Hebrews 11:4
"By faith Abel (believed God? No. He offered. He did something) offered
unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained
witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he
being dead yet speaketh." By faith, primarily, but it was faith plus sacrifice. Now you come all the way down to verse 7.
Hebrews 11:7
"By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet (rain) , moved with fear (holy reverence, and what did he do?) prepared
an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world
and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith." He
did something. Now, let us ask. If Noah would have stood out there in
the Middle East and say, "Alright God, I believe you that a flood is
coming," and never built an ark, what would have happened? He would have
gotten washed away along with the rest of them. But along with his
faith that a flood was coming, what did he do? He built an ark, but
first for about 115 years he warned the people of the coming doom. And
all the rest of the way up through Scripture, all those great men of
God, Jacob, Isaac, David and all the rest. They were men of faith, but
faith alone? No! Faith plus Temple worship, plus Law keeping, plus this,
plus that, under the yoke of a burden which they could not bear. Are we
making our point? Abraham made sacrifices every year. He was
known by God through Noah, Shem and Eber's witness, he was trained in
the ways of God by them. He did not just simply believe God. God saw
that he had faith and He imputed righteousness to him because of it. And
so it is with us. Without doing a thing, we just simply say, "Yes Lord,
I believe it, I receive Your Word that I died IN You, that we were
raised in resurrection power, and ascended within You, this I believe
with all my heart." And that's all God is looking for. Now
let's go back to Galatians chapter 3. We could stay in Hebrews 11 and
prove the same thing. That all those other heroes of faith were also
attached with some type of a human work. Especially after Jacob came on
the scene the old way or path was lost to them. That is the reason that
they failed, they trusted in their own sufficiency and religion more
than they did God. They made their religion and idol and we know what
God thinks and feels about idols. Why? Because man by his very nature
places them above God and above the knowledge of God. (Jeremiah 6:16
tells us to search out the old path, then walk in it.)
Galatians 3:8
"And the scripture, (the Old Testament) foreseeing (God's foreknowledge sees the end from the beginning) that God would justify the heathen (Gentiles) through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed." Now
we know there are some great theologians who stand on the premise that
Abraham knew the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. We stand and
say, "Yes! Abraham, and there's in scripture language that indicates
that he did. There are many things to indicate Abraham foresaw the death
on a Cross and the burial and resurrection of the Messiah." He had an
inkling an inner witness. Just as all the Old Testament prophets had an
inkling that God was going to do something. They also understood from
Isaiah that God was going to have salvation for the Gentiles. But they
didn't know how. In fact, we may have looked at this previously - we
don't think we have, but we may have. Come back with us to I Peter
chapter 1. It kind of rings a bell that we may have kind of looked at
it, but it won't hurt to look at it again.
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