Faith & the Example of Abel and Enoch

Hebrews 11 | Vintage Faith | 11:4-6 | Pastor Duane Smets

This an exegetical sermon of Hebrews 11:4-6 which explores the first two stories of faith that are referenced in the chapter: Cain and Abel followed by Enoch. Special attention is given to the gospel in how God teaches his people to faithfully worship, all the while knowing that only blood of faithful Jesus can cause their bones to sing out a satisfying song. This sermon was originally preached on Sepetember 18th, 2011 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA.

Listen

The Resolved Church | www.theresolved.com

(619) 393-1990 | contact@theresolved.com
All Rights Reserved © The Resolved Church

Permissions: you are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material provided you not alter the wording in any way and you do not charge a fee. For web posting a link to this document is preferred.

The Resolved Church
Pastor Duane Smets
September 18th, 2011

Vintage Faith | A Sermon Series From Hebrews 11
Faith and the Example of Abel & Enoch | Hebrews 11:4-6
I. Righteous Abel (v4)
A. His Story
B. God’s Way Of Worship
C. Dead Men Talk
II. Rewarded Enoch (v5-6)
A. His Story
B. God’s Disdain For Death
C. Pleasure Must Be Had

Introduction

Welcome to the second week of our new fall sermon series “Vintage Faith” where we are learning from the eleventh chapter of the book of Hebrews about the kind of faith the people of old had…the ancient people who loved and lived for God thousands of years ago. We believe faith has not changed and our hope is by digging into their lives it will enliven us to the same kind of deep, long lasting, God glorifying faith which enabled them to put a stamp on history and leave a great legacy for others.

Sometimes it seems we get this attitude that people who lived like 5-6,000 years ago were just really stupid, ignorant people; primates just barely smarter than a tree or something. For some reason my mind automatically starts imagining these cave men and women playing with crayons inside caves. But as we’ll find, the people and the faith which they lived out had more meaning, vision, and vitality than much of what passes for being religious, spiritual or even Christian these days. We need to learn from these who have gone before us.

Today we’re looking at two guys: “Faith and the Example of Abel and Enoch.” So let’s read over our text for today, pray and get into it. Hebrews 11:-4-6 “By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks. By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God. And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”

Let’s pray.

I. Righteous Abel (v4)
A. His Story

We begin today by looking at Abel. So let me tell you Abel’s story. There’s not a lot of length to it but a ton of depth. His life was short. In fact his very name means “breath” or “vapor.” We first read about Abel in the first book of the Bible, Genesis.

Adam and Eve, the first man and woman God created are apparently popping out kids like mad, fulfilling God’s first commandment to be fruitful and multiply. We don’t know how many kids they had, the Bible only tells of the names of three but does say they had many other sons and daughters (Gen 5:4). I mean, they’re populating the earth, right? The Bible says Adam lived like 930 years…so who knows they could have had literally like a hundred kids. I don’t know. The mom’s are like, “No way. Poor Eve.”

That’s beside the point…What the Bible is interested in are the names of the children who played a role in the passing down of God’s promise to Adam and Eve in the garden to one day put an end to sin and the serpent, and to one day bring a group of people back to the garden of life to live with him.

So here’s what happens. Two sons are born. A dude named Cain is born and seemingly right after him, a dude named Abel is born. Cain and Abel are brothers. Cain grows up and he ends up being a farmer, he works the ground growing grains, fruits, whatever. Abel grows up and he ends up being a shepherd, raising sheep.

Now apparently their parents, Adam and Eve had taught them something about the importance of worshipping God and offering him sacrifices as a part of that. After Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, God made the first sacrifice himself, the first one to kill an animal and he makes clothes to cover Adam and Eve since after sin they had become guilty before God and were aware of their need for physical and spiritual covering.

So Abel sacrifices the firstborn of his flock, the best and most valued sheep and offers it to God. Cain makes an offering from his working of the ground, but very interestingly Genesis doesn’t say it was a first fruit, the best and first of his crop. In fact, the text almost lends to this idea that he was doing it begrudgingly…he didn’t really want to make any sacrifice and give anything to God because when he offers it God didn’t have regard for his offering.

In response Cain gets angry and then God addresses the desires of his heart saying, Genesis 4:7 “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.” I mean this is a word of grace from God. Cain has already blown it but God throws him a bone, tells him how to make it right and how to avoid making it worse.

Some people have tried to say it was that he should’ve offered an animal, a blood offering or something. But that’s not what God addresses when he speaks to Cain, God addresses the motivations and desires of his heart…essentially his faith or lack thereof. But Cain doesn’t listen. Instead, he goes out to the field where Abel is with the sheep and he kills him.

And that’s the story of Abel. He’s a man of many firsts. He’s the first man ever recorded offering an acceptable sacrifice to God. He’s first man to die. The first man to be murdered. And as we’ll see later he’s the first man other than Adam to be connected to Jesus.

Now there is a couple things in this story of Abel I want to draw out and focus on with you guys today. Both are from what Hebrews says. One is the nature of an “acceptable sacrifice” and the other is his death that “still speaks.”

So let’s talk about an “acceptable sacrifice” and “God’s Way of Worship.”

B. God’s Way Of Worship

Look back at the passage in Hebrews. Verse 4 says, “By faith, Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous.” So here’s my questions. What makes a sacrifice acceptable? What is a sacrifice? And who gets to determine whether it’s good enough or not?

First, a sacrifice. To sacrifice means to give to another at great cost to yourself. There is something you give up or let go of in order to help, bless, benefit or love another person. Whether it’s time, money, or a physical object…there’s always some sort of internal pain or death involved in sacrifice. Right now, all of us here in this room are sacrificing a portion of our day and our time to listen to and learn from the word of God…hopefully it’s because we realize he’s worthy and we love him and recognize we need him. But you may be here for some other reason.

Now here’s the thing. Both Cain and Abel knew that they were created by God and were meant to offer him sacrifice because of it. They like us, owed their life, their food, their jobs and their families to him and they were to honor him for it. But Cain’s sacrifice and Abel’s sacrifice was far different.

John Owen, the great Puritan writer and preacher says Cain he merely just paid homage to God as the creator and preserver but he did not look at his own sin and recognizing his need for deliverance and turn to God for it…instead he was just sort of paying God off. In contrast, Owen says Abel fixed himself on God both as creator and redeemer, recognizing that sacrifice was the means through which God provided covering for his sin.

Jesus is actually the best on this. He’s the one who actually calls Abel, righteous Abel. It’s in Matthew 23. Jesus is in a gnarly fight with the Pharisees. And he is railing against them. He tells them they are like a cup that is all clean on the outside but filthy dirty inside. He tells them they are like nice fancy white tombstones but stand over dirt and death and dead men’s bones. His whole point is that outward acts of worship, whether it be giving money, going to church, praying, doing good deeds…whatever it is is worthless if it is not coming from a heart of love and worship to God!

So Jesus is saying all this stuff and then points to Abel as an example saying that mere external acts of religious worship that are not from the heart follows the heritage of Cain who killed “righteous Abel.” So what made Abel righteous? What made his sacrifice acceptable to God? His faith. His heart of worship.

Here’s the deal. The only kind of worship God is interested in…the only kind of worship God will accept…is the one that comes from faith. This old dude, F.F. Bruce, well he’s actually dead now, said, “Sacrifice is not acceptable to God because of its material content but only when it’s an outward expression of a devoted and obedient heart.”

I mean do you really think that God like the smell of burning animals? That the odor was just like so pleasing to him? “Mmm burning flesh!” When was the last time you burnt your hair or your skin? It reeks. God is not interested in you just working harder and doing more things to try and please him or make him happy. He’s only after the inward purity of heart that comes from faith. That is God’s way of worship. All other ways of worship end up in the way of Cain, which is the way of death and hell.

So the real question before us today at this point is are you worshipping God in the way of Cain or the way of Abel? Are you just paying homage to God because you know you are supposed to or are you actually loving and serving the one who made you because he is your God and your hope and you’re putting all your faith and trust in him? Is worship of God real or is just a performance where you’re just going through the motions? Do you really love God?

Oh God would you give us great faith in you like the faith of righteous Abel. Well, there’s one other thing here about Abel and then we’ll move on to Enoch, so let’s look at Dead Men Talk..

C. Dead Men Talk

This is where our passage in Hebrews says, “through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.” These words are actually a direct reference to a part in the Genesis story of Cain and Abel that I didn’t read earlier. I’ll read it for you now.

After Cain kills Abel God goes to Cain and says to him, Genesis 5:9&10 “‘Where is Abel your brother?’ And he (Cain) said, ‘I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?’ And the LORD said, ‘What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.”

Abel’s blood, his death, it speaks and it cries out to God for justice! For vengeance! In fact in Judaism there is a long tradition in writings, commentaries and stories of Abel being a judge, a chief of justice, which Hebrews may even be eluding to.

This is the same thing we feel and react whenever evil and injustice occurs. For example, last year when Chelsea King was raped and murdered and her body was thrown in Lake Hodges here in San Diego… We cry out for justice! Or when the surfer Emery Kauanui was beaten and killed after a bar fight here in La Jolla a couple years ago… We cry out of for justice! Or when 10 years ago some men flew planes into the twin towers in New York killing hundreds of people… We cry out for justice!

Their blood cries out. Dead men talk! But here’s the thing. Even when we do get justice and the people pay and they’re put to death for their crimes…it just doesn’t seem to be enough…it just doesn’t seem to make everything fully right…and we’re left with this feeling, this longer for something better, a better solution, a better justice.

Do me a favor. Turn one page over in your Bible and look at Hebrews 12:23-24 “To the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.”

Normally I wait until the end of my sermon to try and surprise you all and be like…”and look how this all points to Jesus and the gospel” as if you didn’t know I was going to do it every week. Surprise! But this is just too good and I couldn’t wait until the end.

We sang it just a few moments ago, “your blood speaks a better word.” It comes straight from this passage here in Hebrews 12:24…Jesus blood, his blood shed on the cross, speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. What word does Abel’s blood speak? Justice. What word does Jesus’ blood speak? Both justice and mercy.

In Hebrews 12:23 God is the judge, the one to whom everyone will answer. Every crime committed with hands and every commandment crossed in our hearts. Before God the judge we are all guilty. But what does Jesus do? He mediates with his blood. With his blood he suffers, he takes the place of the guilty and suffers the penalty we as criminals deserve so that justice gets satisfied. And then the better part, the new covenant…we get to go free. His blood, his blood is better because it doesn’t just speak justice but it speaks mercy and enables us to be made new and to start all over again.

Have you longed for justice? Know that God will judge all. You can be sure of it. But also know that there is mercy in Jesus to be had for those who stand underneath the covering of his blood. What we’re really longing for when we long for justice is for things to be made right and in Jesus God makes a way and it’s better. So really Abel is just meant to be a sign post to point us to the true and better Abel, the Lord Jesus Christ upon whom we can look to and be saved.

If you’re just longing for vengeance and justice there’s a deeper thing you’re missing and that is your own guilt and the vengeance and justice you deserve. What you really need is mercy. The true and better word Jesus speaks. Are you looking to him and embracing his provision or holding out for something different which deep down you know cannot really satisfy the longing of your heart? Dead men talk and the thing they speak out most is the need for life, new life…and it comes from Jesus who rose from the dead and gives that life to us.

Well, let’s move on and look at Enoch, another who points us to our longing for and need to escape death.

II. Rewarded Enoch (v5-6)
A. His Story

First let me tell you Enoch’s story. Enoch is the great, great, great (6 greats) grandson of Adam. I’ll read to you everything the Bible says about him. It’s even shorter than Abel. Genesis 4:21-24 “When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.” Super short right?

So basically Enoch’s story is a weird one. He’s not a Christian. He turns 65 and he has a son with a crazy freaky name, Methuselah and something about that has an effect on him so that he becomes a Christian and starts walking with God. After walking with God for 300 years he disappears and Genesis says, what happened is God took him. Not meaning “took him” like we say sometimes when someone dies, but took him in the sense of he didn’t die and God just transferred him over to heaven or something.

Crazy weird story right? I mean there’s only two other places in the Bible where something like this happens. In one place there this dude named Elijah who is walking along the road with his buddy Elisha talking and all of the sudden this whirlwind comes and separates them and then Elijah is floating up into the air in a chariot of fire until he disappears (2 Kings 2). I’m telling you there is some freaky stuff in the Bible.

Then there’s Jesus himself whom after he died on the cross and rose again, appearing for forty days to hundreds of people is hanging out with his disciples when all of a sudden he’s caught up in a cloud into the air and ascends into the atmosphere until he disappears (Acts 1:6-11).

Now for a lot of people these stories just sound like crazy stories that couldn’t be true and if anything prove how the Bible is just a false fairytale. But you’ve got to remember one thing. The Bible, from the very first words of its pages presents us with a God who made everything by his own great power. So if you’re in fact God and you’re able to do that big of a thing…then it’s no big deal for you to decide to make some people ascend into the air and then take them to wherever heaven is at. So philosophically David Hume fans, we’re still sound and consistent logically speaking.

What’s more important with Enoch than the craziness of him disappearing is what the Bible says about his life. One the change that occurred in him and then the reasons why Hebrews says God took him.

First, think about the change. He was not walking with God until after his son was born. Often times major life events can have the effect of waking people up to the things which really matters. I have had multiple couples who while in the middle of pre-marital counseling we’re doing become Christians because it’s the first time they’ve begin to think seriously about their lives.

Same thing with having kids. There’s something about having another little person who you’re going to end up teaching one thing or another that can cause parents to begin to realize they need to figure out exactly what it is they believe and how they’re going to raise their kid.

It seems that is what happened with Enoch. Something about having his son Methusaleh had an effect on him and God used it to change his heart and the course of his life so that Enoch began to walk with him. Walking with God is this universal metaphor in the Bible for really what it means to be a Christian or part of the people of God…you are living your life, day in and day out with God, following Jesus and seeking to do everything with and for him on into the future he has prepared.

There’s this old Christian kid’s song which has this line in it, “This world is not my home, I’m just a passing through.” We’re on a temporary journey here on this earth and we’re meant to travel it with God. Walking with him…back to the garden.

Are you walking with God? Following his lead? Or are you blazing your own trail doing your own thing? Is there some event which has happened recently in your life and through it God is trying to get your attention and tell you to begin walking with him?

You are meant to walk with God. We are meant for life with God, not death…which is what Hebrews brings out from the story of Enoch, so let’s look at God’s disdain for death.

B. God’s Disdain For Death

Look back at Hebrews 11:5. It says, “By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death.” And then it says it was God who took him. What the text emphasizes here is God’s antithetical attitude toward death. God don’t like death. God is the author and giver of life. Death is opposed to him and despised by him. It’s why he sent his son into the world, to die and rise…so that death would no longer have the final word and that life would win.

In Ezekiel 18:32 God says, “I have no pleasure in the death of anyone.” God hates death. The Bible begins with God creating life. Death is an intrusion. Through Jesus God puts to death death itself. And the story of the Bible ends in life everlasting with God. It seems the reason Enoch is singled out here right after Abel is the contrast. Abel is a figure of death killed by the sin of his brother. Enoch is a figure of life, who lives because he walks with God.

Many have noted that our culture seems to have a fascination with death. Whether it’s nightly on the news, from the seemingly endless row of murder, suicide and natural disaster…whether it’s fictional stories, TV shows and movies based on war, violence or the paranormal activities of vampires, werewolves and zombies…or whether it’s the art of musicians, poets, painter and the like…or whether it’s the real life situations of war and terror or the simulated situations of video games like Call of Duty: Black Ops, a game which sold over 7 million copies in the first 24 hours it was released and over a billion dollars in profit…death is sometimes seemingly glorified as though we delight in it.

Enoch stands as a figure in the Bible who reminds us we are meant for life, not death and there is more pleasure to be found in living and walking with God than any other thing. Which brings us to our final point for this morning that “Pleasure Must Be Had.”

C. Pleasure Must Be Had

This last point comes from the added commentary in Hebrews 11 on the nature of faith which springs from the Enoch example. Verse 5 ends by saying Enoch was commended as “having pleased God.” And verse 6 says, “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”

Two things here about faith. Last week we learned that faith is a convinced sureness and is directed toward either the unseen or the future. What verse 6 adds here is that the intended recipient of faith is God and not just a simple acknowledgment of his existence but a life lived in a pursuit and desire to please him.

That’s what pleasing God is about pleasure. I could be wrong here but I don’t think this verse is trying here to convince us that God exists. If we’re honest we all know God exists. Even the athiest affirms a certain God’s existence he believes does not exist…he has to argue the existence of God in order to deny it. Psalm 14:1 says the “fool says in his heart there is no God.” You’re a fool if you say that because you know it’s not true.

So I don’t think this verse is really emphasizing the existence of God but rather the pursuit of God and seeing him as the source of pleasure. Look at it. The goal and the thrust is to “please him”, “draw near” to him, want to be “reward”-ed by him and to “seek him.” What the text here seems to be getting at is if you really do in fact actually believe God exists then you’ll want him…you’ll want to please him, you’ll draw near, want his rewards, and will seek him. If you don’t then you may know there’s a God deep down but you’re living like a practical athiest.

There is perhaps not another man who has labored for most of his life to help us understand the importance of this truth than theologian and pastor John Piper. In 1986 he published his landmark book, “Desiring God” where he coined the phrase “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” A statement meant to express the twin truths that we as human beings are meant to glorify God and we do that best by finding our satisfaction, pleasure, happiness…whatever you want to call it…we find it most in God.

Six years prior to publishing the book “Desiring God” he gave a sermon on the topic. He begins it this way, “I think my desire to be happy is a proper motive for everything I do. I do what I do because I think it will make me happier in the long run. In fact, I think that if I abandon this pursuit of joy, I will become incapable of worshipping and obeying God. For what is worship but the expression of delight in God? What obedience does God want but cheerful obedience?” And then he cites Jonthan Edwards 22nd resolution, “Resolved, To endeavor to obtain for myself as much happiness in the other world as I possibly can, with all the power, might, vigor, and vehemence, yea violence I am capable of, or can bring myself to exert, in any way that can be thought of.”

The point is there is no happiness outside of God. Pleasure, pleasure in God, must be had or else it is darkness and misery. I got an email this week from a friend who has been battling AIDS for years now. He has his ups and downs and recently hit a big down where he became so depressed he had to take a medical leave from work, quit taking his pills, hadn’t spoken to anyone in months and had decided to just wait it out until he died. He’s coming out of it now and I responded to him with some words of love and some resources for him to check out.

Here is the heart of what I told him. God is the fountain and the root of all joy. Jesus died on the cross and rose again for sinners like you and me. That is the root of joy, for the more we grasp how great and good that truth is the more it will transform our affections. God has designed you to be in community with him and in community with his people and without it you will always find yourself battling darkness.

You see the reward we seek is not something we earn from God. We saw that clearly with Abel. The reward we seek is the pleasure of God himself. That’s why we draw near to him. He and he alone has life. Pleasure must be had. And it comes from walking with God like Enoch did. Faith and faith alone is the only thing God ever rewards and his reward is always the same, infinite joy and life everlasting.

Some of you today have been searching for happiness in all the wrong places…looking for it in a guy or a girl or your husband or wife or your kids or your job or money or your house or this or that. Some of you have even been searching for happiness in the search itself. It’s popular these days to say you’re searching but not too popular to say you’ve found. Some of you need to come to a place this morning where it becomes fixed in your brain that you will never be happy apart from God and you will seek your happiness in him and him alone…where he is the end of your search.

Conclusion

We need to conclude and I want to conclude this way today…with the gospel. Surprise! Here’s the truth. Listen. None of us in this room has ever sacrificed enough to be acceptable to God. The truth is none of us are like Abel, we’re all Cains. We’re so prone to just paying God off or giving him a part of ourselves but never really giving our hearts.

The truth is we long for God’s justice to be done to others but we don’t want it for ourselves. We’re quick to call God on fairness when we think it will benefit us but we don’t want fairness from God when it comes to what we deserve.

The truth is none of has walked with God. In fact, as Isaiah 53:6 says, “we all like sheep have gone astray” and gone our own way. We prefer to take the lead rather than to follow the Lord’s. We don’t have faith. We haven’t pleased God. We don’t draw near to him and seek him out. We want good things, rewards but not the reward of God himself.

This is the truth my friends. But hear the gospel of Jesus Christ this morning. Though we all like sheep have gone astray and have turned our own way…the Lord laid on Jesus the iniquity of us all. Jesus satisfied the justice we deserve on our own heads. Jesus offers all of himself on the cross for all sinners who put faith in him. The greatest sacrifice of all! And then guess what he does…he seeks us out, he draws near to us, and he freely gives us the reward of himself and life eternal.

The good news of the gospel is that though we have failed at all these things…Jesus has been and accomplished them for us and he gives all of that to us through us putting our faith in him and walking with him. Jesus is the true and better Abel, the true and better Enoch and the true and better you and I. It’s him. He is all we need. There is no faith but faith in him. So let’s go to our great God and savior and worship him today. He is great. He is good. And he gave his life for us.

Let’s pray.