Hebrews 11 brings before us the subject of the framing of God’s world. The prophet Habakkuk comes to help us as being the source of the quotation in the end of Hebrews 10, “Yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith.” In Habakkuk we get a vision; here we have the reality.
Hebrews 11:3 is unique in that while all the other verses (from v. 4 onward) speak of men, verse 3 speaks of an act of power on the part of God, and no doubt refers primarily to the creation itself, when by His utterance the worlds sprang into being from nothing. Here, however, it is stated in a moral context. It is the framing, not of this world, but of God’s world. It is not simply creation; it is putting it together piece by piece according to a particular intention. The mighty Architect who frames that world has the whole blueprint before He starts.
We see from the passage that the framing of God’s world is a living thing. It is not a material idea; it is built up in the hearts of men through the ages from Abel onward. It is a living structure, a putting together of the character of Christ. It is building Christ into men’s souls.
Christ has been written down the ages. The exquisite beauty of this chapter is that somewhere in the life of every person of faith who is brought forward in it—sometimes quite at the end—some trait of Christ came out under God’s eye. And God, so to speak, put His finger on that trait and said, That is Christ; that is part of My world and will never pass away. It is not perhaps what we should have picked out, but it is selected by the divine Architect as forming part of the world which He is framing by His utterance. How living it makes it all! God’s ways with us will be to link our affections to that order of things which is all centered in Christ.
There is no knowledge outside of Christ (Col. 2:3). Christ is the one theme, object and source of all divine knowledge. Although in this chapter we are directed to men of like passions with ourselves, it is not to occupy us with them but with the traits of Christ in them.
Note Ecclesiastes 3:11, “He hath made everything beautiful in His time: also He hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.” That is the framing of God’s world. It views things outside the question of sin and the fall. I know Ecclesiastes deals with things on earth; so does Hebrews, but it brings into view the work of God, the worlds which sprang into being under His touch.
It shows how God set eternity in the hearts of men—not this world of sin and death, but His beautiful world which was ever before Him in Christ. It was the world of which Christ was already in purpose the center, which was to take all its character from Him. It was the world He set in the hearts of the men of faith. He drove the present world out of their hearts so that there was no place for it. And what was the consequence? There was in their hearts, as there might be in ours, the portrait of Christ by grace on these “living tables” so that we may read Christ there.
We find when God’s world comes into view that all its bases must be laid in redemption silver. Abel shows us that. The old order was to pass away, already superseded for faith by that simple offering—the recognition of the moral excellence of God’s Lamb coming out in its fullness through death. “And by it he being dead yet speaketh.”
“By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death.” Enoch is the seventh from Adam. Until Enoch the death knell sounded for every man—“and he died.” But God gave witness to the fact that He would not allow death to run its full course without breaking in upon it in power. He showed His sovereign right to take the seventh man straight into His presence apart from death if He saw fit. It is wonderful to know that God has seen fit to interrupt death’s course, and will do it again.
The saints are a heavenly, not an earthly, people. Translation is proper to them. We see it inherent in Christ Himself when He was here: “What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where He was before?” He told Mary, “Go to My brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto My Father, and your Father; and to My God, and your God” (Jn. 20:17). Ascension was inherent in His Person, and now it is the proper hope of the Christian. In Enoch, then, the great fact of God’s sovereign right to set aside death is portrayed. So shall we triumph over death through Christ.
Then Noah comes on the scene: “By faith Noah, being warned of God…prepared an ark to the saving of his house.” It was Noah’s faith in the Word that saved his house. The saints of God like Enoch have no roots here, and with them translation will not be a tearing up of roots, for Christianity means that we live in the light of heavenly things. So Noah, a preacher of righteousness in a world of corruption, built an ark, which by its very nature has no earthly foundations. His building was a subject of scoffing to all who saw it; but it was Noah’s conception of Christ and it brought all his house into safety. In fact Peter declares that it was Christ Himself who did the preaching by His Spirit through Noah (1 Pet. 3:18-20).
Next we get Abraham, who looked for a city which had foundations, whose builder and maker is God. God said to Abraham when Lot left him, choosing this world, “Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art,” and He appeared to him with the promise of a son. God gave the name, Isaac, “He will laugh.”
The point with Abraham was this, that he fell on his face and laughed. It was not the laugh of unbelief as it was with Sarah. His faith looked forward into God’s world, and he saw there Christ, the true Isaac, the true Son of laughter, and he entered there in spirit into the faith of Christ. “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day: and he saw it, and was glad” (Jn. 8:56). He looked for a city which had foundations, foundations that could not be shaken or overthrown like the cities of the plain—foundations to be laid on Christ (see 1 Cor. 3:11; Eph. 2:20).
Sarah is next: “Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed.” The woman in Scripture presents the subjective side of faith. In a man we get objective faith, but with the woman there is the conception of Christ in the mind and affections. Our hearts are absolutely incapable of embracing and receiving the character of Christ naturally (see 1 Cor. 2:7-16), but as we come under the touch of the work of God, Christ is formed in us (Gal. 4:19). “When she was past age” she conceived; it is all outside nature. Christ is outside the natural mind, however trained and theological it may be; but to the heart that loves Him, Christ is formed there in the affections.
“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but…embraced [saluted] them.” They saluted them, that is, they welcomed the promises anticipatively in Christ. By this they declare that they seek a fatherland. Do we seek a fatherland? That is what we take our character from. These worthies, who had not yet come to Christianity, but in whose hearts Christ was written by faith, sought a fatherland, and what was the effect? “Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God.” That is God’s great answer to faith. He is not ashamed of them. The blessed God vindicates the heart of faith which in simple dependence on Him takes a path that terminates outside this world. “He hath prepared for them a city.”
We have had the birth of Isaac, but now Abraham and Isaac come on the scene in a new way. “By faith Abraham…offered up Isaac.” That gives us in figure Christ risen from the dead. Isaac, in whom all the promises centered, was to pass into death, but Abraham’s faith accounted that God was able to raise him up from the dead. No doubt Abraham had faith regarding a general resurrection, but he had more than that. He accounted “that God was able to raise him [Isaac] up, even from the dead.” So Christ has been raised from the dead—He Himself the blessed firstfruits of a mighty harvest to come.
Isaac was the “only begotten” son. That expression is always applied to Christ except in this one instance. It has the force of the one darling of the heart. He received him, in figure, from the dead, which showed that he was the true son of laughter. He received him back to be the father of millions of millions. We see how everything in God’s world is to center in Christ risen from the dead. His character continues in everyone that follows.
“By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come.” The blessings of Jacob and Esau are very comprehensive in character. Jacob came in and stole the blessing, but that is not spoken of here. It is not Jacob’s faith or Esau’s that is in question, but that of Isaac.
Then we read, “By faith Jacob…blessed both the sons of Joseph.” The blessing that Jacob gave to the sons of Joseph did not please Joseph at all. He brought his two sons, born in the foreign land—their names Forgetting and Fruitful—he brought them to Jacob, just about to die, who crossed his hands and conferred the prime blessing on the younger. It is the action of Jacob in guiding his hands wittingly that is emphasized.
That dying man of faith had the full purpose of God before him, so that he could overstep the rules of nature and could guide his hands, as he leaned there on the top of his staff, crippled as to this world, but his heart entering into all the purposes of God regarding His people. In the light of God’s counsel and purpose he saw Christ portrayed in the “Fruitful” and “Forgetting,” and refused to uncross his hands.
“By faith Joseph, when he died…gave commandment concerning his bones.” Joseph was a wonderful reminder of Christ in one way. He could say: “Go and tell my father of all my glory”; but there is not a word about that here. Joseph’s life is left out, and it is his end that is brought before us. The glory of Egypt had no part in God’s world; it was all tinsel. Human glory disappears, and his faith is concerned with his desire that his remains should be identified, not with the glory of Egypt, but with the testimony of God.
Time would fail us to dwell in any fuller detail on these traits of Christ, but Moses calls for comment. “By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper [beautiful] child.” It is the faith of Moses’ parents that is brought out here. Did they in faith catch some gleams of Christ in the face of that child? That face itself was afterward to catch the very glory of the covenant he was to usher in. When Moses came out from the presence of the Lord his face shone; in faith his parents saw the child beautiful to God, marked our by Him as part of the building of His world.
“By faith he…was hid three months of his parents.” That child was placed in the very last spot that you and I would have chosen for him—in the river of death. They might have carried him as far as possible from the river, but the faith of his parents put him in the place which signified death, where every other boy was placed to die.
Moses, when he was come to years, took up the faith of his parents. He refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He put the two worlds in the balances; this world had no attraction for him. Instead of the “pleasures of sin for a season” he chose reproach with the people of God. God wrote all that in His book, and built it into His great world which is going to endure forever.
“By faith they passed through the Red Sea as by dry land: which the Egyptians assaying to do were drowned.” All imitation of faith must inevitably fail, but the Red Sea was passed by faith, that is, the appropriation of Christ’s death for them, and they entered the land.
“By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about seven days.” Jericho was in the land, and yet it was in possession of the enemy, who had no right or title to it; God was going to raze it to the ground and make it part of His inheritance. The priests preceded the people blowing rams’ horns, which speak of the beauty and power of the Victim; this was the testimony that felled all the powers of this world. The moment for the saints of God to shout has not yet come. In silence God’s witness goes on; but that moment will come when He will say: “Shout!” We are here in the intense expectation of that moment of final victory.
Rahab received the spies is faith, by which she was justified (Jas. 2:25); God’s counsel and purpose were presented to her faith, and she received that testimony in peace.
“What more shall I say?” The author had brought them in detail to that point, and then he pours out in broad strokes more of what God has built into His world, without dwelling on details.
There were those tortured. They might have recanted and had a resurrection back into this life, but they refused it that they might obtain a better resurrection. They could afford torture and death in order that they might get a resurrection to God’s world. We have the Spirit’s epitaph on them: “Of whom the world was not worthy.”
Then we come to the topstone: “Jesus the author and finisher of faith” (Heb. 12:2). That is the completion of it all; all His character came down, covering the whole framing of God’s world. Christ known in the affections and heart will mark that world through the ages.
In Ecclesiastes 3 we read that there is a time for everything. Faith always acted in a timely way and it would be instructive to trace in Hebrews 11 how these principles were acted out: “a time to be born and a time to die”; “a time to weep and a time to laugh”; “a time to get and a time to lose”; “a time of war and a time of peace.” May they also find an answer in our ways down here.
To Habakkuk it was said, “Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.” We have seen here not merely the vision but the reality written and made plain upon the tables of every heart that appreciated Christ. What do we read? Christ—nothing else! In so doing, “Let us run” (Heb. 12:2), the response to Habakkuk’s words, “that he may run that readeth it.”
May Christ so lay hold of our affections, as we see Him giving His character to the framing of God’s world, that we may “run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of faith.”