Hebrews 10:3535Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward. (Hebrews 10:35) is a connecting link between the two great thoughts of the epistle: Christianity puts you inside the veil and outside the camp. That is, it undoes the work of Satan, which estranged you from God and made you at home in a corrupted world. The religion of the Lord Jesus just comes to upset Satan’s work. Nothing can be more beautiful than the antithesis which thus shows itself between the serpent and the serpent’s bruiser. The “great recompense of reward” shows itself in the life of faith that we are now going to read about. We are called, as John Bunyan says, “to play the man.”
If happy within, we are to be fighting without. Chapter 11 shows us the elect of all ages “playing the man” in the power of this principle of confidence.
“Cast not away therefore your confidence,” for it thus shows that it has “great recompense of reward.” Faith is a principle that apprehends two different things of God. In Romans 4 it views Him as a justifier of the ungodly, but here it apprehends God as “a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” The moment you apprehend God by a faith that does not work, you enter on a faith that does work. While we rightly cherish a faith that saves our souls, let us not be indifferent to a faith that serves our Saviour. How boldly we sometimes assert our title, but do we value our inheritance? Just so, if I boast of a justifying faith, it is a poor thing to be indifferent to the faith that we have here in chapter 11: “Now faith is the substance [confidence] of things hoped for, the evidence [conviction] of things not seen.”
This faith was the strength of all the worthies in old times, who through it “obtained a good report.” It is another proof that, as we have said, everything in this epistle is to set aside law. If I take up the law as the secret power of my soul to do anything for God, I am not doing it for God, but for myself. The law might chasten and scourge me and call on me to work out a title to life. But that would be serving myself. Faith sets law aside. Then, having established faith as a working principle, he begins to unfold the different phases of it from the beginning.
I believe that Hebrews 11:33Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. (Hebrews 11:3) is a reference to Adam who, by faith, was a worshipper in the garden. He looked behind all the wonders that surrounded him and apprehended the great Artificer. But, when we left innocency, we left creation as a temple and we cannot go back. If I go back, I go back to Cain. And here we come to Abel and to revelation. We are sinners, and revelation which unfolds redemption must build us a temple. You must take your place as a worshipper in the temple that God in Christ has built for you.
Then we come to Enoch. We are told that he walked with God and that he pleased God. To so walk with God is to please Him. Can anything be more welcome to us than the thought that we can give complacency to God? There was nothing in Enoch’s life to make history, but whatever condition of life may be ours, our business is to walk with God in it. You may say: “A poor, unnoticed thing am I, compared with some who have been distinguished in service for the Lord.” “Well,” let me reply, “you are an Enoch.”
Now Noah’s was a very distinguished life. Faith laid hold on the warning. Faith does not wait for the day of glory or the day of judgment to see glory or judgment. Faith here for 120 years seemed to be a fool. Noah was building a ship for dry ground, and he may well have been the mockery of his neighbors, but he saw the thing that was invisible. Supposing you and I lived under the authority of coming glory: what fools we would be in the eyes of man!
“He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” The faith of a saint is an intensely working thing. Will God be a debtor to any man? No; He will pay to those who sow bountifully.
Next, Abraham’s life is a picture of the varied exercises of faith. There was a magnificence in his faith. He went out blindfolded, but the God of glory led him by the hand. So he came to the land, but not a foot of it was given. He must have the patience of faith. Whatever fell from the lips of God was welcome to Abraham. He walked his life of faith in the power of the recollection of what he had seen under the hand of the God of glory.
Sarah’s was another kind of faith. We must see God as a Quickener of the dead. Noah understood God in this way as did the Israelites under the blood-stained lintel. Death was there and attached to every house in the land, but the Israelites knew God as the Quickener of the dead. If I make God less than a Quickener of the dead, I make myself more than a dead sinner. It is as Quickener of the dead that I must meet Him.
Verse 13 is a beautiful verse. The first thing to do to a promise is to apprehend it then to exercise faith about it and then to receive it by the heart. They “embraced” them. Their hearts hugged them. How far has my heart hugged the promises? The closer we hug them, the more blessedly we shall consent to be strangers and pilgrims in this world. They spoke of strangership, not because they left Mesopotamia, but because they had not reached heaven. Supposing there were a change in your circumstances, would that cure your strangership? Not if you are among God’s people.
In chapter 2 we read that Christ is not ashamed to call us “brethren.” Now we read that God was not ashamed to call these strangers His people. If you have fallen out with the world, God is not ashamed of you. For God Himself has fallen out with it, and He is not ashamed of you, for you are of one mind with Him. When they said they were strangers, God called Himself their God.
We see Abraham in another light: Every hope of Abraham depended on Isaac. To give up Isaac seemed not only to become a bankrupt in the world, but to become a bankrupt in God. Have you ever feared God making you a bankrupt in Himself? Has He turned away never to return? Abraham got Isaac back in a figure, sealed as a fresh witness of resurrection. We never lose anything by trusting God in the dark.
Then we come to Isaac. He showed his faith by blessing Esau and Jacob concerning things to come. This is the little, single bit of his life that the Spirit looks at as the eminent work in it.
Jacob is more remarkable, as Noah had been more remarkable than Enoch. Though his was a very eventful life, the only thing we get here is, “By faith [he]... blessed both the sons of Joseph.” It shows how much of a Christian’s life may be rubbish. Jacob’s life was an exhibition of a saint who went astray and whose whole life was occupied in getting back. This act of faith comes at the close of his life. He does this beautiful service of faith in the face of the resentments of his own heart and the appeal of his son Joseph.
But Joseph’s is a lovely life a life of faith from the beginning. Joseph was a holy man throughout, but there was magnificent outshining of faith just at the close. He had control of the treasures of Egypt, yet he spoke of the departing of his brethren. That was seeing things invisible. The general course of his life was unblamable, yet we do find in his words as he was departing the finest utterance of faith. Now that is what you and I want. You must seek to get under the power of things hoped for things unseen the expectation of the Lord’s return. That is walking the life of faith by which “the elders obtained a good report.”
J. G. Bellett (from The Opened Heavens)