By Faith #2
(based on Hebrews 11:29-12:2)
As I mentioned last week, the 11th
Chapter of Hebrews is often referred as the Faith Chapter. Last week we touched briefly on two of the
characters listed in the long intro from verse 8-16. But the full list in Chapter 11 includes the
following people of faith. Bear with me
as we go through our old Sunday School list of the people we learned about long
ago:
Abel – who had the faith to believe in the
sacrifice he offered to God as worthy of God’s praise, and the dubious honor of
being the first person killed by his own brother, Cain;
Enoch – the son of Cain, had the faith of righteousness
and enjoyed such a close relationship with God that he did not have to
experience death and was instead simply taken up to heaven;
Noah – another righteous man of intense
faith. His generation had sunk to such a
moral depravity that God could no longer suffer humanity and sought to destroy them. Noah obeyed God’s command to build an ark in
the middle of a desert despite public ridicule and had faith that God’s promise
of flooding the earth would happen;
Abraham and Sarah – who we spoke about last week,
had faith enough to believe that God’s promise of future generations would come
through them, even though they were very old and Sarah was barren;
Isaac – son of Abraham and Sarah, offered as a
human sacrifice to God, but had faith to believe that he, too was a child of
promise and that God’s covenant with his father would come to pass through him;
Jacob – son of Isaac, became the father and
indeed, the fulfillment of the promise made to his grandfather, Abraham. He continued great faith in God to fulfill
that promise and became the father of the twelve tribes of Israel through his
sons, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher,
Joseph, and Benjamin;
Joseph – one of the youngest sons of Jacob had
faith to believe that he was part of the family’s great inheritance to be blessed
by God in spite of circumstances that led him to be sold into slavery by his
own brothers and then sent to prison by his employer. But there in prison to be miraculously
rescued by Pharaoh to lead the people of Egypt through a famine, to forgive his
brothers their role in his earlier difficulties and to regather his family in
Egypt;
Moses – a child of the Levite tribe after many
generations passed between the death of Joseph and the enslavement of the
Israelites to the Egyptians. Moses had faith
to believe that his upbringing in the court of the Pharaoh would one day lead
to the freedom and rescue of his people.
He sought God’s wisdom, advice, and counsel. By faith he confronted Pharaoh to let his
people go and through faith led them out of the land of Egypt to wonder in the desert
for 40 years to a Promised Land God would give them.
The whole of the Israelite nation who fled
Egypt and crossed the Red Sea – by faith they followed Moses and watched as God
parted the sea to let them pass safely to the other side while the Egyptian
army descended upon them to force their return;
Joshua – a young man under the tutelage of
Moses became the commander of the army of Israel. By faith he listened to the words of the
Lord, led the Israelites to surround the city of Jericho in the land of Canaan,
marched around its walls for seven days, blew the ram’s horns and gave a great
shout from all the people of Israel and in this way, felled the walls of
Jericho;
Rahab the prostitute – harbored the spies of Israel
when they came to Jericho. By faith she
received them in peace and told them of the cities fear of the Lord and counseled
them on how they might escape from sight of the king, for this she was spared
in the invasion of Jericho;
Gideon – another commander of Israel’s army
like Joshua. He defeated the Midianites with
just a handful of soldiers rather than with a huge army and by faith believed
that God had delivered them from destruction.
Although Israel wanted to make him king at the time, by faith Gideon
refused for he believed that only God was king;
Barak – Deborah commissioned him to lead the
Israelites in a battle against the Canaanite forces to overthrow Sisera. By faith he followed her counsel and overcame
the great army of the Canaanites;
Samson – a thoroughly unlikely inclusion to this
list of people of faith, Samson was not a good man. He had many flaws including that of being a
womanizer and a person who sought revenge at any proclivity. Yet, by faith, he believed that God had
called him to a particular task of destroying the Philistines and upon capture,
lashed between the columns of the temple, prayed to God for deliverance and
brought the temple down with his enormous strength, killing himself and the
entire aristocracy of the Philistine society;
Jephthah – another greatly flawed character on
this list of the faithful, but by faith Jephthah led the Israelites to a peaceful
conquering of the land of Moab and Amon;
David – continues the long line of flawed
characters used by God, by faith he continued to build up the nation of Israel
and to lead the people to a time of prosperity and unity;
Samuel and all the prophets – by faith listened
to the word of God and proclaimed and lamented over and over to the people of
Israel about their belief in God and how they often turn away from those beliefs. And as consequence would receive the penalty
of those unfaithful acts.
A growing list of more of the faithful could be
exhaustive, but concludes with verses 33 and 34 – and more who by “faith conquered
kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions,
quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of
weakness, became mighty in war, and put foreign armies to flight.”
However, verses 35b-38 also records the trials
of those who had faith: “Others were tortured and refused to be released, so
that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still
others were chained and put in prison. They
were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins,
destitute, persecuted and mistreated for the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in
caves and holes in the ground.”
Well, that latter list really doesn’t sound
like a list I’d like to be on. Would you? But these men and women, “others” as the passage
simply names them, who endured such torment were living by faith just as much
as Noah, Abraham, Moses or Joshua. Their
faith was not weaker. If anything, their
faith was probably stronger because it enabled them to endure incredible
suffering. They are not “lesser” saints
because they found no miracle. If
anything, they are “greater” saints because they were faithful even when things
didn’t work out right.
In fact, they are mentioned at the close of the
list in summary; “These were all commended for their faith.” At a crucial moment in time in history, they
each acted in faith. God saw their faith
and rewarded it.
Living by faith often meant moving against the
prevailing tide of public opinion. Noah
built an ark, Abraham left Ur, Moses rejected Egypt, and Joshua marched around
Jericho. The same principle holds true
today. If you decide to live by faith,
you will definitely stand out from the crowd, and you may face opposition and
ridicule.
Hebrews 11 demonstrates that the life of faith
is not a rarity. It’s easy to look at Enoch or Noah or Joseph or Moses or David
and say, “I could never do that.” Down deep in our hearts, we have believed a
lie that the life of faith is restricted to a few “special” people. We think we could never qualify to have our
names added to the list of Hebrews 11. But
that’s the very reason this chapter is in the Bible, so that we would know that
these are ordinary men and women who did extraordinary things simply because
they had faith in God. They are made of
the same stuff as us. The life of faith
is within the reach of every believer. They were flawed characters as well; both
saints and sinners alike, used by God because of their faith and their faith
alone. Not because they were perfect,
but instead because they were willing and open to God’s promises and God’s
faith in them.
The great heroes of the faith seem far removed
from us. It’s hard to think about the
Apostle John trying to sync up his iPod or Jeremiah ordering coffee at
Starbucks. We tend to think of them as dim, misty characters whose faces peer
out from the pages of Sunday School stories.
Time, culture, language, history.
There is vast gap between us and them. And yet what won them approval wins us
approval too, their faith in God. That’s
what God honors.
I wonder if other names could be added to that
list.
It seems that we do add them. I can’t recount the number of times that the
cloud of witnesses are mentioned by all of you when you remember the past. We are surrounded by that so great a cloud of
witnesses who came before and by their faith continued to believe, worship and
do wondrous things.
By faith, so do you. So, add your own name to that very same list
and may God give us steady courage to follow the Lord so that some day our
names might be added and recounted by those who come after us. Amen.
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