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Rusty Miller
"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained approval" (Heb. 11:1-2).
Some call it "Faith's Hall of Fame." Others, "The Roll Call of Faith." What we find in Hebrews 11 is actually the Holy Spirit's guide to understanding what it means to have faith in God. It is filled with example after example of men and women who, through intense trial and at great personal cost, wore their faith in God as their cloak in life, and who gave their all to show that God's ways were most important in their lives.
In most of our looks at this great chapter, we tend to focus on the great old patriarchs Abraham and Moses, and there is good reason to focus there (the Hebrew writer himself spends six verses each on these men, while spending only one or two on all the others). But young people are not without representatives in this chapter, and all of the examples are of people who lived faithfully, so even those we think of as older were sometimes characterized by faith from a very young age.
For instance, verse 22 begins, "By faith Joseph, when he was dying . . ." Yet, it is obvious from the account of his life that Joseph was a man of great faith even when he was young. Sold into slavery as a youth, Joseph quickly rose to prominence in the house of his master (Gen. 39:6). Despite his youthfulness and the hardship into which he had been thrust, Joseph has strong enough faith to understand that his master's wife was attempting to lure him into a "great evil" (vv. 7-9), and so, he refused even to listen to her (v. 10). His faith was enough for him to resist her advances, even when he had to leave his garment in her hand (v. 12). Joseph had to have known how bad that would look to his master, but rather than sin, he was willing to suffer whatever consequences came from his actions, even when those consequences meant a fall from position and ultimately, a term in prison (vv. 13-20).
One of the hardest lessons for young people to learn is being willing to sacrifice position and suffer consequences when they make a stand for God. Worldly people are not comfortable with those who have faith strong enough to withstand sin, and so the faithful often sacrifice popularity and are made fun of by those who fail to understand. This is extremely difficult, but also extremely rewarding, for young people. Everytime sin is overcome in a young life, it becomes that much easier to defeat the next time, and it allows us to build the kind of faith which will sustain us in time of trial.
In verse 32 of Hebrews 11, we find the mention of David, and it is so easy to see the great king and writer of the Psalms that we often forget the shepherd boy who stood up to a giant. We want to dismiss the story of David and Goliath as a "children's story," but it is far more. There is a tendency to rush through the events of the story, to hurry to get to the stone plunging into the giant's head and his falling to earth. We want to see David triumphantly carrying the head of his adversary back to King Saul.
The story of David's faith though, can be found in his words. Having shunned the armor of the king (2 Sam. 17:39), David goes out to meet Goliath and is immediately taunted by the great warrior, who promises to feed the young shepherd to the birds and beasts (vv. 42-44), but David is not disheartened and he says, "You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have taunted. This day the Lord will deliver you up into my hands, and I will strike you down and remove your head from you. And I will give the dead bodies of the army of the Philistines this day to the birds of the sky and the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord does not deliver by sword or by spear; for the battle is the Lord's and He will give you into our hands" (vv. 45-47).
This is not idle talk on David's part, but faith showing forth in his bravery in fighting such a formidable foe. Today, young people face immense (giant?) obstacles, yet with faith like David had, they too, can overcome the adversary. More than a "children's story," we need to see this as an example for young people in their fight against Satan.
The Hebrew writer closes this section with a list of great men and women who overcame great challenges. Those figures certainly included the young men Daniel ("shut the mouths of lions," v. 33) and Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego ("quenched the power of fire," v. 34), among others, and young people would be well served to study further these stories as well (see Dan. 3 and 6).
The facts are that faith is as important to young people in their fight to live Christ-like as it was to the old patriarchs trying to live righteously, for "without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him" (Heb. 11:6).
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