Faith's Hall Of Fame: Abel

Hebrews 11:4

Faith’s Hall of Fame: Abel

Introduction

Cooperstown, NY. Those of you who are baseball fans know that it is the home of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Ten years ago, back in July of 1998, my son Joel and I visited Cooperstown. We had tickets to the Hall of Fame game at Doubleday Field. The Baltimore Orioles played the Toronto Blue Jays and beat them 7 to 1 in an exhibition game. The Orioles are my son’s favorite team so it was a special treat to see them play. Before the game, we visited the Hall of Fame. We had a great time looking at all the exhibits. The Hall of Fame includes …

· 35,000 bats, balls, uniforms, and gloves

· 130,000 baseball cards

· 500,000 photographs

At the Hall of Fame, you can view such treasures as …

· Jackie Robinson’s 1956 Brooklyn Dodgers jersey

· The bat Babe Ruth used to hit his record setting 60th home run back in 1927

· The most valuable baseball card in the world—the T206 Honus Wagner card—worth 2.8 million dollars

By the way, if you come across some old baseball cards in a trunk in your attic, you might want to find out what they’re worth before you sell them at a yard sale for 50 cents!

Well, the Hall of Fame contains many baseball treasures. But the centerpiece of the museum is a room called The Plaque Gallery. There the plaques of all 278 members of the Hall of Fame line the oak walls—including such Yankee greats at Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Yogi Berra, and Mickey Mantle.

In Hebrews chapter 11, we walk into a gallery. But it’s not lined with the plaques of baseball’s greats. Rather, it’s lined with the plaques of Old Testament greats—men and women of faith.

In Cooperstown, we have Baseball’s Hall of Fame. In Hebrews 11, we have Faith’s Hall of Fame. And the first plaque that we come to bears the name of an Old Testament All-Star—a man by the name of Abel.

His plaque is engraved with these words in Hebrews 11:4: “By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead.”