Hebrew 11:1-3, “1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. 2 For by it the elders obtained a good report. 3 Through 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.”
The list of faithful persons in Hebrews 11 include Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sara, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David also, Samuel and the prophets. A few examples of their demonstration of faith.
Hebrew 11:4, “By faith Abel 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.” Cain offered God the works of his hands as a farmer while Abel offered the blood of a lamb. Abel’s sacrifice was acceptable to God and Cain’s was not. While Leviticus has a provision for offering grains as a sacrifice, Cain’s offering was not in accordance with it.
Genesis 5:21-24, "And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah: And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters: And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years: And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him." Although Enoch pleased God, few of his descendants survived the flood, only Noah his three sons.
For 120 years Noah follow the dictates of God and built the ark. One can only imagine the ridicule he and his family endured building an Ark in a dry climate that had never known rain.
God appeared to Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia and said, “Leave your country and your people, and go to the land I will show you.” Abraham settled in Harran and stayed there until after his father died and then obeyed God commend to “go to the land I will show you.”
When God told Abraham to take his only son and sacrifice him he did not hesitate. Abraham Left the next day to fulfill God’s command. This was not the moral equivalency to the sacrificing of children to pagan gods. Abraham knew that Isaac was the son of promise and through him he would be the father of nations.
Hebrew 11:11, “Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised.” Although Sarah laughed at the prophecy she would have a son in an another year, she still was rewarded with the child of promise.
Hebrew 11:26, “Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward.” Moses fled Egypt and discovered God in the wilderness. Through faith, he led God's people out of Egypt and to the edge of the promised land.
The Prophets, Hebrew 11:36-38, “36 And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: 37 They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; 38 (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.”
Paul end this chapter with a promise to us, the Holy Spirit? Hebrew 11:39, “And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: 40 God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.”
