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August 15, 2010
“Here We Go Again!”
Hebrews 11: 29 – 12: 2/Luke 7: 11 - 17
Sunday, August 15, 2010
This past Wednesday, a deacon and an elder were looking at the first draft of the bulletin for this Sunday. They were checking the Scripture passages that were printed in the bulletin, and I heard one say “Oh Yeah, Pastor is back and we are printing half of the New Testament is the second lesson.” I know some of the passages I select for our Worship Services are somewhat lengthy but I do try to keep them from being too long.
Actually, for the sake of brevity I did not print or read the entire passage I want us to look at this morning. The subject of this passage is people who demonstrated great faith. The passage begins with the rather well-known statements of the first 2 verses of chapter 11 of the Epistle to the Hebrews. There Paul writes “Now Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval.”
The rest of chapter 11 is devoted to reminders of various folks who demonstrated great faith in God. Those referred to are Abel, the murdered son of Adam, Enoch who walked with God without passing through death, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, the parents of Moses and Moses himself. As our second reading began in verse 29 of chapter 11 we read about more people of great faith. Some are mentioned by name, others by the defining events of their lives.
Here we find a reference to the Israelites who came out of Egypt with Moses and crossed the Red Sea or sea of reeds on dry land. Next we find their children and grandchildren who 40 years later witnessed the falling of the walls of Jericho. In connection with the fall of Jericho we find the name of Rahab, previously a citizen of Jericho who sheltered Israel’s spies and embraced the God of Israel.
Then we find more people mentioned by name: Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, and Samuel.
The first 4 of these were Judges who ruled portions of Israel before the Kings, These were men of great faith whom God used to deliver parts of Israel from their enemies. When you read the stories of their lives, you will see that they also had their weak moments. They had occasions when their behaviors did not please God.
David was the greatest of the kings of Israel. He built Israel into a mighty nation by his acts of faith in God, but he also had his great failings.
Samuel is mentioned because he was a great prophet, appointing the first two kings of Israel but he is also mentioned as being one of the many prophets of Israel. Some of the deeds of faith accomplished by some of the prophets are mentioned here. The one who shut the mouths of Lions was Daniel. The ones who quenched raging fire were Daniel’s three companions, Shadrach, Mesach, and Abednego.
The women who received their dead by resurrection were The widow of Zerepath and the woman of Shunem. The son of the former was raised by Elijah and the son of the latter was raised by Elisha. In the generation just before the author of this epistle, other women had had their loved ones raised from the dead by Jesus. One of those accounts was our first reading this morning.
Some of you might be familiar with some of the successful TV preachers of our day and previous years. I find fault with a lot of them not because I compete with them, but because some of them preach a false or truncated gospel. Many of them preach some form of the prosperity gospel, the gospel of Success, whose primary thrust is that God loves us and wants us all to be materially prosperous and successful in our careers. This passage would up to this point seem to agree with those preachers because all of the aforementioned were blessed by God materially for their faithfulness.
But then in the middle of verse 35 our author begins to open other categories of believers. Let me read what our author says about them. “Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Other suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in the skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented – of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.”
These folks are singled out for commendation as having great faith because they would not give up their faith in God to escape torture and persecution and poverty. The word that is used for torture here implies being stretched out on a rack and beaten to death. This happened to many Jews who suffered during the Maccabees’ rebellion against Antiochus Epiphanes about 200 BC. These exploits are not mentioned in our bible, but they are a part of the History of the Jews described in the books of the Maccabees. In II Macabees the tortures and deaths of a woman and her seven sons is described. They refused to abandon their God and their Hebrew ways, so they were killed.
Our author tells us that they refused to accept release in order to obtain a better resurrection. A resurrection better than and of a different kind than that of those who were brought back to life and given to their mothers. They were striving for an eternal resurrection.
It is interesting that one of the signs of faith given earlier was that the faithful escaped from the edge of the sword, now we find that one of the signs of the faithful is that they killed by the sword. Both can be a sign of godliness.
We who are prosperous and do not suffer for our faith need to be careful lest be look down on those fine Christians who are in our own time facing poverty and persecution because of their faith. We need to pray for them and support them in every way we can.
It is interesting to note how the blessing and sufferings worked out in the lives of those who have been alluded to in this passage. Jeremiah escaped the death sentence of King Jehoiakim, while his contemporary, the faithful prophet Uriah was killed by Jehoiakim. According to Jewish tradition, Jeremiah was later stoned to death by Jews in Egypt. In the New Testament, we see James the Apostle killed by Herod, and Peter being delivered from the same fate by an angel. According to Jewish Tradition, Isaiah was sawn in half with a wooden saw.
Several of the prophets wore animal skins; Elijah, Elisha, and Ezekiel, and in the New Testament, John the Baptist.
Then after holding up all these people who did great things because of their faith, our author wrote “Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.”
Now remember, he had already stated that some of those who suffered torture refused to be released because they were seeking a better resurrection than just being brought back to this life. The means to that resurrection was not achieved until Jesus died and rose from the dead. Those great people of faith who lived before Jesus did not receive all that they were hoping for until Jesus came. They will receive their resurrections with those of us who believe in and will be raised from death by the power of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
But the author of this epistle has gone through the entire 11th chapter giving his readers descriptions of great people of faith to make his point in the beginning of chapter 12. It is easy to spot because it begins with a Therefore. He wrote “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us,”
I think he is referring to the people of great faith as witnesses in two senses. First of all they have witnessed or demonstrated to us what can be done if one has great faith. They have shown us what we can do if we act on our faith.
They are also witnesses in the sense that they are observing us. Now I do not think that this passage teaches that dead Christians observe what is going on down here. But I think we are to imagine them looking down, encouraging us to live as they lived, rooting us on in our race.
Ah, Yes, the race. What race? The race that we live with our lives before God. Our author likens the Christian life to a race because in order to compete in a race you must get rid of extra weight. In our case that is not physical weight, it is the sins that hold us back. We need to get rid of them and live our lives to please God.
The reason I am preaching on this passage today is that many of us are about to start a new lap in this race of our lives. School is starting soon. Some of us will be starting a new school year as teachers and professors and school nurses. Some of us will be starting to teach Sunday School for another year. Some of us will soon be starting college as students. Some of us will be going back to school as students.
Some of us are in other laps of the race of our lives; the recently retired and long retired laps. These bring their own challenges and pains and limitations.
Whatever lap you are in or soon to begin in the race of your life, run it well, taking as examples the great people of faith who lived lives honoring God. But don’t look to them or focus on them. Look to Jesus, the one who has given us our salvation and who does watch us from his throne in heaven. Do all to please Him in your work and in your rest and in your retirement, getting rid of things that keep you from doing your best, and striving to please Him in all things.
Pastor David Horner
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at August 15, 2010 06:38 PM