In the highly celebrated chapter 11 of the book of Hebrews, our author furnishes his readers with examples of men and women from antiquity who lived by faith and were commended for doing so.
As we examine both the nature and object of faith in the Old Testament, we find that neither have changed very much. Of course, for contemporary believers who live after the death and resurrection of Christ, we look back at the real historical events of the Gospel. Two thousand years ago a real man by the name of Jesus, who claimed to be the Messiah, the Christ, was crucified and buried; and on the third day He rose from the dead. These are verifiable historical events that we can look back to, events that our Old Testament predecessors had no specific knowledge of. If we go all the way back to the very first believers who walked by faith – Abel, Enoch, and Noah – we find that they believed the very same things that we do today. Our faith today is not very different from the prototypical ancient faith exemplified in these three men. They believed in a sacrificial atonement, a future resurrection, and the reality of the wrath to come – key elements of our contemporary walk of faith.
