Hebrews 11

1-3 The Meaning of Faith

Faith is:

• Not just hope, but assurance
• Being convinced, that though we can’t see it, it’s there
• The means by which our [spiritual] ancestors were approved
• What helps us understand that the Word of God created the world, making things we can see out of things we can’t see. And I would interpret Word here to mean God the Son, the eternal logos (John 1:1-4).

4-7 Abel, Enoch and Noah

• By faith:
  • Abel was counted as righteous, because God approved of his gifts
  • Enoch pleased God; therefore, God took him before he died.
  • Noah built an ark to save his household, thereby condemning the world but inheriting righteousness.
• Without faith,
  • We can’t please God
  • We can’t approach God
  • We won’t seek God

8-22 Abraham

• By faith, Abraham
  • Set out for an unknown destination, knowing only that it would be his inheritance
  • Lived in a tent in a foreign land (just as co-heirs Isaac and Joseph had done), because he anticipated a more substantial city designed and built by God. Did not Abraham live in tents all his life? (See Genesis 24:67-25:8) If this is not talking about Jerusalem, does it mean that Abraham had a concept of heaven, or is it the Hebrew writer’s way of saying that Abraham knew by faith that God would eventually give him something better?
  • Received “power of procreation,” even though he was old, and thus produced descendants that were as many as the sands by the seashore.
  • Offered up Isaac, even though he was the means by which God’s promises would be fulfilled, believing that God could raise him up again, which in essence, he did.
• By faith, Jacob blessed each of his sons
• By faith, Joseph gave instructions about the burial of his bones, because he knew about the Exodus, which was still hundreds of years in the future. (Genesis 50:24-26)
• All these:
  • Died in faith without receiving the promises, yet from a distance they not only saw them but greeted them. This indicates not only an acknowledgment of something better, but a joyful anticipation of it.
  • Confessed they were strangers and foreigners on the earth. (“This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through.”)
  • Did not think of the land they had left behind
  • Desire a better country, a heavenly one. Which answers my previous question about Abraham. If this is so, maybe the Hebrews did have a concept of the afterlife. It is interesting here, though, that in the first three bullets, the writer uses the past tense, while desire is in the present tense.
• Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God – and he has prepared a place for them. With all their faults, they pleased God because they not only believed in him, they believed what he told them.

23-28 Moses

By faith:

• Moses’ parents hid him for 3 months after his birth, because he was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict
• Moses refused to be called a son of Pharaoh, choosing to suffer rather than enjoy “fleeting pleasures of sin.” And that’s the society Moses lived in – either give in to sinful pleasures, or suffer.
• He considered suffering for the Messiah to be more rewarding than the treasures of Egypt.
• He left Egypt, unafraid of the king’s anger
• He persevered, as if seeing him who is invisible. Somehow we (I) have tended to think that the Patriarchs of Faith believed only what God told them about the here and now: Abraham having a son, Moses entering the promised land. But the Hebrew writer intimates that they believed in something more ephemeral. Abraham saw a city he would never live in, and Moses suffered for a Messiah who was as yet undefined.
• He kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood so the destroyer would not touch Israel’s first-born.

29-40 Other Israelite Heroes

By faith:

• The people passed through the Red Sea on dry land, but the Egyptians drowned in it.
• The walls of Jericho fell down
• Rahab the prostitute did not perish with the disobedient
• Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephtha, David, Samuel, the prophets and others – “of whom the world was not worthy” – performed both mighty works and suffered unimaginable persecutions -- “in order to obtain a better resurrection.” Again, a belief in a spiritual resurrection, not just a promised land or earthly success.

Yet – they did not receive what was promised. Their hope was not complete “without us.” Our faith is a continuation – and a completion – of their hope. We have very large shoes to fill, made larger still because we know the end of their story.

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