Lesson for September 8, 2024
The Triumphs of Faith
Lesson 2
Hebrews 11
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 before he was taken up, he was attested to have been pleasing to God.”
By faith means Enoch was faithful in learning Bible doctrine, as it was communicated to him by God. The source of a prophet’s message came from conversations directly with God, dreams, visions, sometimes angelic teaching. He acted upon this doctrine by not only becoming a great believer, but he became a great communicator of doctrine, as a prophet. A person who functioned as a prophet in the Old Testament communicated Bible doctrine and often spoke of future events. Because of Enoch’s faithful service, God chose to transfer him to Heaven without experiencing death.
Genesis 5:21-24 gives some commentary on Enoch as to his faithfulness to God. Enoch, a prophet of God, was a spiritually mature believer during the period of history in which he lived. The phrase attested to have been pleasing to God means Enoch was a righteous man who consistently followed God’s instructions for his life.
Jude 14 helps us understand who Enoch was and why he was mentioned in this list of faithful believers. The prophecies of future events by Enoch dealt with apostasy in the future Tribulation and the coming of Christ at the end of the Tribulation. Enoch spoke of the period of the Tribulation with emphasis on the Second Coming of Christ where there would be one of the greatest judgments in history against apostasy. Enoch warned the apostates early in history; he was only the seventh generation from Adam, and he looked into the future to illustrate the judgment of apostasy.
Jude 1:14-15, “It was also about these people (apostate teachers) that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord has come with many thousands of His holy ones,to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.”
Verse 6
“And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for the one who comes to God must believe that He exists, and that He proves to be One who rewards those who seek Him.”
Once again, faith in this verse means believing Bible doctrine. Pleasing God is based on consistent and persistent positive volition toward Bible doctrine. None of us can please God without believing (faith) and applying the doctrine in our soul.
He who comes to God refers to believers who want to know Him, and to occupy themselves with Jesus Christ. Occupation with the Person of Christ means that we are fully aware of Christ in every area of our lives and that we are staying in fellowship with Him a maximum amount of time. It means that we are thinking divine viewpoint based on our knowledge of His Word and that we have no higher goal in life than to bring honor and glory to Him in our thoughts, in our attitudes, in our words, and in our actions. Our desire should always be to saturate our minds with His Word. (I Corinthians 2:16b; II Corinthians 10:5; Philippians 1:19-21)
Must believe that He is means an exercise of our faith in Who God is and what our relationship is like with Him. Must believe therefore means to be convinced of the truth of Bible doctrine to the point that you know the effectiveness of Bible doctrine in your life. You have experienced the effect of taking in doctrine on a consistent basis and then applying it to the circumstances of your life. And you have seen that it works to resolve any issue in life!
You are a member of the Royal Family of God, your life now has meaning and purpose, and the Word of God has defined God’s plan, what your objectives should be in life. Therefore, you must comply with His instructions if you are going to please God and be rewarded with divine blessings by Him (a rewarder of those who seek Him).
Verse 7
“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.”
Most of us know the story of Noah and the Flood, but there is a tremendous amount of doctrine and analogy associated with this story. In this story, we find the doctrines of Theology (the doctrine of God), Christology (the doctrine of Christ), and Soteriology (the doctrine of salvation).
Satan and his demons were hard at work prior to the Flood attempting to spoil the plan of God. It was Satan’s goal to stop the humanity of Christ from being born or to corrupt the entire human race so that Christ could not be true humanity, if He was born. Many believers have no clue as to the significance of the humanity of Christ and why Christ had to become a man by means of a virgin birth.
The very first Gospel message in the Bible (the seed of the woman in Genesis 3:15) places the emphasis on Christ’s humanity and on the Virgin Birth. While many Christians do not understand the importance of the humanity of Christ, Satan does and always has. Satan made many specific attacks on the humanity of Christ in an attempt to keep Him from coming into the world, because if Jesus Christ was prevented from coming into the world, then there would be no salvation.
Jesus Christ is God. He is also true humanity. In His deity, Jesus Christ is eternal life, and eternal life cannot die. He is immutable and can’t change. He is sovereign and is not subject to death. And yet the only way for man’s salvation is the Cross, and so Christ had to become true humanity, because it is the humanity of Christ that would die spiritually and then physically. Only the humanity of Christ could bear the sins of the world through His substitutionary spiritual death on the Cross. (Hebrews 2:9-14; Philippians 2:5-8)
We can see Satan’s attack of Christ in Genesis 6, which was a demonic infiltration into humanity attempting to destroy it as God had created it. This was the greatest attack ever made upon our salvation.
Satan’s attack was so successful that the line by which Jesus Christ would come into the world was narrowed down to a family of eight, the family of Noah. Had it not been for the Flood, the attack would have been entirely successful, since there would have been no “true humanity” left in the human race. All of the human race would have been part human and part demon.
Noah took the proper action, even though he was in the minority. However, with God, and His Word in your soul, you are never in the minority. Noah received a message from God about the termination of civilization. The ship that Noah constructed was his action regarding the warning he received. This information came to Noah at least 120 years before the flood, according to Genesis 6:3.
By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household means Noah respected and reverenced God and accepted His instructions to build a ship before the rain came. And remember, it had never rained before in the history of the world. So, it took a lot of faith and faithfulness on the part of Noah and his sons to construct the Ark.
And we must remember, while Noah and his sons were building the Ark, the rest of the world was becoming increasingly corrupt around them. Fallen angels had infiltrated the human race and a new, evil race was about to completely corrupt it. (Genesis 6:5-7; Matthew 24:37-39)
God can use one faithful and obedient person to change the course of history, according to His plan. And the only way you can please God is by faith (believing Bible doctrine and applying it on a consistent basis). It was Noah’s faith in God and His Word that turned around the course of history and staved off the attack of Satan against the humanity of Christ.