Hebrews is a book built around five major warnings, all drawn from a history of Israel, up to and including the time Israel’s Messiah was on earth the first time.  The warnings though are directed, not to the Jewish people, but to Christians; and all five warnings, presenting the same subject matter from different standpoints, have to do with the salvation of the soul.

Hebrews chapter eleven, which is placed in the book chronologically between the fourth and fifth warning passages (passages in chapters ten and twelve), forms an apex in the book relative to “faith” and the saving of the soul.  Moving from chapter ten into chapter eleven, the saving of the soul is clearly seen as the goal of “faith” (ref. Chapter 1 in this book).

Not only does Hebrews chapter eleven deal with faith to the saving of the soul — illustrating the matter by and through the faith of individuals, extending from Abel to numerous individuals throughout Jewish history, covering millennia of time — but this chapter in Hebrews is structured after a fashion that numerous dispensational truths regarding the Jews, the Gentiles, and the Church of God are also dealt with

The entire drama of human history, from man’s beginning in Eden to that toward which all Scripture moves — the Messianic Kingdom — is set forth by and through a divinely arranged dispensational plan, using selected individuals and events.  And by and through these individuals and events — particular individuals, and events in the lives of these individuals (events occurring under God’s sovereign control of all things) —that which God deems of primary import in the complete 6,000 years of Man’s Day, leading into the 1,000-year Lord’s Day, that time when the salvation of the soul will be realized, can be seen. 

Thus, if one wants to see that which God deems of primary import relative to bringing His plans and purposes regarding mankind to pass, Hebrews chapter eleven would be one place to go.  Then the larger context, from which Hebrews chapter eleven draws — the whole of Scripture — would be the primary place to go.

And, whether one goes to Hebrews chapter eleven or to the whole of Scripture itself, he must always keep one statement in one verse from chapter eleven at the forefront of everything:

But without faith [apart from believing that which God has revealed] it is impossible to please Him [to please God] . . . . (v. 6a)