[Prayer]
Today’s message is from Hebrews 11:8-22. It’s part of the “faith” chapter of Hebrews. Hebrews 11 is full of examples of people who lived their lives by faith.
According to verse 1 of Hebrews chapter 11, “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” And the writer of Hebrews is not talking about being certain of just anything that we might hope for (a delicious Thanksgiving dinner), but about being certain of God. And hope, in the Bible—the word hope doesn’t mean the same thing as it usually does when we say ‘hope’ these days (I hope it won’t rain, but it probably will). No, when the Bible says ‘hope’, it is referring to something you are looking forward to and that you really expect to happen.
Verse 6 of Hebrews 11 says, “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” Tom talked about these things last week.
Now, I talk about what the Bible says and about what the writer of Hebrews said, but it’s really what God has said speaking through the writer of Hebrews. So, as always, as we read the passage, remember that we are reading the word of God. I will talk about what the passage says some, but what is really important is what God says: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Tim. 3:16, 17)
Also, as always, I encourage you to read your Bibles every day. Study and meditate on the word of God. If there is something you don’t understand, ask God to give you understanding and try hard to understand it! God is telling you what you need to do. He rewards those who earnestly seek him.
So, now let’s read today’s passage—Hebrews 11:8-22:
8By 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. 9By 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. 10For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
11By 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. 12And 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.
13All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. 14People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. 15If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
17By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, 18even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” 19Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death. 20By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future.
21By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph’s sons, and worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff.
22By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions about his bones. (Hebrews 11:8-22)
Faith in God is trusting God. When you trust God, that means that you believe that what he says he will do, he will do, and that when he tells you to do something (or not to do something) it’s the best thing you can do. To trust means to obey. When you say that you believe in Jesus, it means that you trust Jesus. (The song says, “Trust and obey, there’s no other way...”)
And something else I like to point out whenever I have the opportunity: Faith and faithfulness are very closely tied together. In fact, faith and faithfulness are the same word in Greek. The translators have to decide which word they are going to use in a given place in their translations. The NIV (the translation we are using) says, for example, that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control—faithfulness. (Gal. 5:22, 23) But the HCSB, the Holman Christian Standard Bible says the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness and self-control. The more you trust God the more faith you have, the more faithful you become.
Look at verse 8 in today’s passage. It starts out “By faith Abraham, when he was called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance...” It could have been translated “By faithfulness Abraham, when he was called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance...” Faith (or faithfulness), by the way, God says, are a gift from him. Now let’s look at the first verse in today’s passage.
Verse 8, the first verse in today’s passage, says, “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.” If you look at Genesis chapter 12, you’ll see that God spoke to Abraham and told him to leave and go to a place that he would show him. Abraham didn’t know where he was to go—just to a place the Lord would show him. But the Lord did tell him this: that he would make him into a great nation, that he would bless him and make his name great and that he would be a blessing. He also said that he would bless those who blessed him and curse those who cursed him and that all peoples on earth would be blessed through him. (Jesus humanly is descended from Abraham. All nations on earth are blessed through Jesus.)
Abraham obeyed God by faith. If a voice spoke to you, or even if someone appeared to you and said that he was the Lord... If you were told to leave to go somewhere and weren’t told where, only that you were going to be someone great (a martyr, maybe?). What would you do? Well, before you say, “Well, if God spoke to me directly, I would certainly obey,” listen to what I think I might do. Here’s what I might think. I might think, “Is this my imagination—or a hallucination—or a demonic spirit speaking to me? How do I know it’s God?” And even if I did think it was God, I might think, “Well, I’m comfortable here and don’t really want to go somewhere where I don’t even know where it is, even if I am promised something great.” A lot of times we tend to settle in and just be comfortable. We even do that when the circumstances aren’t all that comfortable just because we think that what we know has to be better than something that is unknown. Well, I don’t really know what I’d do. But faith comes from God and so does conviction. (Tom went to China by faith and he came back here by faith, by the way. He prayed to know God’s will.)
So why do you think Abraham obeyed? It doesn’t say. It just says that he did it by faith. But, nevertheless, my guess is that this was not the first time that God had spoken to him. The command and the promises that God had given to Abraham in Genesis he gave to him while he was living in Haran. In Acts, in Stephen’s speech to the Sanhedrin, Stephen told them that God had given this same command and made the same promises to Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia before he had gone to Haran. I think Abraham knew God and that Abraham had trusted and obeyed God right along. The more faithful you are, the more you will be able to recognize God’s will and the easier it will become to trust and obey. “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Rom. 12:1, 2) The more faithful you are, more you will be able to recognize God’s will and the easier it will become to obey. But the less faithful you are, the more difficult it will be to recognize God’s will and the harder it will be to trust and obey!
Verses 9 and 10 in today’s passage say, “By faith he (Abraham) 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. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” (Heb. 11:9, 10) Abraham was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. What are we looking forward to?
I mentioned that you can kind of get settled into a mediocre situation and not want to disturb that status quo even though something much better is promised. Moses led the Israelite out of slavery in Egypt through many miraculous signs that God provided—even to the point where he put to death all the firstborn sons of the Egyptians, but let the firstborn sons of the Israelites live. The Israelites were promised a very wonderful land, a land “flowing with milk and honey”. But when things got hard while they were traveling through the desert to the promised land, they said that they would rather be back in Egypt under slavery. At least they had good food there. What is your attitude toward this present life? Are you comfortable? Are you trying to become more comfortable? How important is it to you to have a ‘successful’ life in this world? How does it affect your thinking to know that there is something vastly better that is promised to us? Would you rather just settle in and remain in your present situation forever? What are you looking forward to? What are we looking forward too? (And, by the way, Abraham was rich. God had made him rich. But he was still looking forward to something much better. He was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.)
Let’s look at verses 11 and 12:
11By 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. 12And 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. (Hebrews 11:11, 12)
Abraham became a father by faith! How do you become a father by faith? Abraham was old and Sarah was not able to have children. And she was old, too! The Lord did a supernatural miracle and Isaac was born. The Lord had promised that he would make Abraham into a great nation and that through his offspring all nations on earth would be blessed. But Abraham was lamenting that he had no children: “O Sovereign LORD, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus? You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.” (Gen. 15:2, 3)
The Lord told Abraham, “This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir. Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them. So shall your offspring be.” Abraham believed the Lord and he credited it to him as righteousness. Abraham believed the Lord! Do you believe that you are a sinner and that Jesus died for your sin? Do you believe the Lord? If you believe the Lord, he credits it to you as righteousness.
Let’s look at verses 13 through 15:
13All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. 14People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. 15If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. (Hebrews 11:13-15)
You know, Genesis doesn’t say anything about the resurrection from the dead or about eternal life—about new bodies that won’t perish and being in the presence of God—but there are hints. We know that neither Abraham nor Isaac nor Jacob settled in the land of Canaan that Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt to. That happened several hundred years later. And they certainly didn’t see the “city with foundations whose builder and architect is God. And how in the world would the promise of descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky mean anything to Abraham if he was expecting to be dead and in the ground and out of existence? But he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God—a heavenly city. That’s what we should be looking forward to, also.
Let’s look at verses 17 through 20:
17By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, 18even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” 19Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death. 20By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future. (Hebrews 11:17-20)
This is where God tested Abraham’s faith (or maybe his faithfulness—really, he tested both). But before I talk about how God tested Abraham, I want to point out that there were some things that Abraham did that don’t appear to have been done by faith. The writer of Hebrews lists the things Abraham did by faith, but not the things that he failed to do by faith.
For example: After Abraham arrived in Canaan, the land which the Lord had showed him—the land to which he had gone by faith—there was a famine. What did Abraham do? He packed up and moved to Egypt where he had apparently heard there was food. The account in Genesis says nothing about his praying nor does it say anything about the Lord’s directing him to go to Egypt. It just says that there was a famine and that he went because the famine was severe.
And not only did Abraham leave the land that the Lord had told him to go to, but when he arrived in Egypt he told his wife Sarah to say that she was his sister. He thought that because Sarah was a very beautiful woman, when the Egyptians saw her, they would realize that she was his wife and kill him in order to take her. But if they thought she was his sister, they would presumably just take her and let Abraham live. (They apparently had some sense about adultery, but none about murder.)
Well, that’s exactly what happened. Sarah said that she was Abraham’s sister and Pharaoh, the ruler of Egypt took Sarah to be his wife...and the Lord had to fix the situation. So, Abraham did not do everything by faith. What can we learn? Here’s what we can learn. Don’t rely on your own wisdom. Ask God for his wisdom. Do you pray? Pray about every decision. What else can we learn? Those that belong to God, he sometimes—note that I say sometimes—he sometimes rescues them from their sinful blunders. I think he does that when it is necessary for him to do so in order to be able to accomplish his plans for us. But, I’d say, most of the time he lets us learn from our lapses in faith. But he loves us.
Oh yeah. And another thing: Abraham believed God when he told him that his offspring would be as numerous as the stars in the sky, but Isaac wasn’t born until quite a few years later when Sarah was even older. here’s what happened. Sarah was getting tired of having no children and suggested that Abraham take her maidservant Hagar and have children with her. They would then become Sarah’s children. They would belong to her. Abraham agreed and Ishmael was born. The result was lots of trouble. I won’t go into detail. But, again, Abraham apparently failed to seek God’s direction. Do you pray?
Now let’s get back to today’s passage. God told Abraham to take Isaac to a place he would show him—one of the mountains in the area of Moriah—and to sacrifice him as a burnt offering. That’s really extreme. And I can’t remotely imagine that I would believe it was God speaking to me if I was told to do something like that. I would certainly reject it and cry out to God for help. I wouldn’t want to admit that anything like that was even in my mind. But, apparently Abraham, the man of faith, was able to know for sure that God was speaking to him. So he obeyed.
Now, for Abraham, he may not have thought, that offering Isaac as a burnt offering would be murder. But this was his very special son. God told Abraham to take his son, his only whom he loved, and sacrifice him as a burnt offering. Abraham had to do it. God told him to. But Abraham believed God’s promise that it would be through Isaac that his offspring would be reckoned. He believed that he would come down the mountain with Isaac alive. And he did. And, according to verse 20, by faith, Isaac, in his old age, blessed his sons Jacob and Esau.
If you read the passage in Genesis where Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau, you’ll see Isaac was almost blind and that Jacob disguised himself as Esau in order to steal the blessing that Isaac had intended to give to Esau. But, even though the blessing was stolen, Isaac knew for certain that Jacob would be blessed. Apparently he had supernatural assurance from God. It was a prophetic blessing. When you read the passage in Genesis, you wouldn’t think that anything was done by faith. But in reality it was by faith that Isaac was able to give the blessing.
Let’s go on. Verses 21 and 22 say:
21By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph’s sons, and worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff.
22By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions about his bones. (Hebrews 11:21, 22)
Jacob blessed Joseph’s sons in the same way that Isaac had blessed him. It was a prophetic blessing. And about Joseph—when he was ready to die, he gave instructions that he be buried in Canaan with his ancestors (they were in Egypt at this time). The Lord had told Abraham that they would be slaves in Egypt for 400 years and then come back to Canaan, the land that the Lord had promised to Abraham and his descendants. Joseph accepted God’s promise that had been handed down to him by faith and believed that the Israelites would return from Egypt to Canaan. He was telling them that when that happened, he wanted them to carry his bones with them back to Canaan. And, in fact, when the time came, that’s exactly what they did.
Well, faith is believing what God says he will do he will do—and that what he says is good and right is good and right—and that what he says is evil is evil. (Think about what God says about what’s going on around us in this society right now—and maybe about what’s going on in your life, too.) Faith is believing that when God says that the righteous will live by faith, the righteous will live by faith. And it’s believing that that the unrighteous are those who have no faith. It’s believing that those who are righteous will inherit eternal life while those who are unrighteous will inherit everlasting shame and contempt. Praise God that even though we have no righteousness of our own, we have the righteousness of Christ—the righteousness that comes through faith and is from God! Praise the Lord!
[Prayer]