Hebrews 11:32-40
Let’s give our attention to God’s
holy and inspired word as we read Hebrews chapter 11, beginning
at verse 32. And what more shall I say for
time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah
of David and Samuel and the prophets who through faith conquered kingdoms. and forced justice, obtained
promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power
of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out
of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead
by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing
to accept release so that they might rise again to a better
life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, even chains and
imprisonment. They were stoned. They were sawn
in two. They were killed with the sword.
They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted,
mistreated, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering about
in deserts and mountains and in dens and caves of the earth. And all these, though commended
through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since
God had provided something better for us, that apart from us, they
should not be made perfect. Amen. This is God’s holy and
inspired and inherent word. May he add all its truths to
our minds and our hearts. Let’s pray now and ask for his
grace. Our God, we thank you that you are a speaking God,
And that you speak to us often each Lord’s Day, you speak to
us that we might have our hearts again lifted towards heaven.
You speak to us that we might be fortified. We might be strengthened
against the world and against the devil and even against our
own flesh. For these all war against us,
that we might fall from you and stop walking in your ways. Lord,
that’s not what we want. We want to finish strong. We
want to fight the good fight. We want to run the race that
is set before us. We want to persevere. We do not
want to be those of who it was said have have have fallen back. We want to make our way safely
to heaven and land on Canaan’s beautiful shores. And so may
this word encourage us today and encourage our minds and our
hearts, but also our hands so that we will do As we leave today,
that which you ask of us. And this we all pray in the name
of Jesus, our savior, amen. I would guess that some of you
are puzzle putter togetherers. Maybe on a rainy day or during
the winter months or a week’s stay at the beach, you find a
puzzle and you lay it all out on the table. Some of you do
those little puzzles with just a few pieces, large pieces. I
mean, some of you have graduated to the more sophisticated and
difficult puzzles with smaller pieces. And then some of you,
I’m sure there are some of you who did the multiple thousand
pieces puzzles with the little tiny pieces. You can’t even begin
to discern what is on those pieces, but somehow you put them together.
You know what it’s like to put together a puzzle, to labor and
to find the edges and to find the blue sky and the green grass
and all the edges. And then you work your way towards
the center only to find that there are some missing pieces. And you have labored, you have
endeavored, you have spent hours into the night over coffee and
tea and conversation, laboring to put this puzzle together.
And yet it cannot be finished because there are missing pieces. We have a member in our family
who’s, oh, how would you put it? He’s
into puzzles. And our children have discovered
that if you hide a piece from him, he goes nuts. He goes crazy
and he’ll call them. call them and say, what have
you done with the pieces to this puzzle? It’s a dirty trick for
what happens when we are near the end. We are in great anticipation. We are ready to complete the
puzzle to to see the final pieces put into place. But without those
final pieces, there is no reward. There is no. Sense of accomplishment,
there is no sense of of completion, and I want to tell you Dear brothers
and sisters of the Lord Jesus Christ, living in 2016 with a
copy of God’s word in your lap, you are not missing any of the
pieces of the puzzle of redemptive history. All the people that
we have read about and studied in the last weeks, as we have
looked at chapter 11 of Hebrews, it says they did not receive
what is promised. It says that they looked at the
promises of God from afar and they greeted them in the distance.
It says that they died in faith, not having received the things
promised, but they greeted them from a distance. But not you. You have all the pieces to the
puzzle of redemptive history. And yes, like the people in Hebrews
chapter 11, the heroes of the faith, you are strangers. You
are exiles. You are seeking a better homeland.
You are on your way to the heavenly city just like they were. You’re passing through the city
of man on the way to the city of God, but you are not missing
any of the pieces of the puzzle. You have every piece that has
been promised and you can put it together nicely and neatly
and you can see all that God has done in Christ Jesus to save
sinners and to redeem them and to bring them safely into heaven. And so as our writer, our author
of this letter to the Hebrews is exhorting whoever his audience
was a couple thousand years ago, as he by God’s Holy Spirit is
exhorting you today through the preached word, the same encouragement
is there as you long for heaven, as you look to Jesus, persevere
in the faith. But what he’s going to say to
you today is I’m going to give you several more examples of how
people of faith lived, but he’s also going to say to you, you
have less information Or they had less information
to go on than you do. You have every piece of the puzzle
at your disposal. They had less redemptive history
in their minds and hearts. You have more. Yet they persevered
through hardships. And there’s some sense where
he’s going to say, you have more. No, you have way more redemptive
history. You have way more pieces of the
puzzle. In fact, you have the whole puzzle completed. Why then
would you fall away? Why then would you shrink back?
Why then would you not persevere in the faith? Well, there are
two features of the faith that we want to consider from today’s
passage, and the first is this, as we’re longing for heaven and
looking to Jesus, faith has victories. Faith has victories. Remember,
several weeks ago, we looked at the life of Abraham. What
did God promise to Abraham? He promised two things, basically,
in his covenant promise, grapes and grandchildren. Remember the
grapes that represented the land, the promised land. I will give
you a land with houses you did not build, vineyards you did
not plant, walls you did not raise up, with cisterns you did
not hew. I’ll give you grapes. I’ll give
you grandchildren. I’ll give you offspring as numerous
as the stars in the heaven and the sand on the seashore. And
so God promises to Abraham land and offspring, grapes and grandchildren. And we have seen in chapter 11
of Hebrews how those promises have been fulfilled in the lives
of the people of faith through the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob, through the exodus with Moses and Joshua and all
the leaders of Israel. We’ve seen how through the conquest,
through Joshua’s leadership, Rahab’s intervention, through
the faith that brought the walls of Jericho down, God’s promise
of greats and grandchildren has come to those who have faith. And now we see through the period
of judges and the kings and the prophets and even the little
intertestamental period, the period of history that we know
very little about between the end of the Old Testament and
the beginning of the New Testament with the coming of Jesus. We’re
going to see today that faith has victories. We’re told in
this passage that through faith. The men and women of old conquered
kingdoms. They enforced justice. They obtained
promises. They stopped the mouths of lions.
They quenched the power of fire. They escaped the edge of the
sword. They were made strong out of
weakness. They were made mighty in war. They put foreign armies
to flight and women received back their dead. You see, these
are the stories of David enlarging the territories of Israel, the
promised land. the grapes, enlarging the territories
to the greatest distance possible, four corners stretched out as
God had promised through David and his exploits. We’re going
to see that Solomon in his wisdom could judge. And enforce justice,
remember the story of the two women who claim to have the same
child, and he says, we’ll settle this, we’ll cut the child in
half. And the woman who truly was the mother said, no, let
her Let the other one have the child. He enforced justice. The
promises were obtained. Abraham did receive land. Oh,
it was just a little little tomb for his wife, but he received
a glimpse of the promised land. Or how about in Joshua 23, when
Joshua stands before the Israelites and he says everything God has
promised, all the good he has said to us that he will do, he
has done for us. And then, son, why then would
you not go into the land and dwell there and worship him and
keep his covenants? There’s Daniel in the lion’s
den. By faith in God, he stops the mouth of lions. Or there’s
Shadrach and there’s Meshach and there’s Abednego who went
into the fiery furnace. And that fourth person of Theophany,
we believe it is, Psalm of Christophany, the presence of God with them,
baffled the king and his men. But they quenched the power of
fire by faith. It says, by faith, some fled
the edge of the sword. Remember Jezebel, wicked Jezebel,
wicked Jezebel, Queen of wicked Ahab, wouldn’t
Donald Trump have a good turn of phrase for her? Crooked Jezebel,
maybe. She wanted to put together or
put to death all the prophets of Israel. And some, by hiding
in caves, escaped the edge of the sword. Or how about Gideon
and Samson, weak men. Samson, weak for women. Gideon,
weak in his resolve to even serve God. They were made strong out
of weakness. And Gideon, with just a small
army of a few hundred men, routed the enemy. And Samson, as we
read, had taken care of the lives of many Philistine enemies in
his own lifetime. But with the tug of those columns
in the great temple of Dagon, thousands of Philistines, in
fact, more Philistines than he had killed in his lifetime, were
dead that day, made strong out of weakness, his eyes plucked
out, but still enough faith to call on God and say, give me
this one more act of redemption as a judge of Israel. By faith,
the people of God were mighty in the war, remember Hezekiah.
facing 185,000 Assyrians. That’s a lot of Assyrians. And
Assyrians were bad, wicked, nasty warriors. They were mean, they
were evil, they were foul. And God shows Hezekiah and his
men on the top of the mountain. He shows his host, his army,
his angels who come to do the fighting. And as the next little
phrase in our passage says, foreign armies were put to flight 185,000
Assyrians. On the run, crying like babies
because Yahweh, Sabbath of the Lord Almighty, whose whose army
showed up to fight for his people of faith. It says women received
back their dead. Elijah and the widow of Zarephath,
who had fed him out of her meager, in fact, empty cupboard. lays
on top of her son, her dead son, and says, oh, God, would you
raise this one? Would you raise the son of this
dear saint, this dear widow, and bring him back to life? And
he breathes again. And she says, now I know that
you are a man of God. You see, faith has victories.
Faith has victories, territories enlarged, armies put to flight,
salvations, triumphs, victories. What about you personally? Do
you have victories as you live by faith? Has God healed you? Has God taken care of your every
need? Can you say without a shadow
of a doubt that in my life, God is on the move? God is at work. God is a God of salvation. And
that through faith, what seems to my eyes and what seems to
the world is insurmountable object standing in front of me through
faith in him. We can beat Philistine armies.
We can lick cancer. The power bill can get paid and
education can be obtained. All the obstacles that stand
in front of us by faith. In God, we can find victories. Oh, don’t you know there were
losses and crosses in the lives of these people? I mean, Samson,
as he pulled down those pillars, was pulling down those pillars
to what? His own death. Or King David in his pursuit
of the kingdom of God and expanding the territories. Oh, he was a
worthless father in many respects. Oh, yes. A man after God’s own
heart. Yes. A king of all kings on this earth.
But his family fell apart for the sake of his labors. And we
could go on and recount the losses and crosses to these people.
So don’t think that this is like going to the high school reunion
and all the cheerleaders and all the jocks who are We’re triumphant
and victorious in high school are still that way in life. And
you’re just the loser. No, there are losses and crosses
in every person’s life. But let me encourage you in this
way. Does this not excite you to live by faith and conquer
kingdoms, to live by faith and to put foreign armies to flight,
to live by faith and say there is cancer in my body, but my
God can heal it if he so chooses. Does this not excite you to raise
your children and your grandchildren and your great grandchildren
in the nurture and admonition of the Lord and to be on the
forefront of the kingdom of God coming in this world? You see,
these people were on the front lines. They were in the forces.
They were in the trenches and they were building the kingdom
of God for him on Earth. All the reality of God in heaven
was being made manifest on Earth through these people. So do you
have faith? Do you have faith to conquer
God’s enemies? Do you have faith to conquer kingdoms? Do you have
faith to proclaim the gospel? Do you have faith to live your
life even when the odds of the world are against you and the
Assyrian army is staring you down and saying, I dare you to
defy us? Does not this excite us? And
so you may ask, what might God have me do? I’m no King David. I’m no Solomon. I’m no Rahab. I’m no Moses. I’m no fill in
the blank. Think about the widow at Zarephath. Moses comes to her when he’s
in hiding from his enemies and says, feed me some bread. And
she says, I have none. And he simply says, just make
it. And her provisions never run out, her cupboard is full.
She didn’t have anything to offer God, yet she offered it and God
blessed her. He took care of her and gave
her grace, even her own son back from the dead. What might God
ask you to do? Maybe something simple like this widow. Some
of you may be in the position of Solomon. You’re wise. You’re
skilled at administration. You’re skilled at building something.
You’re skilled at making a lot of people fall into ranks and
do the right thing. You see, faith in God leads us
to victories. But faith has its hardships.
That’s the second thing we should consider from this passage. Faith
indeed has its hardships as we are longing for heaven and looking
to Jesus. Faith, yes, has its victories.
but it has its hardships, its difficulties. You ever thought
about this question? When you get to heaven, who is
it that you want to sit down with and chat about their faith,
their life, their Christian journey? I mean, Moses, Abraham, David,
Noah, Samson might be pretty interesting. You might wanna
sit down with Enoch and say, now exactly what did you do that
pleased God and he just beamed you straight up without a death?
You may want to ask all those sorts of questions. You know,
our proclivities, our desires are rather earthly. We want to
talk with the victorious ones. But I’ll tell you who you ought
to get in line and speak with is this next list, those who
went through hardships, those who whose names are not even
listed. Notice how he mentions them.
Some. Others. These are no-namers. These are folks whose names are
not even listed, yet it says they endured misery. And I want
you to notice very clearly that it says they did not sell out
for Christ. They did not sell out for the
gospel. If you look at the beginning
of the chapter, it says in verse 32, what more shall I say? And
it lists great names, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David,
Samuel, big names. But in verse 35, halfway through
it says some were tortured. Verse 36, others suffered mocking. But go back to the end of verse
35, it says some were tortured, refusing to accept release. They
were unwilling to recant. They were unwilling to say no
to Jesus and yes, yes to their own life. They were unwilling
to say No to turning on God, and they were willing to say
yes to torture. Yes to mistreatment. Yes to hardship. Yes to being a loser in the world’s
eyes. These were no-namers. They were
the some. They were the others. Now, this
is a Hebrew audience our author is writing to. They’re facing
persecutions from Nero, persecutions that rival Misery like no other era. Persecutions that rival torture
like no other era. Persecutions that rival difficulty
for the people of God like no other era has seen. And he’s
writing to the Hebrew audience and saying people have had it
pretty bad for following Christ. Don’t you turn from him. And
he’s just spent, remember the first 10 chapters of Hebrews
saying, Jesus is great. Jesus is worthy of your following
him. Jesus is worthy of your allegiance.
Jesus is better than angels. He’s better than Moses. He’s
better than Melchizedek. He’s better than the priest of
Aaron. He’s better, better, better than everything. Don’t you turn
your back on him, even if you are tortured, even if you face
death. And he’s saying to us in 2016, Where we’re told that Christians
are ignorant people. At best, our intellectual capacity
is somewhere off the floor. We’re told that our belief system
is a crutch. We’re told that we are not the
intellectual elite. And he’s saying to us, dear Christians
in 2016 America, don’t go after idols. Don’t go after other gods. Keep your eyes on Jesus, but
don’t let persecutions get you down. Even if it’s intellectual
assault, even if it’s gag orders and silencing, as we experience
in our own nation, walk with Jesus and your life will be far
better. These endured misery and they
did not sell out. They refused. They refused release
and endured pain and suffering. What does this passage say about
them? It says they were tortured. They were mocked. There were
floggings, there were chains, there was prison, there were
stones. Some were sawn in two. They were killed with the sword.
That speaks of the actions committed against them. But what about
the conditions of their lives? They wandered. They wore skins. They were destitute, afflicted.
They were mistreated. They lived in deserts and caves
and on mountains. And the world’s reaction to the
people of God was a reaction in response of wickedness, of
utter pressure to to cave in to the pressures of the world
and to stop following God, even the pressure to denounce Christ
and have life. There’s some examples you’ll
recognize from scripture. Who was Psalm in two? Well, history
tells us that it was Isaiah the prophet who spoke faithfully
the word of God to the people of God, utterly rejected over
and over, lived a miserable life as he proclaimed the word of
God And he was Solomon, too, or the prophet Jeremiah, yet
another mouthpiece for the for the voice of God. And he was
stoned and afterwards or before stoning and he was beaten and
utterly mistreated. These people were tortured, they
were mocked, they were floggings. This reminds us of the life and
ministry of the Apostle Paul. It reminds us of the sufferings
of Jesus. Anyone. who is committed to speaking
for God and to living by faith will have hardships. Yes, victories.
Oh, but there will be hardships. Be living in caves and mountains
and wearing the skins of animals. But the world’s reaction to the
people of God was one of scorn. And our passage tells us this.
It says the world was not worthy of them. And you have to wonder, is it
that the saints of God are unfit for the world? Or is it that
the world is unfit for the saints of God? And there’s a there’s
a great question for you. Are you worthy of the world?
Are you worthy in the world’s eyes? No, you don’t have to give
it all up and live in caves and mountains. For sure. David lived
in a palace. So did Solomon. You don’t have
to. Mistreat yourself in order to be a faithful Christian. It
will come. Don’t worry about that. It will come. But God’s
people live on different economic terms. We have different values
than the world. We live for heaven. Others live
for earth. And so, brothers and sisters
of the Lord Jesus, let it be said of you that by faith, as
you suffer for God and as you are victorious for God, that
you do not sell out. That you do not put a price on
your faith, you do not put a price on Jesus and that whatever comes,
you will live faithfully. There’s another set of examples
the author of Hebrews has in mind. It’s from the Maccabean
era. It’s from the era between the
Testaments where the Jews were utterly oppressed by the Romans.
Yet the great hero Jacob Maccabeus rose up and led the people of
Israel in victory. But there were some miserable
times. And you go to the apocryphal books, the books that we don’t
count as books of our Bible. And you read the account of some
of the difficulties in the book of Maccabees, treated as history,
not as God’s word, treated as history. But there was a woman
who had seven children. And they were put to torture
by the Romans. They were put to torture, and one child after
another, tortured and put to death. One child after another,
tortured and put to death in a worse way than the previous
one. And when it finally comes to the woman’s term to die, she
stares at her final son as he is nearing death, and she says,
I birthed you, and I weaned you for three years, and I did not
raise you to denounce the name of God, but I raised you to die
for God. believing that he will raise
you from the dead. Friends, that’s not worthy of
the world. That is worthy of heaven. That
receives God’s commendation. And so let us, as we live our
lives of faith, remember that it may cost us everything. It
may cost us our comforts. It may cost us our friendships. It may cost us our popularity.
It may cost us being politically correct, but you see, to live
by faith means you will be victorious and it means you will have hardships.
There will be great and wonderful times. The church will flourish.
There will be temporal blessings in your home and in your life,
but there will be hardships. The church may shrink. The hardships
and setbacks in your home and family and personal life may
be there. But friends, faith plods along. Faith is one step
after the other, longing for heaven, looking for Jesus, walking
step by step with our eyes on that glimmer of light that is
shining forth from heaven. When you get to heaven. You’ve got your list of people
you’ll want to see. But there may be a list of people who want
to see you. What was it like, you no namer?
What was it like, you no namer who had all the pieces of the
puzzle? There just may be a line at your
lodgings in heaven. And it may be that Abraham and
Moses and some of these others are in your line and they want
to say you were privileged. You had your Reformation study
Bible. You had your Bible on your iPhone
and your iPad. You had sermon audio and podcast. You had morning and evening worship
at your church. You had all these resources at
your disposal and we were under resourced. We were limited. We had access to the scrolls
on the Sabbath. But could only hear them read.
We had to memorize what we heard. We had bits and glimpses of the
promises and oh, God was good. He sustained us and we had faith
in him. There just may be a line at your
lodgings in heaven asking how you We’re blessed and how you
enjoyed it and how you used it. But there’s a danger in all that
we’re blessed with. We live in a world that’s very
different from theirs, and there is so much to eclipse God. There’s so much to come into
the way of the brightness of the son of God and to overshadow
it so that all we see is the world and its trappings. All
we see is what the devil offers and the Turkish delight that
is ours for the taking. and the desires of our heart
from the remaining sin and the flesh that is in us. So let me
encourage you, dear brothers and sisters, keep walking towards
heaven. Do not put your tent stakes in the ground, for this
is not your home. Heaven is. And go by faith, looking
to Jesus, the author and the perfecter of your faith. Let’s
pray together. Our great God in heaven, we thank you We thank
you that everyone in heaven and on earth has a name, that we
are children of faith, and that all the provisions that were
for Moses and David and Solomon for Paul and the apostles and
for the church are now ours in Christ Jesus. We thank you that
you have granted us to live in this era where we have a full
picture. We have all the pieces of the
puzzle. We are not puzzled. No, we have it clearly before
our eyes that Jesus is our salvation, our hope, the author and the
perfecter of our faith. So help us to live step by step
by faith and march resolutely toward heaven, not wavering,
not shrinking back, not turning aside to the right or to the
left, but land us safely on Canaan shore individually, but also
together as a church. And this we ask and pray in the
name of Jesus. Amen. Let’s stand and sing of our need
for God as we use number 468, the king of love, my shepherd
is.