Hebrews 11:1-3,8-16
In the name of the God who protects us day by day, increasing our strength and our faith, dear fellow servants of our Lord,
There’s a little mind game that tells us something about human nature. I’m sure many of you have tried it or at least have seen it being done. It involves two people. One volunteers to stand straight up, with arms crossed and eyes closed, and then falls backwards and is caught by the second person before hitting the floor. Simple, right? But you know what inevitably happens – the person falling backwards panics and arms quickly fly out in an effort to cushion the fall. No matter who’s doing the catching, almost every person seems to have a hard time having faith that they’ll be caught before they hit the floor.
By nature we’re skeptical people. We find it easy to doubt others and hard to put our trust in them. But who can blame us? We’ve all been taken by the deal that seemed “too good to be true.” We’ve all been let down by people, sometimes even people we consider our best friends. Too many times we’ve put our faith in others, only to have them not be there for us when we needed them most.
As Christians, we acknowledge the disappointment of misplaced trust while understanding that those around us are imperfect sinners, just as we are. And yet the whole issue of faith takes on a different perspective when we’re talking about an almighty and perfect God – a God who’s always true to his Word, who never lets us down, who’s always there to catch us! That’s why the writer to the Hebrews this morning can confidently encourage us, at all times and in all circumstances, to:
“Have Faith!”
I. The nature of faith
II. The power of faith
III. The result of faith
The 11th chapter of Hebrews has been called “the grandest chapter in the Bible on faith.” Read it in its entirety, and you’ll understand why. It begins with a definition of faith, one which I’ve always appreciated (v 1), “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Here’s another way to think of it: Faith believes the future and accepts the past. First of all faith believes the future — it’s the assurance of things hoped for. The evening before his death Jesus pointed his disciples to the assured hope of faith when he told them (Jn 14:19), “Because I live, you also will live.” We haven’t seen him return yet, but we’re confident our Lord will be coming back for us to take us home, simply because we have faith in what he promised when he said (Jn 14:3), “I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” And in the meantime we have faith that he’ll take care of us, because he’s promised us (Mt 28:20), “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Credit is given to the Old Testament believers who had this same kind of fatih (v 2), “This is what the ancients were commended for.” They never saw the Messiah in the flesh. They didn’t witness his humble service, his sacrificial death, or his final victory. Abraham never met Jesus, and yet as he heard earlier this morning in our Old Testament reading, the Lord credited his faith to him as righteousness. Later in this chapter you’ll find a number of people mentioned who lived by faith, not by sight – Abel, Enoch, Noah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and many others. They were all sure of what they hoped for and certain of what they did not see!
Faith believes the future, but it also accepts the past. None of us witnessed the resurrection of our Lord, but we accept it as an actual, accomplished fact because we have faith in what God tells us in his holy Word. By faith we accept what has taken place in the past, especially what the Lord has done for our salvation. That’s why we have no problem accepting how this world came to be (v 3), “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” We can’t explain it with human reason, but we accept it by faith! After all, we really have no choice but to believe the only eye-witness who was there, and that’s God! Instead of subjecting God to our human reason, we subject our human reason to the almighty God. And don’t let some liberal, pushover churches out there tell you it doesn’t matter if you believe in a six-day creation. If you question creation, you question the past. And if you question the past, you would have every reason to question the future, including your salvation. So believe in what God says happened. Have faith!
Not seeing, but still believing – that’s faith! Jesus said as much when he told Doubting Thomas (Jn 20:29), “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” That’s a blessing that our Lord gives to all believers who didn’t have the benefit of witnessing his resurrection. That’s a blessing that he gives to you and me! Rejoice that the Holy Spirit has worked that saving faith in your heart – faith that enables you to be sure of what you hope for and certain of what you do not see!
Now that we know what faith is, let’s take a closer look at its power. It’s faith that links us to the only one capable of rescuing us from our sins. Faith links us to Jesus!
Notice what the patriarch Abraham was motivated to do because of his faith (vv 8,9), “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.” Don’t take lightly what Abraham was asked to do. He was told by God to gather up his wife and servants and all that he owned and to leave his homeland – and God didn’t give him a MapQuest to follow either! He just told him to go, and Scripture tells us (Ge 12:4), “So Abram left, as the LORD had told him.” Abraham’s obedience to the Lord’s command was a fruit of his faith!
God would lead Abraham to the land of Canaan, a land he promised to give to him as his own later on. But Abraham would live like a foreigner in tents. The only land he ever owned was a small burial plot he purchased for his wife. His son Isaac and grandson Jacob never actually owned the land either. But they all had faith in God and his promise, and they knew that the land would someday belong to their descendants. But this didn’t bother Abraham. He had bigger things to look forward to (v 10), “For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” Unlike the tents secured only by pegs or earthly cities built by men, Abraham had dreams of a city with permanent foundations built by God himself. The power of faith led Abraham to look beyond this life to the life that is to come — an eternal life with his Lord in heaven!
But that’s not all. Abraham believed in God’s promise of salvation, but he also had faith in another promise the Lord had given to him (vv 11,12), “By faith Abraham, even though he was past age – and Sarah herself was barren – was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who had made the promise. And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.” Faith empowered Abraham to believe the impossible. He knew God was faithful to his word. And at the age of 100, with his wife Sarah 90 years young herself and to date unable to bear children, Abraham became a dad. In Romans Paul puts it this way (4:18,19,21), “Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him . . . . Without weakening in his faith, . . . being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.” And from that one son grew a great nation, and from that great nation came an even greater descendant – the promised Messiah himself!
With the power of faith Abraham believed in the promises of God, no matter how unbelievable they may have seemed. Take that example to heart for your life today. You may be faced with some rather troubling challenges in your own life right now. Employment questions, relationship struggles, financial woes – we all have something that comes to mind that at times seems to be an unconquerable foe. But our Lord comes to us with a simple directive – have faith! After all, it’s that faith that allows us to look back at how our Savior overcame our biggest obstacle – that of our sinfulness. So if we have a God who has taken care of our sins and has defeated the devil, why not trust him with the rest of what we face in life? Have faith in the God of your salvation, the God who is able to do the impossible!
The Holy Spirit gives us the power to put our faith in our powerful Lord and Savior. The end result? The promise that the best is yet to come!
The Old Testament believers lived for what was yet to come, something they would not see during their lifetime on this earth (v 13), “All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised (at least, not while on earth); they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance.” Even though these believers didn’t receive the fulfillment of God’s promise while alive, they all still rejoiced to see the promised Savior by faith, “from a distance.” And that was O.K. with them, because they all knew that their time on earth was intended to be temporary (vv 13-16), “And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country – a heavenly one.” They felt restless here on this earth, almost as if they didn’t belong here. Shouldn’t it be that way for us also? How can we get too comfortable here in this sinful world when we know the best is yet to come, when we’ll be taken to “a better country – a heavenly one” with our Lord and Savior? As Paul reminds us (Php 3:20), “Our citizenship is in heaven.” Our visas here are only temporary. The time will come for us to go back home.
Those who keep focused on what is yet to come find favor with the Lord (v 16), “Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.” In our Gospel lesson earlier this morning we heard Jesus remind us (Lk 12:34), “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Make your relationship with God “your treasure,” and you’ll put your heart into whatever it takes to make that relationship the best that it can be. The end result will be God joyfully calling you his own and giving you membership into the eternal city prepared for you and all believers before the creation of the world!
We’re worshiping today under the theme, “Looking Forward to Better Things.” If this truly is our mindset here on this earth, how evident is it in our lives? Our time here is so very short and yet so very important. The few years of our earthly existence can’t possibly compare to the unlimited time we’ll spend in eternity, and yet what we do with our time here is vital. The temptations are obvious, and they are abundant. Satan loves to get us so preoccupied with the here-and-now that we overlook the hereafter. We spend such a small fraction of our time in the Lord’s house and around his Word, and yet we even allow that time to be sacrificed in favor of time spent on worldly pursuits. We spend our dollars on so many things temporal, only to squirm and fidget when it comes to supporting things spiritual. We lie awake at night over how to supply our children with the best things of this world, only to so often neglect what they’ll need for their salvation. While proclaiming to be looking forward to better things, too often we try to obtain those “better things” from the world around us when they can only come from God and from the life that is to come.
This is where faith comes in. Make use of the opportunities you have to grow in the faith that points you in the right direction, that directs you to your Savior’s cross, that assures you the best is yet to come, that makes you sure of what you hope for and certain of what you do not see. Take to heart the words of Paul from 2 Corinthians (4:18), “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
That’s the kind of faith worth having! As the commercial says, make sure you don’t leave home – or this world! – without it!
Amen
Hebrews 11:1-3,8-16
The Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost
August 19, 2007
Messiah, Wichita, KS