December 19, 2023

Hebrews 11: 4-32 By faith Abel . . . Enoch . . . Noah . . . Abraham . . . Isaac . . . Jacob . . . Joseph . . . Moses . . . Rahab . . . And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jepthah, David, Samuel and the prophets. (NIV)

God has always been in the business of writing extraordinary stories with ordinary people.*

One day in my high school US History class, some of my friends and I were pretty mean to one of our classmates. We probably didn’t sink to the level of bullying but . . . the next day . . . at the same hour . . . the principal announced over the PA that the following students should report to the office. And one by one, he began to call our names. And as each name was called, we began to glance at each other, realizing that we were all busted . . . Except he never called my name. Turns out, the principal was calling them to a meeting for honor students – yes, my mean friends were honor students – and my name was not on the list. 

Hebrews chapter 11 contains a list of names – we might call them honor students – that we often call Heroes of the Faith. What did they have to do to appear on the list? And what can we do to have our names added? Let’s just look at a few of them and see how we compare. 

• Abel: offered a better sacrifice than his brother. Do you see anything in his story that might help us get on the list? 
• Enoch: was commended as one who pleased God. Maybe doable but I doubt that not experiencing death is in our future. 
• Noah: in holy fear, built an ark to save his family. Not in God’s plan for any of us! 
• Abraham: went where God told him to; became the father of a nation; offered his son as a sacrifice to God and passed God’s test of his faith. I think God asked a lot more of Abraham than he ever will of us. 

And the list goes on. Somewhere in that roll call of the faithful must be a clue as to how we can get our names added to the list. Wait! I think I just gave you a clue. Faithful. It wasn’t what they did that got them included on the roster – it was their faith. In faith, we may or may not do mighty deeds, but God did not commend these people for their actions. He honors them for the faith that led them to act. None of these people was placed on the list for their perfection – and the Bible makes no attempt to spin their biographies to make them seem otherwise. 

As someone has observed, no one on that list ever imagined the role they would play in God’s plan,* and neither can we. But though our deeds may be small and unheroic, our faith can be mighty. All these people, verse thirteen says, were still living by faith when they died. That’s how I plan to get my name included on this list.

We spend much of our time, if not most, immersed in the mundane. It takes faith to believe that these things matter.*