Excerpt from Hebrews 11:8-19 sermon

The following is an excerpt from a recent sermon I was honored to preached in a dearly beloved church. It is always both a nerve racking and humbling experience to present God's Word to God's people before the very presence of God. I'm thankful whenever God provides the opportunity to teach, preach, and spend extra study time in the scriptures.

The formatting is unchanged from my sermon notes. I've found a vast array of habits and practices that various ministers of God's Word have used to help guide their sermons. For myself I try to keep great emphasis on moving quicker through longer paragraphs, and slowing down my pace to provide greater weight to shorter statements. Hence the strange fragmenting of sentences and paragraphs.

2) Second, what is meant in the phrase “by faith”? 

Another way of asking this question, what is it that the author of Hebrews is focusing on through the repeated refrain? 

Exegesis: 

The author is drawing his original audience, and us as a secondary audience, to study and learn from the consistent, unifying factor between all of the people of God throughout the history of God’s people. This unifying factor is that it is by faith that empowers and enables God’s people to surrender, submit, and follow God’s desires in their lives. 

The author quotes from Habakkuk in Hebrews 10:38:

“But my righteous[g] one will live by faith.

    And I take no pleasure

    in the one who shrinks back.”[h]

After this quote the focus becomes the “righteous” - those who live by faith. The author of Hebrews then goes on to cite the faith of:

Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Joseph’s sons and Joseph, Moses Parents, Moses, the ancient enslaved Israelites, the army at Jericho, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthath, David, Samuel, and the prophets, and countless martyrs. 

Yet the focus isn’t on the accomplishments of these individuals, the focus is on the faith of these individuals. It is “By Faith” that all these people of God experienced God’s work in their lives. 

What is your “by faith” statement? I want to be careful here and not “read us back into the text”. I’m not saying here that you and I are equivalent to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob. I’m not saying that we have the same details in our stories, I’m not saying that we have the same sorts of struggles, the same sorts of place in the grand history of God’s plans. 

What I am saying that one way in which the author of Hebrews seeks to encourage his original audience is through pointing to the consistent history of faith in the lives of the patriarch’s and OT examples of God’s people. This encouragement extends to us as readers of Hebrews. Our context is different, indeed we’re not the original audience and yet we are connected. Just as the author of the book of Hebrews was encouraging his audience to “run with perseverance” (12:1) by linking all these various “by faith” accounts, we too can find encouragement. 

And our encouragement isn’t to be found in our power, our prowess, our promises of securing outcomes. Rather our encouragement is found in the tremendous relief of pressure when we surrender all the outcomes to the stupendous and shackle shattering power of Christ Jesus. That we are not in control of the outcomes, that our confidence is not found in ourselves to make good come about - but rather in God. So we depend on him and can act with full trust by faith that as we behave, act, think, speak, and live in submission to God we are living as those saints that went before us. We too are living “by faith” as humbly cede to God that it is only through the power, the presence, and the person of God himself that any of God’s promises shall come to pass. 

Our encouragement isn’t found in:

our own ability to fulfill God’s promises, 

our own ability to make a future through our effort, endeavors, and hopes,

our own dreams, and desires, our own skills, passions, abilities or talents,

but rather our encouragement is found in the reality that:

the same God who promised to Abraham “I will bless those who bless you, 

and 

I will curse those who curse you” 

Is today, right now, October 21st 2018 the same God who has gathered you, your family, your friends, you neighbors, your strangers together in this place of worship. 

Our encouragement is found in this reality: 

That the God who made a barren Sarah bear children, 

That the God who gave an old dying man a new born son, Isaac,

That the God who protected Abraham’s descendents enslaved in Egypt,

That the God who delivered Abraham’s descendents out of the house of bondage,

That the God who tore down the walls of Jericho separating God’s people from their promised land,

That the God who made a virgin conceive and give birth to a son,

That the God who sent his only son as the sacrifice to make atonement for our treachery,

That the God who rose Jesus Christ up from the grave is the same God who now has promised 11:40 “something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.”

Application: 

So what is your “By faith” statement? 

What are the ways in which God has called you to rely on him? What are the ways in which God has called you to live “by faith”? 

Is this in regards to an illness, a family situation, a scenario at your workplace, a way in which you spend your time, a way in which you use your resources, a way in which your disposition or attitude is being changed or challenged? 

One of the encouraging aspects about this list is the wide variety of ways in which God empowers his people. For Abraham, he was empowered to take Isaac to the mountain for sacrifice, but for others the scenario was quite different. For Abraham he was empowered to move from one land to a land that God would show him, but for others the scenario was quite different. 

While the scenarios may be different the motivating source of our activity is still the same. If we are found in Christ than it is “by faith” that we can submit to God’s Word, have hope and assurance in God’s promises.

So too for us today! By Faith!