Hebrews 11 (Part 3)

As we get into this section of Hebrews 11, I want to remind you that the author is emphasizing the life of faith, primarily because the people to whom he was writing were dealing with some very difficult life circumstances in the way of persecutions and hardships. And he needed to remind them, and that's what this chapter is, a reminder to them that God's people have always been called to live by faith. They're not, they weren't being asked to do or to live through anything that was odd or different or anything that was apart from whatever God had asked His people to live through in the past. It is always, we are to live by faith, so we continually ask the question as we're going through the book of Hebrews: How's your faith doing? Is your faith okay? Is your faith strong? Is it struggling? Is it waning? Is it building up and growing? Those are important questions because depending on how your faith is doing, there will be a connection to all of the aspects of your life, and especially how you get through difficulties in life, like, a yearlong pandemic. You know, stuff like that. Walter, bring me up just a hair, if you would please. So, this is an important– this whole chapter is very important, but you know, the stuff that we're going to be going through today. He (the author) begins with Abraham. Look with me in verse eight, which is where we pick it up. Hebrews eight, he says, “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance, and he went not knowing where he was going.” I want you to stop there because that alone, just that first verse that we're looking at today is so important because Abraham was a man who lived by faith. We covered, you know, a little bit about Abraham in a previous section back in chapter six as we were making our way through that chapter. That was concerning the promise that God gave to Abraham. But here the emphasis is more on the calling of Abraham to leave what was familiar to him. Have you ever– has God ever called you to do that in any capacity? Leave what is familiar to you? Abraham had grown up in this particular area. His family was there. And God came upon, you know, moved upon him to, to up and move his family to this new land which God had promised to give him. And of course, the point of all this is that, is the whole issue of faith. Whenever we're called to do something that is unfamiliar, it takes a special dose of faith. When life is hard, it takes a special dose of faith. And you know what we find out when our faith isn't very good, don't we? When we go through hard times? How many? I'm not asking you to raise your hand, but I'm wondering how many believers were caught off guard in the last year– when life got challenging, when we were brought into a very unfamiliar sort of a scenario. I wonder how many of us got caught off guard and kind of came away just, I mean, shaken, shaken, to the core. And it can do that to you, and it takes faith to move on when God says to move on. And so this first verse that we're looking at is all about moving on when life is unfamiliar, when you're going toward a goal that– I don't even know where I'm going. I don't know what it's going to look like when I get there. And we're told here that Abraham had faith in God and went. In fact, the very first thing that we read there in verse eight is, “By faith Abraham obeyed,” and he obeyed because he trusted God. And he took Him at His word. Right? Let me show you on the screen from Genesis chapter 12. This is where it's given to us. Now, the Lord said to Abram, (of course he hadn't been renamed Abraham at that point, but He said) “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.” And so God is even acknowledging in this command: Go from all that is familiar, all that you've been raised with, and I'm going to put you in a place that is completely unfamiliar to you, but I want you to go and we're told that he (Abram) did, he obeyed. ---

But for those of you who have ever read through the rest of that passage in Genesis and I'm sure that's most, if not all of you, you probably remember that Abraham's faith was not a perfect faith, you know. God told him to go to the Promised Land and he got about halfway there and then he paused and he stayed for quite a while and he didn't quite go in, get into, the land where God had told him to go. And then once he got there, there were problems. Do you guys remember that? There were issues that came up. In fact we’re told that no sooner had he gotten into the land, but there were things that started to happen that was completely out of his control, just like the pandemic we went through in this last year. Let me show you this. As we move on, Genesis 12. It says:

Now there was a famine in the land. (That stinks.) So (it tells us that) Abram (Abraham) went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. (and) When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, “I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance.” (that’s a nice thing to say to a woman, but he goes on to say) “... and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake.” So this is the man that we are told obeyed, walked in faith to God. And as soon as he got into the land, they're dealing with a famine. And there are really two things that come out of this section that we just read on the screen. They remind us, these two things, that Abraham was not a man who was perfect in his faith. For starters, he reacted to the famine out of fear. There's nothing in the record that tells us Abraham was told to go to Egypt. Nothing. God in fact told him to go to Canaan. That was the land where He (God) had promised to take care of him, and He said, “This will be your land.” But Abraham looked at the circumstances and he said, “Well, this isn't going to work. I'm going to have to go to Egypt.” So he started hoofing it to Egypt. The second thing that's very interesting to note about the section we read on the screen is that when they got there, once again, he responded out of fear saying to Sarah, “Listen Babe, you're a dish and these Egyptians, they're going to look at you and they're going to think, ‘Whoa, I want her,’ and they'll kill me and take you for their own. Because I know the kind of people they are. So, here's the deal. I want you to lie. I want you to lie, and I want you to tell them that you're my sister because it's really kind of a half-truth. And then it'll be okay.” And we find out that the process of all that, Abraham not only asked his wife to lie, but he put her in a morally compromising situation. As you go through and kind of read the story, you find out that this was not– this was not a good plan. It didn't work out very well at all. So, do you see what, the kind of, the point here is? Abraham was a man of faith and he obeyed God, but he didn't do it perfectly. And neither do we. So I want you to understand here that when we read through the Hall of Faith, we're talking about people that are really just like you and me– from the standpoint that, you know, we have our faith in God, but not perfectly. We stumble from time to time. We do things that are kind of stupid from time to time. Really foolish, you know. We fail, you know? Just like Abraham, you know, that wasn't his finest hour. But here's the really interesting part, and I like this. God doesn't focus on the failure, He focuses on the faith, and that should be the real thing that we bring from this passage. God focuses on their faith. Now as we're looking back through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and the writer of the book of Hebrews, we're talking about Abraham and what do we hear? Do we hear about all the failures? No. It's one thing I like about the Bible. All the failures are there for us to read, but now when we go back and reflect upon his life from the standpoint of the inspiration and perspective of the Holy Spirit, what do we see? We see faith. You see? We see that faith that was there. Was it a perfect faith? No, no, no. But there was faith. And there was obedience that came from that faith. And so forth….

The very next verse (in Hebrews), look with me at verse nine in your Bible. It says, “By faith he went to live in the land of promise,” (of foreign–) “as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.” We're told here in these two verses that when Abraham finally made his way to the land of Promise, he lived there essentially as a foreigner. You know Abraham never built a city. And Abraham never sought to take political control of the land. He just– he went there as a sojourner. He walked through the land that God had given him as if he didn't have any ownership of the land at all. He lived like he was passing through, just passing through the area. And why? We're told, again, in verse 10. Again, look at verse 10. He was looking forward to something else. He refers to it here, the author does, as “the city that has foundations” and he's talking about the new Jerusalem that is to come. But for all practical purposes, this is a reference to heaven, if you will. So, it's kind of a way of saying that Abraham came. He lived in the land, but he lived there as a foreigner. He just passed through or just lived as if he was passing through the land. And he did it because he was looking forward to something better. He was looking forward to heaven. And this is of course, a reminder to you and to me that this life is not our home. We forget that sometimes. Don't we? I do anyway. Okay. True confession time. I forget sometimes that this world is not my home and I start living like it is my home and I start kind of putting down my roots, so to speak, and I'm reminded by passages like this that I don't belong here. In fact, as believers, Abraham models for us how we are to live in this world– as strangers and aliens just passing through. Just passing through. You can tell what somebody thinks about this world when they're talking about somebody who has left it. And I'm talking about somebody who's passed away. You can tell how Christians refer to this world when they speak about people who have passed away, particularly– and even believers. What we ought to say about believers is, wow. Now they're home. They made it home. Praise the Lord. They made it home. They're home. What we tend to emphasize and focus on is our loss. And, and we do lose– the presence of an individual. We lose their company, their day-to-day connection. We, I get that, but they as believers are home. They were only passing through. Were only passing through, and they finally made it to their destination. They're home. That's what we ought to say. Every time we do the funeral for a believer, oh, thank God she's home. This was a hard life. It was a rough life. Some people have a long, rough life. Some people have a short, rough life, But once it's over, they're home. You know? It takes faith though to look at life that way, to look at the world that way. It takes faith to get through this life. Right? It takes faith. Faith in God, trust in God, confidence in God to hold fast to His promises that speak of the life to come. So you see, you can see that we're on the same journey as Abraham. His journey is our journey. No, no difference. We've been called to live in a place that isn't really our home, because we're all looking for a better home. And by the way, it's one we've never seen before. (laughs) That makes it a little dicey, doesn't it? It's one thing when I go somewhere where I know what it's like. You know, Sue and I are planning to go back to Minnesota to visit our family this summer. We were both born and raised there, and we go back usually once a year. We've tried to even go back twice a year in the last 30 years. We've at least gone once in the last 30 years. So, you know that, we know that road really well. It's a blessing when we can fly and I don't have to look at the road. But when I go back to Minnesota, I know exactly what to expect. I know what the prairie looks like. Been there. Lived there, was raised there, you know. And there's no surprises usually. Might be a couple of new houses, new businesses, “Oh that's new.” (Pointing to a “new building”) But you know, it's just the prairie. We're all heading though, somewhere that we really can't relate to, and that puts the unknown in our path. And whenever the unknown is in our path, we just kind of, you know, get the shakes. I don't like the unknown. Do you? At all. If I have something coming, how you– don't you love it when your boss calls you into the office and you don't know what it's all about. (He says) “Hey, I want to talk to you tomorrow. At two o'clock. Be there.”

Oh geez, I’ve got to wait. And then you say, “Sure, what's up?” And they go, “You'll find out.” (whimpering) You know, that's terrible. But in a sense, much of what we're looking toward is that same unknown. However, it is based upon the promises of God and the goodness of God, which ought to change our perspective. And I hope it does. You know, I’ve got to be completely honest with you and tell you that the events of this past year, as challenging as they have been, have actually served to kind of loosen my grip on this world. Just a little bit (laughs). I think. And I'm talking about the pandemic and all the things that went along with it and frankly the way that our nation has even responded to it. I haven't liked it but it has helped to loosen my grip I see the country that I live in, which I have loved very much, very very quickly, especially in this last year, departing from the foundational principles on which it was established and essentially our US Constitution is now getting to the point where it is considered to be an outdated document. And I'm not going to talk politics because that's not my goal. I'm just telling you what's been going on in my own heart and what I'm seeing here, and I would be lying if I told you that it didn't bother me. I'd be lying if I told you that I wasn't grieved to see what's been happening in our nation. And I've had to wrestle with that grief pretty much all year long. I mean, we've seen this coming, but it was a slow train. And it picked up to the speed of an avalanche here this last year. I mean, just moving very quickly. And it does bother me and it does grieve me, but at the same time, it has served in my life at least, to accentuate in my heart the message that we see in these verses. And I read these verses and I derive a great sense of comfort from them, from the standpoint that this world, which disappoints, is not our home. And I can't look to this world or any structure of man-made government and say, “This ought to satisfy.” Right? Because ultimately it can't. The best laid plans of men are going to disappoint. And if I'm walking around in a perpetual state of disappointment in the things of this world, shame on me because I got my eyes on the wrong thing. Right? That's not the world's fault. The worlds– we all know the direction the world is headed. So if my focus has been on the wrong place, and now I'm reeling under the disappointment. That's on me. The Bible is very clear that this world is not our home. And I got to tell you something, I have a deep appreciation for my brothers and sisters in Christ who are working ceaselessly, praying tirelessly, to bring our nation back to a constitutionally faithful way of being a nation. I do appreciate it. But there's a much larger part of me now that resonates with this passage rather than that movement. Okay? And I'm not suggesting in any sort of a way that we should forget about our nation and not care. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying that we come to passages like this in the Bible. It kind of awakens us to the fact that we've been in a deteriorating situation all along, and just because it's been deteriorating a little bit faster in the last year doesn't mean that it was ever heading in the right direction. It just means we're now going a little faster in the wrong direction. I hope that doesn't sound like a bummer to you. I really do. I'm not trying to depress you. I hope you don't have to go home and take a pill after this message, you know. Because the point here is that it's going to take faith for you and me to get through what the world is becoming and what our nation is becoming. It's going to take our faith to get through it, Guys. Just like it was taking faith for these Hebrew Christians to get through their circumstances– because they were believers in Christ and yet life was really rotten. And they were dealing with serious persecution issues like confiscation of their property, personal persecution. Difficulty. Distress. And they were honestly thinking of chucking the whole thing and going back to the Old Testament law. We saw that earlier in the letter. And the author is simply writing to remind them guys, it's always taken faith. You want to go back to the Law? Listen, even under the Law, people were told and encouraged to live by faith. Even Abraham had to live by faith. He faced the unknown and he lived by faith. Let's move on. Verse 11, “By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age,” I would say so; she was 90. “...since she considered

Him faithful, who had promised. 12 Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead,” Isn't that a nice thing to say about Abraham? “... were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the enumerable grains of sand on the seashore.” We'll come back to Sarah in just a moment. I want to focus on these next verses. Look at verse 13 and following. I love this. He (the author) says, “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar,” okay, “and having acknowledged that they were strangers in exiles on earth. 14 For people who speak thus make it clear that they're seeking a homeland. 15 If they had been thinking of that land from which they'd gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared for them a city.” And Guys, can I just tell you, this is the part right here that really resonates in my heart, these words right here. This is the message. And again, it doesn't mean we abandon things like our country and so forth. It just means that our eyes are lifted up to a greater reality, an eternal reality, the goodness of God and what He has prepared for us. And I just, I love, I love those verses– acknowledging we're strangers here, we're exiles. An exile is somebody who's taken out of their country and put into a place where they really don't belong. That's us. Because you see, we've been birthed into the kingdom of God by our faith in Jesus Christ, and now we're part of a different kingdom. Yeah, we're living amidst this other kingdom, but that's not what we're a part of. We're a part of God's kingdom and frankly the kingdom that we are now birthed into is diametrically opposed to this other worldly kingdom that is going on all around us, and we're wondering why we can't merge the two. And Christians throughout the years have tried to merge them. And I'm again, please, I'm not decrying or demeaning in any way the efforts of born again believers to make social change part of their culture. I appreciate deeply, those efforts. Everything from the abolition of slavery, which was largely produced through born again Christians to many other social changes that have taken place over the course of just the history of our country and in the world.

Believers have been behind it a great deal and I'm powerfully appreciative of those things, but… it's never going to be the Kingdom of God. This is not, and the apostle Paul told us that as we get closer and closer to the end, it's going to get worse and worse from the standpoint of morality and Godliness. So, these verses lift our eyes to that greater reality. Okay, let's talk about Sarah. Let's go back here and talk about Sarah, because we read in verse 11 that, “By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive even when she was,” quite over or, “past the age…” of childbearing. And these words are so complimentary and have you ever noti–, you read through the passage and you kind of think, “Huh really, Sarah had faith? I don't remember that because I remember Sarah doing some pretty whacked out things. For like, she would, came to Abraham at one point and said, “Okay, here's the deal. Obviously, God doesn't expect me to have a baby, so we got to work this thing out.” And you'll remember she proposed that Abraham marry her handmaiden Hagar and have a child through her that Sarah could then raise as her very own. How'd that work out for them? Not too good. And you know, Abraham went along with it. And there's no question about the fact that there was a breakdown of faith. There was a breakdown in that area. Not just Sarah, but also, you know, Abraham. He didn't say, “No Honey. We just need to wait for God to bring about the promise.” He went, “Okay.” And then you remember when the Lord appeared to Abraham, about one year before they were to have the child miraculously, supernaturally, you'll remember that when Sarah was, she was in her tent fixing dinner or whatever and the Lord is speaking to Abraham, saying “This time next year you'll have a child.” And Sarah laughed. She just– she burst out in laughter and the Lord even kind of called her on it. So we're kind of reminded about those sorts of things and there's no denying them. But I want to remind you that the writer of this letter– he had read through Genesis. He knew. He knew of Sarah's failures. He was well aware of the fact that she had had some failures of faith. But again, isn't it a comfort to know that all the failures that we do have and experience in our lives are kind of expunged? Well, I'll throw out “kind of,” they're expunged from God's ledger. Isn't that cool? You remember them. I remember my faux pas of faith big time. Even regret them, even have some sorrow over them. But what about God? What about the way He sees your failures of faith? How about– they don't even remain. They're burned up. They're consumed by the glory of God's holy presence. We read about this, you know, back in our study of Jeremiah on Wednesday night, but I just find it an incredible comfort to know that part of the new covenant is that God forgives our sins and remembers them no more. Remembers them no more. Did you guys catch that? That's good news. Because you see all our sin has been taken to the cross. All those faux pas of faith, those have all been taken to the cross. Now you go back, and you look at the record; oh it's great, it's a wonderful record. We look at Abraham. Yeah, man of Faith. No, there's no mention of him taking his wife to Egypt and practically, you know, throwing her into the lion’s den. There's no mention. Not now. Because faith you see, in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross, expunges your record. It's gone. And then we come to the greatest test of faith yet. It says in verse 17, “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son 18 of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named. 19 He considered that God was able to raise him back from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.” And this is that account that you'll remember is retold, or is told us, in Genesis chapter 22. So, we're going to read through it. It's somewhat lengthy, but I'm going to put it on the screen anyway for you. Okay. Let's do it. It says, Genesis 22:1- 18 (ESV) After these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am." He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”

Genesis 22:1- 18 (ESV) So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. Then Abraham said to his young men, stay here with the donkey. I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, his son, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together.

Genesis 22:1- 18 (ESV) And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father.” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son,” (By the way, that's prophetic. God himself will provide the lamb. That's prophetic. That's talking about Jesus right there. And He did. Okay.) So they went both of them together. 9 When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.

Genesis 22:1- 18 (ESV) But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me. And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place, “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”

Genesis 22:1- 18 (ESV) And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said “By myself, I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed because you have obeyed my voice.”

--- Wow. Wow, right? This was certainly the greatest test of Abraham's faith. I mean, there, no, no question about it. And you know, God knew that it would be, because you'll remember that He (God), how He referred to Isaac. Did you catch that? Both at the very beginning of that passage and at the very, kind of toward, the end, the Lord referred to Isaac as “Your son, your only son.” Did you catch that? Isaac was not his only son. He had another son through Hagar by this time named Ishmael. Okay. So why is it that Ishmael is not being taken into consideration in terms of being a son of Abraham? And the answer is in this chapter of Hebrews. In fact, it's in a verse that we looked at last week. Look at (Hebrews 11) verse six here in your Bible. It says, “And without faith it is impossible to please Him.” I actually– I have it up on the screen for you there too.

So, what was it about Ishmael that God didn't accept him? It was because he didn't– he was not the by-product of faith. He was the by-product of human effort. Ishmael was the by-product of, “We gotta help God. He's obviously having trouble making this promise come to pass, so we need to help Him out. So, here's what we're going to do….” Can you relate? Have you ever done that? Have you ever given birth to an ‘Ishmael’? I have… lots of times. Because an ‘Ishmael’ is the product of unbelief. An ‘Ishmael’ is the product of doubt (whining) “I don't think God can do this. We need to help him.” Isaac, on the other hand…. There was no way, there's no way you're going to get Isaac out of a man who's almost a hundred and a woman who's 90. And yet here he was. He was a miracle child. He really was. He was the result of a promise, the result of faith. And when you think about it, you know, you read through the pages of the Old Testament, you see that there've been a lot of ‘Ishmaels’ born. Moses had some Ishmaels, you know. Well going back, Jacob had, well, a bunch of them. Jacob was a man who kind of lived by his human wits. He gave birth to several ‘Ishmaels’. I'm not talking about physical children here. David, King David, had some ‘Ishmaels.’

Every time we step out in the flesh to fix a problem or to try to make something better, we give birth to an ‘Ishmael.’ Ishmael, for you and for me, is the poster child of self-effort; that tight grip that we have on our lives that tries to make it happen. But the good news here is once again, that the ‘Ishmaels’ we create are not what God remembers. In fact, He doesn't recognize them at all. Under the blood of the lamb, ‘Take your son, your only son, whom you love….’ Right? I don't recognize that work of the flesh. And we have had plenty of them. Let me– I quoted it for you but let me put it up on the screen for you from Jeremiah chapter 31 just to end. Again, that promise,

All those failures that we spend our life regretting, God says, “Boo, not in My remembrance, under the blood of the Lamb. Now by faith, live your life. Walk it out in faith.” Amen. Father, thank You so much for the reminders. As we talk in these passages about the life of faith and the life of unbelief. We're reminded that faith is what counts. And unbelief and the failures of our faith are under the blood of Jesus Christ and no longer remembered, no longer taken into consideration. What a wonderful truth that is. Lord, this last year has been really, really hard and we've struggled sometimes to live by faith. We've been encouraged by the world to live by fear, but we choose today not to be a part of that – and instead to live by faith because Your people have always had to live by faith regardless of the difficulties that they face. So, Father, we open our hearts to You in the Name of Jesus that You might strengthen our faith. Strengthen it through Your Word. Strengthen it through fellowship. Strengthen it through prayer. Lord, we want to hear Your voice. We want to be people of faith. We want to be like Abraham, who heard the voice of God and obeyed because he had confidence even though he faced the unfamiliar, the scary, the unknown.

We want, Lord, to rest in You. For we pray these things in the Name of Jesus Christ, our Savior, and all God's people said, amen. God bless you. ---