In the case of Abel, Enoch, and Noah, the Scripture tells that the first obtained God’s witness that he was righteous, that the second had the witness on earth that he pleased God, and that the third became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. But in their daily lives in the world no sign appeared that it was worth anyone’s while to be righteous or to please God.
Abel was cut off by the hand of a murderer, unavenged. Enoch disappeared mysteriously and was not found. Noah disappeared, probably amid the mockery of the world of his day, into an ark which he had prepared in obedience to God. God shut him in, and that was the last the world saw of him. The importance of pleasing God or of being righteous appears from the fact that God selected the facts concerning these three men, out of the many centuries that passed between the fall in the Garden of Eden and the flood, for His divine comments.
Later in Genesis, two chapters (10 and 11) are allotted to the history of the world, then twenty-four chapters are devoted to recording the history of an unknown, insignificant man (Abraham), while Nimrod, the mighty hunter, is busy founding empires, and Asshur goes out and builds Nineveh, the “great city.” (Gen. 10:11.) The world was being settled, populated, and divided too by the judgment of God. But of all these things, so interesting to the scientists and antiquarians of our day, the Scripture speaks little. God’s heart was with the solitary man who obeyed Him, and who became the object of these wonderful ways of God.
“By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.” Hebrews 11:8.
God’s comment about the world of Abraham’s time shows that it was much like the world of today:
“And this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” Genesis 11:6.
So we can understand something of what it must have meant to God to find in such a world a man, who, when he was called, obeyed. The Scripture expresses the simplicity of his obedience in a striking way:
“They went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.” Genesis 12:5.
“By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles;” that is, “tents.” Hebrews 11:9.
Nimrod founded an empire while Abraham dwelt in tents. Asshur built the “great city” (Jonah 1:2), while the steps of Abraham’s path toward the city that has foundations, whose builder and maker is God, might be traced by the frail heaps of stones that marked the spots where had taken place the intercourse of a man of faith with God. God is not the God of Nimrod, but He is not ashamed to be called the God of Abraham. (Heb. 11:16.)