appeared under various characters and energy of patience, and sustained souls under all kinds of suffering. Their glory was with God, the world was not worthy of them. Nevertheless they had received nothing of the fulfillment of the promises; they had to live by faith, as well as the Hebrews, to whom the epistle was addressed. The latter, however, had privileges which were in no wise possessed by believers of former days. Neither the one nor the other was brought to perfection, that is, to the heavenly glory, unto which God has called us, and in which they are to participate. Abraham and others waited for this glory; they never possessed it: God would not give it them without us. But He has not called us by the same revelations only as those which He made to them. For the days of the rejected Messiah He had reserved some better thing. Heavenly things have become things of the present time, things fully revealed and actually possessed in spirit, by the union of the saints with Christ, and present access into the holiest through the blood of Christ.
We have not to do with a promise and a distinct view of a place approached from without, entrance to which was not yet granted, so that relationship with God would not be founded on entrance within the veil-entrance into His own presence. We now go in with boldness. We belong to heaven; our citizenship is there; we are at home there. Heavenly glory is our present portion, Christ having gone in as our forerunner. We have in heaven a Christ who is man glorified. This Abraham had not. He walked on earth with a heavenly mind, waiting for a city, feeling that nothing else would satisfy the desires which God had awakened in his heart; but he could not be connected with heaven by means of a Christ actually sitting there in glory. This is our present portion. We can even say that we are united to Him there. The Christian’s position is quite different from that of Abraham. God had reserved some better thing for us.
The Spirit does not here develop the whole extent of this “better thing,” because the assembly is not His subject. He presents the general thought to the Hebrews to encourage them, that believers of the present day have special privileges, which they enjoy by faith, but which did not belong even to the faith of believers in former days.
We shall be perfected, that is to say, glorified together in resurrection; but there is a special portion which belongs to the saints now, and which did not belong to the patriarchs. The fact that Christ, as man, is in heaven after having accomplished redemption, and that the Holy Ghost, by whom we are united to Christ, is on earth, made this superiority granted to Christians easily understood. Accordingly even the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than the greatest of those who preceded it.
Footnotes for Hebrews Chapter 11
32: Indeed all that are spared for the world to come. Their state is expressed in the end of Rev 7:1-17, as that of the Jews in the first verses of chapter 14.
33: In general we may say that Heb 11:8-22 are faith resting assured on the promise, the patience of faith: Heb 11:23 to the end, faith resting on God for the activities and difficulties faith leads to, the energy of faith.
34: Observe that in these, cases we find the rights of Christ in resurrection; the judgment of nature, and the blessing of faith, through grace; the inheritance of all things heavenly and earthly by Christ; and Israels future return to their own land.
35: Stand still, says Moses, and see the salvation of Jehovah.
36: Crossing the Jordan represents the believer being set at liberty, and intelligently entering by faith into the heavenlies; it is conscious death and resurrection with Christ. The Red Sea is the power of redemption by Christ.
John Nelson Darby — Synopsis of the Books of the Bible: the New Testament (c. 1857–1862) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On vv1, 8, 13, 20, 23, 30
THIRD SECTION
INSPIRITING RETROSPECT OF THE HISTORY OF THE BELIEVING ANCESTORS
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I
Edifying examples of faith down to the time of Abraham
Heb_11:1-7
1 Now [But] faith is the substance of [confidence in] things hoped for, the evidence 2[conviction] of things not seen. For by [in] it the elders obtained a good report. 3Through faith we understand [apprehend intellectually, νοοῦμεν] that the worlds were [have been] framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear [that not from the things which appear may have sprung that which is seen1]. 4By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God2 testifying of [over] his gifts; and by it he being dead yet [after dying still] speaketh.3 5By faith Enoch was translated that he should [in order that he might] not see death; and was not found, because God had [om. had] translated him; for before his [the4] translation he had [hath had] this testimony, that he [has] pleased5 God. 6But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is [becometh] a rewarder of [to] them that diligently seek him. 7By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear [pious forethought], prepared an ark to [for] the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.
[Heb_11:1.—ἔστιν δέ,—ἔστιν not, as many, “there is faith,” but: “but faith is,” etc.; ἔστιν a copula, but, as very often in the classics, emphatically placed first,—ὑπόστασις, as occasionally in later Greek, confidence, as Heb_3:14. Not a rhetorical description, but a simple statement of the nature of faith.
Heb_11:2.—ἐμαρτυρήθησαν, were attested, received attestation.
Heb_11:3.—νοοῦμεν we perceive with the νοῦς, mind, reason, thus intellectually and rationally (Rom_1:20)—κατηρτίσθαι, have been (and so stand now) framed. Τοὺς αἰῶνας, the ages, hence the worlds, regarded as existing in time.—ῥήματι θεοῦ, by an uttered word, mandate of God (Heb_1:3).—εἰς τὸ μέ, in order that not, the logical purpose of this intellectual perception: μέ belongs to the whole clause, but grammatically to γεγονέναι—ἐκ φαινομένων, emphatically placed in the clause, thus: in order that not out of things that appear—μὴ ἐκ φαινομένων cannot stand for ἐκ μὴ φαινομ.[6]—μή—γεγονέναι, not—should have sprung, as it would have done, unless discerned to have been framed by the word of God.
Heb_11:4.—Μαρτυροῦντος ἐπὶ τοῖς δῶροις, testifying over, on condition of, his gifts: not περὶ τῶν δώρων,—ἀποθανὼν ἔτι, after dying, still, ἔτι, logical, under this state of things, viz., even after he was dead (see Gen_4:10).
Heb_11:5.—τοῦ μὴ ἰδεῖν, in order that he might not see=experience death: the purpose of the translation, including perhaps also (Alf.) “the purport.”—πρὸ τῆς μεταθέσεως previously to the translation—to the record of it, or to its occurrence as recorded.—μεμαρτύρηται, he hath received testimony, he stands attested to in the record.—εὐαρεστηκέναι, to have pleased.
Heb_11:7.—εὐλαβηθείς, moved with pious fear or foresight; Alf., taking forethought (see εὐλαβείας, Heb_5:7); εἰς σωτηρίαν,for the saving.—K.].
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Heb_11:1.—But faith is confidence in things, etc.—The position of ἔστι at the beginning of the clause by no means obliges us to the view last defended by Böhme, which was indicated by the Lect. Rec. up to the time of Griesb. by a comma after πίστις. According to this the following words would be in apposition with πίστις, while the real existence (ἔστι=there is, there exists) of faith would be asserted with emphasis, for which, however, there is no shadow of an occasion. Rather, the copula is made to precede (and hence as the subst. verb to be accented) in order to call attention to the predicates which characterize the subject (so also Win. since Ed. 5). We are thus to look for a definition of faith, but a definition corresponding to the connection and object of the section: a definition therefore which does not restrict itself to mere Christian and Gospel faith, but presents religious faith in its broadest and most general aspects. The object of this faith is, therefore, in a manner entirely general, but still appropriately and exhaustively, designated as τὰ ἐλπιζόμενα and as πράγματα οὐ βλεπόμενα, designations which do not mutually cover each other, but are concentric, and express the essential relation of the objects of faith to the need and condition of the believing subjects, under both their practical and theoretical aspects. Ὑπόστασις and ἔλεγχος express that which, in this relation, faith is as an affection or act of the mind. The former denotes (com. Heb_3:14) steadfast confidence (Luth., Grot., and most recent intppr); the latter, conviction, (particularly in the conscience) assurance, (August., Calv., Beng., etc.). The refutation of the rendering of ὑπόστασις as substance (Heb_1:3) as in Vulg., Ambros., August., Chrysos., Thorn. Aqu., Schlicht., Beng., Bisp., etc., or as foundation, as with Erasm., Calv., Stein, V. Gerl., etc., or as representation, as with Castal., Paul., Menk.; and of ἔλεγχος, as proof with Vulg., or as inward persuasion with Bl., De W., Lün., Menk., will be found well worth reading in Thol. and Del. In proof of the correctness of his definition the author adduces the fact that ἐν ταύτῃ, i.e., in point, or in respect of, a faith of such a nature, the ancient fathers have a good report. This meaning of μαρτυρεῖσθαι is frequent in Acts, and occurs, 3Jn_1:12; 1Ti_5:10. In this latter passage, as here, it is constructed with ἐν, which is neither to be regarded as equivalent to διά in Heb_11:4; Heb_11:39 (Luth., Calv., Grot., Beng., and others); nor need be separated from the verb=in possession of such a faith (Win., Bl., Lün.,), [Moll’s construction is, I think, unobjectionable; there is no difficulty in making ἐν ταύτῃ directly limit the verb. They gained their attestation in this=in this point, in such a faith they gained a good report.—K.].
Heb_11:3. By faith we understand.—νοοῦμεν. We apprehend with the νοῦς, mind, intelligence. This verse would seem, according to Lün., to be out of place, and in relation to Heb_11:4, to introduce an inharmonious element into the discussion. This unfavorable judgment springs from the erroneous supposition that Heb_11:3 shows merely “the necessity of faith, on our part, in relation to a fact belonging to the past, and recorded in Scripture.” To such a necessity the language has no reference; the passage treats merely of the fact that faith, as an assured conviction of things which are not seen, also evinces itself within us in our rational and spiritual perception of that relation of the creation to the Creator which forms the condition of all history, and all Revelation, while its more full unfolding belongs to the Scripture that commemorates the faith of the fathers.
This faith, resting upon and guided by the Holy Scripture, is the organ within us of that perception of the invisible in and above the visible, and of their reciprocal relation, to which neither the perceptions of sense, nor the deductions of reason of necessity lead. The most natural inference for men would rather be this, that τὸ βλεπόμενον, that which falls under the eye, that which meets our senses, has sprung ἐκ φαινομένων viz., out of that which belongs to the world of phenomena. This idea of the causal relation of the phenomena to the τὸ βλεπόμενον must be set aside, as shown by the μὴ γενονέναι, which declares that the seen has not sprung from the apparent. The μή belongs (with all the best interpreters since Beza) to γεγονέναι, and not to ἐκ φαινομένων With this latter, however, (=ἐκ μὴ φαιν.) it was constructed, after the Peshito, Vulg., Chrys., Theod., by the ancients generally, and recently by Stengel and Ebrard, and taken entirely arbitrarily as=nothing, things nonexistent, while Schlicht., Este, and others, adopting the same construction, conjecture that the author, with his mind on Gen_1:2, ἡ δὲ γῆ ἦν ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος of the Sept., refers to the visible issuing forth of the organized world from formless and blind chaos. With equal erroneousness most interpreters take the clause εἰς τὸ μή as denoting result. It, in fact, implies purpose (Hofm., Lün., Del., Riehm). It makes a recognition of the design of God in that framing and arrangement of the world (κατηρτίσθαι) which has been just before described. God, by the Word (ῥήματι), which gives authoritative expression to His will, has formed the αἰῶνας. These Æons (αἰῶνες) are (Heb_1:2) the invisible, spiritual, and permanent potencies of the phenomenal world, of which, at the opening of the epistle, the author has expressly said that they owe their origin to the Son of God, and of which he here says that they were formed, arranged, or put in order by the creative mandate of God. They form the antithesis required by Del., to the ἐκ φαινομένων, which antithesis he, supposing it not to be expressed, needlessly and erroneously supplies by ἐκ τῶν νοητῶν, as the intelligible and divine ideas, out of which the world has sprung. The entire confusion which has attended the explanation of this verse, has sprung from erroneously taking αἰῶνας, τὰ φαινόμενα and τό βλεπόμενον as equivalent designations of the world. Calvin unites the two words, writing ἐκφαινομένων as a single word, and takes τὰ βλεπόμενα as=κάτοπτρα, thus rendering “that they might become mirrors of invisible things.” But the construction is harsh and unnatural. [I know no good authority, and no sufficient reason for Moll’s singular explanation of αἰῶνες. The rendering worlds, either as material worlds (Del.), or as the aggregate of all things existing in time and space, seems far more natural, and meets all the necessary conditions of the passage. The antithesis to the τὰ φαινόμενα,—as that out of which the τὸ βλεπόμενον has really sprung,—is not the αἰῶνες as a set of spiritual and invisible potencies (as Moll), nor the τὰ νοητά, as, with fully equal improbability, supposed by Delitzsch, but simply the ῥῆμα θεοῦ, the sovereign mandate of God. Our sensible perceptions, is the author’s idea, would lead us to regard all that we see as having no deeper origin than the things which are palpable to sense, material and sensuous springing out of material; but faith enables us to trace all to the unseen but omnipotent agency of God.—K.].
Heb_11:4. And by it he, being dead, yet speaketh.—Many, following Chrys., take this language as declaring that the history of Abel contains still a sermon challenging our imitation of him, and that though dead, he still speaks in the testimony of Scripture. Philo finds in it a proof of the immortality of the righteous, and also Del. concludes from the cry of the blood of the righteous entering into the ear of God, that after his death he was still an object of divine care, and is thus an unforgotten, undestroyed, living personage. More correctly remarks Calv. with relation to Psa_116:15 : inde patet reputari inter Dei sanctos, quorum mors illi pretiosa est. For the passage Heb_12:24 shows that the author had in mind Gen_4:10, to wit: the crying of the blood of Abel to God for vengeance. God espoused the cause of Abel on account of his faith, and avenged his murder upon Cain (Riehm). The λαλεῖ is a historical present, and ἔτι stands not as temporal, but serves to bring out the contrast to ἀποθανών: with this latter word Œc. and Beng. erroneously connect δι’ αὐτῆς which the former refers to θυσία as the occasion of his death, while the other supplies πίστεως, taking διά as=ἐν or κατά.
Heb_11:6. For he who cometh to God.—The rendering of Luth., Calov, Ramb., Wittich, Schultz, Ebr., “whoever would (or is to) come to God, as Enoch did,” distorts the words of the text, ὁ προσερχόμενος τῷ θεῷ, which refer to drawing near to God in religious worship, Heb_7:25; Heb_10:1. So also δεῖ denotes here not so much moral obligation, as intrinsic necessity. It completes the proof that Enoch’s translation was a consequence and reward of his faith.
Heb_11:7. Moved with pious foresight.—If εὐλαβηθείς meant “in the fear of God” Luth., a Lap., etc.), τὸν θεόν could scarcely have been omitted. Nor is the meaning of “pious trembling before the divine utterance” (Carpz., Böhme, De W., Hofm.), so appropriate as the reference to the foresight with which Noah, in faith in the received χρηματισμὸς περὶ τῶν μηδέπω βλεπομένων, proceeded to his preparations. To refer the words δι’ ἠς σωτηρίαν (Bald., etc.) is entirely inadmissible: we may refer them to κιβωτόν (Chrys., Calv., Bez., Grot., Bisp., etc.), while yet to refer them to the main subject of the discourse, πίστει (Primas., Thom. Aquin., Luth., Beng., etc.), is more in harmony with the connection. Noah is the first person in the Old Testament who received the epithet “righteous,” Gen_7:9. It is further repeatedly applied to him, Eze_14:14; Eze_14:20; Sir_44:17; Wis_10:4; Wis_10:6; also 2Pe_2:5 he is called a “preacher of righteousness.”
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
Faith, by virtue of its nature as faith, excludes uncertainty and doubt, Mat_14:31; Mat_21:21; Rom_14:23; Jam_1:6. On the contrary, it involves in principle the confidence of conviction, and the firmness of assurance. It is, however, for this reason also, an assurance of itself, Eph_3:12; not, indeed, as a formal strictly self-conscious, certainty, and reliableness of conviction, but as a conviction of the reality, truth, and saving power of its object. Such a conviction is, in its very nature, not an immediate perception, that excludes all formal argument, nor again a logical assumption, resting on satisfactory grounds of reason. It is a union of the soul with the object of faith, generated by moral and religious influences; and this object again is not, of course, something simply regarded as true, but it brings in the act of faith itself, the proof of its reality, and becomes a part of the living contents of the soul; while the soul is thus, in an undoubting and unwavering certainty, assured of the hoped for blessings, and has an inward conviction of the invisible.
2. It is this characteristic of faith which appears from the beginning as the invariable, indispensable, and unreplaceable condition for the attainment and maintenance of the right relation of men with God, and as such can be established by a series of examples from the Old Testament, which, on the one hand, furnish the proof of the assertion, and on the other, can, and should, serve as comforting and stimulating examples (Sir_44:21).
3. That in and above the visible, invisible powers and agencies, work and hover, can be ascertained, even outside of the historical sphere of revelation. Nature and reason are so constituted, that the former exhibits herself as an aggregation of phenomena, and the latter is qualified to perceive the noumena, which reveal themselves in the phenomena, and can, hence, attain to the recognition of the existence of God, and to the beholding of his invisible attributes (Rom_1:19-20). But that the world is not a manifestation of the divine essence, not a shooting and breaking forth of divine thoughts, not the mere materializing of a divine ideal world, but that in its origin and arrangements, as well of that which is invisible, as of that which is visible, in and upon it, it must be regarded as a work of the will of God, who dwells in eternal self-consciousness, this can be known only on the ground of a positive historical revelation. The perception of this relation of the world to God, demands a faith analogous to faith in its other exhibitions.
4. Faith, however, has not to do merely with the, Scripturally announced fact of the creation and appropriate arrangement of the world by the creating word; we also gain by faith the understanding of this fact, and especially that God’s purpose in this fact is, to make God known as the creator of all things.
5. Those offerings which are expressions of faith, made not merely to fulfil an obligation, but as a result of profound internal conviction, best please God, and receive the testimony of their accordance with the divine will. But faith, as displayed in offerings, has special reference to the divine compassion, whether rendering thanks for benefits received, or yearning after more grace and fresh attestations of favor, or expressing the need of a restoring of that fellowship with God which sin has destroyed, and of representing the fellowship which grace has reëstablished.
6. God remembers the pious not merely after their death, so as to vindicate them and their cause: He has also power to keep them before death, and to prove Himself not merely the avenger, but the deliverer of the believers. The deliverance is complete, when it effects their removal from earth to heaven.
7. Where there is religious approach to God, there at least exists faith in the existence of the invisible God, and faith in the benefits of a diligent seeking of God. This latter can plead great promises of God (Amo_5:4; Psa_69:33), and by them faith, the condition of all divine approval, is strengthened and quickened.
8. Faith not only discerns clearly, by means of divine revelation, still future things, and is certain in respect to their coming, but also in virtue of its nature, involves obedience to the received word, and a full yielding to the arrangements which God has made, and the ordinances which He has enjoined. It is as far removed from an idle waiting for coming events, as from carnal security; and, therefore, while relying most implicitly upon the help of the Lord, fails in no degree in thoughtful foresight and appropriate activity.
9. Faith does not merely, by its confession, utter the judgment of the wicked world; but faith itself constitutes the actual condemnation of the world, which is hindered from using the existing means of deliverance only by its unbelief; while the believer, as a child of God, not only enters into the inheritance secured to him by pious ancestors, but into the inheritance of the righteousness which God imparts, and which, in all respects, corresponds to faith.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Nature and history serve the believer for advancement in faith and for the confirmation of faith.—The faith of man determines not merely the heart of man, but also his condition and his destiny.—Faith in its nature and its effects.—The examples of faith: 1. what they teach us; 2. to what they incite us; 3. with what they comfort us.—God looks not merely at what we do, but also upon what we intend.—God not merely knows His own; He is also mindful of them, and enables them to recognize His approval of them.—God does not merely give Himself to be known; He would also be sought after, and enables every earnest seeker to find Him.—God renders help in time for eternity, yet only to those who make use of the appointed means of aid.—Faith has its labor, its offering, and its burdens; but it has also the approval of God, and the inheritance of righteousness.—Drawing near to God; 1. in its blessing; 2. in its successive stages; 3. in its means.
Starke:—Away with the old and cold proverb; what our eyes see, that we believe (seeing is believing). Faith is trust and not sight.—Believers, as yet, possess not all; the most and the best they must still hope for.—Faith since it has in itself a Divine, persuasive, and convincing power, is as widely distinguished from credulity and illusive fancy as the day from the night, as a living hand from a painted one.—There is but one way to salvation, in the Old Testament as well as in the New, although this way in the New is much easier than in the Old.—Although faith is a spiritual gift of God, which has its seat in the heart, and is invisible, it still remains not unrecognizable; but along with its confession, reveals itself in works as its essential and inseparable fruits.—If a person pleases God by his faith, he pleases Him also by his works; but if, on account of unbelief, the person does not please Him, his works also fail to please Him, however holy they appear in the sight of men.—The remembrance of the righteous remains in blessing (Pro_10:7; Mat_23:35).—Faith brings man into fellowship with God.—They who hasten after another, and seek not God, have from Him no reward of grace to comfort them.—The godly have, even in this life, material aid from their piety.
Hahn:—In every time faith has its proper exercises and objects.—Believers enjoy the happiness of the Divine testimony alike in their own conscience and in their relation to others.—Faith looks into the whole plan of creation alike in respect to the invisible and the visible.
Heubner:—An age without faith is despicable, valueless.—Just as much as man has of faith, so much is there in him of goodness.—All service of God is sanctified only by faith.—Faith in a God who is asleep, and concerns Himself not about the world, is no religion, and brings no happiness.
Rieger:—The eyes of God look after faith, and, without faith, find nothing well pleasing in man.—The lack of sight must hinder none from steadfast adherence to God.
Footnotes:
[1]Heb_11:3.—The reading μὴ ἐκ φαινομένων is now established, and the sing, τὸ βλεηόμενον deserves the preference before the plur. of the Rec. after Sin. A. D*. E*. 17.
[2]Heb_11:3.—The reading τῷ θεῷ in A. D*. 17 received by Lachm. is evidently an error of the copyist. It is corrected in Sin.
[3]Heb_11:4.—Instead of λαλεῖται read λαλεῖ after Sin. A. 17, 23, 31, 39.
[4]Heb_11:5.—Αὐτοῦ of the Rec. after μεταθέσεως is, according to A. D*. 17, 67**, 80, to be expunged. In the Sin. it is added by a second hand.
[5]Heb_11:5.—We are to write after Sin. A. K. L., 46, 71, 73, εὐαρεστηκέναι: on the other hand, after Sin. A. D. E., 109 ηὑρίσκετο.
[6][I of course do not mean to deny the abstract possibility of this, nor to affirm that there are not Greek constructions very nearly or possibly quite analogous to it. I simply mean to say that there is here no such necessity as would alone justify our resorting to it; while again also most of the cases cited in proof of the usage are hardly satisfactory. Thus, in the passage of Thuc. i. 5, ἡγουμένων ἀνδρῶν οὐ τῶν ἀδυνατωτάτων, there is not the slightest necessity for assuming a transposition of the οὐ. “Men not the most powerless leading” is identical in meaning and equally natural with “men, to wit, those not most powerless.”—K.]
[7]Heb_11:8.—Before καλούμενος, Lachm., after A. D. (E.?), puts the def. article, but omits it before τόπον, after A. D*., and writes with Tisch. after A. D*. K. ἔμελλεν, instead of ἤμελλε, as read, however, by Sin., which omits the art. before both καλ. and τόπ.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2–39 For--So high a description of faith is not undeserved;…
For--So high a description of faith is not undeserved; for . . . [ALFORD].
by it--Greek, "in it": in respect to . . . in the matter of," it, "or, as Greek more emphatically, "this."
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the elders--as though still living and giving their powerful testimony to the reasonableness and excellence of faith (Heb 12:1). Not merely the ancients, as though they were people solely of the past; nay, they belong to the one and the same blessed family as ourselves (Heb 11:39-40). "The elders," whom we all revere so highly. "Paul shows how we ought to seek in all its fulness, under the veil of history, the essential substance of the doctrine sometimes briefly indicated" [BENGEL]. "The elders," as "the fathers," is a title of honor given on the ground of their bright faith and practice.
obtained a good report--Greek, "were testified of," namely, favorably (compare Heb 7:8). It is a phrase of Luke, Paul's companion. Not only men, but God, gave testimony to their faith (Heb 11:4-5, Heb 11:39). Thus they being testified of themselves have become "witnesses" to all others (Heb 12:1). The earlier elders had their patience exercised for a long period of life: those later, in sharper afflictions. Many things which they hoped for and did not see, subsequently came to pass and were conspicuously seen, the event confirming faith [BENGEL].
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39 2. INSPIRATIONAL.—The glories of Faith in its illustrious examples…
2. INSPIRATIONAL.—The glories of Faith in its illustrious examples of old, Heb_11:1 to Heb_12:2.
1. Now—As if beginning to anticipate that too continued a strain of warning and rebuke might wear upon his hearers, our apostle now suddenly changes his tone to thrilling jubilation. From threatening penalty for unbelief he rises into a lofty peal of exultation over the glories of faith. This faith is not solely ground of safety; it is an inspiration to all sublime moral heroism. It is the basis within the soul of all divine hopes and of all heroic communion with higher things above the things of merely animal sense. This he illustrates by a long line of glorious examples in the sacred record from the creation to the Christian era. All this assumes and affirms that the true Christian faith is the heir and real continuance of that old faith, and that the now faithful Hebrews will be heirs of the faithful of all ages, and will form a real modern extension of the ancient line of faithful heroes. It is one of the many illustrations in Hebrews of what has been called Paul’s habit of “going off at a word,” (and a proof of his authorship of this book,) that this sublime paean is hung upon the word faith, in Heb_10:38, where it occurs in Paul’s favourite formula of justification by faith.
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He now proceeds to show that faith is not only justifying but inspiring, ennobling, and exalting to the soul. We may further add, that the deduction of this heroic evolution of faith from the saving faith of Heb_10:38, amply refutes the preposterous pretence of some German expositors, (as Lunemann,) that the idea of faith in this epistle is different from Paul’s idea. Nothing is clearer than that, with Paul, faith is not only the mainspring of our salvation, but of our sanctification, and of all our Christian graces, virtues, and heroisms. Nowhere else, indeed, has he so fully expanded that view as here; and so we readily believe that it is by him that it is here expanded. Is—The present proposition is not intended as a complete definition of faith; but is such a statement or modified definition as suits our author’s design of showing how faith is the quickening inspiration of lofty enterprise.
Substance—The Greek word (compounded of υπο, under, and στασις, standing) signifies something that stands under an overlying object. Originally and literally, it signifies a basis, foundation, substratum. Our word substance, (derived from the Latin sub, under, and stans, standing,) has the same etymology, and etymologically the same meaning, for substance is a substratum, or base, underlying its properties. Hence our translators, as many scholars, here put the word substance. So Chrysostom says, “For since things are to hope unsubstantiated, faith grants to them a substance; or rather, does not so much grant, as be itself their substance, or existence.” But the true force of the writer’s proposition is, we think, best expressed by the stricter meaning of the word basis, or foundation. The whole current of the chapter shows that what he means is, that faith is within the soul the true subjective foundation of all subjective divine hopes and all supermundane heroisms. Hope, and the things held within the mental conception as things hoped for, have for their subjective basis faith; that power by which all that is transcendent and heroic is embraced in the mind. To translate the word confidence, as Lunemann, Delitzsch, and Alford do, is very flat. By that translation we have the truism that faith is confidence, just as confidence is faith; which are mere identical propositions. Indeed, faith and confidence are the same word in different languages; so that we have faith is faith. Things hoped for are viewed subjectively, as things within the hoping mind; and within the same mind their subjective basis is faith. The soul is a mirror in which are the images of faith as basis, and things hoped for as superstructure. Things hoped for is emphatic, suggesting the inspiring power of immortal and unlimited prospectives within our conception.
Evidence—Rather, demonstration, as Alford and others. Things not seen are like a geometrical diagram, planting a demonstration of themselves in the perceiving mind. That demonstration is received and realized by the elevated faith faculty, or predisposition, and is itself a faith forever. And the more vivid the demonstration the more realizing the faith, and the more heroic the soul in the ascending direction. Things not seen, are the realities of God and his universe outside the visible world, which are revealed to our higher intuitions by nature, by divine manifestation, or by the written record. The animal man, the sensualist, never thinks of or truly embraces these truths. The worldly forget them. The atheist denies them.
And these are all incapable of that spiritual heroism recorded of the ancient worthies.
There is an obvious parallelism in the clauses substance of things hoped for—evidence of things not seen. There appears, also, to be an anti-climax. The former clause is more impressive, and especially more impressive for the author’s inspiring purpose, than the latter. We would explain this by saying that the last is epexegetical, or explanatory; being, as it were, its confirmatory echo. Faith is the subjective prop of our hopes by being the realization of the great Unseen. How feeble a rendering confidence is of the word for substance, υποστασις, (hypostasis,) and how uniformly it means the underlay, or basis of confidence, or other thing, is a point worthy further illustration. Thus (taking several examples in Robinson’s Greek Testament Lexicon) a classical author speaks of the hypostasis (basis-energy) of the soul under endurance of torments; just as a horseman speaks of the “bottom,” or basal strength, of his steed. Another says, “all the hypostasis (underlying vigour) of the bowels.” Another, of “the appearance of wealth, but not the hypostasis,” (underlying reality.) So Paul (2Co_11:17) speaks of “this hypostasis, or basis of our boasting.” So (Heb_10:35) the beginning of our self-basing in Christ. So, also, several passages adduced from the Septuagint by Whitby, and feebly rendered by him confidence, or expectation. In Rth_1:12 it is asked, Is there to me any basis of a husband? Eze_19:5 : All her basis was lost. Psa_89:47 : All my basis is from thee. In all these cases is meant rather the subjective underlay of a subjective confidence than the confidence itself.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–39 1. Now faith] Since he has said “we are…
1. Now faith] Since he has said “we are of faith to gaining of the soul,” the question might naturally arise, What then is faith? It is nowhere defined in Scripture, nor is it defined here, for the writer rather describes it in its effects than in its essence; but it is described by what it does. The chapter which illustrates “faith” is full of works; and this alone should shew how idle is any contrast or antithesis between the two. Here however the word “faith” means only “the belief which leads to faithfulness”—the hope which, apart from sight, holds the ideal to be the most real, and acts accordingly.
the substance of things hoped for] The word “hypostasis,” here rendered “substance,” as in Heb_1:3, may mean (1) that underlying essence which gives reality to a thing. Faith gives a subjective reality to the aspirations of hope. But it may be used (2) in an ordinary and not a metaphysical sense for “basis,” foundation; or (3) for “confidence,” as in Heb_3:14 (comp. 2Co_9:4; 2Co_11:17): and this seems to be the most probable meaning of the word here. St Jerome speaks of the passage as breathing somewhat of Philo (“Philoneum aliquid spirans”), who speaks of faith in a very similar way.
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the evidence of things not seen] The word rendered “evidence” means “demonstration,” or “test.”
not seen] i.e. which are as yet invisible, because they are eternal and not temporal (2Co_4:18; 2Co_5:7). God Himself belongs to the things as yet unseen; but Faith—in this sense of the word, which is not the distinctively Pauline sense (Gal_2:16; Gal_3:26; Rom_3:25)—demonstrates the existence of the immaterial as though it were actual. The object of faith from the dawn of man’s life had been Christ, who, even at the Fall, had been foretold as “the seed of the woman who should break the serpent’s head.” The difference between the Two Covenants was that in the New He was fully set forth as the effulgence of the Father’s glory, whereas in the Old He had been but dimly indicated by shadows and symbols. Bishop Wordsworth quotes the sonnet of the poet Wordsworth on these lines:
“For what contend the wise? for nothing less
Than that the Soul, freed from the bonds of sense,
And to her God restored by evidence
Of things not seen, drawn forth from their recess,
Root there—and not in forms—her holiness.”
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39 (1) We have seen how the writer approached the…
(1) We have seen how the writer approached the subject which is the chief theme of this last division of this Epistle. The coming of the Lord, for judgment upon His adversaries, for salvation to His people, draws nigh. In the midst of dangers and judgments God’s righteous servant shall live, and the ground, of his life is his steadfast faith—if he shrink back, destruction will overtake him. “Our principle of action” (the writer says to his Hebrew readers) “is not shrinking back, but faith. And faith is this. . . .” It has been debated whether that which follows is a definition of what faith is, or in reality a description of what faith does. It is not a complete definition, in the sense of including all the moments of thought which are present in the word as used in the last chapter (Heb_11:38) or in this. The “things hoped for” are not mere figments of the imagination; their basis is the word of God. If we keep this in mind, the words, still remaining general in their form, agree with all that has led up to them and with all that follows; and whether they be called definition or description will be of little consequence.
The exact meaning of the special terms here used it is not easy to ascertain. The word rendered “substance” has already occurred twice in the Epistle. In Heb_1:3 this was its true meaning—the essence which, so to speak, underlies, “stands under,” the qualities possessed. In Heb_3:14 the same metaphor of standing under is applied to steadfastness, confidence (see the Note). The former of these renderings the Authorised version.—in this instance deserting the earlier translations (which for the most part have “sure confidence” or “ground”) to follow the Rhemish in its rendering of the Latin. substantia—has made familiar in the present passage. The sense which it presents, however, is not very clean; and the symmetry of the verse almost compels us here to make choice of some word which denotes an act, or at all events an attitude, of the mind. Most commentators of our own day accept the second meaning explained above, “confidence” or “assurance in regard to things hoped for.” To adopt Dr. Vaughan’s clear explanation, “Faith is that principle, that exercise of mind and soul, which has for its object things not seen but hoped for, and which, instead of sinking under them as too ponderous, whether from their difficulty or from their uncertainty, stands firm under them—supports and sustains their pressure—in other words, is assured of, confides in and relies on them.” This interpretation yields an excellent sense, and has the advantage of assigning to the Greek word a meaning which it certainly bears in an earlier chapter, and in two places of St. Paul’s Epistles. On the other hand, the analogy of the second member of the verse, and a peculiarity in the Greek construction which we cannot here discuss, seem to be in favour of a third rendering of the words: “Faith is the giving substance to things hoped for.” It has indeed been said that by such a translation the things hoped for are represented as being without substance. But this difficulty is only apparent; for in regard to ourselves these objects of our hope do not yet exist, since they still belong to the future (Rom_8:24-25). In the second clause the word “evidence” is likely to mislead; very probably, indeed, it now fails to convey the sense intended by our translators, who hero followed the rendering of the Genevan Bible (suggested by Calvin’s “evidentia”). The Greek word denotes putting to the test, examining for the purpose of proof, bringing to conviction. Under this aspect faith appears as neither blindly rejecting nor blindly accepting whatever may be said about things unseen, but boldly dealing with them as if with things seen, and then unflinchingly accepting that which has stood the proof. One peculiarity of the Greek yet remains to be noticed. In the second clause the word “things” is expressed in the Greek (as in Heb_6:18), but not in the first; we are by this means reminded of the reality of that which is thus spoken of as unseen. The whole verse, then, may be rendered “Now faith is the giving substance to what is hoped for, the testing of things not seen.” And now passing away from the general aspect of the words to that in which they are presented by the context, we have as the meaning: Faith, holding to God’s word, gives substance to what that word promises, investing the future blessings with a present existence, treating them as if already objects of sight rather than of hope. Through faith, guided by the same word, the things unseen are brought to the proof; what that word teaches, though future, or though belonging to a world beyond human sight, is received with full conviction. Thus “every genuine act of faith is the act of the whole man, not of his understanding alone, not of his affections alone, not of his will alone, but of all three in their central, aboriginal unity.” And thus faith becomes “the faculty in man through which the spiritual world exercises its sway over him, and thereby enables him to overcome the world of sin and death.” (Hare, Victory of Faith.)
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 35, 36, 38, 39 Now faith is the substance (so A.V, with marginal…
Now faith is the substance (so A.V, with marginal readings, "or ground, or, confidence") of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. On the senses in which the word upostasiv (translated "substance") may be used, see under Heb_1:2. As to the sense intended here, views differ. There are three possible ones, expressed in the text and margin of the A.V, substance, ground, and confidence. The first is understood by the Fathers generally, the idea being supposed to be that, inasmuch as things not yet experienced, but only hoped for, become real to us by faith, faith is metaphysically their substance, as substantiating them to us. So Theophilus: Ousiwsiv twn mhpw ontwn upostasiv twn mh ufesthkotwn : and Chrysostom, who illustrates thus: "The resurrection has not yet taken place, but faith substantiates (ufisthsin) it in our souls." So also Dante, following St. Thomas Aquinas, in a striking passage quoted by Delitzsch ("Paradise," 24:70-75)Le profonde cose Che mi largiscon qui la lor parvenza Agli occhi di laggiu son si nascose, Che l"esser lore ve in sola credenza, Sovra la qual si fondu Palta spene: E pero di sustanza prende Fintenza. The things profound That here vouch safe to me their apparition From all eyes here below are so concealed That all their being is in faith alone, Upon the which high hope doth base itself: And therefore faith assumes the place of substance.
The rendering ground, which involves only the simpler idea of faith being the foundation on which hope is built, has not much support from the use of the word elsewhere, nor does it seem suitable here. For it is not the things hoped for, but rather our hopes of them that are grounded on our faith. The subjective sense, confidence, or assurance, is most in favor with modern commentators, principally as being the most usual one. (cf. Heb_3:14 2Co_9:4 2Co_11:17; also Psa_38:11, H upostasiv mou para sou estin : Eze_19:5, Apwleto h upostasiv authv : Rth_1:12, ti moi upostasiv tou geneynai me andri) One objection to this sense of the word here is that it is usually followed, when so intended, by a genitive of rite person, not of the thing; Rth_1:12 is an instance to the contrary. But apart from this consideration, the consensus of the Greek Fathers is a weighty argument for the retention of the rendering of the A.V Either rendering, be it observed, gives the same essential meaning, though under different mental conceptions. Faith is further said to be the evidence of things not seen; elegcov meaning, not as some take it, inward conviction of their existence, but in itself a demonstration, serving the purpose of argument to induce conviction. So Dante, in continuation of the passage quoted aboveE da questa credenza ci conviene Sillogizar senza avere ultra visa; E pero intenza d"argomento tiene." "And from this credence it is fit and right To syllogize, though other sight be none: Therefore faith holds the place of argument.
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Is this meant as a definition of faith, or only a description of its effect and operation, with especial regard to the subject in hand? Virtually a definition, though not in the strict logical form of one. At any rate, "the constituents and essential characteristics of faith are here laid down" (Delitzsch); i.e. of faith in its most general sense that of belief in such things, whether past, present, or future, as are not known by experience, and cannot be logically demonstrated. "Licet quidam dicant praedicta apostoli verba non esse fidei definitionem, quia definitio indicat rei quidditatem et essentiam, tamen si quis recte consideret, omnia ex quibus fides potest definiri in praedicta descriptione tanguntur, licet verba non ordinentur sub forma definitionis" (St. Thomas Aquinas, "Secunda Secundae," qu. 4, art. 1). Faith, in the general sense indicated, is and has ever been, as the chapter goes on to show, the very root and inspiring principle of all true religion. And be it observed that, if well grounded, it is not irrational; it would rather be irrational to disregard it, or suppose it opposed to reason. Even in ordinary affairs of life, and in science too, men act, and must act, to a great extent on faith; it is essential for success, and certainly for all great achievements faith in the testimony and authority of others whom we can trust, faith in views and principles not yet verified by our own experience, faith in the expected outcome of right proceeding, faith with respect to a thousand things which we take on trust, and so make ventures, on the ground, not of positive proof, but of more or less assured conviction. Religious faith is the same principle, though exercised in a higher sphere; and it may be as well grounded as any on which irreligious men are acting daily. Various feelings and considerations may conspire to induce it: the very phenomena of the visible universe, which, though themselves objects of sense, speak to the soul of a Divinity beyond them; still more, conscience, recognized as a Divine voice within us, and implying a Power above us to whom we are responsible; then all our strange yearnings after ideals not yet realized, our innate sense that righteousness ought to triumph over iniquity, as in our disordered world it does not yet; which things are in themselves prophetic; and, in addition to all this, the general human belief in Deity. And when, further, a revelation has been given, its answering to our already felt needs and aspirations, together with the usual considerations on which we give credence to testimony, induces faith in it also, and in the things by it revealed; natural faith is thus confirmed, and faith in other verities is borne in upon the soul; which is further itself confirmed by experience of the effects of entertaining it. In some minds, as is well known, and these of the highest order, such faith may amount to certitude, rendering the "things unseen" more real to them than "the things that do appear." It cannot be said that to accept such faith as evidence is contrary to reason; our not doing so would be to put aside as meaning nothing the deepest, the most spiritual, the most elevating faculties of our mysterious nature, by means of which, no less than by our other faculties, we are constituted so as to apprehend the truth. And we may observe, lastly, that even to those who have not themselves this "fullness of faith," its very existence in others, including so many of the great and good, may surely be rationally accepted as evidence of realities corresponding to it.
Vers. 1-3. The nature and power of faith.
In the close of the previous chapter, the apostle has spoken of faith as the principle of spiritual life, and the spring of patient endurance. He has quoted a great saying from Habakkuk, "The just shall live by faith;" and he now proceeds to vindicate its truth in a series of brilliant biographical illustrations. First of all, however, the apostle supplies a theoretic definition or description of saving faith.
I THE NATURE OF FAITH. (Ver. 1.) Faith is a natural principle of the mind. All men exercise it with regard to earthly things. But spiritual faith has for its objects a higher class of realities the truths of religion revealed in the Bible. In the text this faith is looked at in the most general and comprehensive way. It is viewed, not so much as an act, but as a state of mind, and as antithetical to sight.
1. Faith is the eye of the soul. It is "the conviction of things not seen the organ by which we look upon the invisible and the eternal. And, if faith is the eye, the Bible is the eye-glass through which faith looks. The objects of spiritual faith are all supernaturally revealed truths things of God," the things of the Spirit." These embrace all the great truths concerning God, man, the way of salvation, the Church, the last things. The believer"s conviction of these "things not seen" rests upon the testimony of God, given not only outwardly by the lips and pens of inspired men, but inwardly by the witness of the Spirit himself within the soul. "Seeing is believing" in the world of sense; but in the domain of faith this maxim is reversed, for in spiritual things "believing is seeing.
2. Faith is the hand of the soul. It is "the confidence of things hoped for." The universe of the unseen contains those glorious realities which are the objects of spiritual hope. And those realities faith grasps. Saving faith is appropriating faith. The "things hoped for" are all involved in the coming of Christ"s kingdom, which shall bring with it the final triumph of truth over error, and of good over evil. They include also, in subordination to this crowning hope, whatever is necessary for the spiritual cleansing and culture and comfort of the individual believer; as e.g. the forgiveness of sins, peace with God, victory over indwelling evil, growing likeness to Christ, the communion of saints, and the prospect of a blessed immortality. The man whose heart reposes on these hopes will be no longer dominated by the things "which are seen" and "temporal." He will become heavenly-minded. His faith will make him the longer the more humble, pure, laborious, courageous, meek, long-suffering, forgiving. "The just shall live by faith.
II THE FOUNDATION-DOCTRINE OF FAITH. (Ver. 3.) Here the author specifies, as one of the great objects of faith, what is really the fundamental truth of all religion, as it is also the first utterance of revelation (Gen_1:1) the doctrine of the creation of the world by the living God. For our knowledge of this truth we are indebted exclusively to the Bible. Human theories regarding the origin of the universe have been mere conjectures. Heathen philosophers have dreamed of the eternal existence of matter; or they have taught, in some form or other, the doctrine "that what is seen hath been made out of things which do appear." Unaided reason has never ascended by the steps of the design-argument "up to nature"s God." Paley"s famous illustration of the watch suggests a conclusive syllogism only to the Christian theist. What, then, does the apostle assert here regarding creation?
1. That all that exists in time and space was skillfully framed and finished by a simple fiat of the Almighty.
2. That it follows that the universe was not formed out of any pre-existing materials whatsoever, but was created by God out of nothing. The question of the mode in which "the worlds have been framed" is one, when regarded from the spiritual point of view, of very slight importance. It matters little whether "what is seen" assumed its present form in connection with a series of creative acts, or by a process of evolution. What faith lays stress on is this, that the universe is in no sense self-existent, but owes its genesis to the will of a personal Creator or Evolver. Ancient paganism deified the power of nature, and atheistic evolution in our own time sees in matter the "promise and potency" of all life. But the candid, sober confession of science still is, that "behind and above and around the phenomena of matter and of force, remains the unsolved mystery of the universe." Now, revelation explains this mystery. The doctrine of a personal Creator is the foundation-doctrine of faith. If this truth be accepted, it follows that miracles are possible, and that a supernatural revelation is not an unlikely blessing. If God has made us in his own image, then surely we are heirs of immortality; and, although we have gone astray from him, peradventure he may hear us when we call upon him, and may graciously receive us back into his favor.
III THE POWER OF FAITH TO FORM CHARACTER. (Ver. 2.) The "things not seen" and "hoped for" control the life of the believer. They engage his attention. They call forth his energies. They mould his habits. They direct his affections. The conviction and the confidence which make his character what it is are grounded, not upon knowledge, but upon testimony. This truth receives splendid illustration in the lives of the saints who lived during the twilight before the rise of the Sun of righteousness. "The elders" are the Hebrew fathers, and "the world"s gray fathers" of antediluvian times. They trusted in a Savior who was yet only "hoped for," and in a sacrifice for sin that was "not seen." Although they lived so very long ago, and although the truth which they rested on was still but imperfectly developed, yet theirs was saving faith, and it was vigorous, valiant, victorious. For, faith is the belief of a Divine testimony, whatever that testimony may be. Under every dispensation the believer has ventured his eternal interests upon the bare word of God. "The elders had witness borne to them," i.e. the approving testimony of God and his Word. And the apostle proceeds, in the verses which follow, to name some of these illustrious eiders, and to show that their excellence of character was due to the moral power of their faith. This chapter, accordingly, may be said to point out some of the great constellations which blazed in the firmament of the Jewish dispensation. Or it may be compared to a national picture-gallery of the soldiers of faith, and their battles. Or its verses may be likened to the epitaphs on the ancient monuments in the fair and venerable abbey of the Old Testament Church. In conclusion, have we this faith? The assent of the intellect to Bible truth is not enough. Faith for us means personal trust in a personal Savior. Spiritual faith is a grace; it is God-given. Only the Holy Spirit can enable us to be guided, in our whole walk and conduct, by the unseen and eternal realities.
HOMILIES BY W. JONES. Ver. 1. The nature of faith.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for," etc. This is not a definition or description of what is called, in theological phrase, saving faith. It does not set forth faith in Jesus Christ in particular, but faith in its general meaning and its comprehensive exercise. The text teaches us that
I FAITH IS THE DEMONSTRATION OF INVISIBLE REALITIES. It is "the evidence of things not seen;" Revised Version, the proving of things not seen." There are two classes of unseen things:
1. Things which are absolutely invisible. Of these we may mention:
(1) God, a Being of almighty power, of infinite wisdom, of perfect holiness, etc. "No man hath seen God at any time." "Whom no man hath seen, nor can see.
(2) The human soul. That part of his being which thinks and feels, hopes and fears, loves and hates, no man in our present state has seen.
(3) Spiritual truth is Invisible to our bodily eyes. We perceive it, but we cannot see it.
2. Things which are relatively invisible.
(1) There are great historical facts which are invisible to us. Some of these are mentioned in this chapter; e.g. the Creation, the Deluge. But those are of the greatest importance to us which are connected with the life and work, the suffering and death, the resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ the great facts in the accomplishments of human redemption. These were witnessed by many, but to us they are invisible.
Our attitude in relation to them is a thing of the utmost moment to us. If we accept them, it must be by faith.
(2) There are important future events which are invisible to us at present. The heaven into which our Lord has entered, and where God is enthroned, is at present hidden from our eyes. And Hades, the great world of departed spirits, is impenetrably veiled from men in the flesh. The great and solemn judgment, and the different abodes and states of men after the judgment, are as yet invisible to our senses. Now, faith is the evidence, the "demonstration," the "actual proof," of these invisible things which are declared in the sacred Scriptures. It is an act which itself gives the knowledge and proof of the existence of those things not seen." "The essential meaning of the word," says Mr. Matthew Arnold, is "power of holding on to the unseen. It is a deep and intense conviction of the existence and reality of things and persons which are not apprehensible by the senses.
II FAITH IS THE ASSURANCE OF DESIRABLE POSSESSIONS. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for;" Revised Version, "the assurance of things hoped for." It is a firmly grounded confidence of things hoped for. Two observations are suggested:
1. Some of these invisible things which are apprehended by faith are regarded as desirable and attainable. They are "hoped for." Hope is the "desire of good with a belief that it is obtainable;" it is" well-grounded desire." We hope to receive in this present life Divine grace and guidance, provision and preservation, spiritual help in our daily work and warfare, and illuminating and sanctifying influences. And in the life that is to come, we hope for heaven and all its blessedness; its entire freedom from sin and suffering; its perfect purity and peace; the holy and delightful fellowship of glorified saints; the perpetual presence of our adorable Savior and Lord; and the enrapturing manifestation of God. (1Jn_3:2, 1Jn_3:3) We regard these things as attainable because they are promised to the sincere believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we hope for them through him.
2. Faith gives assurance of these desirable and attainable things. It appropriates such of them as may be obtained at present, and confidently anticipates those that are reserved for the future. It was well said by Ambrose, "The heir must believe his title to an estate in reversion before he can hope for it; faith believes its title to glory, and then hope waits for it. Did not faith feed the lamp of hope with oil, it would seen die." And more, it brings future blessings into our present experience, and it gives to us foretastes of heavenly blessedness, which are a pledge and an earnest that our holiest and brightest hopes will meet with full and glorious fruition W.J. Where faith is sweetly lost in sight, And hope in full, supreme delight, And everlasting love.
HOMILIES BY D. YOUNG Ver. 1. Faith in its relation to the future and the unseen.
I FAITH IN ITS RELATION TO THE FUTURE.
1. Nothing is more to be desired than a hopeful outlook towards the future. The future may be regarded doubtfully, fearfully, or even despairingly; on the other hand the question rises if it be not possible to regard the future with a hope which shall become a duty. Doubtless there are many who do look hopefully forward, but they are hopeful simply because of a disposition constitutionally sanguine. They may even make a brightness where there is nothing in the circumstances to warrant it. They think it is quite as likely chance may bring to them success as failure. But this sort of hope never can become a duty, a feeling which a man ought to have, potent and governing in his breast. We do not want a future dependent on chance, or natural endowments, or favorable circumstances. We want a future which shall become bright to every human being because of his humanity, because of his character, because one of the elements in bringing it about is his own choice.
2. This bright outlook towards the future is secured by Christian faith. "Faith is the substance of things hoped for." More correctly, faith is a substance of things hoped for. Bengel alleges that the metaphor is taken from a pillar standing under a heavy weight. We accept the explanation, only adding to it that this heavy weight rests on more pillars than one, and all of them are necessary. The things hoped for will never come into existence for us unless they be related to us by a present, practical faith. Suppose to each of two men a quantity of seed is given. One of them sows his portion, and then to him a harvest is among the things hoped for, his hope being reasonable and based upon an act of faith when he put his seed into the ground. The other, not sowing, if he hopes for a harvest, is clearly under a delusion. The thing he hopes for has no substance; he has done nothing to show real faith. The thing indicated by the word "faith" is something practical; not a man merely saying he believes, but showing his faith by his works. Such a faith becomes a matter of conscience. God gives to the man who wishes for the gift a peculiar insight, a deep conviction in the heart, which is worth more than any argument. The course taken may not satisfy others, may provoke their laughter, their wonder, their pity; but after all the one thing needful is not that our course should be clear to others, but clear to ourselves. If we go wrong in our course through neglect of the Divine voice speaking within us, it is we who suffer the most. We must look to God altogether, and he will give us the right impulse, and concentrate our faculties so that we shall not drift through life, but rather speed onward with a definite aim, concerning which, in our own best moments, we shall have a full assurance that we cannot miss it. These heavenly certainties are not to be revealed by flesh and blood. So much turns on faith that it is no wonder it is so much dwelt on in the New Testament. Of what a glorious life, of what beatific imaginations, does unbelief deprive us?
II FAITH IN ITS RELATION TO THE UNSEEN. "Faith is the substance of things hoped for;" it is not called the substance of things unseen. For it is in no sense the substance of things unseen. They exist, whether we believe them to exist or not. But faith may become to our hearts the evidence of these unseen things. Certainly there can be no other evidence. To all our natural faculties there is presented nothing but a bundle of phenomena, and whatever we may think of beyond them comes into our minds simply because we are unable to believe that there is nothing beyond them. There is an outward man, perceptible to the senses, feeling through the senses a like pleasure and pain; but there is also an inward man, a deep, invisible existence, to which God and Christ appeal, as having the proper sphere of its life in the great invisible outside c f it. It is by faith that the invisible in us is to profit by the invisible outside of us. Prayer is a recognition of the invisible. We are to endure as seeing him who is invisible. The only source of inspiration for a real and full Christian life is to be found in the invisible. And when the invisible rules, when faith lays hold of its riches, then even the visible becomes a more glorious and profitable thing than it ever can do while sense rules alone. Y.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 13, 15, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 39 Now faith is the substance
Heb_11:1-2
Now faith is the substance
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The use of history:
Hitherto the Jewish Christians had continued to celebrate the ancient ritual, and their presence in the temple and the synagogue had been tolerated by their unbelieving countrymen; but now they were in danger of excommunication, and it is hardly possible for us to conceive their distress and dismay.
Their veneration for the institutions of Moses had not been diminished by their acknowledgment of the Messiahship of the Lord Jesus; for them, as well as for the rest of their race, an awful sanctity rested on the ceremonies from which they were threatened with exclusion. Therefore, the writer of this Epistle calls up the most glorious names of Jewish history to confirm his vacillating brethren in their fidelity to the Lord Jesus Christ. It was not by offering sacrifices, nor by attending festivals, nor by the pomp and exactness with which they had celebrated any external rites and ceremonies, that the noblest of their forefathers had won their greatness, but by their firm and steadfast trust in God. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)
What is faith?
The word faith is sometimes used for the object of faith, for the thing to be believed; as when it is said in Acts, A great company of priests were obedient to the faith. But it is quite evident, from the whole series of the examples by which the definition is followed, that it is not of the thing believed, but of the act of believing, that the apostle speaks in the chapter before us. Yet when used of the act of believing, faith will be found to have different senses. Thus it is applied to what may be called historical faith--a bare assent to the truths revealed in Scripture; and this would seem to be the strict use of the term when St. James says, Faith, if it have not works, is dead. Then, besides historical faith, there is what may be called temporary faith--faith which for a time seems productive of true fruits, and then comes to nothing. There is also another kind of faith mentioned in the New Testament; but it does not similarly occur amongst ourselves. This is what divines call the faith of miracles, belief in some particular promise or power, through which, whether as an instrument or as a condition, some supernatural work is wrought. Many had faith in Christs power to heal their bodies who knew nothing of Him as the Physician of their souls. But, confining ourselves to the cases of historical faith and temporary faith, as being those which are but too likely to pass with us for saving faith, will either of the two answer strictly to the definition which constitutes our text? Let us look carefully at the definition. It consists of two parts; and the one is not to be considered as a mere repetition of, or a different way of putting the other. First, the apostle calls faith the substance of things hoped for. Now things hoped for are things which have no present subsistence; so far as our enjoyment or possession of them is concerned, they must be future. But faith, the apostle says, is the substance of things hoped for. It is that which gives a present being to these things. It takes them out of the shadowy region of probability, and brings them into that of actual reality. Faith is, moreover, the evidence of things not seen. By things not seen we understand such as are not to be ascertained to us by our senses, or even by our reason--not seen either by the eye of the body or by the far more powerful eyeof the mind. These are the truths and facts revealed to as by the Word of God, and of which, independently on that Word, we must have remained wholly ignorant. Its province is with invisible things, and of these it is the evidence--the demonstration, or conviction--as the original word signifies. It serves as a glass by which we can see what we cannot see without a glass; not putting stars where there are none, but enabling us to find them where we saw none. Now will the historical faith, or the temporary faith answer to this description of faith? We may put out the case of temporary faith, for this is excluded not so much by not corresponding to the definition while it lasts, as by not lasting. We may not be able to show its defects while alive, but we can of course detect them when dead. But historical faith--the believing what is represented of Jesus Christ, in the same sense, mode, or degree as they believe what is represented of Julius Caesar--this, which passes with many men for the faith which Scripture demands--will this answer to the Scriptural definition of faith? Is, then, this historical faith the substance of things hoped for? Nay, the heart, the affections must be interested, before there can be things hoped for. And, by a similar brief process, we may prove the want of correspondence between historical faith and the second clause of St. Pauls definition. Is such faith the evidence of things not seen? Does it make things not seen as certain to a man as things seen?--for this is the force of the definition. Does it, for example, make hell, which is not seen, as certain to the sinner as the gallows, which is seen, to the criminal given over to the executioner? None of you will maintain this. Unseen things, which, if they exist at all, must immeasurably transcend things seen, cannot be as certain to a man as things seen, if that man give them not the preference, and far more if he treat them with neglect: Now this turns the definition in our text to good account, forasmuch as it operates to the separating historical faith from saving faith, the faith of the great mass of men from that intended by the apostle when he said, For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness. If, then, we now turn to justifying faith, we shall have to give it a seat in the heart as well as the mind--and see whether this will not make it correspond with the apostles definition. And when a man thus believes with the heart as well as with the mind, faith will be to him the substance of things hoped for. The things on which his expectation rests will be the things promised in the Bible. These, as the chief good, will seem to him immeasurably preferable to any good already in possession. They will, therefore, be the objects of his hope. But will they be mere shadows, brilliant and beautiful, but perhaps only meteors, which may cheat him to the last, and vanish within his grasp? Not so; faith gives them a present subsistence. And this faith is moreover the evidence of things not seen; it gives to the invisible the sort of power possessed by the visible. A thing may be unseen and yet have just the same power as if it were seen. Let me be only sure that a man concealed by a curtain is taking aim at me with a murderous intent, and I am moved with the same fear, and make the same spring for my life, as if the curtain were away and I were face to face with the assassin. Now faith takes away the curtain; not that faith which is only the assent of the understanding, for this may leave me indifferent as to the emotions of the mind, but that faith which, having its seat in the affections, must excite dread of danger and desire to escape. This faith takes away the curtain; not so, indeed, as to make the man visible, but so as to make me as sure of his being there, and with the purpose of bloodshed, as if he were visible. Therefore is such a faith the conviction of things not seen; and the believer, he who believes in Gods Word with the heart as well as with the understanding, may be said, in virtue of that great principle, to draw back the veil which to every other eye hangs so darkly between the temporal and the spiritual, and therefore suited to inspire him with confidence. It is in this way, then, that faith, which is such an assent of the mind to the truth of Gods Word as flows into the heart, and causes the soul to build upon that Word, answers thoroughly to both parts of that definition of faith which St. Paul has ]aid down in our text. But now you will say to me, Is this justifying faith? have I not rather given a description generally of faith, than of that particular faith which is represented as appropriating the blessings of the gospel? Not so. True, saving faith has for its object the whole revealed truth of God, though we call it justifying faith, as it fixes specially on the promise of remission of sins by the Lord Jesus Christ. It may be my faith in one particular declaration or doctrine which justifies me, but, nevertheless, my faith in that one particular doctrine is noways different from my faith in every other doctrine similarly announced and similarly established. The things hoped for from Christ are especially the pardon of sin, the gift of righteousness, and admission to the kingdom of heaven. Of these things is faith the substance; to these it gives a sure and present subsistence, making them as though not only promised, but performed; so strong while faith is in true exercise, is the sense of acceptance, the assurance of being heirs of God, yea, joint heirs with Christ. And the things not seen are the past work of Christ in His humiliation and the present work of Christ in His glory. But of these things not seen faith is the evidence or conviction. The believer is just as sure of Christs having died for him, as if he had seen Him die; just as sure of Christs ever living for him, as if, with Stephen, he saw heaven open and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. There is, however, one caution which should be here introduced; for otherwise, whilst we wish to give instruction, we may but darken knowledge, and minister to anxiety. You are not to confound faith and assurance, as though no man could be saved by believing, unless he believe himself saved. It seems, says Archbishop Usher, that justifying faith consisteth in these two things, in having a mind to know Christ and a will to rest upon Him; and whosoever sees so much excellency in Christ, that thereby he is drawn to embrace Him as the only rock of salvation, that man truly believes unto justification. Yet it is not necessary to justification to be assured that my sins are pardoned and that I am justified, for that is no act of faith as it justifieth, but an effect and fruit that followeth after justification. For no man is justified by believing that he is justified--he must be justified before he can believe it; no man is pardoned by believing that he is pardoned--he must be pardoned before he can believe it. Faith as it justifieth, is a resting upon Christ to obtain pardon. But assurance, which is not faith in Christ, but rather faith in my faith, may, or may not follow on the justifying faith. You see, then, that our text accurately defines what is justifying faith, though it does not distinguish that faith from faith generally, neither does it leave us to confound it with assurance. You are not to go away and say, Oh! saving faith is something altogether strange and mystical, unlike any other species of faith; it is not a kind by itself, it is peculiar only in its object. All faith which is not merely historical, is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen; and he who has this faith in the truth that God made him, has the principle of which he has but to change the direction, and he has faith in the truth that Christ redeemed him. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
Faith:
This is the only place in the Bible where we have what we can call a definition of faith. That faith which is the foundation of all other Christian graces--the title by which we keep our place as Christians--the inward working which has its fruit in good works--the hand by which we lay hold on God and on Christ, is here said to be the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen; and by substance, no doubt, is here meant firm confidence, and by evidence is meant conviction. Faith is the laying hold of the future in the midst of the present, of the unseen in the midst of the seen. It is this which marks the true disciple of Christ, that he walks by faith and not by sight. If the world were what it ought to be, there would be little trial of this faith. But though the world was made very good, and though all that cannot be touched by the influence of our sins is still very good, yet the world, as we have made it, is by no means like the handiwork of God. We see all around us a strange contradiction to what we are told, that justice, and truth, and goodness are the most precious of all things known to man. We see often wrong prevail over right; we see the highest honour constantly given to what we know not to be the highest desert; we see mere strength, whether of body or mind, receive the consideration which ought to be reserved for real goodness. How often do we see plain instances of the success of mere rude strength; sometimes of forwardness; sometimes eve,, of cunning and want of strict truth. Nor is this all. Besides this incessant evidence that good does not govern the world, we are perpetually betrayed in the same thought by a traitor within ourselves. At every moment temptation comes; and the temptation is ever close at hand; the evil consequences of yielding seem far away. However much we may be convinced that in the end obedience to duty is better than sin, we find it hard to remember our conviction at the moment that it is wanted. But in the midst of all this, in spite of what our eyes perpetually tell us, and in spite of the strange forgetfulness which our inclinations perpetually cast over Us, in spite of contradictions without and weakness within, there is a voice from the depths of our own souls that never ceases to repeat that right is really stronger than wrong, and truth is better than falsehood, and justice is surer than injustice. To believe this voice, and to obey it; to surrender to it the guidance of the life in the firm conviction that it will guide us to the true end of our being; to do this is faith. This trusting to the voices that speak within, even when they flatly contradict the voices that speak without, is obviously not peculiar to Christians. The Jew had put into his hands the Word of God as far as it was then written. He was put under a system which God had commanded to be observed. Both in one and in the other he found much that was unintelligible, much that seemed either without a purpose or with a purpose not worth pursuit. Through all that was strange and dark, and even contradictory, it was impossible not to know in his heart that the Spirit which inspired the Bible was the same Spirit as that which sometimes whispered and sometimes thundered in his own conscience, an authority which he could not awe, and could not influence, entering into the very secrets of his soul, and yet no part of himself, and that this Spirit was the voice of God. To throw himself unreservedly on the power which was thus revealed to him, both from within and from without, to accept with unconditional submission the guidance of that Word: of God which was, in fact, the fuller expansion of the message given by conscience, to trust in Him who was thus revealed, in spite of every trial and every temptation; this was the faith of the Jew. Their revelation was imperfect. There still remained one question unanswered. The enemy which is hardest for us to encounter is not after all the sight of this worlds wrong and injustice. It is when conscience, at the very moment of demanding our obedience, proclaims also our sinfulness. We would believe, and live by our belief, in spite of all the contradictions and evil with which the world is filled: but we are so weak, so wicked, so hampered with the fetters both of nature and of habit. Will that awful voice, whose authority we dare not doubt, really lead us to peace or to our own destruction? The gospel gave the answer. We read there of One whose life, and words, and death force us to confess that He is the express image of that Father of whom our own conscience, and the prophets of old, have ever told us. We read of One who laid hold on human nature and made it His own, and consecrated it with a Divine power. We read His promises exactly corresponding to that very need which our souls feel every day more keenly. And all this is written down not merely in words but in the deeds of a history such as never man passed through beside, of a history whose every word touches some feeling of our heart, echoes some whisper of our spirit. He bids us surrender ourselves to Him, following His leading, trust in His protection, His power; He promises us by sure, though it may be by slow degrees, but with the certainty of absolute assurance, to join us to His Father and to Himself: He promises not merely to undo some day the riddle of the world, and give the good and the just a visible triumph over the evil and the wrong, but, what we need much more, He promises to give us the victory over sin within ourselves, and to prove to us that God has forgiven us by the infallible token of His having cleansed us. To throw ourselves on these promises, to purify ourselves in the full assurance that Christs love can carry us through all that we shall encounter, to cling to Christ not only in spite of pain and darkness, and strange perplexity, but in spite of our own sins also, this is our substance of things hoped for, this is our evidence of things not seen, this is Christian faith. This is, St. John tells us, the victory which overcometh the world. This is the power which, both in great things and in small, both in hard trials and in easy, ever supports the disciple of Christ by bringing within his reach all the strength of his Master. (Bp. Temple.)
Faith defined:
I. FAITH IS THE CONFIDENT PERSUASION OF UNSEEN THINGS. The word translated substance occurs in Heb_3:14; 2Co_9:4; 2Co_11:17, and is translated confidence. The word translated evidence is from a verb which signifies to convince. Faith is the confidence of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
1. Faith is not belief on the evidence of the senses.
2. Faith is not credulity. God is essential truth, then it is reasonable to repose in what He has said.
3. Faith is not a mere assent of the understanding.
II. FAITH IS THE SOURCE OF ALL SPIRITUAL ACHIEVEMENT. By it the elders achieved all that this chapter records. Faith was the secret of what they were and did.
1. The New Testament ascribes all Christian life to faith. Whosoever believeth shall not perish, &c.; sanctified by faith; this is the victory that,&c.; wherein believing ye rejoice, &c.; kept by the power, &c.
2. This is due to the fact that all Christian life is the result of heavenly influences, and faith lifts it into these. It raises the soul into the heavenly world; brings future things near, and makes Christ live before us. The effect of this on our spiritual nature is its development, like that of a tropical plant brought from a cold land into its native clime and proper conditions.
III. FAITH IS THE MEANS OF SECURING THE DIVINE COMMENDATION. Obtained a good report.
1. This shows our personal responsibility with regard to faith.
2. This is a strong consolation to infirm and secluded believers. (C. New.)
Saving faith:
There were those who one time asked the Saviour, What shall we do that we might work the works of God? To this He replied, This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent. The issue, then, between God and men is narrowed down to this--only believe.
I. THE MEANING OF THE TERM.
1. Sometimes the word refers merely to a creed, with no notion in it of spiritual experience at all (1Ti_4:1; Jud_1:3).
2. When the Bible speaks of faith, it sometimes means mere belief in facts (Heb_11:3). This kind of faith is necessary, in a certain sense, to salvation: for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. The facts of the Saviours life are to be received in that way. But this is not saving faith at all.
3. Again; faith sometimes means that conviction of the understanding which results from proofs laid before it, or arguments adduced. This is that which the woman wrought among her neighbours when she came back from the conversation with Jesus at Jacobs well. This also is the faith which Thomas had when asked to put his hand in the side of his Lord. But this is not saving faith; for our Lord immediately added, Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.
4. And sometimes the Bible means the faith of miracles. This was a peculiar gift, bestowed by Christ upon His immediate followers. Now, whatever was the nature of this peculiar endowment, it is evident enough that there was no grace in it to save the soul; for the Saviour Himself declared Mat_7:22-23).
5. Then, lastly, the Bible means saving faith; the true belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, through which we are justified, and by which we live.
II. THE NATURE OF THIS EXERCISE. The old writers used to say that faith was composed of three elements: a right apprehension, a cordial assent, and an unwavering trust. Let me seek to exhibit these in turn in a very familiar way.
1. To apprehend is really a physical act, and means to seize hold of. When applied to mental operation, it signifies to conceive clearly any given object, and hold it before the mind for examination and use. It does not always include a full comprehension. A drowning man may catch a rope that hangs near him, and be rescued by it, without knowing who threw it to him, or who will draw it in, or what vessel it trails from. He apprehends it, but he does not comprehend it. He sees it, but he does not see all with which it is connected. The two essential things for every man to apprehend, are his own need and Jesus Christs fitness to supply it. There is the inward look, and then there is the outward look. I cannot help myself, and the Saviour can help me are the two thoughts that must lie buried deep in his soul. It matters little how these things are learned.
2. Then comes the second element of faith, already mentioned--namely, assent. This is a step in advance of the other. A simple illustration will make plain what is meant by it. An invalid is sometimes very unwilling to admit his danger, even when he has nothing to oppose to the reasoning of one who proves it. He feels his weakness, but he resorts to a thousand subterfuges to avoid yielding to the physician. His judgment is convinced, but his will is unbroken. He apprehends his danger, and knows the remedy; but he refuses to be helped. What he needs now is assent; and this requires humility and the renunciation of self-will. Faith includes this. It calls for a cheerful submission to Gods requirements, the moment we apprehend them, no matter how humiliating the assertion of our ill-desert may be.
3. The third element of saving faith is trust. By this I mean reliance on the truth of what God said He would do; a quiet resting on His promises to accomplish all we need for salvation.
III. THE USE TO BE MADE OF THIS ANALYSIS comes next to view. Your experience hitherto has been something like this. You have seen your need; you have gone in prayer to Jesus confessing it. You said in your prayer, O Lord, I am vile, I come to Thee; I plead Thy promise that Thou wilt not cast me out; I give myself away in an everlasting surrender; I leave my soul at the very foot of the Cross! And then you rose from your knees, murmuring, Oh, I am no better; I feel just the same as before! You saw that you had made a failure. Now, where was the lack? Simply in the particular of trust. You would not take Jesus at His word. When you have given yourself to Christ, leave yourself there, and go about your work as a child in His household. When He has undertaken your salvation, rest assured He will accomplish it, without any of your anxiety, or any of your help. There remains enough for you to do, with no concern for this part of the labour. Let me illustrate this posture of mind as well as I can. A shipmaster was once out for three nights in a storm; close by the harbour, he yet dared not attempt to go in, and the sea was too rough for the pilot to come aboard. Afraid to trust the less experienced sailors, he himself stood firmly at the helm. Human endurance almost gave way before the unwonted strain. Worn with toil, beating about; worn yet more with anxiety for his crew and cargo; he was well-nigh relinquishing the wheel, and letting all go awreck, when he saw the little boat coming with the pilot. At once that hardy sailor sprang on the deck, and with scarcely a word took the hehn in his hand. The captain went immediately below, for food and for rest; and especially for comfort to the passengers, who were weary with apprehension. Plainly now his duty was in the cabin; the pilot would care for the ship. Where had his burden gone? The masters heart was as light as a schoolboys; he felt no pressure. The pilot, too, seemed perfectly unconcerned; he had no distress. The great load of anxiety had gone for ever; fallen in some way or other between them. Now turn this figure. We are anxious to save our soul, and are beginning to feel more and more certain that we cannot save it. Then comes Jesus, and undertakes to save it for us. We see how willing He is; we know how able He is; there we leave it. We let Him do it. We rest on His promise to do it. We just put that work in His hands to do all alone; and we go about doing something else; self-improvement, comfort to others, doing good of every sort. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)
Faith convinced of the invisible
I. No faith will carry us through the difficulties of our profession, from oppositions within and without, giving us constancy and perseverance therein unto the end, BUT THAT ONLY WHICH GIVES THE GOOD THINGS HOPED FOR A REAL SUBSISTENCE IN OUR MINDS AND SOULS. But when by mixing itself with the promise which is the foundation of hope, it gives us a taste of their goodness, an experience of their power, the inhabitation of their first-fruits, and a view of their glory, it will infallibly effect this blessed end.
II. The peculiar specificial nature of faith, whereby it is differenced from all other powers, acts, and graces in the mind, lies in this, THAT IT MAKES A LIFE ON THINGS INVISIBLE. It is not only conversant about them, but mixeth itself with them, making them the spiritual nourishment of the soul (2Co_4:18).
III. THE GLORY OF OUR RELIGION IS, THAT IT DEPENDS ON AND IS RESOLVED INTO VISIBLE THINGS. They are far more excellent and glorious than anything that sense can behold or reason discover (1Co_2:9).
IV. GREAT OBJECTIONS ARE APT TO LIE AGAINST INVISIBLE THINGS, WHEN THEY ARE EXTERNALLY REVEALED. Man would desirously live the life of sense, or at least believe no more than what he can have a scientifical demonstration of. But by these means we cannot have an evidence of invisible things; at best, not such as may have an influence into our Christian profession. This is done by faith alone.
1. Faith is that gracious power of the mind, whereby it firmly assents unto Divine revelations, upon the sole authority of God the revealer, as the first essential truth, and fountain of all truth.
2. It is by faith that all objections against invisible things, their being and reality, are answered and refuted.
3. Faith brings into the soul an experience of their power and efficacy, whereby it is cast into the mould of them, or made conformable unto them Rom_6:17; Eph_4:21-23). (John Owen, D. D.)
Shadow and substance
I. THE HOPE OF ATTAINING A PERFECT LIFE IS ONLY TO BE REALISED BY FAITH IN CHRIST.
II. THE HOPE OF PERFECTING OUR LIFE-WORK CAN ONLY BE REALISED BY FAITH IN CHRIST.
III. THE HOPE OF PERFECTING OUR HAPPINESS IS ONLY TO BE REALISED BY FAITH IN CHRIST. (R. Balgarnie, D. D.)
Faith;
First, then, this chapter shows us the different ways and modes of the working of faith. And secondly, it speaks to all characters of persons, showing the manner in which faith will affect particular characters. New men declare faith to be unreasonable. Acting on trust! says a godless man, how strange a mode of acting! Surely those who do it are trusting to some vague fancy or feeling, they scarce know what, and call it faith. I answer, Although the thing which we believe, the object of faith, is most marvellous, yet faith itself, belief in the object, is no such strange or unusual thing. Every man constantly acts on faith, and the very man who laughs at another for acting on faith acts on faith himself every day.
1. That man trusts his memory. He does not now see or feel what he did yesterday, yet he has no doubt it happened as he remembers it.
2. Again, when a man reasons he trusts his reasoning powers; he knows one thing is true, and sees clearly that another follows from that. For example, he sees long shadows on the ground; then he knows the sun or moon is shining without looking round to see. But some one raises an objection. He says, Very true; but in memory, reason, and daily life we trust ourselves; in religion we trust the word of another, and that is hard. But there is no real difficulty. In this world we act on the evidence of others. What do we know without trusting others? Are there not towns and cities within fifty miles of us we never saw, yet we fully believe they are there. (E. Munro.)
Faith:
Out of the first clause let me observe--That a lively faith doth give such a reality and present being to things hoped for and yet to come, as if they were already actually enjoyed. And thus it is said of Abraham Joh_8:56).
I. How DOES FAITH GIVE A SUBSISTENCE OR PRESENT BEING TO THINGS HOPED FOR? How can we be said to have that happiness which we do but expect?
1. By a lively hope it doth as it were sip of the cup of blessing, and foretaste those eternal delights which God hath prepared for us, and affects the heart with the certain expectation of them, as if they were enjoyed. It appears by the effect of this hope, which is rejoicing with joy unspeakable and full of glory (1Pe_1:8).
2. Faith takes possession, and gives a being to the things hoped for in the promises. There is not only the union of hope, but a clear right and title; God hath passed over all those things to us in the covenant of grace. When we take hold of the promises, we take hold of the blessing promised by the root of it, until it flows up to full satisfaction. Hence those expressions, believers are said to layhold of eternal life (1Ti_6:12-19), by which their right is secured to them; And he that heareth My words, and believeth in Me, hath eternal life (Joh_5:24). Christ doth not only say, He shall have eternal life, but he hath a clear right and title to it, which is as sure as sense, though not as sweet. Faith gives us heaven, because in the promise it gives us a title to heaven; we are sure to have that to which we have a title; he hath a grant, Gods Word to assure him of it. He is said to haste an estate that hath the conveyance of it, but it is not necessary he should carry his land upon his back.
3. We have it in our Head. That is a Christians tenure; he holds all in his head by Christ. Though he be not glorified in his own person, he is glorified in his Head, in Jesus Christ. Therefore as Christs glorification is past, so in a sense a believers glorification is past; the Head cannot rise, and ascend, and be glorified without the members (Eph_2:6).
4. Faith gives being in the first-fruits. The Israelites had not only a right to Canaan given them by God, but had livery of Canaan, where the spies did not only make report of the goodness of the land, but brought the clusters of grapes with them; so doth God deal with a believing soul, not only give it a right, but give it some first-fruits. A believing soul hath the beginnings of that estate which it hopes for; some clusters of Eschol by way of foretaste in the midst of present miseries and difficulties. This is the great love of God to us, that He would give us something of heaven here upon earth, that He wil make us enter upon our happiness by degrees.
II. THE BENEFIT AND ADVANTAGE OF THIS ACT, AND THE USE OF FAITH IN THE SPIRITUAL LIFE.
1. It is very necessary we should have such a faith as should substantiate our hopes, to check sensuality, for we find the corrupt heart of man is all for present satisfaction. And though the pleasures of sin be short and inconsiderable, yet because they are near at hand, they take more with us than the joys of heaven, which are future and absent.
2. It gives strength and support to all the graces of the spiritual life. The great design of religion is to bring us to a neglect of present happiness, and to make the soul to look after a felicity yet to come; and the great instrument of religion, by which it promoteth this design, is faith, which is as the scaffold and ladder to the spiritual building.
Use 1. To examine whether you have this kind of faith or no, which is the substance of things hoped for. To discover how little of this faith there is in the world, consider
(1) Many men say they believe, but alas, what influence have their hopes upon them? Do they engage them as things present and sensible do?
(2) You may discern it by your carriage in any trial and temptation. When heaven and the world come in competition, can you deny present carnal advantages upon the hopes of eternity? do you forsake all as knowing you shall have a thousand times better in another world?
(3) If faith do substantiate your hopes, though you do not receive present satisfaction, you may discern it by this, you will entertain the promises with much respect and delight. Are they dear and precious to you? You would embrace the promises if you looked upon them as the root of the blessing.
(4) You may discern it by this, the mind will often run upon your hopes. Where the thing is strongly expected, the end and aim of your expectation will still be present with you. Thoughts are the spies and messengers of the soul. Hope sends them out after the thing expected, and love after the thing beloved.
(5) You may discern it by your weanedness from the world. They that know heaven to be their home reckon the world a strange country.
(6) There will not be such a floating and instability in their expectation. You have already blessedness in the root, in the promises; and though there be not assurance, there will be an affiance, and repose of the mind upon God: if there be not rest in your souls, yet there will be a resting upon God, and a quiet expectation of the things hoped for. Faith is satisfied with the promise, and quietly hopes for the performance of it in Gods due time Lam_3:26).
Use 2. To exhort you to work up faith to such an effect, that it may be the substance of things hoped for.
(1) Work it up in a way of meditation. Let your minds be exercised in the contemplation of your hopes (Mat_6:21).
(2) Work it up in a way of argumentation. Faith is a reasoning grace (verse 19).
(3) Work it up in a way of expectation. Look for it, long for it, wait for it Tit_2:13; Jud_1:21).
(4) Work it up in a way of supplication. Put in thy claim--Lord! I take hold of the grace offered in the gospel; and desire the Lord to secure thy Psa_73:24).
(5) Work it up in a way of close and solemn application. In the Lords supper, there thou comest by some solemn rites to take possession of the privileges of the covenant, and by these rites and ceremonies which God hath appointed, to enter ourselves heirs to all the benefits purchased by Christ, and conveyed in the covenant, especially to the glory of heaven; there you come to take the cup of blessing as a pledge of the new wine in your Fathers kingdom (Mat_26:29). God here reacheth out to us by deed, our instrument, which was by promise due to every believing sinner before.
(6) Work it up in your conversations by constant spiritual diligence. Is heaven sure, so sure as if we had it already, and shall I be idle? Oh what contriving, striving, fighting, is there to get a step higher in the world! How insatiable are men in the prosecution of their lusts I and shall I do nothing for heaven, and show no diligence in pursuing my great happiness!
Use 3. To press you to get this faith. There are some means and duties that have a tendency hereunto.
(1) There must be a serious consideration of Gods truth, as it is backed with His absolute power.
(2) You must relieve faith by experiences: by considering what is past we may more easily believe that which is to come. (T. Manton, D. D.)
Faith a substance
I. FAITH IS A SUBSTANCE. I know this is not generally received, for such are the vague, carnal, infidel notions that are abroad in the world, that not a grace of the Holy Spirit is owned; and instead of faith being admitted to be a principle of grace, it is spoken of as natures actings, and is sometimes said to consist merely in the credence of a revealed fact. An opposite party, however, makes faith to consist in a crouching, a cringing, and a conformity to a crafty priesthood. Now I have no such faith as either of these. The one is the faith of the infidel; the other is the faith of heathenism. And they neither of them have any substance. I want a faith that will manifest itself as having substance. I have seen it printed that faith is nothing more than the credence of a revealed fact. But we know that infidels and devils have that sort of faith; for infidels credit thousands of revealed facts, and cannot deny them as matters of fact, yet they have no faith after all. Faith is a substance; and they who are taken up with shadows and vanities do not know the value of it. They cannot value it. They cannot possess it. Faith is a substance worth more than all the misers stores, than all the monarchs revenue, than all the wealth of India. Faith is a substance that can never be frittered away. It overcomes all the world, repels all the devils in hell, and lays hold on eternal life. But, most probably, you will better understand what I mean by this substance of faith if I lead your attention to its origin and its object. Its origin: It grows not in natures garden. It is not the produce of the schools. It is not hereditary from father to son. It is far above that. Like every good gift, and every perfect gift, it cometh down from the Father of Lights. It is of the operation of the Holy Ghost, and its object will prove its substance. Its object is Christ; the Person of Christ; the official character of Christ; the perfect work of Christ; the covenant headship of Christ. And the faith of Gods elect fastens on all these. Further, the object of faith lies greatly in the enjoyment of Christ as well as in confidence in Him. And this will perhaps bring the nature of your faith to the test better than any other principle. I must have a Christ who will bring heaven to me on earth in the enjoyment of Him here. And this will prove whether your faith is a substance or not. The soul which possesses this living, saving faith, sighs, waits, and cannot be satisfied without the sensible enjoyment of the presence of Christ. That faith which is a substance hath a saving power communicated with it. Hence it is called, sometimes properly, sometimes improperly, a saving faith. Bring your faith up to this test again. It is spiritual faith--the substance of things hoped for, that discovers all that is in Christ; the wisdom, the righteousness, the sanctification, and the redemption that are in Him: the pardon, the peace, the justification, the joy, the security, the victories, the triumphs of all the Church of God in Christ, seen wholly in His Person.
II. This saving faith which so discovers and appropriates Is SURE TO GO AND PLEAD BEFORE THE THRONE IN EXERCISE; for whatsoever is not of faith is sin, and cannot be acceptable before God; and there it pleads the merits, the name, the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ for acceptance, relying upon the declaration of the precious Lord Himself, All things whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, believing, ye shall receive. Now I pray you let us look closely into this substance, and raise the inquiry, Does it belong to me? Faith is the substance of things hoped for. Then the first part of the interrogation here would be, What are the things that I hope for? I know if I were to ask the worldling this question, he would reply that he thinks upon worldly prospects, emoluments, and personal gratifications. But not so the Christian; not so the household of faith. Well, now, if I might simplify this, and put it in the plainest possible manner, I should say that the believer hopes to know more and to enjoy more of Christ to-day than he did yesterday, or than ever he had done before. Faith is the substance of it. The believer in Jesus hopes to be more conformed to the image of Christ; that as he has borne the image of the earthly, he shall also bear the image of the heavenly. Faith is the substance of that. The believer in Jesus--the real Christian--hopes to attain to more intimacy with heaven and to have a measure of heaven began in the soul on earth. Let us inquire as regards experimental participation. There is such a thing as the joy of faith. There is such a thing as the triumph of faith. There is such a thing as the race of faith, and it is always a winning race. There are joys experienced in this substance which none but the possessor can know. I hasten on to mark its sanctifying operations. The apostle says concerning this, in his account of the progress of the gospel, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, that God put no difference between Jews and Gentiles, purifying--mark the expression--purifying their hearts by faith. That faith that will not purify the heart, is not the substance. It may illumine your head till you are giddy; it may enlighten your understanding till you are as proud as Lucifer; it may inflame your pride as a professor till you are as vain as the devil can wish you to be; but if it does not purify the heart, it is not of God--purifying their hearts by faith.
III. I will now proceed to speak of THE WEALTH WHICH THIS FAITH REALISES. It is a substance. Now, most people are ready to travel a good many miles in order to learn how to acquire wealth. They forego much carnal ease to get riches. But, after all, they make a terrible mistake. This is not true wealth. Riches make to themselves wings, they fly away, and defy all control. But the wealth which faith realises is altogether of a different kind. It has no wings. It is not subject to thieves. It cannot be hoarded up and be useless to its possessor; for it is that good principle which works by love. And thus faith realises the inheritance both of grace and of glory, and by it the title deeds to both are clearly read and lodged in the bosom of Deity. Oh, happy man, who goes so far in the attainment of faith! The wealth which faith realises is an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for all who are kept by the power of God through faith. I am not fond of relating anecdotes in the pulpit, but I cannot refrain on the present occasion from telling you one which I heard from my dear fathers lips when I was a boy. It was of a godly man who possessed much wealth, and used it for the glory of God, but who lived to prove that he could not clip its wings. All flew away, and he was reduced to living in a furnished room, where he was supported entirely by the charity of his friends. One of his visitors who had been very kind to him, once asked him this question, How is it that I find you to be as happy now as when you were in possession of all your wealth? His immediate answer was, When I possessed all this worlds goods I enjoyed God in all; and now I possess none I enjoy all in God. Now that is faith; that is substance; a fine specimen, a fine witness of it. (J. Irons.)
Faith
1. Faith is the confidence--the firm persuasion--of things hoped for. In the ancient games the runner hoped to win the race, to wear the crown of pine or olive leaves around his brow, and to have his name handed down as victor to untold generations; so, in the confidence of this, he strained every nerve and sinew to reach the goal. That was natural faith. The student hopes to win the prize and find his name in the honours list, and he gives his days and nights to reading. The farmer ploughs the land and sows the field, in hope that in due season he shall put in the sickle and gather the harvest. The merchant and tradesman hope to gain a competency or to make a fortune, and put forth their efforts day by day. These are illustrations of natural faith. So it is with the faith that has to do with spiritual things. The Christian sets before him, not the crown of fading leaves, but the crown that shall never fade away, which the Lord will place upon the brow of all who endure unto the end. He seeks for the smile and approbation of the Saviour, for the treasures in heaven, for the bags which wax not old. This is spiritual faith.
2. Faith is the demonstration of things not seen. Columbus believed that there was another world in the western hemisphere; he was as fully assured of its existence as if it had been demonstrated by mathematical proof. Yet he had not seen the new world; he had never looked upon its mighty rivers, or upon the broad expanse of its prairies and savannahs. He had not ever seen in the dim distance the peak of any of its mountains, or the outline of its coast. No navigator had told him, I have seen the new world; I have cast anchor in its harbours; I have set foot upon it. Yet, in the full conviction that there was another world, he toiled and waited many years, until his eye rested upon it and he landed on its shores. This was natural faith--the demonstration of things not seen. Some years ago the astronomers, Mr. Adams of Cambridge, and M. Leverries of Paris, were convinced that there must be a large planet that had never been seen through a telescope or marked down in any star-map; so they watched the midnight heavens in a certain direction until the planet came within the range of their glass. This was the way the planet Neptune was discovered. This was natural faith. It is even so with the faith that has to do with spiritual things. God is unseen; His glory is dimly reflected in His works. We see the work of His fingers in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. Creation is a book in which we may read, page after page, His handwriting, His own Divine autograph; but the Almighty Writer is unseen. In the flowers of the field we see the forms of beauty which He has pencilled and coloured and enamelled; the Divine Artist we see not. We stand and gaze with wonder and admiration upon a part of this beautiful temple of creation, but we see not the Divine Architect; yet, as in St. Pauls Cathedral, we read of the architect, Sir Christopher Wren, If you seek his monument, look around, so we see in the skill and wisdom displayed in this glorious creation the monument of the Almighty Builder. We believe that God is, and that He is the Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. We believe in the great love which He has towards us, which He has revealed in Jesus Christ; that, like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him; that He watches over us by day and by night, that His ear is open to our prayer, His arm stretched out for our defence. We believe that He is present with us in the house of prayer, and we can say with the confidence of Jacob, Surely the Lord is in this place, &c. We believe that He has given to us exceeding great and precious promises, that we may be partakers of the Divine nature; and that, although the heaven and the earth pass away, not one of these promises will fail. We believe in an unseen Saviour, &c. (W. Bull, B. A.)
Evangelical faith
I. THE THINGS TOWARDS WHICH FAITH IS DIRECTED ARE INVISIBLE.
II. SOME OF THE INVISIBLE THINGS ARE AT ONCE DESIRABLE AND ATTAINABLE.
III. THOSE INVISIBLE THINGS, WHICH ARE DESIRABLE AND ATTAINABLE, FAITH MAKES POWERFUL IN THE PRESENT LIFE. (Homilist.)
The value and importance of faith
Faith is the source of all truly religious feeling, and the ground of all acceptable service. Without it we can neither come to God nor perform any work which is acceptable to Him.
1. Faith is the condition of justification: Being justified by faith; He that believeth is not condemned; he that believeth not is condemned already.
2. It is the source of spiritual life: The just shall live by faith. He that believeth hath everlasting life; he that believeth not shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.
3. It puts us in possession of every Christian privilege.
(1) The gift of the Spirit: Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? … In whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy spirit of promise.
(2) Adoption into the Divine family: To as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name; Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
(3) Peace with God and peace of mind: Being justified by faith we have peace with God; He that believeth shall not make haste. Joy in God: In whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.
4. It is the source of all Christian feeling and action. Our hearts are purified by faith. Our prayers to be acceptable must be offered in faith. If we would ask successfully, we must ask in faith, nothing wavering. (W. Landels, D. D.)
What is faith:
Faith has many workings, many results, many frets--and some select one of these and call it faith itself. But the text goes to the source when it says, What faith is this. The word here rendered substance, means properly the act of standing under so as to support something. Thus in philosophical writings it was applied to the essence which forms, as it were, the substratum of the attributes; that supposed absolute existence (of thing or person) in which all the properties and qualities, so to say, inhere, and have their consistence. In this way the word is once applied in Scripture, in the third verse of this Epistle, to the essence of God Himself, and the Divine Son is said to be the express image of His person--the very impress, as it might be otherwise rendered, of His essence. But there was another use of the word, in which it meant the act of the mind in standing under (so as to support, and bear the weight of) some statement or communication, making, as we say, a heavy demand upon the faculty of believing. It thus passes from the idea of substance into that of assurance or confidence. It is thus used by St. Paul in two passages of the second Epistle to the Corinthians, where he speaks of his confidence in the readiness of their alms-giving, and again of the confidence of his glorying, though it be in weakness, about himself. And so, once again, in the third chapter of this Epistle to the Hebrews, we find the expression, If we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end. There can be no question as to the meaning of the word in the verse now before us. Faith is the assurance of (confidence in) things hoped for. Faith is that principle, that exercise of mind and soul, which has for its object things not seen but hoped for, and which, instead of sinking under them as too ponderous, whether from their difficulty or from their uncertainty, stands firm under them--supports and sustains their pressure--in other words, is assured of, confides in and relies on them. It is not the Christian only who lives by faith. Faith is no dreamy, imaginative, or mystical thing, which it is fanciful if not fanatical to talk of. The schoolboy who expects a holiday, to be earned by his diligence or forfeited by his misconduct, exercises faith in that expectation the husbandman who expects the harvest is exercising that confidence in things hoped for which is faith. The parent who anticipates the manhood of his child is an example of that walking by faith which only madmen and fools disparage or dispense with. When Christ bids us to be men of faith, He is not contradicting nature, He is not even introducing into the world a new principle of action; He is only applying a principle as old as Nature herself, to matters beyond and above nature, which it needed a new revelation from the God of nature to disclose and to prove to us. If this proof be given us, it becomes as reasonable to anticipate and to prepare for eternity as it is reasonable to anticipate and to prepare for a holiday or a harvest, a wedding, or a profession. Faith is confidence in things hoped for; and whether the expected future be a later day of this life, or a day which shall close this life and usher in an everlasting existence, the principle which takes account of that future is one and the same--only debased or elevated, profaned or consecrated, by the length of the vision and by the character of the object. We must walk by faith if we would not be the scorn and laughingstock of our generation. The only question is, What, for us, are those things hoped for, which faith makes its object? Are they the trifles of time, or are they the substances of eternity? Are they the amusements, the vanities, the luxuries, the ambitions, which make up the life of earth--or are they the grand, the satisfying, the everlasting realities which God has revealed to us in His Son Jesus Christ--such as the forgiveness of sins, peace with God, victory over evil, the communion of saints, a growing likeness to Christ, a death full of hope, and a blessed immortality in Gods presence? (Dean Vaughan.)
Faith the substance and evidence:
An unseen and heavenly world is required to correspond to our faith just as much as a material world to correspond to our senses. I stand in the midst of nature on some lovely spring morning. The fragrance of flowers from every bright and waving branch, dressed in pale and crimson, floats to me. The song of matin birds falls on my ear. All this beauty, melody, and richness are the correspondence to my nature of the material world through my senses. Now there are inward perceptions and intuitions just as real as these outward ones, and requiring spiritual realities to correspond with them, just as much as the eye requires the landscape, or as the ear asks for sounds of the winds and woods and streams, for the song of birds, or the dearer accents of the human voice. To meet and answer the very nature of man, a spiritual world, more refined modes of existence, action, happiness, must be, else his nature, satisfied and fed in one direction, and that the lowest, is belied and starved in another direction, and that the highest. But, without illustrating further, in this general way, the rooting of faith in the primary ground of our being, let me show the peculiar light in which the great doctrines and practical influences of religion are brought to us, by thus considering faith itself as the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. And first the great doctrine or fact of the being of a God is one of the things that corresponds to our faith, of which faith itself, as a faculty of the soul, is the basis and evidence. We want no other reason for believing in God. Faith itself is the reason, and the best reason. He that believeth hath the witness in himself. We need nothing put under our faith to support that, any more than under our direct outward perceptions, our positive knowledge, the dictates of our consciences, or the affections of our hearts, going forth to fix upon their appropriate objects. Like them, it is a radical part of our very constitution--only a part which Christ has come specially to bring out, enrich, and ennoble with the truth he utters, and the actual objects he presents. To the man in whom this principle or sentiment of faith is thus enlivened by meditation, prayer, and the whole stimulus of the gospel, the Supreme One does not appear simply as a first Cause, an original Creator, far back out of our present reach, but as the perpetual Sustainer and Renewer of all things, to whom he joins with the angelic choir of the poet in singing, Thy works are beautiful as on the first day. His God is near him, nay, with him; breathes upon him in the freshness of the morning; folds him tenderly in the shades of night, and answers every entreating or confiding desire which he silently ejaculates, with peace, sanctity, assurance that can be felt; the benediction from these covering heavens falling upon him like dew. As, sailing in northern latitudes, the needle dips to an unseen power, so his heart inclines to the unseen power of heaven and earth. With an ever-quickening sense of the Divine Being, comes also, through this vitally unfolded power of faith, the feeling of a share in the permanence of that Being; a persuasion, and, so far as in the flesh such a thing can be, realisation of the immortality of the soul. As we believe in the world below because we have senses, and not because somebody attempts logically to prove it to us, so we believe in the world above by the inner perceptions of faith. In fine, the same faith, while convincing us of this durableness of our real life, redeems us from the bondage of death, to which many, all their lifetime, are subject. Thus the apostle declares of Christ, that he abolished death. For just in the degree that, through a religious faith, the feeling of immortality grows in the soul, the death of the body loses power to disturb or alarm it. Principles and affections are developed, on which, we know and are inwardly assured, death cannot lay that icy finger which must chill every flowing drop in the circulation of animal life. The spirit, alive to its relations to God and to all pure beings, is conscious of nothing in common with the grave, has nothing that can be put into the grave save the temporary garment that it wears; and its mounting desires, its ardent love, its swelling hopes, its holy communings, are not stuff woven into the texture of that garment, but are as separable from it as the lamp from its clay vase, as the light of heaven from the clod it for a passing moment illumines. In fact, in this state of inward life, the ideas of the spirit and death, of dust and the soul, cannot be brought together, any more than can the ideas of virtue and colour, thought and material size. (C. A. Bartol.)
Faith, the substance of things hoped for:
It is a certain and evident fact that every one of us is living, every moment, in two worlds: a material world and a spiritual world. All nature, all with which our bodies only have to do is one; all thought and memory and hope, and the inner workings of the mind, all that lies far away out of sight, all beyond the grave, all that concerns other worlds than this, that is the other world. The spiritual world which we cannot see is as real as the material world which is always before us. The power which makes the spiritual world a fact, by which we realise it, is faith. And that power is one with which it has pleased God to endow us all for that end. And where that faith is in full exercise, the unseen becomes more real than the seen--for the seen can only be when it is actually present, and must cease with our natural life, while the unseen, though invisible now, will soon be all that we shall see, and will last for ever. Hence, faith, which is the sight of the mind, is a far greater thing than the sight of the eyes; for it has to do with the inner nature of a man which he carries with him everywhere, which is always going on: and it takes in, and makes real and present, God and heaven, and all that God hath said and done, or will say and will do; and all the grandnesses of the eternity. It makes substance of all these things, and gives evidence of our hope that these substances are ours. If I had to define faith I should call it a loving trust, a loving, personal approbation, merging into a holy life. But what is the groundwork of faith? what is its warrant? what justifies you in believing all this? Gods voice. How does Gods voice speak to me? Partly in His word, partly in His works, partly in His whisperings to my soul. There are two things which must never be forgotten about faith. The one is that though faith is a reasonable and intellectual exercise of the mind, nevertheless it lies more in the heart than in the head. It is not written without a distinct point and sufficient reason, The evil heart of unbelief. How can you believe and sin? The belief comes from God only. And the second and most important consideration is that all faith is a gift. However much you may read and study and think, you will never obtain faith except by prayer. It lies in the sovereignty of God. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)
Faith a sign of human progress:
Faith is really a sign of human progress. It is the first thing that distinguishes us from the beasts of the field. Let me use an illustration: If there is grass for the ox, the ox feeds; if there be none it dies. It knows nothing of tillage or preparation of the soil for its provender. It knows no future. So, in a measure, is it with the savage. In his rudest state he is only one step above the brute. He hunts for his food, or gathers the wild fruit of the earth. Then take the stage of human life next above this--the simple, wandering, pastoral life. The shepherd or herdsman has to shift his flock from one district to another. He looks forward but a very little. Then comes the agricultural life, in which some provision has to be made for the future. The field is ploughed and sown in prospect of the next years harvest. Then comes a more civilised age, that of building and teaching. The pious ecclesiastic lays the foundations of some grand cathedral, in which he has faith to believe that future generations will worship. The poet or the prophet speaks, content that men unborn shall acknowledge the truth of his message or his song. And this indicates the onward progress. According as a man is animated by some lofty purpose, so his view is wide and far-reaching. As he is simply selfish, and believes only in his present gains and in what serves his present purpose, so his view and place is small. It is faith, or trust in what is distant and unseen, which alone raises him and makes him great. (H. Jones, M. A.)
Faith a well-worn word scarcely realised in meaning:
These key-words of Scripture meet the same fate as do coins that have been long in circulation. They pass through so many fingers that the inscriptions get worn off them. We can all talk about faith and forgiveness and justifying and sanctifying, but how few of us have definite notions about what these words that come so easily from our lips mean. There is a vast deal of cloudy haze in the minds of average church and chapel goers as to what this wonder-working faith may really be. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Faith not blind confidence:
Faith--true, living faith--is not mere blind confidence; it is confidence for a reason. (Hy. Dunn.)
The repose of faith
Faith might perhaps, not improperly, be denominated the repose of the intellect and the repose of the affections; i.e., the understanding perfectly admitting the Divine testimony and the heart confidently trusting the Divine assurances. (T. Binney)
The evidence of things not seen
Faith, the evidence of things not seen
I. First, concerning the ACT. Faith is said to be the evidence. It is a grace that representeth the things of religion with such clearness and perspicuity of argument, that a believer is compelled to subscribe to the truth and worth of them; as a man yieldeth, when he seeth clear evidence to the contrary. There are in faith four things:
1. A clear light and apprehension. As soon as God converteth the soul, He puts light into it.
2. Faith is a convictive light, that findeth us corrupt and ill-principled, and full of prejudices against the doctrine of the gospel; and it is the work of faith to root out of the soul those carnal prejudices, counsels, reasonings, and carnal excuses which shut out that doctrine which the gospel offereth to us.
3. It is an overpowering and certain conviction, that is, such as dispossesseth us of our corrupt principles, and argueth us into a contrary opinion and belief.
4. It is a practical conviction. He that believeth is so convinced of the truth and worth of these things, that he is resolved to pursue after them, to make preparation for his eternal condition.
Use: To put us upon examination and trial, whether we have such a faith or no, as is an evidence or convincing light; you may try it by the parts of it. There is the assent of faith and the consent of faith; a clear light and firm assent, and a free consent to the worth of the things of God.
1. There is a clearness and perspicuity in the light of faith, which doth not only exclude the grossly ignorant, but those that have no saving knowledge.
2. We may know whether faith be an evidence by the firmness of our consent. If men were more convinced there would be a greater conformity in their practices to the rules of religion.
II. I come to the OBJECT, Things not seen. Faith is an evidence, but what kind of evidence? of things that cannot be otherwise seen, which cloth not disparage the evidence, but declare the excellency of faith. Not seen, that is, not liable to the judgment of sense and reason. What are those things not seen? Things may either be invisible in regard of their nature, or of their distance and absence from us. Some things are invisible in their own nature--as God, angels, and spirits; and all the way and work of the Holy Ghost in and about the spiritual life. Other things are invisible in regard of their distance and absence; and so things past and to come are invisible; we cannot see them with our bodily eyes, but they are discovered to us by faith. In short, these things not seen, are either matters of constant practical experience, which are not liable to outward sense, or principles of knowledge, which are not suitable to natural reason.
1. Matters of practical experience. The blessings of religion as the enduring substance (Heb_10:34), the benefit of affliction, the rewards and supplies of the spiritual life, answers of prayer, they are things not seen in regard of the bodily eye and carnal feeling; but faith expects them with as much assurance as if they were corporeally present, and could be felt and handled, and is assuredly persuaded of them, as if they were before our eyes.
2. Principles of knowledge. There are many mysteries in religion above reason; until nature put on the spectacles of faith, it cannot see them.
That the evidence of faith is conversant about things unseen by sense or natural reason.
1. Because much of religion is past, and we have bare testimony and revelation to warrant it; as the creation of the world out of nothing, the incarnation, life, and death of Christ; these are truths not liable to sense, and unlikely to reason--that God should become a man and die. Now upon the revelation of the word, the Spirit of God makes all evident to faith.
2. Much of religion is yet to come, and therefore can only be discerned by faith. Fancy and nature cannot outsee time, and look beyond death (2Pe_1:9); unless faith hold the candle to hope we cannot see heaven at so great a distance. Heaven and the glorious rewards of religion are yet to come; faith only can see heaven in the promises and look upon the gospel as travailing in birth with a great salvation.
3. That of religion which is of actual and present enjoyment, sense or reason cannot discern the truth or worth of it; therefore faith is still the evidence of things unseen.
If the object of faith be things unseen, then
1. Christians should not murmur if God keep them low and bare, and they have nothing they can see to live upon. As long as they do their duty, they are in the hands of Gods providence.
2. In the greatest extremity that can befall us there is work for faith, but no place for discouragement; your faith is never tried till then.
3. A Christian is not to be valued by his enjoyments, but by his hopes. He hath meat and drink which the world knows not of (Joh_4:32).
4. Christ may be out of sight, yet not out of mind.
Reproof to those that are all for sense and for present appearance.
1. Such as do not believe without present feeling.
2. Such as cannot wait upon God without present satisfaction.
(1) This is a great dishonour to God, to trust Him no further than we see Him. You trust the ground with your corn, and can expect a crop out of the dry clods, though you do not see how it grows, nor which way it thrives in order to the harvest.
(2) It is contrary to all the dispensations of Gods providence. Before He gives in any mercy there are usually some trials.
(3) It is contrary to the nature of faith.
(4) It will weaken our hands in duty when we look to every present discouragement. If faith be such an evidence of things not seen, then let us examine--have we this faith that can believe things not seen? This is the nature of true faith. Hope built upon outward probability is but carnal hope; but here is the faith and hope we live by, that which is carried out to things not seen with the bodily eye.
Take these directions to discover it.
1. How doth it work as to Christ now He is out of sight? Alas! to most Christians Christ is but a name, a fancy, or an empty conceit, such as the heathens had of their topical gods, or we of tutelar saints, some for this country and some for that. Do you pray as seeing Him at Gods right hand in heaven pleading your cause, and negotiating with God for you?
2. How doth it work as to His coming to judgment? Is the awe of that day upon your hearts? and do you live as those that must give aa account even for every idle word, when the great God of recompenses shall descend from heaven with a shout?
3. How can you comfort yourselves in the midst of all your straits and sorrows with the unseen glory of another world? Do not you faint in your duty, but bear up with that courage and constancy which becomes Christians (2Co_4:16). 4, How doth it work as to the threatenings of the Word? Can you mourn for a judgment in its causes, and foresee a storm when the clouds are but a gathering?
5. How doth your heart work upon the promises in difficult cases? Thereby God tries you, and thereby you may try yourselves (Joh_6:5-6).
6. You may try your assent to the promises by the adventures you make upon Gods word.
7. You may know whether you have this faith, which evidenceth things to come, and find out the weakness or strength of it by observing the great disproportion that is in your affections to things of sense, and things of faith. It is true, a Christian is not all spirit, and therefore sensible things work more with the present state of men than things spiritual. But yet certainly in a child of God, one that believes, that hath the evidence of things not seen, there will be some suitableness.
8. You may know whether you have this faith by your thoughts of the ways of God, when they are despised or opposed. Faith, which is the evidence of things not seen, can see a great deal of beauty in a despised way Of God, and glory in a crucified Christ; as the good thief upon the cross could see
Christ as a king, when he hung dying on the cross in disgrace (Luk_23:42).
To press you to get this faith, which is the evidence of things not seen, that you may believe that which God hath revealed in His Word, and that solely upon Gods authority and the account of His Word; to quicken you to get this faith, which is of such great use to you.
1. Consider that all the difficulty in assenting to doctrines of Scripture was not only in the first age.
2. Consider the benefit of a sound conviction. A clear evidence of the mysteries of salvation is a great ground of all reformation of life.
3. The more faith depends upon the warrant of Gods Word the better; and the fewer sensible helps it hath, the more it is prized (Joh_20:29).
4. Sensible things will not work, if we do not believe the Word; those that think Moses and the prophets are but a cold dispensation in comparison of this, if one should come from the dead, for then they would repent and turn to God, let them read (Luk_16:29-31).
5. We have need now to look after this faith, which is the evidence of things not seen, because the great reigning and prevailing sin is infidelity and unbelief; which is seen by our cavilling at every strict truth, by our carelessness in the things of God, by the looseness and profaneness of those that would be accounted Christians.
6. We ought to look to this faith, because none are so resolved in the great matters of faith, but they may be more resolved; no man doth so believe but he may believe more (1Jn_5:13).
Direction to get and increase this faith.
1. Beg the illumination of the Spirit of God to show you the truth of the Word, and the good things offered therein. This evidence is from the Spirit; thereof Paul prays for the Ephesians (Eph_1:17-18).
2. Employ your reason, serious consideration, and discourse. The devil throws the golden ball in our way, of honour, pleasure, and profit, to divert us from heavenly things; and the intention of the mind being diverted, the impressions of religion are weak and faint.
3. Labour to get a heart purged from carnal affections. Where there is more purity there will be more clearness (Mat_5:8). (T. Manton, D. D.)
Faith:
What a mighty thing as a motive-power this faith must be! If a man is possessed by it, that something can be done; in some sure sense, it is done already, and only waits its time to come into visible existence in the best way it can. Just as one of those noble groups John Rogers fashions for us is done the moment the conception of it has struck his heart with a pang of delight, though he may not have so much as the lump of clay for his beginning; while I might stand with the clay in my hand to doomsday, and not make what he does, because I could not have the Faith … the evidence of things not seen. What cannot be done, cannot be of faith. There can be no real faith in the soul toward the impossible; but make sure that faith is there, and then you can form no conception of the surprises of power hidden in the heart of it. And, trying to make this thing clear to you, I know of no better way to begin, than by saying, that faith is never that airy nothing which often usurps its place, and for which I can find no better name than fancy--a feeling without fitness, an anticipation without an antecedent, an effect without a cause, a cipher without a unit. A mere fancy, to a pure faith, is as the Arabian Nights to the Sermon on the Mount. Then faith is not something standing clean at the other extreme from fancy, for which there is no better name than fatalism--a condition numbers are continually drifting into, who, from their very earnestness, are in no danger of being sucked into the whirlpools of fancy; men who glance at the world and life through the night-glass of Mr. Buckle; who look backward and there is eternity, and forward and there is eternity; and feel all about them, and conclude that they are in the grasp of a power beside which what they can do to help themselves is about what a chip can do on the curve at Niagara. And yet their nature may be far too bright and wholesome to permit them to feel that the drift of things is not on the whole for good. They will be ready even to admit that our souls are organ-pipes of diverse stop and various pitch, each with its proper note thrilling beneath the self-same touch of God. But, when a hard pinch comes, they smoke their pipe, and refer it to Allah, or cover their face and refer it to Allah; but never fight it out, inch by inch, with all their heart and soul, in the sure faith that things will be very much after all what they make them--that the Father worketh hitherto, and they work. And these two things--the fancy that things will come to pass because we dream them, and the fatalism that they will come to pass because we cannot avoid them--are never to be mistaken for faith. It is true that there is both a fancyand a fatalism that is perfectly sound and good--the fancy that clothes the future to an earnest lad with a sure hope; that keeps the world fresh and fair, as in nature like that of Leigh Hunt, when to most men it has become arid as desert dust;--the bloom and poetry, thank God, by which men are converted, and become as little children. And there is a fatalism that touches the very centre of the circle of faith--which Paul always had in his soul. When sounding out some mighty affirmation of the sovereignty of God, he would go right on, with a more perfect and trusting devotion to work in the line of it. Fancy and fatalism, are the strong handmaidens of faith; happy is the man whose faith they serve. But what, then, is faith? Can that be made clear? I think it can. A young man feels in his heart the conviction, that there in the future is waiting for him a great destiny. Yet that destiny depends on his courage, and that courage on his constancy; and it is only when each has opened into the other, that the three become that evidence of things not seen, on which he can die with his soul satisfied--though all the land he had to show for the one promise was a graveyard;and all the line for the other, a childless son. Another feels a conviction, that here at his hand is a great work to do--a nation to create out of a degraded mob, and to settle in a land where it can carry out his ideas and its own destiny. But the conviction can be nothing without courage; and courage, a mere rushing into the jaws of destruction, without constancy. Only when forty years had gone, and the steady soul had fought its fight, did conviction, courage, and constancy ripen into the full certainty which shone in the eyes of the dying statesman, as he stood on Nebo, and death was swallowed up in victory. And yet it is clear, that, while courage and constancy in these men was essential to their faith, faith again was essential to their courage and constancy. These were the meat and drink on which the faith depended; but the faith was the life for which the meat and drink were made. A dim, indefinable consciousness at first it was, that something was waiting in that direction, a treasure hid in that field somewhere, to be their own if they durst but sell all they had, and buy the field. Then, as bit by bit they paid the price in the pure gold of some new responsibility or sacrifice, the clear certainty took the place of the dim intimation, and faith became the evidence of things not seen. This is the way a true faith always comes. Conversing once with a most faithful woman, I found that the way she came to be what she is lay at first along the dark path, in which she had to take one little timid step at a time. But, as she went on, she found all the more reason to take another and another, until God led her by a way she knew not, and brought her into a large place. Yet it was a long while before any step did not make the most painful drafts on both her courage and constancy. And so the whole drift of what man has done for man and God is the story of such a leading--first a consciousness that the thing must be done, then a spark of courage to try and do it; then a constancy that endures to the end; and then, whatever the end may be--the prison or the palace, it is all the same--the soul has the evidence of things not seen, and goes singing into her rest. Now, then, we want to make sure of three things, then we shall know that this faith is our own
1. That God is at work without me--that is, the Divine energy--as fresh and full before I came, as the sea is before the minnow comes.
2. That He is at work through me--that is, the Divine intention--as certainly present in my life as it was in the life of Moses; and
3. That what we do together is as sure to be a success as that we are striving to make it one. There may be more in the graveyard than there is in the home. In the moment toward which I have striven forty years with a tireless, passionate, hungry energy, my expectation may be cut off, while my eye is as bright and my step as firm as ever. It is no matter. The energy is as full, the intention as direct, and the accomplishment as sure, as though God had already made the pile complete. And when, with the conviction that t can do a worthy thing, and the courage to try and the constancy to keep on, I can cast myself, as Paul did, and Moses and Abraham, into the arms of a perfect assurance of this energy, intention, and accomplishment of the Eternal--feel, in every fibre of my nature, that in Him I live and move and have my being--I shall not fear, though the earth be removed, because
A faith like this for ever doth impart
Authentic tidings of invisible things;
Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power,
And central peace, subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation.
(R. Collyer, D. D.)
The evidence of things not seen
I. THE OBJECT IS SOMETHING NOT SEEN. Things unseen are not only such things as are invisible, and such as cannot be received by the eye, but also such as are not perceivable by any of our senses. Neither are things insensible meant, but such as are above the reach of reason. So that things unseen are such as are neither perceivable by the sense nor reason, so as to have either an intuitive or demonstrative knowledge of them. These are such as are conveyed to the soul by Divine revelation, without which man could not have known them; and such propositions as the connection of the terms depend upon the will of God.
II. FAITH IS THE EVIDENCE OF THESE THINGS UNSEEN; because we, having a certain knowledge of Gods veracity, and His revelation of these things, are as certainly persuaded of the truth of them; and give as firm assent unto them as if they were seen and intuitively and demonstratively known unto us. Yet here you must consider
1. That though the things and propositions be above reason, yet this persuasion or firm assent and this certain knowledge of the Divine revelation are acts of reason, and in the book of reason are they written.
2. That this object is of greater latitude than the former. For things hoped for, which are to come, are not seen; and not only they, but many things past and present.
3. That the things not seen in this place are not all things not seen, but such as God hath revealed to be the matter and object of our Divine faith.
4. That though substance and evidence may differ, yet both are a firm assent; but in respect of the things hoped for, may include a firm confidence and a certain expectation; for in respect of that object, that assent is more practical than this evidence which respects things unseen; so that here wants but little of a perfect definition.
5. The faith here defined is Divine faith in general, not that which is called justifying as justifying, for that is but a particular branch of this general, looking at a particular object, which is Christs sacrifice and His intercession. (G. Lawson.)
Faith proving and reproving:
In the realm of the unseen faith examines and discriminates. Faith is not credulity. Faith is not the promiscuous acceptance of this, that, and everything which lies out of sight. Faith is the criterion and touchstone of things unseen. When one comes to her with a professed doctrine, saying, In the world out of sight, the world of spirit and heaven, there exists such or such a truth, such or such a reality, such or such a being; faith, the faculty by which we take account of the unseen, applies herself to the subject, puts it to the test of Scripture, asks its evidences and examines them, rejects the worthless, ratifies the true, and finally gives judgment upon the result and upon the issue. Faith has lived long enough to know--even from Scripture--how confident sometimes are lying wonders, how easy it is to find evidences for any folly, how far we might drift from the moorings of truth and duty if we gave heed to every doctrine which professed to rest (as St. Paul once expressed it)upon spirit, or word, or letter as from us. It is the office of Faith to test and to discriminate things unseen--to decide whether they belong to the revealed invisible, or to the conjectured, imagined, fancied invisible--and according to her judgment upon this question, so to determine the further question, Shall I accept, or shall I refuse? Faith takes Gods Word, and tests every professed truth by it. Faith is the touchstone of all matters lying in the region of spirit--she decides whether, for her, they are true or false, by seeing whether they agree, or whether they conflict, with her own one guide, which is the revelation, the inspiration, of God. This exercise of faith implies, then, one earlier. Before faith can test things unseen by the Word of God, she must have that Word, and she must know it. (Dean Vaughan.)
Things not seen:
Things hoped for are things not seen. St. Paul says in the 8th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, Hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But the unseen is not coextensive with the hoped for. There are things not seen elsewhere than in the future. Faith is wider than hope. Faith has other spheres than futurity. Whatever is invisible, whether past or present or future, is an object of faith. Every fact in history is apprehended by faith. Every past event, every record of birth and death, of battle and revolution, of dynasty founded and fallen, of historical person and character, can be grasped, can be accepted, only by faith. To be assured that certain portions of this island were successively occupied by Roman, by Saxon, by Dane, by Norman--that the established religion of this country was once Pagan, once Romanist, once Puritan--that a sovereign of this country was executed at Whitehall and buried at Windsor--that there ever was such a person as Alexander or Caesar or Napoleon--is an exercise, a strong exercise, of faith. That which is not at this moment seen and handled and tasted--that storm or that Shipwreck or that fire which the public paper tells of as having happened a month ago or happened yesterday, but which we ourselves did not see happen and can only know of by testimony--belongs, for that reason, to the realm of faith. The province of faith is coextensive with things not seen. And those unseen things may be either future, or past, or present. It is idle to deny that there are such. If we spoke only of earthly existences, how many of these, of the most certain of these, are at this moment out of our sigh! The friend from whom you heard yesterday--the person dearest to you in the world, not now by your side--it is faith, it is not sight, which represents that existence to you as real.But which of us, of the most sceptical of us, denies the fact of spiritual existences, spiritual agencies, which are of necessity, not by accident, but essentially, not now only, but always, things unseen? Faculties, habits, feelings, affections, motives, principles, processes and conditions of thought, laws of cause and consequence, souls and spirits of the dead and living, beings above us, a God of creation and providence, a Father and Saviour and Comforter--in whatever degree, to whatever extent, we have information or conviction of any of these, however confidently or however tentatively we have hold upon any of these, it is faith, faith alone, which grasps or deals with them--they too belong to that vast realm of the unseen, for the contemplation of which faith is the one faculty--that faith which is not only the assurance of things hoped for, but also--it is a far larger and wider term--the evidence of things not seen. (Dean Vaughan.)
The visions of faith:
Faith is a certain image of eternity; all things are present to it; things past and things to come are all so before the eyes of faith, that he in whose eyes that candle is enkindled beholds heaven as present, and sees how blessed a thing it is to die in Gods favour, and to be chimed to our grave with the music of a good conscience. Faith converses with the angels, and antedates the hymns of glory. Every man that hath this grace is as certain that there are glories for him, if he persevere in his duty, as if he had heard and sung the thanksgiving-song for the blessed sentence of doomsday. (Bp. Jeremy Taylor.)
The prospect of faith:
Faith, having seated itself upon the high tower and mountain--Gods omnipotency and all-sufficiency--hath a great prospect. It can look over all the world, and look into another world too. (W. Bridge.)
The tense of faith:
Faith altereth the tenses, and putteth the future into the present tense. (J. Trapp.)
Faith a telescope:
Faith is to sight and reason what the telescope is to the naked eye. By the use of this wondrous instrument the most distant planets are now made known to us in detail. A map of Mars has been published showing canal-like seas, islands and large mountains or table-lands covered with snow. Faith brings the distant near, makes the spiritual the most real, and gives us to dwell in heavenly places. (H. O. Mackey.)
Faith a corrective:
Men who see the invisible, estimate the more correctly the things temporal and the things eternal. (T. B.Stephenson, LL. D.)
Believing in the unseen:
Dr. Parker, preaching when a dense fog prevailed, said the fog had taught him to believe in the unseen world more than ever before. Close to him there were oak trees that were hidden the previous day by mist. But he knew them to be there. Men might say, If they were there we could see them. But they are there and you cannot see them! A schoolbay would have laughed in his face if he had said the trees did not exist because the fog hid them. Yet there are men going on to old age who deny the unseen world because they cannot see it. But the trees are there and so are the angels! (Christian World.)
An appeal to the great names of the past:
We know the power of any appeal to the great names of our secular history. There is no scholar, however humble or obscure, whose exhausted energy is not renewed when he is reminded of the famous students of former times. The honours which cluster and thicken, as the ages roll by, sound the names of great poets, artists, philosophers, statesmen, stimulate the enthusiasm and sustain the energy of those who, in distant times and countries, strive for the same glory. When nations are struggling for freedom, it is not living patriotism alone which gives strength to their arms and daring to their hopes--the memory of the patriots of other lands and of other centuries kindles enthusiasm and inspires heroic endurance. Defeated, while living, in their conflicts with tyranny, they triumph gloriously after death. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)
By it the elders obtained a good report
A good report obtained by faith
I. THE FATHERS UNDER THE LAW HAD THE SAME KIND OF FAITH THAT WE HAVE. The same promises; upon the same terms; through the same merit of the blood of Christ.
II. THE APOSTLES ASCRIBE THEIR RENOWN IN THE CHURCH TO THEIR FAITH. Though the private soldiers do worthily in the high places of the field, yet the general bears away the honour, he gets the battle and wins the day; so here, all graces have their use in the holy life, all do worthily in their order and place; love worketh, hope waiteth, patience endureth, zeal sparkleth, and obedience urgeth to duty; but faith bears away the prize, this is the chiefest pin and wheel in the whole frame of salvation. Partly because it is the grace of reception on our part, by which we receive all the influences of heaven, and partly because it directs and quickens all other graces. It feeds hope, it teaches patience to wait, it makes zeal to sparkle, it gives relief to self-denial, and encourageth obedience. Faith is like a silken string, which runs through the chain of pearl; or like the spirits that run with the blood throughout all the veins.
III. THE FAITH OF THE ELDERS WAS AN ACTIVE FAITH, that discovered itself by good fruits and gracious actions; otherwise it could not have brought them into credit with the Church. God only knows the heart. It is actions that discover their faith, and the strength of their assent.
IV. ONE OF THE REWARDS OF AN ACTIVE FAITH IS A GOOD REPORT.
1. For the reasons of Gods ordination and appointment. I shall touch upon those that are of a chief regard and consideration.
(1) That every necessary blessing may be adopted and taken into the covenant, and provision made against all inconveniences that may befal us in the way of religion. As the Psalmist saith of Zion (Psa_48:12-13).
(2) Because of the great inconveniences of reproach and infamy, either to God and religion itself, or to good men.
(3) That God may retaliate with faith. Believers honour Him, therefore He will honour them (1Sa_2:30).
(4) That this may be a bait to draw in others to a liking of His ways.
2. In what manner doth the Lord dispense this privilege? And it is grounded upon an objection, that may be framed thus; the servants of God are often clouded with black reproaches, They took away the spouses Son_5:7), that is, her honour and name. David complains (Psa_22:6). Therefore how doth God give in this recompense to the active faith? I answer, in several propositions.
(1)The blessing is not absolutely complete in this life. As long as there is sin we are liable to shame. A good name is an outward pledge of eternal glory. When sin is abolished then may we expect perfect glory. In a mixed estate we must look for mixed dispensations.
(2) The wicked are not competent judges when they judge of the faithful Luk_6:26). General applause can seldom be had without compliance, and without some sin; therefore it is spoken as a cursed thing to gratify all, and seek to draw respect from all. There is one rare instance in the third Epistle of John, verse12.
(3) We have the approbation of their consciences, though not the commendation of their lips; and their hearts approve when their mouths slander; and we have their reverence, though not their praise.
(4) There are some special seasons when God will vindicate His people from contempt. There is a resurrection of names as well as of persons.
3. Whether in the exercise of faith we may eye a good report? is not this vain-glory? I answer in four things.
(1) Our chief care must be to do the duty, and trust God with the blessing; this is the temper of a Christian.
(2) If we expect it as a blessing of the covenant, we must rather look for it from God than from men, expect it as the gift of His grace for our encouragement in the ways of religion.
(3) All the respect that we have to men is by a greater care of duty, to prevent undue surmises and suspicion (2Co_8:21).
(4) The glory of God and the credit of religion must be at the utmost end of all (Mat_5:16).
Uses:
1. Prize this blessing; it is a sweet encouragement to you in the work of God. I observe that usually men first make shipwreck of a good name, then of a good conscience.
2. Be careful how you prejudice the good name of a believer; you cross Gods ordination. How ought you to tremble, when you go about to take off the crown which God hath put on their heads!
3. To press you to this active faith. There is great reason for it upon these grounds.
(1) Because there are so many censures abroad.
(2) Because there are so few good works abroad. (T. Manton, D. D.)
The renown of faith
I. INSTANCES OR EXAMPLES ARE THE MOST POWERFUL CONFIRMATIONS OF PRACTICAL TRUTH.
1. Who these elders were is put beyond dispute by the ensuing discourse. All true believers from the foundation of the world, or the giving of the first promise, unto the end of the dispensation of the Old Testament, are intended.
2. This testimony was given them in the Scriptures; that is, it is so in particular of many of them, and of the rest in the general rules of it.
II. THEY WHO HAVE A GOOD TESTIMONY FROM GOD SHALL NEVER WANT REPROACHES FROM THE WORLD.
III. IT IS FAITH ALONE WHICH FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD WAS THE MEANS AND WAY OF OBTAINING ACCEPTANCE WITH GOD.
IV. The faith of true believers from the beginning of the world, WAS FIXED ON THINGS FUTURE, HOPED FOR, AND INVISIBLE; THAT IS, ETERNAL LIFE AND GLORY IN AN ESPECIAL MANNER.
V. That faith whereby men please God ACTS ITSELF IN A FIXED CONTEMPLATION ON THINGS FUTURE AND INVISIBLE, from whence it derives encouragement and strength to endure and abide firm in profession, against all opposition and persecutions.
VI. HOWEVER MEN MAY BE DESPISED, VILIFIED, AND REPROACHED IN THE WORLD, YET IF THEY HAVE FAITH, IF THEY ARE TRUE BELIEVERS, THEY ARE ACCEPTED WITH GOD, AND HE WILL GIVE THEM A GOOD REPORT. (John Owen, D. D.)
Faith and its exploits
I. FAITH GREATENS MEN.
II. FAITH MIGHTILY AFFECTS OUR ORDINARY HUMAN LIFE.
III. FAITH IS POSSIBLE TO ALL CLASSES.
IV. FAITH IS CONSISTENT WITH VERY DIFFERENT DEGREES OF KNOWLEDGE.
V. FAITH CAN MASTER INSUPERABLE DIFFICULTIES. Stormy seas forbid our passage; frowning fortifications bar our progress; mighty kingdoms defy our power; lions roar against us; fire lights its flaming barricade in our path; the sword, the armies of the alien, mockings, scourgings, bonds and imprisonment--all these menace our peace, darken our horizon, and try on us their power; but faith has conquered all these before, and it shall do as much again. Reckon on Gods faithfulness. Look not at the winds and waves, but at His character and will. Get alone with Him, steeping your heart and mind in His precious and exceeding great promises. Be obedient to the utmost limit of your light. Walk in the Spirit, one of whose fruits is faith. So shall you be deemed worthy to join this band, whose names and exploits run over from this page into the chronicles of eternity, and to share their glorious heritage. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
The best acquirement
1. All obtain some kind of report.
2. Some obtain a great report.
3. All may obtain a good report.
4. All ought to endeavour to obtain a good report.
5. A good report is not easily and at once obtained.
6. A good report is the best of all things that can be obtained. It is the only passport to heaven, and the only imperishable possession. (D. Thomas.)
The faith of the ancient worthies:
Christ crucified for us forms the great object of faith under the Christian dispensation. But the apostles words, no less than the facts of the case, forbid the supposition that all Gods testimony concerning His Son was embraced in the faith of these ancient worthies. In the case of Enoch, for example, the faith which the apostles argument attributes by implication to him is the general belief that God is, and that He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. In Noahs case no mention is made of any testimony or object of faith, except the Divine warning concerning the coming flood. In the case of Rahab, again, there is nothing in the book of Joshua, or in what the apostle says of her here, which can be construed as pointing to the Messiah. But supposing that in these cases, at least, their faith did not consciously embrace the Messiah, because the Messiah had not been revealed to it, it does not therefore follow either that they were saved in virtue of their faith as a meritorious act, or that they were saved independently of Christ. It is to be noticed, moreover, that the reason why their faith did not embrace so much as we are required to believe, was not because of anything defective in that faith, viewed as a mental act--the effects it produced forbid that supposition--but simply because of the want of a fuller revelation. They had not received the promise in its full and perfect form. Compared with that which we enjoy, their light was but as the dim dawn. And it is a striking testimony to the excellence of the principle, that a faith to which so little was revealed should sometimes so far surpass ours in the wonders which it wrought. Their faith is in fact a model for our own. It was proportioned to the degree of light which they possessed. They believed Gods Word in so far as God had spoken to them. It was not that they received only one part of the Divine testimony, and wilfully rejected another--true faith never does that, but receives with equal readiness and confidence whatsoever God says. To believe only so much of what God says as suits our wishes, or accords with our prejudices, or commends itself to our reason, is not to believe the Divine testimony. The result of our own judgment, or our own fancy, it is in no sense faith. He is in no sense a believer who receives only so much of Gods Word as pleases him, and gives the lie to all the rest. We insist the more on this because of the practical issues which it involves. Not only is our faith worthless, if it be not ready to give credence to all that God has said, but it will prove ineffectual for salvation, however much it may embrace, if it receive not the one truth which assures us of the freeness of the Divine love to us through Christ Jesus--that truth which constitutes the burden and substance of the gospel message. Even the faith of those earlier saints, limited as was the testimony presented to it, tended to this result. The revelations of God which they had received, declared or implied His righteousness and His friendship for man--a righteousness which would not allow sin to pass with impunity, and a friendship which promised mercy to those who would repent of sin and seek after God. Faith in these would naturally suggest to the believing soul the difficulty of their being exercised consistently with each other. But it would also convince them that, notwithstanding that difficulty, the Divine promise would be fulfilled. If the revelation given said how it was to be done, the same faith would receive its testimony. But if not--if the dim foreshadowing of the coming Saviour left them in ignorance of how Gods promise could be fulfilled consistently with His righteousness--faith would nevertheless assure them of its fulfilment, and calmly receive it and rely on it, leaving Him to determine how it was to be accomplished; for the province of faith is to receive what God says, simply because He says it, not to show how Gods Word can be true. In this way, we imagine, the faith of some of these earlier saints operated. Believing in Gods righteousness, and yet believing His promise to forgive and receive those who came to Him, they verbally and by sacrifice made confession of their sins and evil deserts, and yet trusted to Him to find a way of rendering the fulfilment of His promise consistent with His own righteousness. Thus their faith wrought in them reconciliation to, and trust in God, and thereby proved the means of their salvation. It will now appear how it is that, although they might be saved, without conscious and intelligent faith in Christ we cannot--how it is that the revelation we are favoured with places us in a position entirely different from theirs. It is because that revelation is a test of the true state of our minds in relation to God. Possessed of it, if we do not believe in Christ we reject the Divine testimony, and prove that we have no faith in anything which God says, but are still in a state of unbelief and rebellion and enmity. In fine, in the absence of a revelation, confidence in God and submission to His will were possible, though under the circumstances faith in Christ was impossible. Whereas, in possession of a revelation, the want of faith in Christ shuts us out from a state of confidence in God, and submission to His will, and must therefore debar us from the enjoyment of salvation. (W. Landels, D. D.)
Antiquity of faith:
The for, like so many fors in Scripture, rests upon a word or two unwritten. As if it were said, A mighty grace--An ancient grace--A worldwide and an age-long grace--for by it--or rather, in it, on the subject of it, on the strength of it--the elders, they of the old time, the saints and servants of God from the very beginning, obtained a good report; were attested, were borne witness of, received an approving testimony, from Him who alone is the faithful and true witness, God Himself in His holy Word. In many things they and we are widely separated. But this verse teaches us the unity of all ages and all countries in one single comprehensive principle. In this faith, the apostle says, to which I exhort you--his faith of which you will have so special a need in these coming days of trial and temptation--in this faith they lived and died to whom God in Scripture bore His emphatic testimony: in this, and no other--this same assurance of things not possessed but hoped for--this same discrimination of things not seen nor touched nor handled, yet existing in all the changeless reality of a world indestructible because immaterial, eternal because Divine. If we would ever know unity, we must seek it in the life of faith. Unbelief, like sin--unbelief, which is sin--is division, is disunion, at once. No two unbelievers, no two sinners, can be at one. Unity is to be found only in faith. Two men who are distinctly conscious of one God, one Lord, one Spirit--two men who are resolutely bent upon giving up everything contrary to the Divine Will as they read it--two men who are living holy lives in the pursuit of a life beyond death, everlasting and eternal--are at one with each other, whether they know it or not--for they are both living that life of faith in which the elders, like the men that are now, obtained a good report. (Dean Vaughan.)
Faith the foundation and strength of character
Character is mans noblest possession, the accomplished design of renewing grace, the crown and glory of human life. By virtue of it a man takes rank with the peerage of heaven, and holds an estate in the general goodwill. It is much more true that character is power than that knowledge is power. History teaches us that moral forces are the real rulers of the world. The influence of wealth is feeble in comparison with the influence of tried worth. No one is shut out from obtaining this best of all distinctions, this most priceless of all possessions. Every one should aim to deserve a good report. The text admonishes us how it is to be obtained. By faith the elders attained that excellence of character which gave them favour in the sight of God and man. Faith is declared to be the foundation and strength of character.
I. FAITH MAKES MEN MASTERS OF THEIR CIRCUMSTANCES. There are some persons who seem to have no character of their own. When hemmed in by moral restraints and moving in an atmosphere of religion, they exhibit a negative colourless goodness; but let them be thrown into a tide of dissipation and they yield without a struggle, and go with the multitude to do evil. The first truth, then, for faith to grasp is this: I am a spiritual and immortal being, with power to choose my own lot, determine my own course, and form my own character. If I allow myself to be the sport of circumstances, I shall be unstable as water and never excel; but if I have faith in the invisible might of energy, and in the ultimate success of perseverance, I shall obtain the prize of my high calling.
II. NEXT COMES THE CONVICTION OF OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO GOD FOR THE USE OF THIS POWER. A great many wise decisions and virtuous struggles with temptation go to the building up of a good character. Human nature is a marshy soil for such a structure, and needs a great deal done under ground and out of sight before its ,stability can be secured. There must be a strong foundation of moral concrete, of conscientiousness. But this cannot be laid without frequent appeals to conscience, and its judgments will be wavering and obscure unless faith unstops the ear to hear the sanction of Gods voice. It is a sheet-anchor to a man in temptation, if he have sufficient faith in Gods presence and authority to make him say, How shall I do this great wickedness and sin against God? Again, faith in God as our omnipotent Father and the Judge of all, creates a habit of referring everything to conscience. Believe that for every opinion you adopt you will be called to answer before God, and you will be careful not to take up hastily with any, and not to hold them in the clenched fists of prejudice.
III. MOST MEN WHO HAVE ATTAINED A GOOD REPORT HAVE HAD A DEFINITE PURPOSE IN LIFE, AND A CLEARLY DEFINED NOTION OF THE PLACE GOD INTENDED THEM TO FILL. Our forefathers had a deep impression of the Divine hand shaping the course of an ordinary mans life; hence they spoke of his business or occupation as his calling. So long as a mans trade is useful to the community, fitted to serve the comfort or refinement of society, he has as much reason to believe that God has called him to it as he has to believe that God designed the earth to bring forth food for mans support. And, depend upon it, man will turn out all the better work, and do his duty with all the greater care, for believing that God accepts it as a service to Himself. In every walk of life we shall find scope for a career of usefulness and happiness, provided we buy up its opportunities. To begin with the duty lying nearest to us is the way to fulfil our mission.
IV. FAITH IN THE IMPERISHABLE WORTH OF TRUTH is another most necessary element in the formation of an honourable character. Integrity in word and deed is the backbone of character, and loyal adherence to veracity its most prominent characteristic. Seldom has a finer eulogium been pronounced upon any man than was spoken by the late Duke of Wellington on the occasion of the death of Sir Robert Peel. He said: I was long connected with him in public life. We were both in the councils of our sovereign together, and I had long the honour to enjoy his private friendship. In all the course of my acquaintance with him, I never knew a man in whose truth and justice I had greater confidence or in whom I saw a more invariable desire to promote the public service. In the whole course of my communication with him I never knew an instance in which he did not show the strongest attachment to truth; and I never saw, in the whole course of my life, the smallest reason for suspecting that he stated anything which he did not firmly believe to be the fact.
V. BY FAITH, FEELING THEIR OWN WEAKNESS, THE EXCELLENT OF THE EARTH LAID HOLD ON THE STRENGTH OF GOD. In reference to all the distinctive traits of Christian character, we may say without the slightest qualification, Severed from Christ, and without faith in His helpful Spirit, you can do nothing. These heavenly fruits of character do not grow on the wild olive-tree of humanity, but only after it has been grafted into the good olive-tree, the Lord Jesus Christ. They imply the possession of so much which a man who has only the prudential virtues, after the fashion of the world, is wholly destitute of. They imply faith in Gods omniscience and care and a hope of eternal glory; they imply convictions which have broken the heart, made it jealous for Gods honour, humbled it at the feet of Divine mercy, and inspired it with a love of peace and gentleness. Without these convictions and sentiments such traits of character are impossible. There is neither motive for them nor meaning in them. They are the fruits of the Spirit, and only possible, therefore, in those who have the Spirit. But in every age God has given His Holy Spirit to such as sought His aid. (E. W.Shalders, B. A.)
The roll-call of the illustrious dead:
Auvergne, a Breton warrior, called Grenadier of France, died fighting for his country. As a memorial, his comrades decided that his name should still stand on the rolls. It was regularly called, and a comrade answered for him, Dead on the field. So is Heb_11:1-40., a roll-call of the victorious dead, a regimental register of Gods heroes.
The victories of faith
In almost every capital of Europe there are varieties of triumphal arches or columns upon which are recorded the valiant deeds of the countrys generals, its emperors, or its monarchs. You will find, in one case, the thousand battles of a Napoleon recorded, and in another you find the victories of a Nelson pictured. It seems, therefore, but right that faith, which is the mightiest of the mighty, should have a pillar raised to its honour, upon which its valiant deeds should be recorded. The apostle undertook to raise the structure, and he erected a most magnificent pillar in the chapter before us. It recites the victories of faith. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39 1–3. Faith is the substance. The old meaning of…
1–3. Faith is the substance. The old meaning of substance, as well as of Hupostasis, the Greek word here used, is “stand under,” that is to be a foundation. Faith is the foundation on which all our hopes for the future are built. The evidence. Rather, the conviction or persuasion of things not seen. Without faith we would be limited to the very narrow world comprehended by the senses.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 7, 13, 17, 21, 23, 30, 32 THIS chapter contains a series of illustrations, taken from…
ILLUSTRATIONS OF FAITH AS A PRACTICAL POWER IN LIFE
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
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THIS chapter contains a series of illustrations, taken from the heroic ages of Hebrew history, of the nature and influence of faith in God. The writer desires to show that faith makes a motive and inspiration for daily life and conduct as sufficient and as satisfactory as distant announcements and demonstrative proofs. In impressing the temporary character of the Mosaic religious system, the writer is careful to preserve everything belonging to the older age that had a universal, a simply human character. And faith is the same thing sustaining patriarchs, prophets, and martyrs of the olden time or the new.
Heb_11:1. Substance of things hoped for.—Here the word means “confident expectation”; and this is so real that the man of faith acts as if he already had what he hoped for. Things only “hoped for” have no actual present reality to us. They gain practical reality in the faith that grasps them. That faith gives the present enjoyment of them. Evidence.—Demonstration, proof. Faith in the Divine word supplies the place of and is equivalent to proof. It satisfies the mind, and it inspires conduct just as a proof or demonstration should do. Stuart points out that the “faith” mentioned here is not specifically what is understood by “saving faith”; but rather faith as a practical principle and power, influencing all life and conduct. “The true and essential nature of faith is confidence in God, belief in His declarations.” Faith here is the principle of pious and virtuous belief and action.
Heb_11:2. Elders.—Heroes and saints of the older age.
Heb_11:3. Worlds.—Greek “ages,” i.e. the world regarded from the standpoint of human history. “The ‘time-world’ necessarily presumes the existence of the space-world also” (Farrar).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Heb_11:1-3
Faith and Reason.—It is necessary to consider precisely what idea of faith this writer has, and illustrates in this chapter. It is manifest at once that he is not attempting any general description of faith. If we had to understand him in that sense, we should have to say that his definition was an imperfect one, because it excludes so much. His mind was full of a particular class of people, who were under particular circumstances of temptation and difficulty, and his setting of truth is strictly and exactly adapted to them. The Jewish Christians had entered the spiritual dispensation in which faith is the medium, and they were seriously tempted to drift back into the material dispensation in which sense is the medium. The case is put strongly in the words, “But we are not of them that shrink back unto perdition, but of them that have faith unto the saving of the soul.” But it would seem to those Jewish Christians as if he were urging them to break altogether away from their old history and old associations, and that was a very hard thing for the Jew, who had such a passionate attachment to the old. The writer seems to say that he advises nothing of the kind. There is a spiritual element in that old history and old ceremonial; that spiritual element is the real glory of them. That is precisely akin with the spirit of the new dispensation, which really is the very heart of the old, freed from its swathing bandages and its material limitations. “By faith”—just the very faith he is urging them to retain—“the elders obtained a good report,” or “had witness borne to them.” Definitions of faith are seldom satisfactory, because it can be viewed from several sides, and the definition may give only one of its sides. Locke describes faith as the assent to any proposition not made out by the deductions of reason, but upon the credit of the proposer. But that sees faith only on one side, and is altogether unsatisfactory to the Christian mind. The precise idea of faith in this chapter may be seen by a consideration of the similar terms, belief, saving faith, and trust. The writer is certainly not meaning belief, or the assent to particular statements of truth; nor does he mean “saving faith,” or that acceptance of Christ as Saviour, and that soul-surrender to Him, which is the proper beginning of the Christian life; nor can he be referring to “trust,” which is a personal feeling of confidence in Christ, and a daily renewed attitude of dependence. Neither of these aspects of faith are appropriate to this occasion.
I. Faith is the power in man which makes real to him the unreal.—By unreal is only to be understood the “unseen.” Man calls material things real and spiritual things unreal, and we take man’s standpoint. The deeper truth which he is to grow to apprehend is, that the spiritual is the real, and the material is but as its shadow, and so unreal. The mischievous teachers might urge on the Jewish Christians that in leaving Mosaism for Christianity they were leaving the real, the tangible, that which was known and proved, for the unreal, the vague, the uncertain, the intangible. What therefore needs to be made clear is, that man has within him a power which is altogether higher than sense. He can come into relation with that which cannot be seen, cannot be heard, cannot be touched. He can see the unseen; he can hear the unheard; he can feel the unreal. It is man’s power to live in the unreal that is his sublime dignity. This lifts him up out of the animal range, for the creatures have no up-looking eyes. This lifts him up out of the range of animal, carnal man. Faith makes him a new creature, another creature, an altogether higher creature. That power in man which puts him into relation with the spiritual world, and makes that unreal world real to him, the very world in which he lives, is the faith with which the writer deals in this chapter. And it is strictly to the point for him to plead that, in urging the Jewish Christians to keep in that spiritual world to which they had been lifted, he was but urging them to do what the noblest heroes of the ages had done, what alone accounted for the patience of their achievements, and the splendour of their triumphs. They endured through the faith-power that was in them. They “endured as seeing Him who is invisible.” Faith as a power in man is kin to spiritual vision, and gets its best illustration from our bodily vision. The body looks out from the eyes, discerns something outside it which it regards as real, and lets that something influence feeling and direct conduct. And the soul looks out from the eyes of faith, sees something outside it which it regards as real, which is spiritual and eternal, and it lets that something influence feeling and direct conduct. This is precisely what is illustrated for us in Abel, and Enoch, and Abraham, and Moses. It is the power in man which Christianity cultures, develops, purifies, ennobles, and guides to fitting objects. The two sentences, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the proving of things not seen,” are really one thought repeated in the usual Hebraic mode. Taking the Authorised Version, we may see that the “substance of things hoped for” is simply this—making a present, real, and active power to us the unreal. And the “evidence of things not seen” is the making evident to us—manifesting to us, so as to be practically influential upon us—that which the bodily eye fails to discern. “Evidence” here is not “proof.” We can never get any proof of spiritual things. They are “spiritually discerned.” We speak of things being “in evidence” when they are presented to us for serious consideration. Faith brings unseen and eternal things into evidence; presents them for our consideration, with a view to the right ordering and shaping of our conduct and relations, both as regards God and as regards man. That then is the faith that is impressively, and we may say attractively, illustrated in this chapter. It is the faith that makes a present power on us of what is not materially present—that makes the unseen God a present inspiration to duty, the unseen Christ a present persuasion on feeling, and the promises of spiritual blessing a realised present possession of the blessing. Faith makes God real, and He is with us now. Faith makes righteousness real, and it becomes our attainment now. Faith makes heaven real, and it is about us now. It is the power which makes the unreal real to us. It is the power which keeps the unseen related to the seen. And “that which is seen is temporal, that which is unseen is eternal.”
II. Faith is the power which does for the unreal what reason does for the real.—“By faith we understand.” Just as man takes the facts that are apprehensible by his senses, examines them, inquires about them, reasons concerning them, and thus comes to understand them, and then acts upon them, so the spiritual man takes the facts of the unseen and eternal world, which are apprehensible by his faith, examines them, inquires into them, uses his quickened spiritual faculties about them, and so comes to apprehend them, to understand them, and then acts upon them. Much difficulty is needlessly made in defining the relations of faith and reason. They simply belong to two distinct spheres. Reason moves in the sphere of sensible and material things, and concerns itself entirely with that which takes forms which are apprehensible by the human senses. Faith moves in the sphere of intangible and immaterial things, and concerns itself entirely with that which takes no form which the senses can apprehend. A man is not a mere bundle of senses. The distinction is illustrated by a reference to the Creation. Nobody knows anything about the origin and first forms of material things by any evidence that the senses can give him. Nobody saw its birth; nobody watched the unfolding order. The obervations of the earth’s form and crust on which modern geological studies are based only give rise to conflicting theories, which change with each passing generation, and are all untrustworthy. The scientific man knows more about the Creation through his beliefs than through his observations. But the spiritual man knows, by his faith in what God has revealed, all that we really need to know concerning the material creation. But observe a distinction. The writer only deals with what the spiritual man needs to understand concerning the Creation. Let the sense-man go on inquiring as freely as he may please. Our faith satisfies us; it is to us just the same as if we had been able to reason it all out; God—God alone—the God of Judaism and of Christianity, made the worlds; and there was nothing existing before Him out of which He could make them, and which could possibly set up a rivalry against Him. “By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which do appear.” Unbiassed reason does but reaffirm the conclusions of faith; and he who has the faith is beforehand with the man of reason in his apprehension of the primary truths of science and religion. What is thus illustrated in relation to the material creation is further illustrated by reference to selected heroes of the older Bible history. The principle for the spiritually renewed man that “through faith we understand” is capable of extensive application in all the actual spheres and practical relations and multiplied difficulties of life. The godly men of old really lived their daily life, really met and mastered their cares and perplexities, in the power of their faith. What has been done can be done. What has been done we can do.
1. Look at Abel. By faith he understood what offering, and what spirit in his offering, would gain his acceptance with God. By faith he understood the primary conditions of acceptable human worship.
2. Look at Enoch. By faith he understood the spirit of the earthly life that would secure the favour of God. He understood how to please God.
3. Look at Noah. By faith he understood how to act when God’s judgments were abroad in the earth. By faith he understood the safety in which a man always stands who is actively obedient to the will of God.
4. Look at Abraham. By faith he understood where to go, what to do, and how to order his household. By faith he understood the holy mystery of the Divine control of human careers.
5. Look at Sarah. By faith she understood how to meet the surprise events of life. For surprise indeed it was to gain her motherhood in her old age.
6. Look again at Abraham. There is one scene of surpassing interest in his life-story. It is his being called to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. By faith he understood something of the mystery of Divine discipline, and something of the absolute claim of Divine obedience.
7. Look at Isaac. By faith he understood that the interest of a man is not bound up in this life, but belongs to a future, of which he can provide but a part.
8. Look at Jacob and Joseph. Both by faith understood how the world triumphs over the death, and passing away, of individuals; both by faith understood how man lives again in the fulfilment of God’s sublime purposes in their race.
9. Look at Moses. By faith he understood what his great life-work was to be. And knowing what it was, he did it, and did it nobly. The triumphs of faith can be summarised. They cover all life—all commonplace life of duties, all special calls to service. Faith everywhere takes the place of understanding, and does for us all that understanding could do. Have we fully entered into apprehension of this most practical relation of faith to life? Even in the new spiritual life we want to reason out everything, and say we will believe nothing that we do not fully understand. Then we must be below our spiritual level. This is the standpoint of spiritual men: “By faith we understand.” The apostle Paul puts his position as a spiritual man quite plainly. “The life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God.” A striking New Testament illustration of faith as a practical power on conduct is found in the behaviour of St. Paul during the great storm at sea. “In that desperate crisis one man retained his calm and courage. It was Paul the prisoner, probably in physical health the weakest among them, and the greatest sufferer of them all. But it is in such moments that the courage of the noblest souls shines with the purest lustre, and the soul of Paul was inwardly enlightened. As he prayed, in all the peacefulness of a blameless conscience, it was revealed to him that God would fulfil the promised destiny which was to lead him to Rome, and that, with the preservation of his own life, God would also grant to him the lives of those unhappy sufferers for whom, all unworthy as some of them soon proved to be, his human heart yearned with pity. While the rest were abandoning themselves to despair, Paul stood forth on the deck; and after gently reproaching them for having rejected the advice which would have saved them from all that buffeting and loss, he bade them cheer up; for though the ship would be lost, and they would be wrecked on a certain island, not one of them should lose his life. For they knew that he was a prisoner who had appealed to Cæsar; and that night an angel of the God whose child and servant he was had stood by him, and not only assured him that he should stand before Cæsar, but also that God had, as a sign of grace, granted him the lives of all on board.” “Wherefore, sirs,” Paul said, “be of good cheer, for I believe God, that it shall be even as it was told me.”
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Heb_11:1. Faith is more than Belief.—Faith is that power within us which makes the things of another world seem as real to us as the things of this world—which brings home to us the things not seen, and makes them as clear and sure to us as if we could see them with our very eyes. The great work of faith is to realise—make real to us—the things of the world unseen. And so faith is sometimes called the eye of the soul, because it looks upon the great truths of religion, and sees them as clearly, certainly, and constantly as the bodily eye looks upon and sees all the outward things around us. The bodily eye has no doubt that the things it sees are true and real. When it looks upon the mountains and fields and trees, it is quite sure that they are really there as it sees them. And so faith, the eye of the soul, has no doubt about the things it looks upon. It is quite sure that there is a God, and that God is ever present, and knows all we think and speak and do; it has no doubt about a Saviour who died for us, and about a Holy Spirit who dwells in our hearts. But still more, the bodily eye not only is sure about the truth of what it sees, but also cannot help seeing the things before it. When you walk along the road, you do not try to see everything in your way; you see it without trying. So too faith. Faith is not only sure of the truth and reality of the things not seen, but also has them ever in mind, keeps them ever in view, as it were. Faith means a great deal more than mere belief. It means making a thing real to our souls, having it ever present to our minds, keeping it so clearly before us that we cannot help acting upon it. So faith is the root of good works and holiness. We cannot help, when the unseen world seems so real and present to us—we cannot help living for that unseen world, instead of for the world we see. That power which keeps the great realities of another world clearly, constantly, steadfastly, before our souls is the only power which can conquer the snares and temptations, the power and the perils, of this world.—W. Walsham How, D.D.
Faith as Assent.—Faith is an assent unto truths credible upon the testimony of God (not on the reasonableness of the thing revealed, though by this we may judge as to whether it be what it professes, a genuine revelation), delivered unto us in the writings of the apostles and prophets. Thus Christ’s ascension is the cause, and His absence the crown, of our faith; because He ascended we the more believe, and because we believe in Him who hath ascended our faith is the more accepted.—Bishop Pearson.
The Evidence of Things not seen.—The evidence that the “fool” wanted when he “said in his heart there is no God”; the evidence that Pharaoh wanted when he inquired, “Who is the Lord that I should serve Him? or what profit shall I have if I pray unto Him?” the evidence that Goliath wanted when he disdained David “because he was but a youth”; the evidence which Pilate wanted when he so scornfully inquired, “What is truth?” the evidence that Gallio wanted when “he cared for none of these things”; the evidence that St. Peter wanted when he exclaimed, “Lord, we have left all and followed Thee; what shall we have therefore?”—such evidence had Noah during one hundred and twenty years. Caring nothing for the gibes of the ungodly, he went on quietly building his extraordinary boat. The wise man had it when he said, “Cast thy bread upon the waters, and thou shalt find it after many days.” The three Jews had it when they said, “Be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods.” Job had it when he said, “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” Daniel had it when he said, “They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament.” True faith is totally distinct from sectarian canting, which springs from ignorance and conceit. It is totally distinct from fanatical excitement, which in the nature of things is a transient emotion, powerless to change the heart and life. True faith leads you on, leads you ever. A man looking for the evidence of things not seen is a patient, earnest, careful, constant creature. But the practical man says, Where is the evidence? Illustrate by the mystery of Baptism, Confirmation, the Lord’s Supper. Men are better or worse according to the measure of their faith, i.e. their power to realise the evidences of things not seen. Columbus said, “When I passed across the sea to find a land that men thought dwelt only in my fancy, they scorned me for my toil, yet had I faith in God, that He would prosper and direct my purpose.”—Hawthorn Homilies.
Faith a Soul-principle.—Faith is that principle, that exercise of mind and soul, which has for its object things not seen, but hoped for, and which, instead of sinking under them as too ponderous, whether from their difficulty or from their uncertainty, stands firm under them, supports and sustains their pressure—in other words, is assured of, confides in, and relies on them.—Dr. Vaughan.
The Power of Faith Man’s Dignity.—Every one knows how much the word “faith” has to do with Christianity. The word is, indeed, peculiar to religion, and in an especial manner peculiar to the religion of Christ. In His revelation to man God has taken hold of that one part of our nature which was lying most neglected, and yet in which the seed of our highest perfection is alone to be found. Faith is indeed that which most raises us from a state of brute selfishness and brute ignorance; and leading us on gradually, according to our gradual growth, from one high object to another, ends by offering to the mind of the Christian the most perfect object of all, even God Himself, our Father and Saviour and Sanctifier. But faith is also that part of our nature in which the effects of our corruption are seen most strongly. What does the text say faith is? It is that feeling or faculty within us, by which the future becomes to our minds greater than the present, and what we do not see more powerful to influence us than what we do see. When we are told of God, we see at once that He is an object of faith, far more excellent than any other, and that it is when directed to Him that the feeling can be brought forward to its full perfection. Faith in God seems to be perfect in all the points required to perfect it; it rests on the word of Him who is all-good, all-wise, and all-powerful; it points to objects so distant that faith must be strong and well matured in order to reach them; it encourages and terrifies by blessings and miseries so far removed from our present conceptions, that the faith must be far more powerful which can overcome actual temptations by dwelling on objects which our understandings are as unable to grasp fully, as our bodily eyes to see and to hear them. This, then, is religious faith. There is a peculiar species of religious faith, called Christian faith: that is, not only a faith in God our heavenly Father, but a faith in God as He has revealed Himself to us in the New Testament; that is, in God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. This Christian faith is of a more excellent kind, because it shows us more of God’s perfections than any other; and from that view becomes even yet stronger, and more pure, and more self-abandoning. But this faith cannot be understood by all. How can they who live wholly by sight, who do not practise even the lower kinds of faith, how can they so much as understand the highest? (See Sermon on 1Jn_5:4-5.)—Thomas Arnold, D.D.
The Psychology of Belief.—We can only believe what is intelligible, what we can understand. Not, however, completely understand; if we could believe nothing unless we understood it completely, we should never believe it at all. Because we can believe what we do not understand completely, it has often been assumed that we can believe what we do not understand at all. Language which we do not comprehend is for us an unknown tongue. It is a mere sound. Sound is not the object of belief, but sense. A meaningless proposition cannot be believed, for the very simple reason, that since it is meaningless, there is nothing to believe. We can only believe what is possible. We cannot believe that which is contrary to reason. Reason contradicts a statement when it shows that it never could be true. Belief would not be possible unless there were some things which it is impossible to believe. We can only believe what is probable. We can neither believe without evidence nor against it. Evidence is to mental vision what light is to physical. Of mental vision there are two kinds—knowledge and belief. The evidence of certainty produces knowledge; the evidence of probability produces belief. The amount of evidence required to produce belief is different in different individuals, and the amount of evidence required will be different in the same individual for different subjects. Belief is independent of volition. The profession of belief is not so limited. We cannot believe to order or at will.—Prof. Alfred Momerie.
A Genuine Act of Faith.—Every genuine act of faith is the act of the whole man, not of his understanding alone, not of his affections alone, not of his will alone, but of all three in their central, aboriginal unity; and thus faith becomes the faculty in man through which the spiritual world exercises its sway over him, and thereby enables him to overcome the world of sin and death.—Hare.
Heb_11:1; Heb_11:6. Faith includes Belief.—The terms we constantly use in religious conversation and in our preaching may be compared to current coin, which the whole community have an interest in keeping perfectly pure and of the true weight. So it is with terms such as faith, justification, sanctification. They are apt, like coins, to be clipped of some small portion of their Scriptural meaning; and we do well constantly, as it were, to take them to the mint and compare them, or rather the meaning we have come to attach to them, with Holy Scripture. The word translated “faith” is equivalent to trust in a person. Those who “come to God” are those who are on their way to faith; yet we are told that before they can have faith they must at least “believe that God is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” Faith is a Scripture term which is used in a larger sense than belief. Every one who has faith believes; but every one who believes has not necessarily all that is comprehended in the term “faith.” Belief is a part of faith, not the whole. Belief is an act of the intellect. Faith is that unshaken trust in God as our heavenly Father, in Christ as our Saviour, and in the Holy Ghost as our Sanctifier, which is wrought in the heart of the Christian by the Holy Spirit. We cannot believe without being convinced; if we are intellectually convinced that Jesus is the Christ, we cannot say so from the heart, except by the Holy Ghost—“cannot come to Christ except the Father draw us.” It is not the profession of belief alone that God requires, although He requires this, but the acting out of the belief. We must be careful not to assert that there are no degrees in faith, and so make sad the hearts of children of God, whom He has not made sad.—Robert Barclay.
Heb_11:2. The Inspiration of High Examples.—“For by it the elders obtained a good report.” R.V. “For therein the elders had witness borne unto them.” A recent review-writer on “Modern Socialism and Economics” points out that all forms of society, aristocratic or democratic, despotic or republican, have recognised qualitative differences in their individual members. A better soldier or sailor, inventor or planter, poet or singer, soon made an impression on these societies, and found his reward. This principle, if not rejected, is oppressed by socialism. The mass of society, and not the essential quality of the individual members, occupies the attention, and stimulates the inventive plans of socialists. This is not the method of nature, which improves by variation, and not by mere succession and repetition. Progress comes by diffusing quality through the mass, and not by merely increasing the bulk of the mass; and the quality of individuals, once attained, becomes a common heritage. In no sphere of life does God ever permit man to keep on one dead level. Everywhere God sends forth the advanced man, the superior man, that he may be the inspiration to effort and attainment to others. Every superior man starts in other men the hopeful restlessness of discontent and ambition. The natural tendency of men on a level is to sink to a lower level. So there are always among us best men, elect men, who save humanity by preventing it from sinking, and inspiring it to rise higher. This is the fact in the moral and religious spheres, and Jesus Christ is the supreme Example who declares what is possible for humanity and helps to the attainment of it.
Heb_11:3. Faith and Philosophy dealing with a Material World.—It needs to be clearly seen that faith and philosophy do not ask the same thing concerning creation. Philosophy asks, “How did these things come to be?” Faith asks,” Who brought these things into being and order?” It is of the very essence of the faculty of faith that it bears relation to person, not to force. This is plain if we remember how closely associated faith is with “trust” and with “love.”
Heb_11:3-4. Faith and Reason.—How “faith” properly stands related to “reason” may be illustrated by the reference to the Creation How “faith” stands related to “religion” may be illustrated by the reference to Abel. Faith cannot be satisfactorily defined; it can be described in what it does, or helps us to do.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 11
Heb_11:1. Teaching what Faith is.—The Rev. R. Cecil imprinted upon the mind of his little daughter the true idea of faith, by the following method: “She was playing,” said he, “one day with a few beads, which seemed wonderfully to delight her. Her whole soul was absorbed in her beads. I said, ‘My dear, you have some pretty beads there.’ ‘Yes, papa.’ ‘And you seem vastly pleased with them. Well, now, throw them behind the fire.’ The tears started into her eyes; she looked earnestly at me, as if she ought to have a reason for so cruel a sacrifice. Summoning up all her fortitude, her breast heaving with the effort, she dashed them into the fire. Some days after, when I returned home, I opened a treasure, and set before her a bagful of large beads and toys of the same kind; she burst into tears with excessive joy. ‘These, my child,’ said I, ‘are yours, because you believed me when I told you to throw those paltry beads behind the fire; your obedience has brought you this treasure. But now, my dear, remember as long as you live what faith is. I did all this to teach you the meaning of faith. You threw your beads away when I bade you, because you had faith in me that I never advised you but for your good. Put the same confidence in God; believe everything that He says in His word. Whether you understand Him or not, have faith in Him that He means you good.”—Sunday Readings.
Walking by Faith.—Andrew Fuller was to preach before a ministerial association. On his way there, the roads in several places were flooded by recent rains. Mr. Fuller came to one place where the water was very deep, and, being a stranger to its exact depth, was unwilling to go on. A countryman acquainted with the water cried out, “Go on, sir! you are quite safe!” Fuller urged on his horse; but the water soon touched the saddle, and he stopped to think. “Go on, sir! all is right!” shouted the man. Taking the man at his word, Fuller proceeded, and the text was suggested, “We walk by faith, not by sight.”
Faith and Sight.—By constant sight the effect of objects seen grows less; by constant faith the effect of objects believed in grows greater. The probable reason is, that personal observation does not admit of the influence of the imagination in impressing the facts; while unseen objects, realised by faith, have the auxiliary aid of the imagination, not to exaggerate them, but to clothe them with living colours, and impress them upon the heart. Whether this is true or not, the more frequently we see the less we feel the power of an object; while the more frequently we dwell upon an object by faith, the more we feel its power.—J. B. Walker.
Faith.—
My faith, it is an oaken staff,
The traveller’s well-loved aid;
My faith, it is a weapon stout,
The soldier’s trusty blade:
I’ll travel on, and still bestirred
By silent thought or social word,
By all my perils undeterred,
A soldier-pilgrim staid.
My faith, it is an oaken staff,
Oh let me on it lean;
My faith, it is a trusty sword,
May falsehood find it keen!
Thy Spirit, Lord, to me impart,
Oh make me what Thou ever art—
Of patient and courageous heart,
As all true saints have been.
T. T. Lynch.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On v36 “Better” is not antithetical to bad, but to good.…
ARGUMENT 15
THE BETTER RESURRECTION.
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“Better” is not antithetical to bad, but to good. Hence the logical sequence follows that while there is a bad resurrection for the wicked, there are also two resurrections for the righteous — the good and the better, the first and the last. It is stated positively
“Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: over these the second death hath no power, they shall be priests of God and Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.” (Rev 20:6)
This Scripture, as well as others, settles the question of the two resurrections without the possibility of cavil. I am sorry this important revelation has been obscured by the spiritualization of the first resurrection. This is a gross and flagrant error, utterly untenable, as it breaks up and destroys the antithesis, doing away with the corporeal resurrection altogether, and plunging headlong into the Swedenborgian heresy. The Greek is ezeean in both cases, which simply means, “they lived.” If it is spiritual in one sense it is in the other, and physical resurrection is forever gone. Hence we see the utter untenability of this construction and receive unequivocally the doctrine of the two resurrections. In the rapture described by Paul (1Th 4:13-18), we have another graphic account of the first resurrection, when the Lord shall come after His bride, preparatory to His millennial kingdom. Php 3:11,
“If perchance I may attain unto the resurrection which is out from among the dead.”
The Old Testament saints were not ignorant of the glorious reality of the Lord’s bridehood. Therefore they suffered the most terrible tortures of martyrdom that they might have a place in the first resurrection; which will take place before the millennium, the last resurrection being postponed till the final judgment. It is certainly a glorious privilege to rise and shout o my grave a thousand years before the general resurrection, especially when we consider the glorious privileges of the bridehood to reign with Christ during the millennial ages.
36-38. Here the Holy Ghost describes the terrible tortures inflicted by a wicked world and a fallen Church on the Old Testament martyrs. They shouted in the fires anticipating the glories awaiting them in the Lord’s bridehood and the first resurrection.
39. “All these having received the witness of the Spirit through faith, obtained not the promise.”... While the Bible is flooded with thousands of promises, especially considering the synonymy of promise and commandment in the Greek and Hebrew, by which the number is doubled, the great Messianic promise of the Lord’s incarnation and the world’s literal and actual redemption by the bleeding Christ on the cross, his triumphant resurrection, glorious ascension and mediatorial coronation and intercession throughout the Bible is magnified as “the promise” by way of pre-eminence and exaltation. While the saints of all ages lived in glowing anticipation of this wonderful prophetical fulfillment, and the realization of the Messianic promise, yet they all died without the sight. Contrastively with the verification of this promise, theirs was a dispensation of Christian imperfection. Yet their stalwart and sanguine hope swept onward through the lights of type and prophecy into the personal experience of Christian perfection. This grand faith brigade lived, testified and shouted, in the realization of Gospel experiences many centuries in advance of their age and generation, while the rank and file of the Church barely reached perfection in the article of death, passing into eternity in a state of spiritual infancy, like the great bulk of the Gospel Church of the present day. Their case was apologizable, as they were in harmony with their dispensation, while the unsanctified millions of the Church of the present day, both clerical and laic, are blundering along amid the fogs of carnality, three thousand years behind the age.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 Faith and Things Hoped for and Unseen.
Heb 11:1
Faith and Things Hoped for and Unseen.
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I. Faith appears at first sight a very simple thing; it is nothing else but believing the word of God. We know what it is to receive the word of a man, to believe statements, thought strange and surpassing our experience, because we regard the character of him who makes them with respect and confidence. But then, remember, as God is greater than man, as God’s word is heaven, high above any human word, so the reception of this word, the believing of this word, is necessarily something quite different from the reception of any human word or testimony. As is the voice, so is the echo; as is the seal, so is the impression; as is the word or revelation, so is the faith. The Divine word produces in the heart of man faith, which is Divine in its nature and power. To assent to the word of God is therefore to enter into a perfectly new life, a perfectly new mode of power and existence.
II. True faith takes hold of the Divine word; it is weak or strong, great or small, as it receives, keeps, and uses, the word of God. The source of weak faith is in the ignorance and slowness of the heart with reference to the Divine testimony. The strength of faith is the humility of a helpless and broken heart cleaving to the promise. There was one who, next to the apostles, was perhaps the greatest gift of God to the Church, whom we all admire for his faith. And yet Martin Luther was wont to say, "Oh, if I had faith!" And often he confessed that, unless every day he read the Scriptures, and meditated on Christ, and repeated the Creed, and prayed the Psalms, his heart became dead and cold, full of dark and hard thoughts of God, and of dreary and tormenting doubts and fears. Let us dwell, then, on Christ; let us consider Him in steadfast, frequent, daily meditation; let the word of Christ dwell richly in our hearts, minds; and homes.
A. Saphir, Lectures on Hebrews, vol. ii., p. 257.
Faith.
Ages, like individuals, have their besetting sins, and prominent among those of the present day is faithlessness. We have many excellent characteristics, without doubt; we should be inhuman if it were not so. We are earnest after our fashion, enterprising, intellectually veracious, humane, liberal, tolerant; but underneath, and behind all this, we are emphatically a faithless generation. The one thing conspicuous by its absence from our social and political dealings, from our literature, from our art, from our thought, from the conduct of our lives, is faith; and yet, "whatsoever is not of faith is sin," and "without faith it is impossible to please God."
I. Consider what faith is. We too often think and speak of it as a speculative faculty, co-ordinate with reason, and differing from reason only in being concerned with a different subjectmatter; as if, while reason assures us that honesty is the best policy, or that probability is the guide of life, or that the laws of nature are uniform, faith supplies us with similar judgments about God, and spirit, and immortality; judgments that is, which may or may not have an important bearing on our lives, but which are exhausted, as far as faith is concerned, by the intelligent recital of the orthodox creed. But this is not St. Paul’s view. Sight, intuition, vision, by whatever name you call it, is a higher thing than reason, for it is that in which reason ends; and faith is higher than even sight, for it is sight become creative. It sees in darkness, believes without evidence, is certain of impossibilities, grapples with and forces the blank, dark, empty nothingness into substance, and consistency, and reality, and life; it is the reflection, almost too bright for frail human nature, of the Divine power that can create ex nihilo.
II. Why is it that when our health, and wealth, and time, and opportunity, are not actively misused for evil, they are so often frittered away? Simply for want of faith. You start in life with high ideas and an exuberance of energy, but you have not courage to bring the two into relation—i.e., you have not faith. Your ideas are like the visions that float before the artist: they are unreal to begin with; but you are endowed with a creative faculty, and you can call them into existence by the bare fact of your faith. You can make them what they are not, as the heroes and saints have done before you, but you will not, and so you allow the God-sent vision of your destiny to fade away unfulfilled, till in the end it will be nothing more to you than the melancholy memory of some sunrise long ago.
J. R. Illingworth, Sermons, p. 116.
Faith.
I. Faith is here opposed to sight. It is, in the first place, the resting of the soul upon the unseen. This, the writer says, has been the common feature of all great, heroic, saintly deeds and lives. He draws his illustrations from the history of the race to which he writes. Every one whose name was great in its history, its founders, legislators, rulers; its warriors, and its martyrs; its prophets, and its poets; those without its limits who had helped it in days of adversity; all had one common characteristic. They had looked beyond what they could see. They had believed in the future, in the possible, in powers of which their senses gave them no assurance.
II. Faith is the vivid life-moving realisation of the unseen, the distant, the ideal. It is not the same as hope, but it is the spring of hope—that on which hope rests—the substance, the reality of things hoped for. In this sense it colours all history. It gives to all life its beauty, its romance, its spiritual energy. The faith of which the chapter speaks is generally not merely the faculty, the will, to see beyond the present and the visible; it is the eye open to the sun of the unseen world.
III. Let me suggest two thoughts on this point: (1) That we do well to feed our imaginations and fortify our instincts by gathering, by dwelling upon, even as the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews dwells upon pictures of this virtue of heroes. This is the great good to us of poetry, and of the great scenes of history. (2) This is one thought; the other is that we should each strive to see, if we may use the paradox, the unseen side, the ideal side of our work. That dream-world is the true, the real world. All those visions of beauty—truth and love and justice—are not phantoms of our brains, but the outlines dimly seen of One infinitely perfect, by whom and in whom are we and all things.
E. C. Wickham, Wellington College Sermons, p. 42.
Faith.
I. Faith is that feeling or faculty within us by which the future becomes to our minds greater than the present; and that which we do not see, more powerful to influence us than what we do see. It is very true, that if we knew nothing of God, still there would be the same feeling of preferring the future and the unseen to the present; and this feeling, wherever it rested, would raise and improve the mind. But the moment that we are told of God, we see that He is an object of faith, far more excellent than any other, and that it is when directed towards Him that the feeling can be brought towards its full perfection.
II. It is a very necessary part of faith that the thing which we believe be told us by some one whom we have reason for believing—some one whom we know to be, so far as we are concerned, good and wise. The moment we are told of God,—so perfect in wisdom, so perfect in goodness, so perfect in power—we find One on whose assurance we may rely with a most certain trust, and whose commands will be as good and wise, as the fulfilment of His threats will be sure. Again, it is a great trial of faith when the good or the evil expected is distant, and still greater when it is not only distant, but imperfectly understood. Now the good or evil which God promises and threatens to Christians is so distant, that it will only come after our earthly lives are over; it is so imperfectly understood, that eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man to conceive, the things which God has prepared for them that love Him; nor yet, I may add, the wrath which He has prepared for those who do not love Him. So then, faith in God, in His promises, and His threatenings, seems to be perfect in all the points required to perfect it.
T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. ii., p. 1.
References: Heb 11:1.—R. W. Dale, The Jewish Temple and the Christian Church, p. 242; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. v., p. 175; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. i., pp. 163, 170; Church of England Pulpit, vol. v., p. 305; Homilist, 1st series, vol. iv., p. 338; Ibid., 2nd series, vol. ii., p. 587; C. J. Vaughan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. viii., pp. 286, 296. Heb 1:1-10.—E. W. Shalders, Ibid., pp. 298, 317, 325, 349, 356; H. W. Beecher, Ibid., vol. xvi., p. 28; Ibid., vol. xxiii., pp. 31-40; A. Mursell, Ibid., vol. xviii., p. 248; G. Macdonald, Ibid., vol. xxi., p. 385. Heb 11:1-3.—Ibid., vol. xvii., p. 264; Homiletic Magazine, vol. vii., p. 191.
Heb 11:3
Faith in God the Creator.
I. Reason cannot ascend from nature to nature’s God. The most comprehensive observation of things seen, and of which we can take cognisance, and the most minute analysis of things with the most remote and simple elements, leave the question of creation or the origin of things perfectly untouched and unapproached. The step from matter to mind, from things which appear to that which is the cause, spring, origin of all, is one which reason cannot take. God reveals it; we believe.
II. We believe that God is, for He has spoken to us; He has loved us, He has redeemed us. He was Abraham’s guest and guide, his sure portion, and exceeding great reward. He brought Israel out of Egypt. He spoke unto the fathers as unto His chosen friends. Jehovah reveals to us that He is the Lord, the Creator of heaven and of earth; that He made all things by the word of His power. He reveals to us that all things were made by His Son, and for Him, who is appointed Heir of all things; that not atoms, or an original matter, but Christ, is the beginning of creation, in whom all His counsel stood before Him from all eternity.
III. God is the Creator; this is the first note struck on the lyre of Revelation, with which all other strains are in harmony. It sounds throughout the whole anthem. In Christ we hear the full melody; in Him we behold both the eternal counsel of redemption, and the final consummation in glory. Such are the apparently simple but inexhaustible and ever-blessed revelation truths for the sinner seeking salvation, for the Christian in affliction, in temptation; for the day of warfare, the night of sorrow, the hour of death.
A. Saphir, Lectures on Hebrews, vol. ii., p. 273.
Reference: Heb 11:3.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. vi., p. 334.
Heb 11:1
The Work of the Few and the Many.
The history of mankind, whether secular or religious, resolves itself into the history of a few individuals. It is not that all the rest do not live their own lives, or can shirk their own eternal responsibilities; but it is that the march and movement of the many is as surely influenced by the genius of the few as is the swing of the tide by the law of gravitation. It is a law of our being that we should belong—the vast majority of us—to the unknown, to the unrecorded masses, who, long before the very things we own have perished, shall have passed away out of all remembrance as utterly as though we had never been.
I. There, then, is one great fact of life; another, and a far sadder one, is that, by a sort of fatal gravitation, the human race seems of itself to tend downwards. It is impulse, passion, temptation, more than reason, that often sways the heart of each man, and therefore of all men. It is the few only who are saints; the few only who are heroes.
II. How does God carry out His work of continuous redemption? It is by the energy of His chosen few. Into their hearts He pours the power of His Spirit; upon their heads He lays the hands of His consecration. The history of mankind is like the history of Israel in the days of the Judges. The deliverance of mankind has never been wrought by the multitude; always by the individual.
III. We learn from this subject: (1) the secret, the sole secret, of moral power. Who that reads the signs of the times can fail to perceive how much this age needs to learn the secret. By faith, each in his age and order, these saints of God delivered his generation, inspired his successors, wrought righteousness in a faithless world. (2) We may notice also that the work of these saints of God, being always and necessarily human, is never permanent in its special results. There is an infinite pathos in the predestined failure of men and institutions which leave no adequate heirs to propagate their impulse, to carry on their purposes. Abraham dies, and in a century his descendants are slaves. When the influence of God’s saints has spent its force, if the work pauses for a moment, everything falls into ruin and corruption. Only as an inspiring, passionate, continuous energy can Christianity regenerate the world. (3) These apparent failures were never absolute. No good man, no saint of God, has ever lived or died in vain. The very best of us leaves his tale half untold, his message imperfect; but if we have but been faithful, then, because of us, some one who follows us with a happier heart and in happier times, shall utter our message better and tell our tale more perfectly. Some one shall run and not be faint; some one shall fly with wings where we have walked with weary feet.
F. W. Farrar, Sermons and Addresses in America, p. 202.
Heb 11:4
Faith as Acting on Worship.
I. All faith implies an effort, a motion of the will towards God. It maintains not existence merely, but living energy; it is not otiose, but active; it even asks, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" Think of this as regards worship. To be real it must be a business in which we take an active part—a homage to a Presence which we feel. If there are any to whom the Lord’s day, with its special duty, or each day’s ordinary duty of prayer and praise, is a mere blank of unoccupied thought, a mere spiritual void, then be sure that the world, the flesh, and the devil, are filling the vacuum. You come away the better or the worse from every service; you are either drawing near to God and receiving of Him, or you are practising unbelief, decomposing your assurance into doubt, and rehearsing the earlier stages of that hardening of the heart of which the Israelites are the standing type, who walked for a whole generation in God’s presence, and knew Him not, and perished by the way.
II. Praise is valueless except it express faith. Take the oldest hymn of the distinctively Christian Church, which we have inherited from its earliest ages—the Te Deum. That hymn has doubtless been so universally received throughout the West because it appeals so peculiarly to our faith as Christians. That is the simple account of it; it contains a creed, but under the most personal of aspects. Is it possible to utter such words as those of the Te Deum without an emotion of faith and not be self-convicted? Exactly in proportion as it embodies the articles of the faith, and displays each separate credendum in near connection with our most deeply seated hopes and our most awful fears, in that proportion does it demand the inward, the subjective faith in us which is the Divine quality in the heart of man. Faith alone can put a life into our worship.
H. Hayman, Rugby Sermons, p. 16.
Unselfish Immortality.
I. It is so that every great man speaks to men. Dead, they live; buried, they rise again; and they speak with more power after death than during life, for jealousy and envy no longer dog their footsteps, and their faults are seen as God sees them, through that veil of charity which justice weaves; and their good is disentangled from their evil, and set in clear light, because so wise and true is the heart of mankind, in spite of all its wrong and folly, that in its memory it is the good and not the evil that survives.
II. Our home and our society are to us what the world is to a great man—the sphere we may fill with work that cannot die. The statesman moulds a people into order and progress, partly by the force of character, partly by great measures. We are the statesmen of our little world. Every day mother and father stamp their character upon their children’s lives, mould their manners, conscience, and their future by the measures by which they direct the household. This is our work, and all of it lives after you—lives with tenfold power when you are dead, multiplies in the lives of those who have known you well.
III. Take noble care of the works that are handed down to to you, and the voices that come to you from the silent world. We look too carelessly on that store and its riches. The past spreads a banquet before you; eat and be thankful. The eating will nourish your whole being; the thankfulness will help you to digest the food. And as you do this the sense of the enduring life of human kind will grow on you; you will begin, through long unweaving of yourself with the past, to feel unwoven with an infinite future. This last result will make you worthy yourself to speak when you are dead, to follow your works in men to come. To do this with regard to Christ is to become a Christian.
IV. Considering that universal communion of those who have among men done and thought nobly or beautifully, and how among this communion there is neither nation, nor time, nor place, nor language, but mankind is all, and in all—we, entering into this region through sharing in the works and speech of all those who have been good and great in all lands, become ourselves universal in thought and feeling. We shall arise into the conception of an everlasting life for this vast and glorious race that has so wonderfully thought, and done, and loved, and turn, believing, with outstretched hands and eager eyes, to Him who said, "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to Him."
S. A. Brooke, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvii., p. 401.
References: Heb 11:4.—Homilist, 2nd series, vol. ii., p. 588; J. G. Rogers, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxviii., p. 225; W. J. Woods, Ibid., vol. xxxiii., p. 200.
Heb 11:1-7
Abel, Enoch, Noah.
Before the flood and the Abrahamic covenant God had a people on earth who lived by faith. Abel, the first martyr, Enoch, the seventh from Adam, and Noah, the preacher of righteousness, are the three witnesses of the period whose lives are recorded.
I. Abel, the first man who had to descend into the grave, was carried through it on the arms of redeeming love. Abel, believing the word, approached God through the bitter sacrifice. Every one who believes in Jesus Christ is an accepted worshipper. There is no other true and spiritual worship but the worship of a believer in Jesus, and this worship is always accepted. Of this, the only worship, Abel, though dead, yet speaketh.
II. The sinner who through faith in the sacrifice is righteous before God, belongs now to God, and is an heir of eternal life. Sin and death have no more dominion over him. Thus Enoch, the seventh from Adam, walks with God. In this simple familiar expression we have the description of the new life; it brings before us communion with God, dependence on His guidance, submission to His authority, confidence in His love and favour, continuous, habitual fellowship, and a mind conformed to God’s mind, and delighting itself in the Lord.
III. Abel testifies of faith’s sacrifice and worship always accepted. Enoch of faith’s walk and triumph, lifted above sin and death into fellowship with the holy God, the Lord of Life. Noah’s faith has again another testimony. He found grace—the first time the word is used in Scripture—in the eyes of the Lord. His faith, rooted in the contrite heart, and evidenced in his daily work and obedience, was tested by the opposition and mockery of the world to whom he testified of sin, of judgment, and saving grace; declaring what he possessed himself, righteousness by faith. And by his faith he not merely saved himself, but his household.
A. Saphir, Lectures on Hebrews, vol. ii., p. 289.
References: Heb 11:5.—J. Vaughan, Sermons, 7th series, p. 176; Homiletic Magazine, vol. i., p. 112. Heb 11:5, Heb 11:6.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxii., No. 1307; Homiletic Magazine, vol. viii., p. 235. Heb 11:6.—E. M. Goulburn, Thoughts on Personal Religion, p. 41; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iii., No. 107; J. Kennedy, Christian World Pulpit, vol. iii., p. 102; H. W. Beecher, Ibid., vol. xx., p. 317; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. viii., p. 98. Heb 11:7.—S. Mitchell, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxviii., p. 419; H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 3303.
Heb 11:8
The Father of Missionaries.
He went out, as many had gone out before him, as many would go out after him. He moves onwards and onwards towards the setting sun, till at length all progress is stopped by the sea barrier which parts him from the unknown worlds beyond. There, from those bare mountain heights, he would look down on the purple ocean, with its boundless expanse and its ceaseless turmoil,—the ocean, terrible even to his late descendants. What must have been his thoughts as he remembered that promise, the Divine and irrevocable promise, that his seed should be as the stars of heaven for multitude, and that in him all families of the earth should be blessed? For while all else in the scene was changed, the stars, the sacrament and the promise remained unchangeable, as the promise itself was unchangeable. They shone overhead—each particular star—with its own light, in its own region, above that strange, vague ocean, just as they had shone over his boyhood in his familiar inland home.
I. Whence comes it that, in the ceaseless tide of humanity, rolling westward throughout the ages, this one caravan of a simple nomad Bedouin—this single drop in the mighty stream—has fastened on itself the attention of men? The answer is contained in one word, It was his faith which singled him out in the counsels of God, and has stamped him in the hearts of men. He saw, as in a glass, he read, as in a dark enigma, the glory of the great Messianic day, when his children should rule over the earth. The shadow of the future was projected on the experience of the present. He saw, and he believed; he went forth, nothing doubting; he went forth, not knowing whither he went.
II. Abraham was not only faithful himself, but he was also the father of the faithful. Look at the history of the Jewish race. What was the secret of its long life, the principle which revived, animated, sustained it, amidst all disasters and under every oppression? Was it not faith—faith in a Divine call, in a Divine mission for the race? With all their narrowness and all their weakness—aye, and amidst all their defections, too, this faith never died out. It was the breath of their national life. The spirit of Abraham never altogether left his children. "The vanquished," said Seneca bitterly of the Jews, "have given laws to the victors." What would he have said if he could have looked forward for three centuries, and forecast the time when the spiritual Israel—the offspring of Abraham by faith—should plant its throne on the ruins of the majesty and power of Imperial Rome?
J. B. Lightfoot, Occasional Sermons, p. 38.
References: Heb 11:8.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxi., No. 1242; vol. v., No. 261; Homiletic Magazine, vol. xi., p. 365; J. Thain Davidson, Talks with Young Men, p. 89; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvi., p. 145; D. Bushell, Ibid., vol. xxxiv., p. 372. Heb 11:8-10.—Homilist, 1st series, vol. i., p. 119; F. W. Robertson, Sermons, 3rd series, p. 77.
Heb 11:8-22
The Patriarchs.
I. The period of the patriarchs has a very peaceful and lovely character. God appeared and spoke to them. There was as yet no law. What is the real peculiarity of the patriarchal life? What else but faith; that they lived before and with God, waiting for the promise, the heavenly country? They were not worldly; they were other-worldly. God was a very present God to them; while the future, the tabernacle of God on earth with man, was their constant hope.
II. Abraham’s faith was the substance of future things hoped for, and a conviction of things not seen. It triumphed over reason; it laughed at impossibilities; it looked beyond death and the long night of the intermediate state; and in all this it gave glory to God; for this is the only glory we can give to God, believing that He can and will do what He has promised. The fathers, realising the fulfilment of the promise, treated the future possession as if it was theirs already, and disposed of it, as the Spirit directed them, by their last will and blessing.
III. We should learn from Abraham to believe in God that raised up Jesus from the dead. Reason sees your guilt, faith sees your acquittal, for Christ is risen; reason sees your sinfulness and infirmity, faith sees your power and strength in newness of life, for Christ is risen. Live in tents; set not your affection on things below. Live in the tents the patriarchal life of prayer, and a reverent, filial walk with God. When the soul is cast down and disquieted within you, when the heart is heavy, when Isaac, in whom you delight, faith’s child, is to be sacrificed, then believe, hope in God, and know that you shall yet praise Him. Thus we give glory to God.
A. Saphir, Lectures on Hebrews, vol. ii., p. 304.
References: Heb 11:9, Heb 11:10.—C. Kingsley, Village Sermons, p. 89. Heb 11:9, Heb 11:13.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 533. Heb 11:10.—H. J. Wilmot Buxton, Waterside Mission Sermons, 2nd series, No. 3; Homiletic Magazine, vol. vi., p. 268. Heb 11:11.—Expositor, 1st series, vol. xii, p. 345.
Heb 11:13
Faith triumphant in Death.
I. The excellence of the faith which places its object beyond death may be seen in two respects. (1) First, as it is in itself greater and bolder, existing in spite of greater difficulties. It is this, because it is fixed on an unknown object; our objects in this life, however remote, are such as we know or can well conceive of; there are no kinds of human pleasure, of such pleasure, at least, as we ourselves are ever likely to desire, which are not in some degree familiar to our minds already. (2) But, further, the faith which stops short of death may be, and often is, a faith which looks to a good object—to the accomplishment of some great work, to the enjoyment of honourable rest; an old age relieved from labour, respected and beloved. Good objects—I would not say otherwise; yet surely not the best nor the highest. But the faith which looks beyond death is content with no less object than God Himself. The faith which is strong enough to look beyond the grave does not fix its view chiefly on any known pleasure to be again revived, upon any known love to be eternally continued, but upon One who is truly the great end of all being; upon the knowledge of and communion with God and Christ.
II. This faith which takes death within its prospects, and looks on boldly to something beyond, is at once the greatest elevation and the greatest blessing of humanity. It cannot be denied that in quiet times, and amid much worldly enjoyment, such faith is hard to be maintained, and is in many wholly wanting. But yet all the while we are in extreme insecurity, and the sense of this sooner or later must be forced upon us; for sooner or later death and its strangeness must come near to us, and something beyond the grave must be thought of, because the grave itself is close at hand. And if faith has not habitually lived in that region, no longer far off but near, fear will now be dwelling upon it continually. In proportion as any one draws near to God, and thinks of Him, and prays to Him constantly and earnestly, so does he become familiar with the life beyond the grave, and find it possible and natural to fix his faith there.
T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. v., p. 231.
References: Heb 11:13.—Church of England Pulpit, vol. vii., p. 1. Heb 11:13, Heb 11:14.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi., No. 1825; Ibid., Evening by Evening, p. 123; R. S. Candlish, Sermons, p. 235; Homilist, 3rd series, vol. i., p. 73; A. Maclaren, Contemporary Pulpit, vol. i., p. 112.
Heb 11:14
The Expectants.
I. One of the marks of the saints of God is their heavenward look. They are in the world, but not of the world; strangers, not citizens. Their acts, their failures, their sacrifices, their sufferings, are here, but their hearts and their treasures are above. But now, can it be that in urging this I have in reality been condemning them? In presuming to admire their upward hopes, have we in truth been branding them with selfishness? There are some who seem to think so. They urge that the dimmer the hope, the nobler the sacrifice; the more bounded the vision, the grander the energy of those who will labour while it is called today. Strange, indeed, is the revolution of thought when the dearest of blessings is stigmatised as the most perilous of tempters; and when the chief glory of faith, the sure and certain hope of immortality, is not merely discredited as a dream, but branded as a weakness from which true manhood would be proud to be exempt. Compare, it is said, the sacrifices of the Christian with the sacrifices of him who has the Christian morality, and the Christian self-denial, without being cheered or encumbered by the Christian’s hope. The one devotes himself to the service of humanity, asking for nothing again; the other fixes his eyes on the glories of heaven, and calculates the overplus of future happiness which will more than compensate for present suffering. Which is the nobler? To-day we fix our eyes on the true champions of our faith, on those who have made full proof of their ministry, and have shown the world, by visible proof, what it may be to be a follower of Christ. Would they have been more disinterested, would they have been intrinsically nobler, if they had seen no heaven beyond? That upward expression, that unsatisfied air of aspiration, that expectant look as of the servant waiting for his Lord—is it, as great painters have taught us to imagine, the dawn of the eternal day already irradiating the horizon, or is it, rather, the last lingering stain of a refined selfishness, all the more perilous because it is unconscious? No, my brethren; let us never be ashamed of the heavenward heart, as though it detracted from a perfect disinterestedness. Man is born for immortality; that is part of his being, the noblest part, and it cannot be selfish to crave the happiness for which we were created and designed.
H. Montagu Butler, Harrow Sermons, 2nd series, p. 282.
References: Heb 11:15, Heb 11:16.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xviii., No. 1030. Heb 11:16.—Church of England Pulpit, vol. xix., p. 289; W. M. Taylor, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvi., p. 113; T. Hammond, Ibid., vol. xxi., p. 54; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 455. Heb 11:17-19.—C. Kingsley, Village Sermons, p. 99.
Heb 11:21
The Story of a Pilgrim’s Staff.
I. The pilgrim’s staff represented something. He leaned on it, not because it was needed, but because it helped him to realise. It was the type of those principles which sustain and make strong—on which the spirit leans. The spirit flees over many fields, but it rests and finds its home on one, like the lark that sweeps up through the blue, and sings in the heavens. Its home is on the earth. You may go up into heaven as much as you like, but you must have a realising place where you may put your head. Man may think in religion about many things, but he is strengthened by one or two things only. Whatever our faiths are, we need to realise; we need to see the thing embodied so that we may apprehend it.
II. And then it will follow from this, secondly, that as it was a staff through which he realised, and therefore was dear to him because it realised and represented to him, so it was a memory. It was a memory of many things, a memory of many events and seasons. I take it, that the staff was very specially a memorial to him of the covenant in the night when God spoke to him in that marvellous dream. He adored God in the memory of it, for it kept him from falling. He did not adore the staff, but in the memory of it he adored God.
III. He worshipped, leaning on his staff, thirdly, because it was experience to him. The staff was not merely itself a memorial; it was inscribed all over with memory. Did not he think of a wrestling hour with the angel, and of days and years which, if few and evil, were surely not unblessed?
IV. It was a staff of promise. To lean on it was an assurance of what God would be and do; to lean on it was to feel the promises rushing through his soul. They pointed the finger to the future in hope and in faith. Faith rises higher and sinks deeper than our mere relative consciousness. Just as the sky is over the earth, so it is with those promises that arch us over, that surround, that illuminate our heaven. All texts are not the same to us; they vary in their lustre; they vary in the nutriment they give. But every text in the word of God says, "Trust me; rest on me; I will be equal to thee."
V. Lastly, he worshipped, leaning on his staff, for it was the staff of redemption—the uninscribed, but still the apprehended redemption. That staff of his—that piece of stick—was to Jacob a representation of a succession of promises, of times when his soul and God’s soul had had lonely walks and consultations and communings together. The age of stones has gone, and the age of staffs, perhaps, in the way of which either David or Jacob might speak of their being used; but the age of words is not gone, and we lean on the staff in the counting-house, in the school, in the study, in the street, in the solitude, in the wilderness. As we gaze upon it we are able to say of God’s word, "Thou hast not failed me, O thou staff."
E. Paxton Hood, Penny Pulpit, new series, No. 766.
Reference: Heb 11:21.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiv., No. 1401.
Heb 11:22
I. It is not possible to read the life of Joseph without beholding here the portrait of a great man, not merely as a commanding and guiding intelligence, but that which is higher yet, a strong and noble personal character. Evidently, all his early life was pressed upon by thoughts his brethren could not comprehend; a contemplative nature, before whom often floated in his boyhood dreams of what he yet was to be.
II. He was what we should call a self-made man; he was as much so as any man can be a self-made man; his life was one long contest with difficulties, but he overcame them all.
III. His greatness was moral greatness. He was not a warrior. He did not bear the sword; he had that perfectly-formed will, which is character; he had insight and foresight; and he had in his possession that which really makes life easy and character strong. He had principles; faith ruled and controlled his character. He saw the golden purpose running through the darker web of his life.
IV. In the commandment he gave concerning his bones we see (1) the nationality of Joseph. His heart turns to Canaan. (2) The lesson of faith. "I die, but God shall surely visit you." Amid the temples of Osiris, Typhon, and Isis, and the world of uncouth marvels and debasement of the Egyptian temples, he had not forgotten Jehovah. (3) A lesson of the sustaining power there is in the memories of good and great men. Joseph lived in the thoughts and affections and hopes of his descendants. The dust of the holy dead is precious; the words of the holy dead are watchwords. (4) We have here a trust, a hope, an aspiration, concerning the resurrection. I cannot but think that this glorious dreamer anticipated, not only the departure of the tribes, but the final unsealing of all those tombs, and longed rather to be near the old cemetery of Machpelah than amidst the cold, dark, stony, stately rooms of Egyptian pyramids and their coffins.
E. Paxton Hood, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxiii., p. 313.
References: Heb 11:22.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvi., No. 966; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxvi., p. 68; A. D. Davidson, Lectures and Sermons, p. 485. Heb 11:23.—Ibid., vol. xxiv., No. 1421.
Heb 11:23-29
Moses.
I. Israel is a typical nation. The things which happened to them" are recorded for our instruction and comfort. The things which happened unto them, happen unto us also. We also were in Egypt, and had to learn that we could not bring about our deliverance by our own strength and zeal. Like Moses, we had to flee from such attempts of self-wrought emancipation into the wilderness, and wait there quietly upon the Lord. When we were still, and knew that it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, God showed mercy. We also went through the Red Sea, and then sang the song of praise to God; when we were taught the power of Christ’s resurrection, and when the Holy Ghost, separating us by the Cross from Egypt, brought us through resurrection into the new life, and raised our affections to the things above.
II. Israel in Egypt. Look at another aspect of this history. "I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction." The saints who are precious in His sight, whom He purchased with the blood of His own Son, and for whom He has prepared an everlasting inheritance, God’s elect, must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God. Weak and despised believers are the pillars of the world. The intercession of Moses prevails to avert judgment from a whole people. It is the will of God to do great things for us. All things are ours; all things work together for good to them that love God, who are the called according to His purpose; all things are freely given unto us with Christ, the Son, whom God spared not, but gave up for our everlasting salvation. But it is the will of God that we should learn faith.
A. Saphir, Lectures on Hebrews, vol. ii., p. 321.
Heb 11:24-26
The Choice of Moses.
Consider:—
I. The choice which Moses made. If we carefully examine this passage we find it to represent one of the most extraordinary acts of deliberate renunciation of the worldly, and deliberate preference for the spiritual, which the world has ever known. It is equally wonderful, whether you look at the things which he sacrificed, or at the things which he preferred. The adopted of royalty, the dweller in a palace, the well-instructed student of Egyptian wisdom, luxury loading her board at his bidding, pleasure waiting for his presence at her revel, within his grasp the sceptre of the most ancient and wealthy monarchy in the globe. It was surely no light thing to renounce a heritage like this; and there must have been, to constrain his decision, motives of irresistible power. He chose "rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season." He was influenced in his choice by the promise of a Messiah, which God had given unto Israel. There are, in this choice of Moses, the true principles of the philosophy of Christianity. There is involved the recognition of the future as higher than the present—the preference of the spiritual to the secular, when their respective interests come into collision; and to have a right estimate of both, and to secure an equitable adjustment of their several claims, is the great problem of human life.
II. The motive which influenced his decision is presented in the words, "For he had respect unto the recompense of the reward." The recognition of a future state, with its allotments of delights and doom, is frequently recorded in Scripture as exerting a powerful influence on human conduct. We observe (1) it is certain; (2) it is complete; (3) it is eternal.
W. M. Punshon, Sermons, 2nd series, p. 42.
The Wise Choice.
Our admission into the family of all the saints depends upon the use we may make of that power of choice which, at all times, but especially at some times, is given to every one of us.
I. It is remarkable that this grace of choosing is mentioned as one of the characteristic features of the Lord Jesus Christ. So that when any one makes a good selection in things spiritual, he may have the comfortable feeling that he is copying Christ in one of the greatest traits of His perfect character, and that he is making the best return he can, to God Himself, when he chooses him to be his Father, who, from all eternity, has chosen him to be His child. The exercise of choosing is plainly a part, and no little part, of the discipline of life. In creating this world, God seems to have laid it down that it should be a world of probation. All probation presupposes a choice, a power to take good, or to refuse it; to love evil, or to eschew it. Therefore, in a great measure, because it was necessary to the exercise of the faculty of choosing—which God thus made a part of the moral government of this world—He permitted evil to come into it.
II. Moses made his choice as soon as he came to years. We do not know at what age he might be said to come to years. We have no reason to think that it was at that period when he made the first attempt to deliver his countrymen, when he was about forty. There is ground to think that he made the good choice long before that. Probably, it was at that season of life when his reason was capable of making a grave discrimination; and the lesson all lies in the fact that he did it early, as soon as he could. The sooner you give your heart to pod, the younger you are when you make the great decision which is to determine life, the more easy, the more acceptable, probably the happier, and the more Christlike, your choice will be.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 5th series, p. 143.
References: Heb 11:24-26.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xviii., No. 1063; G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount, p. 91; J. Sherman, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. x., p. 185.
Heb 11:25
I. Note, in the first place, that the pleasures of sin are shortlived. In the expressive symbolism of Scripture they are like water in a broken cistern, which speedily runs out, or like the blaze of thorns, which crackle and flame up for a little, and then die down into a heap of ashes; and the experience of all who have indulged in them will corroborate this statement. There is in them at best only a temporary thrill, which vibrates for a moment, and needs to be reproduced again and again. They are not joys for ever. They do not live within a man, sounding a ceaseless undertone of happiness in his secret soul, wherever he may be.
II. The pleasures of sin leave a sting behind, and will not bear after-reflection. There is guilt in them, and there never can be happiness in contemplating that. Yet when the brief hour of joy is fled the guilt is the residuum of the joy.
III. The pleasures of sin are such that the oftener they are enjoyed, there is the less enjoyment in them. There is a wonderful harmony between God’s moral law and the physical, intellectual, and moral nature of man, for every violation of its precepts does, in the end, evoke the protest of all our powers. Each time such guilty pleasure is felt, a portion of the sensitiveness is destroyed, and it takes more to produce the same excitement again, until at last it is impossible to produce it by any means whatever. But with the joys of holiness it is quite different. The oftener we enjoy them they are the higher. The longer and the better a man knows Christ the more happiness does he derive from Him.
IV. The pleasures of sin are most expensive. "The wicked do not live out half their days." The sinner is old before his time. Far otherwise is the experience of the Christian. So far from wasting his energies, his faith economises them, and haloes them all with the joy of his own happiness.
W. M. Taylor, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 145.
Heb 11:26
The Better Country.
I. Look, in the first place, to the state of soul here specified, "They desire." That word denotes an ardent longing for the possession of something which we have not now, but which we may come ultimately to call our own; and when used, as here, to designate the attitude of a believing soul toward heaven, it is to be noted that it is a positive thing. (1) It is not, therefore, to be mistaken for the dislike of the evils of the present life which is frequently mistaken for it. (2) Similarly, we must not suppose that we can use the term to designate that submission to the inevitable which makes a man say that if he must leave the world, though he would greatly prefer to stay in it, he would rather go to heaven than hell. The desire in such a case, very clearly, is to abide in the flesh; and if one has no more powerful attraction to heaven than that it is not hell, he is a long way from being made meet to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light. (3) Even true Christian resignation is not desire. Desire is an attraction to heaven for its own sake; an eager yearning to be with Christ and those who love Him perfectly, and serve Him constantly on high.
II. Note the object towards which this state of heart is directed, "The better land, that is, the heavenly." The evil things of earth shall there be absent, and the things which the Christian most delights in shall be possessed, not only in an infinitely richer measure, but eternally; therefore to those who value this life for Christ’s sake, heaven must be, cannot but be, an object of desire.
III. Note the influence of this desire on those who cherish it. "They confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on earth." Now that confession has a threefold influence. (1) It keeps those who make it from regarding the things of this life as supreme. (2) It sustains the Christian under present afflictions. (3) It gives consolation in bereavement and joy in death.
W. M. Taylor, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvi., p. 113.
References: Heb 11:26.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iii., p. 210; Archbishop Benson, Boy Life, p. 368; G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount, p. 93.
Heb 11:27
Enduring as Seeing the Invisible One.
I. What is this virtual seeing of Him who is invisible? There must be wrought in me, between Him and me, some sympathy, some good understanding and fellow feeling about the matter spoken of. There must be established between Him and me some personal relation of mutual confidence and unity. There must, in a word, be formed a certain close unity of faith working by love. Then will that quasi vision "as seeing" be realised; that vivid sense and keen grasp of "my Lord and my God," as personally present to my eager gaze, my touch, my embrace, which compensates, and far more than compensates, for my never having set on Him my bodily eyes.
II. The joy of the Lord is your strength. Not only at the Communion Table do you rest, but in the field of toil or of battle you endure, as seeing Him who is invisible. So Christ Himself, the man Christ Jesus, endured. The secret of His endurance was that with the eye of faith He always saw the Father. The Holy Ghost strengthens us to endure as seeing the unseen Saviour, even as He strengthened Him to endure as seeing the unseen Father. It is in the felt and realised presence of a Divine person, unseen in one sense, but in another virtually and vividly seen, that your strength to endure lies. And He is to be seen by you, not merely as an object of contemplation in a leisure hour, but as in the time of danger, standing beside you, conversing with you, calling you by name, and bidding you be strong and of a good courage.
R. S. Candlish, Sermons, p. 125.
References: Heb 11:27.—A. Raleigh, The Way to the City, p. 293; E. P. Hood, Sermons, p. 67; J. H. Evans, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. xvi., p. 5; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 331; Ibid., vol. xix., pp. 100, 225; Ibid., vol. xxxi., p. 161; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iv., p. 21. Heb 11:30.—Homilist, vol. i., p. 95; J. Vaughan, Sermons, 14th series, p. 93.
Heb 11:30-40
We may make use of extraordinary examples to encourage our ordinary faith at ordinary times. These models are on a very grand and large scale, and so we can plainly see them.
I. Faith works and suffers; faith is busy and energetic. It is our only strength and victory. In suffering we glorify God as well as in action; and in suffering it is only faith which grasps the promises, and rests on the bosom of God in quiet and loving humility. Suffering is an honour God puts on His saints. To them it is given to suffer for Christ’s sake. A life without affliction and self-denial, a life without the cross, is not likely to precede the life with the crown. Let tried believers not doubt that they are precious in God’s sight.
II. The first and most obvious difference between the old saints of the Church is, that the promised salvation was to them entirely in the future; while we have lived to see the first advent, we also are looking forward to the fulfilment of God’s promises at the second coming. But to Israel the Messianic advent, with its salvation and glory, was altogether in the future. The reasons why the gift of the Spirit is now bestowed are manifold and obvious. (1) The Spirit’s advent is connected with the finished work of redemption. Because the blood has been shed, the Spirit descends. (2) The Spirit comes through the preaching of faith, and not by the law. It is when the forgiveness of sin is declared that God puts His Spirit within our hearts. (3) The Spirit, as an indwelling Spirit, descends from the incarnate, crucified, and glorified Son of God,—the Christ or anointed Head of the Church. At the coming of the Lord the union of all believers will be manifested. This union will be to the glory of God, a part of the blessedness of His people.
A. Saphir, Lectures on Hebrews, vol. ii., p. 337.
References: Heb 11:31.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iii., No. 119; vol. xviii., No. 1061. Heb 11:32-34.—W. Stevenson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiii., p. 292; Homiletic Magazine, vol. vii., p. 278. Heb 11:33.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii., No. 435. Heb 11:34.—Ibid., vol. xii., No. 697; A. P. Stanley, Church of England Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 301; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. v., p. 9; Archbishop Benson, Boy Life, p. 46.
Heb 11:35
Consider:—
I. The better resurrection. Think (1) of the place of it. "There shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie." The body which here depresses the soul shall be framed to lift it up, to give it perception and vigour, insight and wing, and made like unto Christ’s glorious body. (2) Think of the company in the place. In this world our dearest friends become at times more dear to us. Some glow in them, or in us, suffuses the soul, and we feel that they are more ours, and we can be more theirs; times when we see deeper into each other’s nature, and melt into one spirit; those times, above all, when we know that we are touching one another in the thought and life of God. Now, in that heavenly world we shall have the best at their best. (3) Think of the essence of this eternal life. Its essence consists in its entire freedom from sin. (4) Think of the security of that state. The children of the heavenly resurrection die no more; death hath no more dominion over them. The shadow is all behind, the light before, and the light shall no more go down.
II. Consider next the higher faith required for this resurrection. It needed very great confidence in the living God to believe that He could reanimate the dead frame which the soul had quitted for a few hours or days; but to face entire decay and mouldering dust, and to believe that those who sleep in it shall yet awake and sing, this requires a frame of soul still nobler. Let us mention some of its features, that we may aim at them. (1) It needs more of what I may call the patience of faith. The faith of the sisters of Bethany demanded one great effort, and the battle was gained. But ours cannot be so compressed. We have to bury our dead out of our sight, to wait the weary days and years, and "feel God’s heaven so distant." And yet, you see, there are those who endured it all, of whom the voice from heaven has said, "Here is the patience and faith of the saints." (2) It needs also more of what we may call the sanctified imagination of faith. The circle of these earthly resurrections was very narrow and very simple compared with that which we expect. Their faith had only to bring back the dead to their old accustomed house, the well-known seat, the familiar haunts. Ours has to find out a footing for itself from the void and formless infinite, where the scenes and inhabitants and states of mind are so different that our friends seem to have passed away beyond our knowledge. There is an imagination of faith which helps to the evidence of things not seen. (3) This better resurrection needs more of the spiritual insight of faith.
III. Note some of the ways in which we may strengthen ourselves in this higher faith. (1) The first thought is addressed to your reason. We read here of men who were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. Can you imagine that their self-devotion was founded on delusion, and that God has made His world so that the noblest and divinest deeds in its history have a perpetual falsehood at their hearts? (2) "Women... received their dead." God intended that our deepest heart affections should be the helpers of our highest hopes and the instinctive guarantees of a life to come. (3) There is no certainty about immortality save what, grows from union with the dying and living and risen Son of God.
J. Ker, Sermons, 2nd series, p. 336.
Reference: Heb 11:36.—F. W. Aveling, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 84.
Heb 11:37
Martyrdom.
The word "martyr" properly means "a witness," but it is used to denote exclusively one who has suffered death for the Christian faith. Let us consider what it was in the early Christian ages to be a martyr.
I. First, it was to be a voluntary sufferer. Men, perhaps, suffer in various diseases more than the martyrs did, but they cannot help themselves. The martyrs lived under a continual trial, a daily exercise of faith, which we, living in peaceable times, can scarcely understand. To be a martyr is to feel the storm coming, and willingly to endure it at the call of duty, for Christ’s sake and for the good of the brethren; and this is a kind of firmness which we have no means of displaying at the present day, though our deficiency in it is evidenced as often as we yield to inferior or ordinary temptations.
II. The suffering itself of martyrdom was in some respects peculiar. It was a death, cruel in itself, publicly inflicted, and heightened by the fierce exultation of a malevolent populace. The unseen God alone was their comforter, and this invests the scene of their suffering with supernatural majesty, and awes us when we think of them. A martyrdom is a season of God’s especial power in the eye of faith, as great as if a miracle were visibly wrought. It is a fellowship of Christ’s sufferings, a commemoration of His death, a representation filling up in figure "that which is behind of His afflictions, for His body’s sake, which is the Church." And thus, being an august solemnity in itself, and a kind of sacrament, a baptism of blood, it worthily finishes that long searching trial which was its usual forerunner in primitive times.
J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. ii., p. 41.
Reference: Heb 11:37.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvi., No. 1528.
Heb 11:38
Great Men.
I. It behoves us to have a care how we judge the men of our own day who take a leading part in the conduct of affairs, and compel the notice of their fellows. It is easy enough to load them with flatteries if they be on our side; but should they be teachers of new things, with new ways and new ideas and new modes of speech, which some denounce and others mock at, then it behoves us to be cautious and patient. Great things are not so well seen when you are close to them. You may stand beneath the facade of St. Peter’s at Rome, and form but a feeble conception of its magnitude; and even when you remove to some little distance, it is obscured by the crowd of vulgar buildings which surround it. But when you have journeyed twenty miles away across the level campagna, and then turn and look for Rome, it is St. Peter’s which you see, as though it hung from heaven, suspended in the lucid air, and the crowding, encircling meanness has disappeared. And so it is with great men. We need to be at a distance rightly to estimate their magnitude.
II. Of some of the men in this list you would scarcely say that they were moral or religious men. But they were all alike said to have been faithful men; that is, men full of faith. And herein we may notice that the possession of faith is the prime capability for a religious life, as it is also the first qualification for the successful conduct of any great undertaking. By faith I mean the firm grip of some conviction, some purpose or other, so that there is decision and earnestness, and a marked out line in life. The man who takes up a cause and holds by it, and fights for it, even if the cause be a mistaken one; the man who is loyal and true to a person, and stands by him and speaks out for him, such a man, however worldly he may be, however selfish or however immoral, may by God’s grace be converted to genuine piety.
W. Page Roberts, Reasonable Service, p. 117.
References: Heb 11:38.—H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xv., p. 406; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iv., p. 303; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. i., p. 217. Heb 11:39, Heb 11:40.—Homilist, 3rd series, vol. vii., p. 145; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. vi., p. 94; R. Duckworth, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxx., p. 273; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. vi., p. 289. Heb 11:40.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. xii., p. 114.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v1 Division 4. (Heb 11:1-40.)
Division 4. (Heb 11:1-40.)
The path of God’s people the path of faith from the beginning.
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We come now to the fourth division of the epistle, in which the apostle shows by the example of the saints of old how the practical life of those that at any time pleased God had always been a path of faith. This is, of course, a thing very necessary to his argument, which was, in fact, taking away the sensible things of Judaism and replacing them for that which, however blessed in itself, nevertheless required faith for its enjoyment in every part. It is noticeable, therefore, that when he comes to the law, the setting up of the ordered system in the midst of Israel, he gives us very few and slight examples, comparatively, of the path of faith. All this shows his purpose the more completely. We have the trials and experiences of faith put before us especially, as already said, in those who lived before the Jewish system had been established, as, in the wisdom of God, their own fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob lived -the very men who received the promises. *hat a thing for Jews to realize, that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had lived their whole lives apart from that in which now they had, not indeed overmuch, but such mistaken confidence! The complete setting aside of the sensible things of Judaism left them certainly no worse, and in fact immeasurably better off, than these. Indeed, it is not of that which is seen and sensible that faith takes hold, and those who had only those things found really what was theirs in looking beyond them; by just so much as they rested in these they lost the reality.
There are four sections here; the first giving, after an introductory statement of principles, in three who lived before the flood, a foreshadowing of the path of faith ever since; the second, the gain to it of delaying the blessing; the third, the prophetic outlooks granted to it; while the fourth shows its various trials and experiences.
1.(1) The first section, again, has four parts; the first of which, as an introductory statement, shows the sufficiency of faith as the governing principle of practical life. The power of it is in this, that it is "the substantiation of things hoped for, a conviction of things unseen." The heart is drawn out of the world by the attraction of what is beyond it, of what it is convinced of, though unseen. Thus, there is independence of the world; its allurements solicit in vain; circumstances do not control us. We are masters of ourselves, and thus clear-sighted and steadfast.
Through faith, also, the men of old "obtained a good report" -of course, in God’s history of things, not in man’s. It is easy to see in Scripture that the thing which made the old worthies what they were was faith. How perfect the contrast between the same men energized by it and when it was at ebb in them! Then, "by faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that that which is seen should not have its origin from things which appear." It would be a good thing if the men of science today would give heed to such a text as this. Take Darwin’s "Origin of Species," where he never gets, indeed, to the origin, and owns that he cannot prove that any species ever did originate after the fashion he decrees. And think of originating in his manner Eve out of Adam! Given even the rib, she could not have sprung out of that simply. There must have been what did not appear -the power of God. If it is not perfectly scientific to believe that in her case, we may as well give up Scripture at once, for you cannot expunge the miraculous out of it. If it be only a question of less or more, how unreasonable to measure out the power of God, and how enormous the pretence of being able to say just how much this power, or how or when it shall be fitting for it to be displayed!
God has ordained in His mercy a stable world for man, and we may thank Him that it is so, and see abundant reason for its being so, if we are to be able to reckon on things at all. But then they turn round and talk learnedly of laws of nature, and would bind the Author of nature with them, so that He shall not move except at their bidding; whereas, in fact, a stable world is just what is suited as a background for the miraculous. There could be no miracle without it; and the miracles are a reserve of power most fitted to display Him as the living God amid all this mechanism, and not leave Him to be confounded with it. After all, Scripture is at once the most scientific and rational of books, while it is, besides, a miracle of the most stupendous kind, always ready to hand, and with its own power of conviction for any who will examine it. And this one may say in the face of all the higher critics in the world, who are simply the Darwinians of theology, and who, like them, theorize after the most stupendous fashion and then talk about the credulity of faith.
God manifested in creation! If we only realized just what this means, what a suited setting it would make for the brighter manifestation of God in Christ, and how, day by day, we should walk amid the ministries of all the creatures of His Hand! Day to day would indeed utter speech, and night to night tell knowledge. The universe would then be a glorious house of God, and in what corner of it could we be without Him? Here, then, as the basis of a life of faith, we are taught to realize in nature the supernatural, the seen having its root and origin in the unseen, and which has not given up its work in that primary effort that produced it.
(2) In the second place, we have Abel witnessing and witnessed to, bringing to God his fuller sacrifice than Cain, which owns the death that had come in through sin, and in a way contemptible to mere reason, -folly, if it were not faith, -turning that death into an acceptable offering to God, so as to obtain witness that he is righteous, "God testifying of his gifts." But his life exhales from the earth, from which his blood cries still, the world being in opposition to God from its very beginning.
(3) In the third place, we have the heavenward side of this in Enoch, walking with God in a "dedicated" life, upon which no shadow of death comes. How beautiful the gleam of brightness here! Heaven claims him, a type of the heavenly family which now waits, not for the judgment of the earth, though that be at hand, but for the translation at the coming of the Lord.
(4) In the fourth place, Noah gives us the picture of the heirs of earth, Israel and the spared nations, brought through the judgment; his house saved and the world condemned by that faith of his. Here, then, we have already the plain foreshadowing of faith in its various history, these three witnesses together showing us righteousness, communion, and heirship. They are all found in it.
2. The second section gives us, next, the gain to faith in the delay of blessing; and here Abraham is the great example for us. It is striking, the difference we find between Abraham in the Old Testament and as he is presented to us in this account in Hebrews. In the Old Testament you have the circumstances of his life, and his faith in God is manifested and blessed; but of the heavenly country that we are now told he looked for, you find nothing. Typically, of course, there is no difficulty. Wherever we read of Canaan, we rightly think of heaven; but suppose we had not the New Testament, how much should we know? Even now that we have Paul’s comment here, it has been sought by some to show that Canaan, both in the Old Testament and the New, was the sole inheritance promised to him, and that it is all he is ever to have. It is impossible to maintain this if we take the statements fairly here; but that it should have been attempted to maintain it shows how little the Old Testament by itself reveals to us of what Abraham had in view. The difference is of interest in other ways; but we may take it as illustrating the gain of delayed blessing. He did not in his lifetime receive the things promised as to Canaan; to the end he was a mere stranger in it; but it thus became for him a shadow of a better and heavenly inheritance. How much in that day God taught men by pictures of this kind must be plain to all who will consider it; and while to us it would be dreadful indeed to have to go back to such things only for ourselves, yet, when it was the large part of what men had, they might be expected to look into it in a way that now, with our fuller light, we scarcely think of doing. That, of course, does not approve our light dealing. Look at the promise of the woman’s seed at the beginning, which even the perversions of it among the heathen show to have been accepted as speaking of a spiritual deliverance! Look at God clothing Adam and Eve with the skins of beasts, the fruit of death. And so everywhere at that time: things were under a veil; but we may be sure that God did not allow the veil to be so thick as to hide altogether from faith the glory beneath it.
(1) The first subsection here gives us simply and beautifully the obedience of faith in Abraham, who goes out into a place which he was to receive for an inheritance, not knowing at first where he was going. It seems as if, although his steps had been directed to Canaan, yet it was only after he got there that he learned that that was the inheritance. Alas, even with God’s people, how they allow the question of where a thing will lead them, to divert them from the one and simple all-necessary question, Is it God that is leading? Not such a man was Abraham. The Lord give us to be as simple and childlike as he!
(2) The second subsection gives us more the character of the whole, for here we find him, after the births, themselves so long delayed, of Isaac and then Jacob, still a stranger in the land of his inheritance. But what was his compensation? He looked for a city having foundations, whose Architect and Builder (devising the plan and carrying it out) is God. The mention of a city is very striking, if it means that this was actually, as such, before Abraham’s sight. It may mean that this it is in which Abraham’s faith will, in fact, find its consummation, or it may be that God had revealed to him much more than we have knowledge of; for even the earthly Jerusalem was not then existent as the city of God; so that the type even was wanting, except it were Melchisedec’s Salem; and the city here is certainly the heavenly one. The mention of "the foundations" brings before us the very city of the Apocalypse, with its twelve jeweled foundations, like the high priest’s breastplate, the glorious lights and perfections of the divine character. A city built upon these must indeed be abiding. Abraham’s hope had surely, then, been lifted to a higher plane than that of earth, in the meantime of the delay of that earthly expectation.
(3) Now we come to Sarah, to find certainly a sort of resurrection of the dead for her; and the child so born, what a pledge it was of other fulfilments! Here, again, it cannot be questioned how largely the very delay increased the blessing.
(4) Fourthly, it is emphasized for us how long this trial of faith lasted. They "died in faith, not having received the promises," and thus upon earth, during their whole time on it, were strangers and sojourners. The land, too, which they had left lay, in the wisdom of God, all this time as it were within sight, inviting their return; but they persisted, desiring a better country. Here was, then, once more, how great a gain! God therefore openly links Himself with them as their God. "The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob" was His own specifically declared memorial Name; and He has prepared for them a city.
3. The third section shows us faith in its prophetic realizations, which sprang, as always, from the apprehension of God in the sanctuary, where everything is seen in reference to Him alone. Here, again, there are four subsections:
First, we see Abraham offering up, at the word of God, the son in whom the promises were to be fulfilled to him. Isaac shall be brought back, therefore, his faith argues, even from the dead; from which, indeed, he is in a figure received.
Next in Isaac, though at first obscured by fleshly impulses, faith manifests itself in the recognition of God’s rights as against nature, the ruin of nature being implied in it, and His separation of His people from the world.
Thirdly, Jacob rehearses, as it were, in the blessing of the sons of Joseph, his own history; but now at the end of human strength, the struggler becomes a worshiper, and the eyes, dulling to earthly things, are lighted up with far-off glories. It is, again, a sort of resurrection story, with the issues (as always thus) in God’s hand alone.
Fourthly, in Joseph’s case, the departure of Israel out of Egypt is anticipated by him, and he ordains his bones to be for them a continual admonition of the change awaiting them.
4. The chapter closes with a more varied yet slighter sketch of the generations following these early patriarchs. As we come to the establishment of the legal system, the record is scanty, and even Moses himself does not appear after the Red Sea deliverance. As a fourth section, trials and experiences characterize it generally.
There are seven subsections:
In the first we have a remarkable simplicity of faith in Moses’ parents, which acts upon grounds which to most would appear slight enough, -the beauty of the child. God yet answers it, for it was faith in Him; and how largely He answers, for this is Moses the deliverer! Is there not here one of the natural indications of the mind of God, which we are so unskilled in finding? which the poor and unlearned, perhaps, read best, and which are apt to be confounded with mere superstition, and indeed are separated from it by a line too indefinite for general appreciation; but God makes no mistake, and, wherever faith is, with Him it will be found in honor.
In the second place, we come to Moses himself, with whom faith argues, as it might seem, in the very teeth of a most wonderful providence. He will not be a patron to the people of God, but a sharer in their humiliation, which he esteems but "the reproach of Christ," and values above all the treasures of Egypt. The language here, no doubt, assumes a New Testament character; but Moses’ faith, in fact, looked forward to Israel’s Deliverer, who was to come.
Thirdly, we find the sanctuary in which he abides, the unseen presence of God; which, upon his return to Egypt, delivers him from even fearing that wrath of the king which once he did fear, and which is now shown to be powerless. While in the passover and the sprinkling of blood, he draws Israel also into the same sanctuary, as delivered from a greater fear than that of the king of Egypt, by that which has always been a sign of the recognition of the judgment upon man, in that which puts it away forever. In this way, the two illustrations of faith given here are linked together.
The fourth subsection gives us, in contrast, the experience of faith and the assaying of unbelief, at the Red Sea. To faith God opened the way, which unbelief, having evidence for its eyes that it was open, sought to walk in, and so perished.
In the fifth subsection the fall of Jericho again furnishes two contrasted examples of the weakness of man and the power of God. The walls of the city fall at the mere blast of a trumpet; while Rahab, whose house is on the wall that falls, is preserved amid the destruction which comes upon the unbelieving.
We have, then, in the sixth subsection the time following Israel’s entrance into the land. Only six names are mentioned, and of these nothing specific is recorded, though their history is familiar to us; but there follows a long catalogue of various and contrasted forms in which faith in such as these overcame, most even in the way of the cross, by what seemed mere defeat. While in the last place we are carried on in thought to the time of perfect fruition for which they wait until we too receive it, we for whom, meanwhile, something better than they enjoyed has been reserved. So, in his way of constant encouragement and admonition, the apostle reminds these Hebrews.
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv6, 7, 9, 13, 14, 16, 24
Hebrews
SEEKING GOD
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Heb 11:6
THE writer has been pointing to the patriarch Enoch as the second of these examples of the power of faith in the Old Covenant; and it occurs to him that there is nothing said in Genesis about Enoch’s faith, so he set about showing that he must have had faith, because he ‘walked with God,’ and pleased Him, and no man could thus walk with God, and please Him, unless he had come to Him, and no man could come to a God in whom he did not believe, and whom he did not believe to be waiting to help and bless him, when he did come. So the facts of Enoch’s life show that there must have been in him an underlying faith. That is all that I need to say about the context of the words before us. I am not going to speak of the writer’s argument, but only of this one aspect of the divine character which is brought out here. ‘He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.’
I. Now a word about the seeking.
Seek?’ Do we need to seek? Not in the way in which people go in quest of a thing that they have lost and do not know where to find. We do not need to search; we do not need to seek.
The beginning of all our seeking is that God has sought us in Jesus Christ, and so we have done for ever with: ‘Oh! that I knew where I might find Him.’ We have done for ever with ‘feeling after Him, if haply we might find Him.’ That is all past. We have to seek, but let us never forget that we must have been found of Him, before we seek Him. That is to say, He must have revealed Himself to us in the fulness and reality and solid certainty of His existence and character, before there can be kindled in any heart or mind the desire to possess Him. He must have flashed His light upon the eye before the eye beholds; and He must have stimulated the desire by the revelation of Himself which comes before all desires, ere any of us will stir ourselves up to lay hold upon God. Ours, then, is not to be a doubtful search, hut a certain seeking, that goes straight to the place whore it knows that its treasure is, just as a migratory bird will set out from the foggy and ice-bound shores of the north, and go straight through the mists and the night, over continents and oceans, to a place where it never was before, but to which it is led - God only knows how - by some deep instinct, too deep to be an error, and too persistent not to find its resting-place. That is how we are to seek. We are to seek as the flower turns its opening petals to the sunshine, making no mistake as to the quarter of the heaven in which the radiance is lodged. We have to seek, as the rootlet goes straight to the river, knowing where the water is, from which life and sap will come. Thus we have to seek where and what we know. Our quest is no doubtful and miserable hunting about for a possible good, but an earnest desire for a certain and a solid blessing. That is the seeking.
Let us put it into two or three plain words. The prime requisite of the Christian’s seeking after God is as the writer here says, faith, I need not dwell upon that. ‘Must believe that He is’ - yes; of course. We do not seek after negations or hypotheses; we seek after a living Being. ‘And that He is the Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him’ - yes; if we were not cure that we should find what we wanted, we should never go to look for it. But, beyond all that, let me put three things as included in, and necessary to, the Christian seeking - desire, effort, prayer. We seek what we desire. But too many of us do not wish God, and would not know what to do with Him if we had Him, and would be very much embarrassed if it were possible for the full blessings which come along with Him, to be entrusted to our slack hands and unloving .hearts. Brethren, we call ourselves Christians; let us be honest with ourselves, and rigid in the investigation of the thoughts of our own hearts. Is there a wish for God there? Is there an aching void in His absence, or do we shovel cartloads of earthly rubbish into our hearts, and thus dull desires that can be satisfied only with Him? These are not questions to which any one has a right to expect an answer from another; they are not questions that any Christian man can safely shirk answering to himself and to God. The measure of our seeking is actually settled by the measure of our desire.
Then effort, of course, follows desire as surely as the shadow comes after the substance, because the only purpose of our desires, in the constitution of our nature, is to supply the driving power for effort. They are the steam in the boiler intended to whirl round the wheels. And so for a man to desire a thing that he can do nothing whatever to bring about, is misery and folly. But for a man to desire, and not to. work towards fulfilling his desire, is greater misery and greater stupidity. One cannot believe in the genuineness of those devout aspirations that one hears in people’s prayers, who get up and wipe the dust off their knees, and go out into the world, and do nothing to bring about the fulfilment of their prayers. There is a great deal of that sort of desire amongst professing Christians in all churches, conventional utterances which are backed up and verified by no corresponding conduct. If we are seeking after God, we shall not let all the seeking effervesce in pious aspirations; it will get consolidated into corresponding action, and operate to keep thought and love directed towards Him, even amidst the trivialities, and legitimate duties, and great things of life. There will be effort to bring Him into connection with all our work; effort to keep by Him as we go about our daily tasks, if we are truly seeking after God.
And then, desire and effort being pre-supposed, there will come honest prayers, genuine prayers. ‘Seek ye the Lord while He may be found,’ says the prophet, and immediately goes on to exhort us to ‘call upon Him while He is near,’ as one and the chief way of seeking Him. He is always near, closer to us than friends and lovers, closer to us than our eyes and hands, near in His Son and the Spirit, near to hear and to bless, near and desiring to be nearer, yea to be blended with our being and to dwell in us and we in Him. We have not only to desire His gift, and to work towards it, but to ask for it. Then, if we exercise these three activities of desire, effort, petition, we may truly say: ‘When Thou saidst, "Seek ye My face," my heart said unto Thee, "Thy face, Lord! will I seek,"‘ and may go on, as the psalmist did, to offer the consequent prayer: ‘Hide not Thy face from me,’ in full assurance that He is found by every seeking soul So much for the seeking.
II. Now a word about the diligence in seeking.
The writer uses a very strong expression, one word in the original, which is here adequately rendered, ‘them that diligently seek Him.’ Half-hearted seeking finds nothing. You sometimes say to your children, when you have set them to look for anything, and they come back and say they have not been able to find it, ‘You do not know how to seek.’ And that is true about a great many of us. Half and half desire, so that one eye is turned on earth, and the other lifted up now and then to heaven, does not bring us much. It will bring a little, but not the fulness of blessing which follows on whole- hearted, continuous, persevering seeking. If you hold a cup below a tap, in an unsteady hand, sometimes it is under the whole rush of the water, and sometimes is on one side, and it will be a long time before you get it filled. There will be much of the water spilled. God pours Himself upon us, and we hold our vessels with unsteady hands, and twitch them away sometimes, and the bright blessing falls on the ground and cannot be gathered up, and our cup is empty, and our lips parched. Interrupted seeking will find little; perfunctory seeking will find less. Conventional religion brings very little blessing, very little consciousness of the presence of God; and that is why so many who call themselves Christians, and are so, in a measure and in a sense, know so little of the joy of being found of God. They have sought but not sought diligently.
Now let us take the rebuke to ourselves, if we need it, and we all need it more or less. It is a very threadbare piece of Christian counsel, to be earnest in our seeking after God, but it is none the less needed because it is threadbare, and it would not be threadbare if it had not been so much needed. ‘They that search diligently’ - which is the real meaning of the words in the Book of Proverbs rendered, ‘they that seek Me early’ -’shall find Me.’
III. So this brings me to the last thing here, the Rewarder and the reward.
‘He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.’ The best reward of seeking is to find the thing that you are looking for. So the best reward that God, the Rewarder, gives is when He gives Himself. There are a great many other good things that come to the diligently seeking Christian soul, but the best thing is that God draws near. Enoch sought God, came to God, and so he walked with God. The reward of his coming was continuous, calm communion, which gave him a companion in solitude, and one to walk at his side all through the darkness and the roughnesses, as well as the joys and the smoothnesses, of daily life.
Ah, brethren! there is no reward comparable to the felt presence in our own quiet hearts of the God who has found us, and whom we have found. And if we have that, then He becomes, here and now, the reward of the diligent search, and the reward of it to, day carries in itself the assurance of the perfect reward of the coming time. ‘He walked with God, and... God took him.’ That will be true of all of us. There is only one seeking in life that is sure to result in the finding of what we seek. All other search - the quest after the chief good - if it runs in any other direction, is resultless and barren. But there is one course, and one only, in which the result is solid and certain. ‘I have never said to any of the seed of Jacob, seek ye My face in vain.’ If we seek He will be found of us, and so be our Rewarder and our reward.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 Heroes of Faith
Heroes of Faith
The Achievements of Faith, illustrated from the annals of Israel, beginning with the patriarchs and coming down to the martyrs. The writer has already mentioned faith as a necessary condition of a righteous life, and he now proceeds to illustrate the fact that it was by faith that the fathers of the race were able to work righteousness and to endure their trials. Their heroic example ought to encourage the Hebrews to stand fast. The primary purpose, therefore, of this long passage is a practical one. But it has also a place in the main argument of the Epistle. It has been shown that the earthly and visible things are but the types, copies, or shadows of heavenly realities: see Heb_8:5; Heb_9:22-23; Heb_10:1. The underlying thought of the preceding chapters is that, contrary to the ordinary way of thinking, it is the heavenly that is the real. But how are heavenly and invisible things to be realised with any assurance? It is by the operation of faith. Faith is that by which the invisible becomes real and the future becomes present. 'Faith gives a reality to things hoped for, and puts to the test things for the present unseen.' It is no new principle in the world, because it was faith that inspired the heroism and self-sacrifice of the saints who lived under the old dispensation. We, having better promises and a better covenant than they, ought not to fall behind in the exercise of the same faith by which they lived.
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1. RV renders, 'Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the proving of things not seen.' The word represented here by 'assurance' is rendered 'substance' in Heb_1:3; RV and 'confidence' in Heb_3:14. What is meant is that faith is that which gives assurance or certainty of things still in the future. They exist apart from faith, but it is by faith that they are realised. 'Proving' means testing resulting in conviction.
2. The elders] i.e. the faithful men under the old dispensation. Obtained a good report] RV 'had witness borne to them,' sc. by God in the Scriptures.
3. Faith enables us to perceive the invisible cause of the phenomenal world: cp. Rom_1:20, The writer begins with Genesis 1 before proceeding to give examples of the realising faith of the fathers,
4. Abel] The writer says that the greater excellence of Abel's sacrifice was due to his faith, but in what particular the faith was manifested he does not say. It may have been a 'fallen consciousness of the claim of God to the best'.
Yet speaketh] 'Yet,' i.e. still to us. The reference is to Gen_4:10, where Abel's blood is represented as crying from the ground after his death. By faith he overcame death.
5, 6. Enoch] The writer here follows the Greek Version of the OT. Enoch's faith is an inference from the statement in Genesis that he 'walked with God' (Gk. 'pleased God'), and his 'translation' was the reward of his faith.
7. Noah] His faith rested on a direct revelation of 'things not seen as yet,' viz. the destruction of the world and the means of salvation. Fear] is 'godly fear,' as in Heb_5:7. He condemned the world] i.e. either because he warned the world of the impending doom (see 1Pe_3:20; 2Pe_2:5); or because his example took away from them any ground of excuse: cp. Mat_12:41.
8. Abraham] By faith he realised the promises, and made a great surrender in obedience to God's call. He was preeminently a man of faith, the first whose faith is definitely mentioned in the OT. (Gen_15:6); he is the 'father of the faithful.' All his life he 'sojourned, dwelling in tents,' i.e. not actually receiving the promises, but waiting patiently for their fulfilment, and making therefore no attempt to settle permanently in Canaan. He looked for the invisible and heavenly 'city of God,' as the fulfilment of the ideal which was to him the real.
11. Sara] RV 'Even Sarah herself,' i.e. in spite of her earlier and natural incredulity: see Gen_18:10-15.
12. Of one] i.e. Abraham.
13. The promises] i.e. the fulfilment of them. Persuaded of them, and embraced them] RV 'greeted them from afar.' They looked forward by faith and saw the promises and 'saluted them,' or hailed them, from afar, and lived here as in a foreign land, conscious that their true fatherland was not here, but in heaven. And God rewarded their faith by acknowledging them as His people, and providing a 'city' for them above.
17. Abraham's faith in offering Isaac: see Genesis 22. This was the supreme trial of Abraham's faith. He was not allowed to slay Isaac, but he did actually offer him, i.e. surrender him to God, although he was the 'only-begotten,' the child of promise and the only link in the chain of the promise. But faith in God's promise made him superior to all seeming impossibilities in the way of realising the promises.
20-22. Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph were all alike in the fact that on their death-beds they looked by faith beyond death, and were confident of the future.
21. Top of his staff] The Heb. in Gen_47:31 reads, 'the head of his bed.' The difference is due to the same consonants being read with different vowels, mittah being 'bed,' and matteh being 'staff.'
23-28. The faith of Moses and his parents.
23. Proper] i.e. goodly or beautiful. The appearance of the child is said here to have quickened their faith in God that He had destined the child for some great purpose, and their faith was shown in their daring disregard of the king's commandment: see Exo_1:16-22.
24. Moses' faith was shown in his renunciation of all preferments at the court of Pharaoh, and in his espousing the cause of his afflicted brethren. The pleasures of sin were not vicious courses in themselves, but a life of worldly success, which would have been sin for him, conscious as he was of a call to a higher and harder life of duty.
26. The reproach of Christ] cp. Heb_13:13; Rom_15:3. The same reproach as Christ suffered in delivering His people: cp. Rom_2:10. There may, however, here be the deeper thought not merely of similarity, but of identity of suffering. Christ, who was from all eternity, may be conceived as actually the deliverer of Israel by the agency of Moses, and so as suffering Himself what Moses had to endure.
The recompence of the reward] see on Heb_11:1, and cp. the next v.
28. The keeping of the Passover was an act of faith, because it was the appointed means of deliverance from death, and the performance of it implied faith in God's promise of safety.
31. Them that believed not] i.e. the people of Jericho who knew what Jehovah had done for Israel: see Jos_2:9, Jos_2:10.
33. Obtained promises] cp. Jos_6:15.
5. Raised to life again] RV 'by a resurrection.' This literal rendering of the original is necessary to bring out the contrast expressed in the words at the end of the v., 'a better resurrection,' i.e. one to a life which would not, as in the former case, be again interrupted by death.
39. A good report] see on Heb_11:2.
40. There is here the answer to an implied objection, that the faith of these suffering heroes was all in vain, seeing they did not receive the fulfilment of the promises. But, the writer says, this is a wrong inference, the truth being that God has merely deferred then reward in order that they may enter along with us of a later age upon the realisation of the promised inheritance. They are waiting for us so that the whole number of the faithful may be perfected together. Cp. the petition in the Burial Service, 'beseeching Thee.. shortly to accomplish the number of Thine elect, and to hasten Thy kingdom; that we, with all those that are departed in the true faith of Thy holy Name, may have our perfect consummation and bliss...'
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv4, 7, 13, 25, 26, 33, 38, 39 Heb 11:4; Heb 11:7; Rom 10:10 (See Scofield "Rom…
righteous
Heb 11:4; Heb 11:7; Rom 10:10 (See Scofield "Rom 10:10").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 1. Faith in regard to creation and salvation (Heb…
IV. PRACTICAL INSTRUCTIONS AND EXHORTATIONS
CHAPTER 11
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1. Faith in regard to creation and salvation (Heb 11:1-7)
2. The patience of faith (Heb 11:8-22)
3. The energy of faith (Heb 11:23-40)
Heb 11:1-7
The disastrous effect of unbelief has been pointed out in the earlier part of this epistle (Heb 3:12; Heb 3:19; Heb 4:2) as well as the necessity of faith. After the great theme of the epistle, the sacrificial work and priesthood of Christ had been fully demonstrated, faith, in the closing verses of the previous chapter is mentioned once more “the just shall live by faith.” To live and walk by faith is inseparably connected with the possession and enjoyment of the good things which have come, the perfection the believer has in Christ. And now the Spirit of God gives a remarkable record of the saints of old and shows how prominent faith was in their lives and experiences. It is one of the great and marvelous chapters not only of this epistle, but of the whole Word of God.
There is a divine order here in the way the names are mentioned as well as many and deep spiritual lessons into which we cannot fully enter. (The purpose of our work makes this impossible. Saphir, A. Pridham and others will be helpful in a more analytical study of this chapter.) First three antedeluvians are mentioned--Abel, Enoch and Noah. The main part of the chapter is devoted to Abraham and his life of faith, trust and patience, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph are also mentioned. That those who lived before the inauguration of the law covenant and the levitical institutions are prominently used in this faith-chapter is not without meaning. These illustrious heads of the Hebrew nation had the promise; the grace-covenant had been established with them, the covenant which was to remain. They had no law and carnal ordinances, no tabernacle, no priest and yet they pleased God by their faith. And now in possession of the promise, fulfilled in Christ, these Hebrew Christians were to live in faith and manifest the patience of faith, even as Abraham (whom they called “our father Abraham”) did.
The first statement speaks of faith, not so much as a definition, but as a declaration of the action and power of faith. The Revised Version is better in its rendering than the King James translation. “Now faith is the assurance (or substantiation) of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Faith makes real to the soul that which we hope for and is a demonstration of that which we do not see. It is therefore assurance and a settled conviction respecting things hoped for, though unseen. “it is the soul’s hand that grasps the promised blessings and makes them its very own. Faith lays hold on what is future, but sure, and brings it into the life of the believer, so that in the presence and power of it he lives and walks. It is far-sightedness. It sees and foresees. It pierces into the unseen, it seizes the promised riches of God and makes them a present reality, and therefore the life of the believer may become opulent with noble deeds, because ruled and stimulated by a great motive.”
It is by faith we know that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. God called all things into existence. Matter is not eternal; the universe is not a producing cause. God has created all things by Him and for Him, who is the eternal Word (Heb 1:2; Joh 1:1). Man is unable by searching to solve the mystery of creation. How ridiculous have been the cosmogonies of ancient nations. The evolution theories are equally absurd.
(It would be a good thing if the men of science today would give heed to such a text as this. Take Darwin ‘s Origin of the Species, where he never gets, indeed, to the origin, and owns that he cannot prove that any species ever did originate after the fashion he decrees. And think of originating in his manner Eve out of Adam! Given even the rib, she could not have sprung out of that simply. There must have been what did not appear--the power of God. If it is not perfectly scientific to believe that in her case, we may as well give up Scripture at once, for you cannot expunge the miraculous out of it. If it be only a question of less or more, how unreasonable to measure out the power of God, and how enormous the pretence of being able to say just how much this power, or how or when it shall be fitting for it to be displayed!
(After all, Scripture is at once the most scientific and rational of books, while it is, besides, a miracle of the most stupendous kind, always ready to hand, and with its own power of conviction for any who will examine it. And this one may say in the face of all the higher critics in the world, who are simply the Darwinians of theology, and who, like them, theorize after the most stupendous fashion and then talk about the credulity of faith” Numerical Bible.)
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This we believe that the worlds were framed by the Word of God. Abel is next mentioned. The truth of salvation is seen in his case. Sin and death had come in. By faith, trusting in the promise, acknowledging his true condition, he brought a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. He approached God with that more excellent sacrifice. He obtained witness that he was righteous. He was justified by faith. And Abel himself who died by the hand of his brother is a type of the Lord Jesus Christ and His sacrifice.
Enoch was translated by faith that he should not see death. In Abel the truth of righteousness by faith is illustrated. Enoch, walking with God, believing God and prophesying (Jud 1:14-15) went to heaven without passing through death. The power of death was destroyed in his case; the power of that life he possessed was manifested in his translation. How blessedly Abel and Enoch show forth that by faith righteousness and life are bestowed upon those who believe. The great sacrifice, typified by Abel’s more excellent sacrifice and also by his death, has conquered death, Through death Christ has destroyed him who had the power of death (Heb 2:14).
Enoch is a type of the Church. He prophesied of coming judgment (the deluge) but did not pass through that judgment. Even so the true Church, when the Lord comes, will be taken from earth to glory without dying, before tribulation, wrath and judgment come upon this age, which ends like the days of Noah. Enoch also received testimony before he was translated that he pleased God, for he walked in faith in His presence and in His fellowship. This is the walk into which all God’s people are called and which faith and the power of the indwelling spirit make possible. Without faith (a faith which clings close to Him, trusts in His word and is obedient) it is impossible to please Him.
Heb 11:7 speaks of Noah and his faith. In this verse we find mentioned the ground of faith (warned of God); the realm of faith (things not seen); the exercise of faith (he feared); the work of faith (he prepared an ark); the result of faith (he saved his house); the testimony of faith (he condemned the world) and the reward of faith (heir to righteousness). It is the most remarkable verse in the whole chapter. Enoch was caught up to heaven before the deluge came. Noah was warned of the unseen judgment to come (which Enoch had warned would come) and was roused with godly fear. He is a type of the godly remnant of Jews at the end of this present age, who will pass through tribulation and judgment, after the true Church has left the earth, and having passed through the judgment, as Noah did, will inherit the earth. Noah represents the faith and exercise of this Jewish remnant, which will be saved out of the judgments at the close of this age.
Heb 11:8-22
The obedience and patience of faith is the theme of Heb 11:8-22. Obediently Abraham went out, not knowing whether he was going. He obeyed the voice, believed the promise of God. Faith made of him a stranger in the land of promise as in a foreign country. He had no permanent place, but as a pilgrim he dwelt in tents with Isaac and Jacob--”for he waited for the city which hath foundations, whose architect and maker God is.” God revealed to him the heavenly city and in patience he waited for that city, and while he waited he dwelt there content in perfect reliance on God. It was by faith that Sarah received strength to conceive seed “because she counted Him faithful that promised.” And then they died in faith “not having received the promise, but having seen them (by the eyes of faith) afar off and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on earth.” This faith in its power and action is exemplified. By faith Abraham offered up Isaac. He manifested in this act that absolute confidence in God, which, at His command, can renounce even God’s own promises as possessed after the flesh, confident that God would restore them through the exercise of His power, overcoming death. “Observe here that, when trusting in God and giving up all for Him, we always gain, and we learn something more of the ways of His power: for in renouncing according to His will anything already received, we ought to expect from the power of God that He will bestow something else. Abraham renounces the promise after the flesh. He sees the city which has foundations; he can desire a heavenly country. He gives up Isaac, in whom were the promises: he learns resurrection, for God is infallibly faithful. The promises were in Isaac: therefore God must restore him to Abraham, and by resurrection, if he offered him in sacrifice” Synopsis of the Bible.
By faith Isaac and Jacob acted. And Joseph, a stranger in a strange land, yet believing the promises as to the land, reckoned in faith on their fulfillment and thus gave commandment concerning his bones (Gen 50:25).
Heb 11:23-40
Faith in this section illustrates the energy connected with it which surmounts any obstacle and difficulty, and, trusting, brings forth the manifestations of God’s power in deliverance. Such was the faith of the parents of Moses. They hid the child and were not afraid. “Faith does not reason; it acts from its own point of vision and leaves the result to God.” And how this energy of faith is illustrated in Moses himself. His faith renounced the wealth, power, glory and splendor of Egypt. He gave up a princely position, the possibility of an earthly throne and identified himself with the people who had become slaves, because he believed them to be the people of God. Faith taught him not to fear the wrath of the king; faith fears nothing, but God and faith has nothing to fear. The secret was “he endured as seeing Him who is invisible.” By faith he celebrated the passover and the sprinkling of blood, that the destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them.
And what more? The Red Sea, the walls of Jericho, the harlot Rahab. “Rahab the harlot! Those who seek for proofs of the divine authorship of Scripture may find one here. Was there ever an Israelite who would have thought of preferring that woman’s name to the names of David and Samuel and the prophets, and of coupling it with the names of the great leader and prophet of the Jewish faith ‘whom the Lord knew face to face?’ And what Jew would have dared to give expression to such a thought!” Sir R. Anderson, K.C.B.
God’s power opened the way to faith through the Red Sea for the salvation of His people while the unbelieving Egyptian perished. Jericho ‘s walls fall and Rahab’s house, standing upon the wall, is preserved because she believed. And then Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets and the heroes of faith which follow. Their names are not given, but God knows them all as well as the countless thousands of martyrs who are constantly added to this list. “The strongest thing in the world is faith--it has an eagle’s eye and lion’s heart. It has a lion’s heart to confront dangers and hardships, and an eagle’s eye to descry the unseen glories and the sure victory. The heroism of faith is a wonderful thing. It may suffer indescribable tortures and agonies, as often it has, but it is unconquerable, invincible. Some were tortured (tympanized, i.e., stretched in a wheel as the drumhead), ‘that they might obtain a better resurrection,’ as were the mother and her seven sons who were put to death one after the other, and in sight of each other, by the Syrian monster, Antiochus Epiphanes (2Ma 7:1-42). Some were stoned, as Zechariah (2Ch 24:1-27) and Jeremiah, according to tradition. Some were sawn asunder, as was Isaiah under Manasseh. Some were slain with the sword, as Urijah, (Jer 26:23), and James the brother of John (Act 12:1-25). They might have rustled in silks and velvets and luxuriated in the palaces of princes had they denied God and believed the world’s lie. Instead, they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, themselves accounted no better than goats or sheep, nay, they like these reckoned fit only for the slaughter. The world thought them unworthy to live here, while God thought them worthy to live with Him in glory” Professor Moorhead).
“God having provided some better thing for us, that not apart from us should they be made perfect.” The Old Testament saints who died in faith have not yet been raised from among the dead; their spirits are in His presence. New Testament saints constituting the Church, the body of Christ, have provided for themselves some better thing.” But the Spirit of God does not here enlarge upon this and only gives the information that the perfection of the Old Testament saints in resurrection from among the dead will not be apart from us, the New Testament saints. And that will be when the Lord comes for His saints with the shout (1Th 4:13-18).
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 8, 13, 17, 23, 30, 39 A Wonderful Epic on the Power of Faith.
A Wonderful Epic on the Power of Faith.
Faith as a trust in that which is invisible and future:
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v. 1. Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
v. 2. For by it the elders obtained a good report.
The sacred writer here states the fundamental thought of this chapter, the most impressive section on the power of faith in his entire letter, if not in the whole Bible. He begins with a definition of faith: But faith is a conviction of mind concerning things hoped for, a certainty of things which are not seen. Faith, saving faith, that has accepted Jesus and His righteousness, is always and without exception a definite firmness of mind, a certain persuasion concerning the things which God has promised us in His Word for the purpose of having us place our hope upon them; it is an unalterable conviction of the heart regarding those things which we cannot see, which it is impossible for our eyes and for our reason and for our understanding to fathom and to know. Faith thus concerns things which are future, though they may have their beginning in this life; it is not an expectation of dreadful happenings, but a hope of blessed, glorious gifts; it keeps its peculiar form and characteristics, even when it is weak, a mere glowing taper; it is opposed to doubt and unbelief. Faith stands firm in all afflictions. Faith overcomes all weakness, for it is in the midst of tribulation and persecution that faith proves itself a persuasion of the heart that clings to God’s promises. These qualities, or attributes, of faith the author now intends to bring out by referring to a number of examples of men and women of the Old Testament: For in this lay the commendation of the men of old. It was on the ground of their possessing faith that the leading men of the Old Testament received the commendation of God, their deeds being recorded for the benefit of ages to come, of the generations of the New Testament.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 13, 15, 17, 20, 23, 27, 29, 32, 35, 39 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
The author tells three things about faith in this brief introduction.
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Now
This word is used here to mark a break in the main teaching. Here the author starts to explain the meaning of "faith."
faith is being sure of the things hoped for
This can be stated in active form. AT: "when we have faith, we are sure of the things we hope for" or "faith is what allows a person to confidently expect certain things"
hoped for
Here this refers specifically to the sure promises of God, especially the certainty that all believers in Jesus will live with God forever in heaven.
certain of things that are not seen
This can be stated in active form. AT: "that we still have not seen" or "that still have not happened" (See: Active or Passive)
For because of this
"Because they were certain about events that had not happened"
the ancestors were approved for their faith
This can be stated in active form. AT: "God approved of our ancestors because they had faith" (See: Active or Passive)
the ancestors
The author is speaking to the Hebrews about Hebrew ancestors. AT: "our ancestors" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
the universe was created by God's command
This can be stated in active form. AT: "God created the universe by commanding it to exist" (See: Active or Passive)
what is visible was not made out of things that were visible
This can be stated in active form. AT: "God did not create what we see out of things that were visible"
translationWords
faith
confidence
ancestor
create
God
command
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39 11:1-40 In presenting readers with a long catalog of…
11:1-40 In presenting readers with a long catalog of faith-filled heroes, ch 11 builds up overwhelming evidence that the life of faith is the only real way to live for God. The writer repeats the phrase by faith to drive this main message into the minds and hearts of his hearers. The examples follow a pattern: (a) the phrase by faith, (b) the name of the person, (c) the event or action which demonstrated faith, and (d) the outcome.
11:1 Before presenting the list of examples, the author defines what faith is: It is acting on what God has revealed about his will and character. • The reality that grounds our faith is the God who fulfills his promises.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.