"By faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death, 'and was not found because God had taken him'; for before he was taken he had this testimony, that he pleased God. But 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 diligently seek Him" (Hebrews 11:5-6).

"Enoch lived sixty-five years, and begot Methuselah. After he begot Methuselah, Enoch walked with God three hundred years, and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him" (Genesis 5:21-24).

IDEA: Living by faith may be different from reciting a statement of faith.

PURPOSE: To help listeners appreciate what it means "to believe that God is."

There are some statements that we make that seem obvious, but as we think about them, they are not obvious at all. For example, in Hebrews 11:6 we read that "those who come to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him."

The first affirmation suffers because it seems so obvious: They that come to God must believe that He is.

I. On one level, belief in the existence of God may not be as easy as it seems.

In Romans 1:18-21 Paul argues that it is a moral matter that people refuse to believe in God. It is not a lack of proof but a lack of will that produces unbelief.

People often do not want to believe because they don't want God to interfere with their lives.

Scientists will say that they do not believe in God because it gets in the way of their scientific experiments.

For those who do believe in God, it seems that all around us there is testimony to God's existence. We would agree with Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush aflame with God.
But only those who see take off their shoes.
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries!

Is the phrase "we must believe that God exists" merely stating what Christians would affirm in an orthodox statement of faith?

II. It is possible to stay orthodox, but think and act as though God were not there?

All of the men and women in Hebrews 11 would have affirmed that God existed, but they staked their lives on it.

So faith is both an affirmation and an act that brings a belief in God to the very center of our lives.

III. Does this mean that we must have absolute certainty, without any shadow of doubt, in order to be a "true believer"?

The characters mentioned in Hebrews 11 were certainly not people with an unshakable faith.