The Faith of Our Fathers
Walker Rose, Speaker
Hebrews 11:8-21 | July 28, 2024 - Sunday Evening,
Well, good afternoon, Christ Covenant. Good evening, I should say. Really is a blessing to be here with you. If we haven’t met, I would love to meet you. Pretty friendly guy, me and my family, Shelby’s here.
If you would, please turn in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 11. While you’re turning there, let me just briefly catch us up on where we are, give you an overview. As Zach mentioned, I haven’t been here for quite some time. I’ve been taking care of some family. But I trust and hope that one of the themes that we’ve been talking about that’s present from chapter 1 is the overwhelming superiority of Jesus Christ. He’s superior to the angels in power, to Moses in glory, to Joshua in delivering rest, and Aaron in his role as high priest, and over the entire old covenant order.
Now we’ve arrived at the point where the author highlights how faith is displayed in the lives of believers.
So if you would, Hebrews 11, beginning in verse 8.
“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 out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.”
“These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. 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.”
“By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered Isaac up, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. By faith Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau. By faith Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff. By faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave directions concerning his bones.”
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God will stand forever.
Let’s pray. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, this is Your Word, this is Your truth. I pray that You would speak to our hearts tonight through it, that Your message would be clear, that You would be glorified, and that we might love You and adore You more after leaving this evening. It’s in Christ’s name we pray. Amen.
Well, in 1678 John Bunyan published the first edition of the masterpiece he penned in his jail cell, The Pilgrim’s Progress. Of course, it has since been hailed as the greatest allegory ever written, having gone through thousands of editions and re-printings over the years. Bunyan’s work follows the protagonist Christian on his perilous journey toward the Celestial City. He encounters several situations and individuals who attempt to dissuade, divert, or even destroy him and yet he pushes forward each time.
In one particular episode, Christian finds himself at the foot of the Hill of Difficulty when he’s approached by two men who just came from that direction, Mistrust and Fearful. They warn Christian of the dangers that await him with his next steps. This is how he responds: “You’re making me afraid. But where can I run to be safe? If I go back to my own country, which is prepared for fire and brimstone, then I will certainly die there. If I can get to the Celestial City, I’m sure to live in safety there. I must continue for to go back means nothing but death. To go forward is the fear of death but beyond it is life everlasting. I’ll keep going forward.”
In the face of pain, discouragement, opposition, and fatigue, what ultimately motivated Christian to remain steadfast in his journey? Why would he leave the life he built behind him, suffer through endless hardships in the present, and sacrifice the future that his old life was leading to? Because Christian knew that his citizenship in the city prepared for him by his Savior was worth all that and more.
In our text, Abraham is presented as a model for how believers are called to live out their faith. Like Christian, Abraham lived the life of a pilgrim on a journey to a better city. The message I want to share with you this evening is this – because God has promised believers that our ultimate home is in the new heavens and the new earth, we must persevere as faithful pilgrims in this life. I’ll say that one more time – because God has promised believers that our ultimate home is the new heavens and the new earth, we must persevere as faithful pilgrims in this life.
I’ll make it simple. I just have three points and I’ll bet anything you can guess what the last one is.
First point. We must persevere as faithful pilgrims by surrendering our past lives.
Point two. We must persevere as faithful pilgrims by surrendering our present lives.
And our final point. We must persevere as faithful pilgrims by surrendering our future lives.
So point one. We must persevere as faithful pilgrims by surrendering our past lives.
Let’s begin in verse 8. 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 out not knowing where he was going.
In this verse we’re reminded of Abraham’s obedience to the call he received from God to go to this place. It says he went out not knowing where he was going and we may be tempted to read this and think we immediately have a reference for understanding what Abraham actually did. At least for the millennials and the Gen-Z’ers in here like myself, I’m a Gen-Z’er, we can’t get anywhere without our GPS and our phones. If someone asks me to drive virtually anywhere in Charlotte without my phone, I would be useless. That’s not what’s going on here with Abraham. It wasn’t that he didn’t know how to get to a known location, rather he didn’t know where he was going. We look back at Genesis 12:1, God tells Abram go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land I will show you.
Friends, this is not some hop across town. God called Abram to leave his country, his community, and his clan with the instructions to just start walking. On top of that, in Genesis 12:4, we learn that Abraham was 75 years old when he received this call from God. He lived an entire lifetime prior to this moment. How did he respond? By faith, he obeyed. He surrendered his past along with the security, comfort, and predictability of everything he’d ever known.
Maybe some of you have experienced a big move across the country for school, or for a new job, or for a relocation. To be fair, that can be very disorienting. Finding a new church, new friends, searching for good schools for the kids, new favorite restaurants and hangout places for the family, settling into a new home. Not to mention leaving behind all those good things that were at your old location. It’s not easy by any stretch of the imagination.
But there’s almost always some immediate benefit in those situations. A good education, a promotion, a better salary, better place to raise a family, and so on.
But in Abram’s case, there was no immediate payoff. In fact, things got a lot worse. Look down again with me at verse 9. By faith he went to live in the land of promise as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.
He did make it to the land of promise, but he lived there as a foreigner. In Genesis 12 we’re told, we read earlier, that Abram took all his possessions and all his people when he left Haran. He was a somebody back home. He had status, he had honor. But now he’s in a position of disgrace. No bigger house, no promotion, no better school. No. He lived in a tent as a stranger in a strange land. This doesn’t sound like he hit the jackpot.
What could have compelled Abraham to give up so much for something that seemed so much worse? I mean, you’d have to be crazy to do something like that. Right? Look at verse 10. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. The word “looking forward” here in Greek, I’ll do my best, is exedecheto. It means that Abraham expected with absolute confidence, not ultimately for the nation of Israel or even for heaven, but for the Zion that God will usher in at the consummation of time.
Here again we’re confronted with this principle of supremacy that we found throughout Hebrews and discussed earlier. Just as Jesus is the eternal high priest and superior to this earthly high priest, the heavenly Jerusalem is superior to this earthly Jerusalem.
Abraham faithfully persisted and surrendered his past because he understood that he was a pilgrim and he was on his way to something better than anything in his past.
This maps on well with Jesus’s parable of the hidden treasure in Matthew 13. If you remember, a man finds a treasure hidden in a field and he joyfully sells all that he has so that he can go and buy it. Now imagine you’re somebody in his circle who sees him doing this without the context of the treasure. You’d think he was crazy. What are you doing? You’re selling everything? Maybe just like put a little bit back. What’s up with this field? There’s nothing there.
It doesn’t make sense to the world. But to the man who knows the surpassing value of the treasure, it’s the only thing that makes sense.
Friends, the author of Hebrews goal here is not to show how one is justified. Rather, it’s to show how the justified live in the freedom that their faith offers. No matter what your past looks like, whether it’s things that you’ve done or things that have been done to you, faith in Christ gives you the freedom and security to leave the world behind and cling to Him.
You can reject the status and the honor that the world offers you because God has promised you an eternal home in an enduring city. Moreover, Christ is the one who gives us this faith that we need to obey His commands. He’s not indifferent to your needs. In fact, Jesus Himself told us that the Son of Man has no place to lay His head and that He has no honor in His own hometown.
But what happens once you put your faith in Christ? And you surrender your past and you do decide to follow Him. What do you do next?
That brings us to our second point. We must persevere as faithful pilgrims by surrendering our present lives. Now if we stopped reading the text at verse 10, we might be tempted to fill in the gaps with our own cultural ideas. We might conclude that things turned around for Abraham and Sarah and their story ended like a fairytale.
In Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which is superior to the ones that followed, Charlie is this impoverished main character and he’s approached by this shadowy figure named Slugworth right after he gets this golden ticket. They’re in a dark alley and it’s sketchy and he scares him. This ticket grants him access to this chocolate factory. Right? Slugworth is this rival candy maker and he promises Charlie that all he has to do is hand over one of these Everlasting Gobstoppers. It’s this candy, this secret candy, that Slugworth wants to get his hands on so he can start producing it. All he has to do is finish the tour and hand it over.
Well, at the end of the movie, Charlie’s confronted with the choice – is he going to betray Willy Wonka for money or is he going to honor him. Well, if you’ve watched the movie, Wonka kind of betrays Charlie. He chooses not to and in a dramatic twist, we learn that Slugworth was planted by Wonka to test Charlie’s faithfulness. Because Charlie passed the test, Wonka gave him the entire chocolate factory and in the last scene, as Wonka, Charlie, and his grandpa who faked an injury for 20 years, Grandpa Joe, are flying away in a strange aircraft. Wonka gets serious. He grabs Charlie and he says to him, “Now, Charlie, don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he ever wanted.” Charlie gets serious. He says, “What happened?” Wonka replies, “He lived happily ever after.”
Sometimes we think that that’s how things should go. Don’t we? Like that’s only fair. Right? Charlie didn’t take advantage of Wonka to go help Slugworth. Yeah, he deserves all this and he’s going to be happy forever.
You know, God, I gave up money, I gave up status, I gave up my honor to follow You. Now I’m ready to get some of that money back, some of that honor back, some of that status back. My obedience merits that. Right?
That’s not how it works. Let’s look at verses 11 to 13. I’m not going to read them all, but Sarah and Abraham are finally able to conceive Isaac. But if we look back to Genesis 21, we realize that Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah was 90 when Isaac was born. You do the math. That means that for 25 years the promise of descendants through them went unfulfilled.
On top of that, right as they entered into the Promised Land, they found themselves in the middle of a terrible famine that drove them to Egypt to avoid starvation. Things were not going well for them. Even after they faithfully obeyed God.
Though we are right to highlight the faith of these two, the miraculous birth of Isaac was not because of Abraham or Sarah’s faith. It was because of the utter reliability and faithfulness of God.
They got tired of waiting on God for a child so they tried to manipulate the outcome of the covenant by having Ishmael through Hagar. Again we see that Abraham twice conspired with Sarah to tell leaders that she was his sister to avoid danger. Furthermore, when we look at verses 11 and 12, we see that they were both as good as dead. The years for childbearing were gone and yet God still accomplished what He promised. Therefore, we can faithfully surrender our present lives to Him.
But these two did have faith in God, to be clear. Let’s look at 13 to 15. I will read this: “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return.”
I want to consider two other instances in the Bible that I think perfectly map onto the two spectrums here. Okay? The first is the wilderness generation that Moses led out of Egypt in the exodus. If you remember they were constantly complaining to God and Moses about their conditions and their circumstances. They complained about a lack of water, they complained about a lack of food, they complained about fearing the Egyptians pursuing them. They were impatient when Moses was talking with God too long. They didn’t like that Moses had as much power as he did.
You know what they begged for? You know what their gripe was? You should have left us there. You should have left us in slavery in Egypt. At least we had food, at least we had water. Yeah, we took a beating every now and then, but we had food and water.
They weren’t content to be pilgrims. They wanted to be residents with the world. Now that’s on this side, well, y’all over there, this side.
The other example is a good of young Israelites during a Babylonian exile recorded in Daniel chapter 3. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abdnego were faced with a choice. They could commit spiritual adultery against God by worshiping an image of the king, and in so doing they would secure a life of power, status, comfort, leadership. Or they could remain faithful to God and face certain death. Their response to the king was along these lines – our God whom we serve is able to deliver us, He will deliver us, but if not, we still will not worship your gods or bow down to your image.
Friends, the difference between the wilderness generation on this side and Abram and Sarah, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abdnego on this side, is found in verse 16. Look at it with me: “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.”
Their approach to their present life wasn’t dictated by reason or even their experience, but by faith. They knew that where they were headed was better in every single way and that informed everything in their life.
Brothers and sisters, this is the only way to surrender your present life as a faithful pilgrim. When our circumstances seem to be getting more and more difficult or God’s promises seem more and more distant and unfulfilled in our lives, like Abraham, we look forward with that expectation of absolute confidence that God has acted on our behalf, that He’s not ashamed to be called our God, and that He has prepared a city for us.
We’ve talked about how Abraham modeled a faithful surrender of his past and of his present, but what more can we really even do than that? It brings me to my third point. We must persevere as faithful pilgrims by surrendering our future lives.
Let’s look at verses 17 and 18.
“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, of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.””
Here we’re reminded of Abraham’s obedience and being willing to sacrifice his only son Isaac, the son of the promise. Here is faith in God’s promise displayed in all its splendor in Abraham’s life. After everything we’ve talked about in his life, that he surrendered both in his past and throughout his life, it seems like everything’s falling into place. At the very least, the most unlikely and miraculous promise has been fulfilled through the birth of Isaac. Although he and his wife were as good as dead, they bore a son. And now, just when everything seemed perfect, or at least like the trajectory was going up, God required the life of his only begotten son.
Consider the incomprehensibility of sacrificing your own child. In Genesis 22, God’s exact words to Abram are these: “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love and go to the land of Mariah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”
It’s impossible to understand. The pit that must have formed in his stomach when he heard those words. But even more unfathomable than that is that God’s command seemed to be in direct opposition and contradiction to what He previously said. God said Isaac was the chosen line. He was the future. If he followed through with this, by all appearances it would be impossible for the promise to be fulfilled. But rather than try to understand what he could never understand, Abraham lived out his faith in a way that defied the visible and laid hold of the invisible by surrendering his future to God.
But this doesn’t quite seem practical for us. How can we be faithful pilgrims? Nobody’s telling us to sacrifice our children, by God’s grace.
Jump over to verses 20 to 22.
“By faith Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau. By faith Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff. By faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave directions concerning his bones.”
What do we see here? We see the transfer of faith and blessing to the next generation, to the future. Friends, if we’re to be faithful pilgrims in this life, we must first lay hold of that heavenly vision of the new heavens and the new earth, and then we must commit our lives to passing on that glorious vision. We must pass it on to our children, to our grandchildren, to our neighbors, the youth in our community, our friends. It’s true, this surrender of our future and the work of our triune God that it can be said that Abraham’s descendants outnumbered the stars in heaven and the sand on the seashore.
Earlier in the service Zach read Revelation 19:6-9. I want to read it again, briefly.
“Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give Him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure”— for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.””
Friends, this is the end for which the pilgrim surrenders his past, his present, and his future. Blessed are those who are invited.
Let’s pray. Lord, we are grateful tonight for Your Word. We’re grateful for the men and women who went before us and who You showed grace and blessing upon and who now are examples for us in the faith. Lord, we pray that You might give us an ear to hear where you’re calling us to surrender. Help us to be faithful pilgrims, Lord. It’s in Christ’s name that we pray. Amen.