The Faith That Pleases God (Hebrews 11:6)

Hebrews 11:1-7 and the Definition of Faith

We're going to read together verses 1 through verse 7 of Hebrews 11, and before we do, let's bow our heads. Our Father, it is our desire that you would speak to us through your Word today. We know that your Word is true.

It is in the light of your Word that we see light and that we understand truth. And it is because you have revealed yourself to us and you have made your Word clear that we are able to understand not only you and your nature, your character, your redemptive plan, but also your expectation of us and how we are to relate to you properly.

So we pray that our hearts and minds would be open today and that you would illuminate our hearts and minds to your Word. May the ministry of your Spirit be to the end of equipping and edifying your people.

Today.

Encourage us and rebuke us as necessary and strengthen our hearts together in and through your Word, we pray in Christ's name, amen. Hebrews chapter 11, verses 1 through 7. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

For by it the men of old gained approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the Word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts.

And through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks. By faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death, and he was not found because God took him up, for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up, he was pleasing to God.

And without faith it is impossible to please him, for he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him. By faith Noah being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.

Faith as the Only Way to Please God

The Christian life is a life of faith from beginning to end. We are by faith born into the family of God, born again. It is by faith that we live in God's family and serve one another in God's family and are faithful in this world, in God's family.

And it is by faith that we die in this world and are ushered into God's presence. It is faith from first to last, and every aspect of our Christian life is to be characterized by faith. And it has always been this way, since the beginning.

Abel was approved because of his faith, having offered the sacrifice that God demanded, and we go back in Genesis and we see from the very beginning it has always been by faith that men were called and expected to relate to God.

Faith has always been at the very heart of what it means to interact with God, to know God, to experience God, to love God, to serve Him and to be known by Him and to know Him. And Hebrews gives us this list of heroes of the faith.

We see in Hebrews that faith saves. It's by faith that we are made righteous. It's by faith that we are made acceptable to God. It is by faith that we do mighty works, conquer kingdoms, etc. These are the heroes of faith that we have in Hebrews chapter 11.

And the author gives to us a list of examples. There's a chronological order. There's a logical order to the examples. He gives us a definition of faith in verse 1, it is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not yet seen.

He gives us examples of faith, Abel, Enoch, and Noah. And then he also gives to us a statement on the necessity of faith and what it means to have faith and why faith is necessary, and that's in verse 6.

In verse 6 we read, and without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him or who diligently seek Him. The word seek there talks about the exertion of an effort, a diligence in seeking after God.

He who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. This is a statement on the necessity of faith. And the two examples that we've seen so far in Hebrews chapter 11, Abel and Enoch, both demonstrate that God is a rewarder of those who seek Him.

And last week we just looked at Enoch's example, but we didn't get into verse 6, which is really the commentary on Enoch's example. It's connected to verse 5 by that phrase, he pleased God. You'll notice in verse 5, by faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death and he was not found because God took him up, for he obtained the witness, that is the testimony, God testifying of Enoch, that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God.

Now verse 6 is the commentary on that. It explains how it is that Enoch pleased God and what it was about Enoch that pleased God, namely his faith. So without faith it is impossible to please Him. You can see that the author is cueing off of the language that he used in verse 5 to describe what it means to please God and how faith is necessary to accomplishing that task.

So then the question before us is, what does it mean to please God and how does faith do.

That?

You'll notice that the author in verse 6 states a positive truth in a negative way. He says it is impossible without faith to please God. So the impossibility is a negative statement and being without faith, that is a negative.

Statement.

If you put the two negatives together, I'm not going to get into complex math, but when you have a sort of a double negative structure like that, that means that the positive aspect of it is that with faith it is possible to please God.

In fact, faith is the only way that it is possible to please God and faith is the only thing that pleases God because the one who comes to God, that is, approaches God initially and pursues and seeks after God through a lifetime of faith, that person must believe that God is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

And that language, pleased God, is the equivalent of walking with God. We saw that last week with Enoch. In verse 5, when it says at the end of verse 5 that Enoch was pleasing to God, we saw that back in Genesis chapter 5, it doesn't say that Enoch was pleasing to God, it says he walked with God.

But the Greek translation of the Old Testament that the author of Hebrews had before him, the Septuagint, it translated that idiom, walked with God, as pleased God, and that is a faithful, it is an accurate and a very good translation of that idea, that walking with God is pleasing to God.

So the Septuagint just translated it as pleasing to God and it's that that the author seizes.

On.

God was obviously pleased with Enoch or He would not have walked with Enoch. For God does not give His blessings, His benefits, the comforts and the joys of being with Him. God does not give those to people who do not please Him, to people who do not have faith.

It is something that the unbeliever does not have. What kind of faith is it that is being described here? It's not the indescript and nondescript and sort of vague idea of believing in a higher power or believing in a God or just a feeling of confidence in something, whatever it is, just believe something.

That's not the idea that the author is talking about. We defined faith back in verse 1. It is specifically a faith in a specific person. It is a specific kind of faith. It is a very narrow faith. It is a very intentional faith and it has in its mind a certain goal or certain ideal, namely that God is the rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

So He's not, this is not an undefined or an ill-defined notion of just believing in a higher power, but it is a specific faith in a specific God to a specific end for a specific thing, very specific.

And that alone is the kind of faith that pleases God. But what does it mean to please God? That's the question, isn't it? What does it mean to please God? Does it mean that you make God in some sense happy?

Because we talk about being pleased by something, right? Somebody does something for us and we become pleased with that. We're pleased. In other words, we're kind of made happy. We're made a little joyful.

We're kind of got to skip in our step, right? We're tickled by this. That's a phrase my grandmother used to use, tickles me pink. We're tickled by this. We're encouraged by this. It puts a smile on our face.

Is that what faith does to God? Is that what it means to please God? The verb that's translated please here is, the word that is translated as please here is used as a verb only three times in all the New Testament, all three of them by the author of Hebrews.

It's used twice, once in verse five and once in verse six, that Enoch was pleasing to God and without faith it is impossible to please him. It's used twice there. The third time that it's used is in Hebrews chapter 13, verse 16, and do not neglect doing good and sharing for with such sacrifices God is pleased.

That's the verb form. The adjective form of that word is used elsewhere in scripture numerous times and when it is used as an adjective, it describes something that is acceptable or accepted by someone.

In fact, that's how it's used in a familiar passage, Romans chapter 12, verses one and two, where Paul says, I urge you brethren by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable.

That's the word, pleasing. Acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect, that which is good and pleasing.

In other words, the idea behind the word is not that God suddenly feels happy about something, that we change His emotions toward us by an act of faith, but rather that we are made acceptable. This is something that God is pleased with, that He accepts.

The idea is that God accepts this, God approves of this, and this is, of course, the whole context in Hebrews chapter 11. By this the men of old gained what? Approval, acceptance, God's pleasure. God is pleased with it or He accepts it, and in view in Hebrews 11 is both our person and.

Our works.

In other words, it is not just us as individuals as fallen creatures in this creation that are made acceptable to God by faith and faith alone, but it is that everything that we do, all of our deeds, our service, our life itself, everything that we offer to the Lord must also be offered in faith or it is not acceptable to Him.

Anything that is not of faith is what, Paul says, it's sin. Anything that is not of faith is sin. So that means that if I'm seeking to please God or be made acceptable to Him on the basis of anything other than faith, it's sin.

Without faith, it is very difficult to please God.

Is that what the text says?

Harder to please God than with faith?

Is that what the text says?

Does the text say that without faith it's a real challenge to please God or that your chances are skimmer if you're going to try and please God? That's not what it says. Without faith, it is impossible, absolutely impossible.

There is no chance. There is no wiggle room. There are no exceptions. There is nobody who has ever been accepted by God who has been so on the basis of anything other than the kind of faith that is described in Hebrews chapter 11.

There is no work that has ever been done which has been approved of by God, been accepted by Him, been pleasing to Him that has ever been done on the basis of anything other than the kind of faith that is described in Hebrews chapter 11.

It is impossible to please God. Now, what would you say about somebody who spent their life trying to do the impossible? Would you think that they're smart, industrious, a real entrepreneur, or would you think that they're crazy?

What would you think of somebody who set out to swim the Atlantic Ocean? You recognize that that's impossible. Would you think that he's a brave person or would you say, no, he's a crazy person? He's nuts.

What would you say of me if you were walking down at the city beach, not right now but during the summer months because this is the only time that I would ever think of attempting something like this.

You were walking down at the city beach and you saw me, you're walking on that path that kind of goes all the way around the city beach and you see me down on the beach and I'm there with a pad of paper and a pencil and I'm holding a palm full of sand and I'm doing this.

And I write something down and you ask me, Jim, what are you doing? I think, well, I've set it out. It's my goal to catalog every grain of sand in the world, to name them, number them, and catalog every last one of them.

And I thought I would start with the city beach and then I'm going to move on to other beaches around Lake Pend Oreille and then Priest Lake and then Coquitlam Lake and then Round Lake and eventually all the lakes in the northern panhandle and then I'm moving on to other states and then the west coast and the east coast and this is my life's goal to catalog every grain of sand on the planet and I'm starting right here in my own backyard.

You would call me what? Nuts. Yeah, you'd think we need to be looking for another pastor because we've obviously stressed this one out too much. He's down there counting grains of sand. Spurgeon said that to attempt a difficulty may be laudable, but to rush upon an impossibility is madness.

It's impossible to please God without faith. To attempt to do something that is difficult is admirable, but to do something and to attempt to do something that is impossible is insanity. Without faith, it is impossible to please God, an impossibility.

And we are told that it is impossible and therefore any and all who try it and attempt to do it, whether to relate to God and to come to Him and be accepted by Him for eternal life or salvation or to do anything, any act, any work that is pleasing to Him in any way is a mad fool and yet people do this all the time.

This was in fact, this was in fact Cain's issue, wasn't it?

Wasn't it?

Cain had revealed to him how it was that he was to approach God. He knew this. He knew what the sacrifice was to be. He knew when the sacrifice was to be offered. He and Abel both had the same amount of information.

They had grown up in that household. This was part of their regular practice. Cain came at the appointed time on the appointed day to the appointed place and he offered his sacrifice, but Cain decided, I'm going to do it my way, the big Frank Sinatra attempt at worship.

I'll do it my way. I'll please God my way. I'm not going to do what I've been commanded to do to be obedient to the Lord. Instead, rejecting what God had said and not believing God's testimony, Cain attempted to do it his own way.

Abel's sacrifice pleased God because Abel believed what God said concerning sacrifices and how God was to be approached and then he in acting in that obedience was an expression of his faith and it is by that faith that was the evidence of his faith, the sacrifice was, that is what made Abel's sacrifice pleasing or acceptable to God and thus what made Abel pleasing and acceptable to God.

This is how all the Old Testament Jews pursued righteousness, not all of them, but most of.

Them.

Paul says this in Romans chapter 9, they did not pursue it by faith, but by works. They were pursuing righteousness because they knew they had no righteousness and they thought that righteousness could be attained on the basis of works and so rather than pursuing it by faith, which is what they should have done following Abraham's example, they didn't do that.

Instead, they pursued it on their own terms, which was by works. Any attempt to keep the law for salvation, it is impossible to please God. Any attempt to keep the Ten Commandments thinking that in the Ten Commandments I can be justified, I can be made righteous, any attempt to keep those in order to earn righteousness and somehow merit God's grace or God's favor or God's blessing is nothing less than a denial of.

Faith.

It is impossible to please God on those terms. Any trust in a ceremony, whether it be communion or baptism or last rites or mass or anything else that is done for you or by you or on your behalf by another, anything like that is nothing less than a disbelief in what God has said and a rejection of faith and an act of unbelief, and therefore it is impossible to please God.

You cannot trust in your lineage, you cannot say because my parents were believers or because my grandparents were believers or because I know people who are believers or because I grew up in a Christian family, none of those things merit you righteousness, and any attempt or trust in any of those things is nothing less than a lack of faith.

To approach God on your own merits, by your own good deeds, to say I've served in a church or I've helped other people, I've served at the soup kitchen, I've done these good things, I've improved my lot in life, I've lived a moral and upright, upstanding life, when I look at all the neighbors around me, all of them are a bunch of fire-breathing, drunken, adulterous, fornicating liars and thieves, I don't trust any of them, and that's the neighborhood in which I live, but look how righteous I am compared to everybody around.

Me.

Obviously, I can warrant or merit God's righteousness, I can merit His approval. Without faith, it is impossible to please Him. It was George Whitefield who said, if I were to trust, trusting in my own works to get me to heaven, I would sooner try and climb to the moon on a rope made of sand.

Your odds are better. You could catalog all the sand in the rope if you wanted to, but you're not going to be able to climb to the moon on a rope made of sand. You cannot gain God's approval apart from faith.

This is good news, and it's bad news. It's bad news because it means that you have to turn your back on every other attempt at pleasing God and being acceptable to Him except faith and faith alone, but here's the good news.

It's by faith and faith alone and not your works. That is good news. The bad news is you have to abandon all of your attempts at self-righteousness. You have to divorce yourself and abandon all of your trust in anything other than that.

You have to admit that you're wrong, turn from your sin, trust in Christ and Christ alone, throw all of your confidence in Him and Him alone. That's a very difficult thing to do, nigh unto impossible thing to do apart from the grace of God.

But the good news is that it is by faith and faith alone. If it were by some work or some good deed or something that we could merit, the bad news is we could never merit enough. We could never be confident enough in anything that we have done, but if God says, just come to me and believe what I have said concerning approaching me and being acceptable to me, if those are the terms, we can meet those terms, we can come to Him on that basis.

Believing That God Is and Rewards Those Who Seek Him

Without faith, it is impossible to please Him. And the reason given is the rest of verse 6, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. He who comes to God, this is the very first movement of the soul toward God.

It is faith that is active at the very, very beginning of us coming to understand who it is that God is and how it is that we are to approach Him. He begins, we have to, the one who comes to Him must believe that He is.

The one who approaches God, who thinks to themselves, who reasons to themselves, I am a sinner, my conscience bears witness of this truth, and there is a God who exists and His standard is perfect righteousness.

And if that is the case, then I have fallen horribly short of that standard, and therefore I need forgiveness and I need all of my sin debt taken away, and I need righteousness in order to stand before Him.

But I have only sin and I have no righteousness, and what He demands is no sin and perfect righteousness so that everything He demands, I have nothing of that. And everything that He forbids, I have a heaping helping of that in my caseload before a holy and just God.

So since that is the case, for me to approach God, I must first of all believe not only that He is, but second, that He will reward me for seeking after Him, that in coming to Him there is a reward. I have to believe that there is a God and that I can lay hold of His promise, that if I will believe Him, trust Him, and place my faith in Him and Him alone, that is all I need for forgiveness of my sins and perfect righteousness and to be made acceptable to Him on the last day.

The one who comes to God, that is, even approaches God for the very first blessing, and what is the very first blessing for which we approach God? Forgiveness of our sins and perfect righteousness. The one who comes or even approaches unto God must believe these two things, and now we are given the object of our faith and the content of our faith.

He must believe that God is. You must believe that God is. Not that there is a God, the difference between this, is not that you believe that there is a God, but that you must believe that God is. Which God?

The God revealed in Scripture. You must believe that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who is incarnated and revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, that this blessed and holy and righteous triune God who spoke the world into existence in Genesis 1 and will recreate the entire world in Revelation 22, that this God exists, the God who is revealed in Scripture.

Specifically, we have to have a faith in the right God. It's not enough that we just believe in God as we see fit or as we are comfortable or that we fashion a God after our own image or that we believe in a God that we are comfortable with and that we enjoy hanging out with.

That's not it. There are a lot of things about our God, the true God, that makes us, as sinners, very uncomfortable. There are a lot of things about His character and His nature that can be very disconcerting to us, but we have to believe and trust in the God who is revealed in Scripture.

Not a God, but the God, and not a God of our own making. God does not countenance idols and He does not sympathize with divided allegiances. He demands our trust, He demands our faith, and it's not just a God that is demanding our faith, it is the God.

We must believe that that God exists and that is to say that we believe what He has revealed about Himself in the pages of Scripture and that we look in Scripture and say, this is my God and I will embrace and accept this divine person.

I will embrace Yahweh, I will believe this God, I will trust this God as opposed to everything else that is offered to me. And we have to believe then also that He rewards those who seek Him. What does it mean to seek God?

I think if I were to ask that question, I'd probably get, I don't know, 150, 200 answers to that question. What does it mean to seek God? That is a very, that would require almost a whole series of messages to unfold that, I think, because we are commanded in Scripture to seek God.

What it means to seek God looks differently with different people. There are different ways in which we seek after God. Psalm 105, verses 3 and 4 says, glory in His holy name, let the heart of those who seek the Lord be glad, seek the Lord in His strength, seek His face continually.

And again, I mentioned at the beginning that there is a diligence to this seeking for God. The Word describes not just a sort of a wandering around and keeping your eyes open for something, but a diligent pursuit of something.

That's what it means to seek God. He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. To seek Him begins with coming to Him for salvation. That is obviously necessary for it, because we are lost ones, and so seeking Him requires that we lay aside all of our attempts at our own self-righteousness and pursue God as He is revealed in Scripture and in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It must begin with seeking Him for that very first blessing, which is salvation. But there's more to seeking Him than just that. It also means that we seek to know Him, that we seek to know Him as He is revealed in Scripture, to know more about Him, to plumb the depths of His perfect attributes, to become more and more familiar with the God who is, how He works, what He thinks, how He feels about things, what He has revealed in pages of Scripture concerning us and nature and reality, what God is doing throughout history.

To pursue and to seek after Him is not simply to say, yeah, I know God, I have a relationship with Him. I had an encounter with Him at a camp meeting one time when I was 14, and I went to camp, and He and I have kind of been on the outs ever since, but I know the God that you're talking about.

That's not what it means to seek Him. To diligently seek Him means that we begin our Christian life by pursuing Him for that first blessing, and then we get to know Him through a life that is lived pursuing after.

Him.

We pursue holiness without which no one can see the Lord. We seek to know His purposes. We seek to bask in the delights of His perfections in His nature and His character. Do you read books about the attributes of God?

Do you read those kind of books? I'm not talking Max Lucado, Joyce Meyer, I'm not talking about that nonsense. I'm talking about books that unfold God's character, His nature, that cause you to spend some time reflecting upon His transcendence, His immutability, His omniscience, His omnipotence, His justice, His righteousness, His goodness, His grace, the perfections of His character, His Trinitarian nature.

Do you spend time thinking about those things? To pursue God means that I take my mind and I engage it in seeking to understand who He is, and how He works, and why He loves us. It is to be conformed to the image of Christ, to be made like Christ, and to pursue holiness, and to pursue conformity to God's Son.

That's what it means to seek Him. And of course, you can unfold all of those. It means that we seek to be obedient to His command, to serve His people, to love the truth, to hate iniquity, error, and unrighteousness.

We have to pursue and seek mortification of our sin, killing of our sin, seeking after His purposes, to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you, to pursue His purposes and His glory and honor, His greatness and His name above all other things.

It is to put Him first. It is to mortify, to knock over, to kill, to burn down, and then salt the ground under every idol of our life. And we will spend our lives doing that. We will spend our lives moving from one idol to the next.

One thing that brings itself up against the knowledge and the glory of God, and we will knock down that idol. We will burn it and salt the ground and move on and find yet another idol. But that's what it means to pursue God, to never tire of Him, to never tire of understanding His purposes, and to never fully grasp even all that He has revealed in truth, but to always be pursuing it and seeking after it.

The one who comes to God must believe that God is, and listen, if what Scripture reveals about Him is true, that He is infinite in all of His perfections, that is that His omniscience is infinite, His grace is infinite, His mercy is infinite, His loving kindness is infinite, His transcendence is infinite, His immutability is an infinite immutability, His wisdom is never-ending.

There's no end to its depth. And if those things are true, if that's the nature and character of God, then you and I can spend all of our lives seeking after that God and never even begin to plumb the depths of His character and His nature and His works.

We can fix all of our minds and our attention and our hearts and our meditation upon that every moment of every day for the rest of our lives and never plumb the depths of it, never even get really below the superficial level of it.

We can have all eternity to get to do that. And this may be an unpopular opinion, but this is my opinion. I don't think ever in eternity we will ever get to the end of that. I think that's what eternity is all about.

That's why it takes eternity, is because He is infinite in His perfections. So that's what it means to seek God. If we are to seek God in that way, then we must believe that He is the rewarder of those.

Who seek Him.

There are some people who think that we should never live our lives or do anything for the sake of a reward. I don't know if you've read verse 6, but does it seem to you when you read verse 6 that rewards are out of the question?

I would never, I don't think that we would adequately or passionately enough seek God if there were not hope of a reward. The reason we seek after God is because we believe that in some way, in some sense, at some time, He is the rewarder of those who do this.

The one who seeks Him for salvation finds righteousness, the forgiveness of sins, a relationship with Him, adoption into His family. The one who seeks Him in service finds the rewards of that service.

The one who seeks Him in their marriage finds the rewards poured out upon them. Upon their marriage, the one who seeks Him in all of life finds that God rewards in this life through all of these different things.

He rewards those who seek Him in those ways. We must believe not only that He is, but something about His nature specifically, that the God who calls us to seek after Him will reward us when we seek after Him.

That just makes sense. He doesn't seek, He doesn't call us, at least not in this passage, to pursue after Him just for the sake of the pursuit. You'll run into people who think that way. Hey, we didn't reach any goal, we didn't get to the end, but wasn't the journey worth it?

Sometimes the journey is not worth it, and we're not called to just pursue God for the sake of having something to pursue. We are called to pursue God so that we might know Him, and that we might serve Him, and that we might glorify Him and be made more like Him, and so that He might reward those who diligently seek after Him.

How does God reward His people? Do you think that in this life that you have experienced or received, Christian, believer, do you think that in this life you have experienced or received 50 or 60 percent of the rewards that God is going to pour out on you?

What percentage do you think you have already enjoyed of the things that God has stored.

Up for you?

I think it's infinitesimally small, what we have already experienced. In fact, I think that the bulk of the rewards that we have yet to experience are all future, the bulk of them, the vast majority of them.

I think we'll look back on this life and think, yeah, that was a taste. It was like, this isn't even an adequate example, it's like the Costco sample. You get to smell a little bit, you get this little tiny thing, hand it to you in a cup, and you think, man, that's good, I should buy that, maybe, I don't know.

And then you get to the next one, you forget what the last one kind of tasted like, and you move on, and now you're sitting here and you're like, I don't remember what I ate last time I was at Costco.

That's kind of what I think most of the rewards in this life are like, they're just samples of what is yet to come. God intends to lavish upon His people, those who seek Him, an untold, unspeakable, and infinite river of blessings, because that is His nature.

We're talking about not just what do we believe about God existing, the God of Scripture existing, but what do we believe about the kind of God that He is? He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

And He rewards not just stingily, but abundantly, graciously, in eternity, infinitely, because if there is an eternity in which we will enjoy rewards, then there can be no end to the rewards that He pours out upon us for all of eternity.

And therefore, what we sample in this life, the blessings and joys and delights of this life are nothing compared to the blessing and joys and delights of eternity, an eternal.

Life.

And in fact, in the gospel, what God offers to us as the reward is Himself. Don't miss this. He provides for us holiness. Whose holiness is it? We're conformed to His image. He gives us righteousness.

What righteousness is it? It's the righteousness of His Son. Everything that God offers to us in the gospel is Himself. God is our reward. And if just…and if that were all that there were, that would be enough.