Sermons from the Epistle to the Hebrews

By Faith, Step Forth

Hebrews 11:8-16

September 23, 2001

Last summer our family made a 3,000-mile trip up the east coast and back again-all in 8 days. I will never forget the skyline of Manhattan as we crossed from New Jersey into New York. The skyscrapers gleamed in the brilliance of the sun. We spotted the Empire State Building, a massive structure that had captured my imagination since I was a small child. And just beyond it we could see the unmistakable imprint of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. The symbol of American economic success and ingenuity seemed to be embodied in that skyline.

September 11^th changed all of that. What seemed so permanent vanished before the eyes of millions of on-lookers. My sister-in-law called me as I sat in my study pondering the events that were just unfolding, and in almost a frantic and certainly heartbroken tone, said, "Phil, the building just collapsed! It is gone! I cannot believe it is happening before my eyes." News of the Pentagon being struck came to light, along with the intention of the fourth jet foiled by divine mercy through the brave intervention of a few men. My quiet, serene, and admittedly comfortable world as a citizen of the United States faced an abrupt jolt. With you, I have wept, and prayed, and pondered day and night how the country I've known for 47 years changed in just minutes.

The question that I've had to ask is this, "How do you live in times like these?" Our minds virtually seethe with scenes of carnage and destruction; our thoughts reverberate with fears and anguish; the thought of more of the same is difficult to stomach. Our lives and plans have been invaded by cruel intruders that have no interest in helping us achieve our goals or satisfy our desires for what we believe are the good things in life. We cannot turn back the clock so that the events of September 11^th might be erased from our thoughts. So how do we live in light of all that has happened to undo us? Do we fold the tent, wallow in despair, lash out in anger, point fingers at government agencies, or hide away in bunkers? Never! As Christians living in America (not simply as Americans) we must step up to the challenge before us. By faith, step forth.

The Bible never candy-coats the events of life. From Adam's fall in the Garden to the cataclysm of the flood to the wrecking of nations to the prophecies of the destruction of Jerusalem, men have endured great hardships and suffering. The collapse of Israel under the Assyrians and Judah by the hand of the Babylonians offered no simple transitions of political power. Carnage, destruction, suffering, and misery were the lot of the ancient divided kingdom. I need not recount the innumerable examples in history and even in modern times that tell the extent of suffering faced by these people.

But that was them not us, we might say. If we are to know how to live in these times then we must learn from our brethren of the past; we must see how they walked with God through the most difficult times imaginable. It is captured in this simple phrase: by faith, step forth. How are we to step forth by faith? Our text comes to us in timely fashion as a balm for our wounds and a light to our path. Let us consider the stepping forth of faith.

I. A word to obey

Obedience and faith go together. Some have tried over the past few years to separate them as though you can have one without the other, and that obedience is unnecessary if you have faith. But such alienation of obedience and faith has no root in Scripture. It is an attempt to accommodate the pragmatism of modern Christianity that goes heavy on talk but light on walk. Faith is never a passive attitude or merely a state of mind. Nor is it the power of positive thinking, as the likes of Peale and Schuller have implied. Faith involves the deep affection of the heart and mind toward Jesus Christ, and goes forth in obedience. Paul even expresses it like this in Romans 6:17-18, "But thanks be to God that though you were slaves to sin [the unregenerate condition], you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching [the gospel] to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness." The Apostle was not discussing a higher level of Christian living that a few attain but most never reach. He was speaking of what it is to be a Christian. You believe this gospel of the crucified and risen Son of God with the affections of the heart and it naturally leads to the obedient submission of your life to him. There is no room in biblical teaching to claim to have faith without it springing forth in some measure of obedience. "Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself" (James 2:17).

What does all of this have to do with the faith of Abraham? "By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going." Faith and obedience are married in this passage, offering us a clear grasp of what it means to trust the Lord.

1. God calls

God called Abraham. That does not mean that God called him to preach or to missions or to some act of service. The context is very clear. God called Abraham out of his paganism and idolatry into relationship with himself. "By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed...." When Joshua was recounting the story of faith for the people of God he spoke of Abraham's past: "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, 'From ancient times your fathers lived beyond the River, namely, Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, and they served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan" (Joshua 24:2-3). Abraham did not have this neat notion of being a follower of the Creator God. He was an idolater. But God met him in his sin, idolatry, and rebellion, just as he does with each of us who are believers, and "called."

Jesus spoke of this call in John 10:27-28, "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they know Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand." And again, "I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd" (10:16). We hear His voice through the proclamation of the gospel and applied by the Holy Spirit. His calling awakens us from the dead, and like Abraham, brings us to life so that we might believe and follow Him.

How do we know that Abraham heard the voice of God, whether in his heart or audibly? "Abraham...obeyed." The call of God through the gospel brings us out of rebellion into an obedient dependence upon Jesus Christ. Abraham "obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going." Even though the details were not clear to him, the voice of God was unmistakable. Abraham decided that he would rather have God and his promises than all the riches of ancient Ur.

The gospel of Christ has this same power to call us out of darkness to faith in Christ. Kevin Millard just returned from Albania and related the story of Klement, a student that he met in 1993 shortly after arriving in Tirana. Klement was from a Muslim family but claimed to be more atheistic than anything else. While Kevin was conversing with some other students, Klement overheard the conversation and began to ask questions. The call of the gospel awakened him, and before long Klement trusted Christ and followed Him in baptism at a Tirana lake. Though only a teenager, he faced persecution from family and friends for his faith in Christ. He was beaten for reading the Bible in his home. Even though he was kicked out of his home and had to sometimes sleep out in the open while attending the university, he graduated with the highest marks in his engineering class. By faith he obeyed. His obedience has led him to continue following Christ in spite of the opposition and to begin a regular bible-teaching ministry with Muslim children. He told Kevin that God has been leading him to be a pastor-teacher and to start a church. The call of God took him from atheism to obedience as an ambassador for Christ. God calls.

2. God sustains

The remarkable issue in this verse is that with that one call of God, Abraham launched out on a journey that would never take him back to the comforts and false security of his homeland. We find that with the call of God, and our obedient faith, He sustains us. "By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going." Do you suppose that Abraham tried to discuss this situation with God? 'Now I'm not so sure about leaving Ur. You know that I've got lots of business opportunities here. My family is here too. Where is it exactly that you are sending me? Can you tell me a little about it, what the people are like, what business opportunities are there, what I can expect?'

The text suggests something else: "when he was called, [he] obeyed." There was no hesitation, no bargaining, no floundering, and no reconsiderations. God called. Abraham obeyed. He learned something very important at the outset. The Lord who saves us owes us no explanations. By faith Abraham "went out, not knowing where he was going," or as the King James Version so eloquently expresses it, "not knowing whither." The God who calls us to embrace him by faith is the God who sustains us through that same faith. Our response to Him is to follow, to trust God's own revelation of Himself to us given in the Word. I sometime think of how with that one call by God, Abraham left everything and wandered out into the desert in obedient faith. He had no Scripture. He had no full revelation of God as we do in the Bible. With the slimmest grasp of God Abraham found that the Lord would be faithful to his own character. This is the thrust of the Hebrews 11 message to the weary and struggling believers: by faith God sustains those he calls. It is in the unseen and the unknown, the adverse and the perplexing, that the mettle of faith is tested and the sufficiency of our God comes through. We are justified by faith, and by this same faith we stand in the grace of God so that "we exult in hope of the glory of God" (Romans 5:1-2). In spite of threats, terrorists, crumbling buildings, and economic woes, God sustains those He calls. Do you believe this? Then, by faith, step forth.

II. A promise to anticipate

How did Abraham step forth in faith? That question is answered in the next few verses, explaining to us that he anticipated the promise of God, and therefore continued on in obedient faith. There is almost an oxymoron in verse 9, "By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise." He was in the very land that God had promised him but he was still an alien there, living as a foreigner. The only thing he owned was a cave for burying the dead and the piece of ground surrounding it. He anticipated something more than a plot of ground just as every Christian must anticipate something more than temporal blessing. Most of the believers across the globe are certainly not prosperous, and many are in poor health. But they are Christians! And they are able to continue stepping forth in faith because of the promises of God that await fulfillment for them. The anticipation of God's promises through the gospel keep them pressing on, and so also with us.

1. Seeing the unseen

One of the worst difficulties we face is that of being overly attached to the world around us. Think about twelve days ago when you saw the smoke and fire billowing from three of the most cherished buildings on the American landscape. You have watched over and over the collapse of two of them, and looked with horror upon the sight of the Pentagon's gaping wound that entombed its dead. The World Trade Center took ten years to build and only a couple of hours to be reduced to a million tons of rubble. Countless jobs have already been lost due to the destruction wrought on that day. Our economy teeters with gloom, and the threat of loss and change looms before us. But we must see the unseen. Abraham, and later Isaac and Jacob, were "looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God." In contrast to living in tents, Abraham looked for the city with eternal foundations. Tent pegs, guy-lines, and animal skins flapping in the breeze were constant reminders to this man of faith that there was more to come. God did not call him out of Ur just for a plot of ground but to enter the eternal city, "whose architect and builder is God." Because his eyes were on the unseen, Abraham was able to endure the temporal knowing that he was now part of the eternal.

Was Abraham a dreamer? a disillusioned, self-deceived madman? He had left the prime city of his day, a land that was full of ancient industry and magnificent buildings, but the center of idolatrous worship. Abraham waited expectantly (that's the meaning of "looking") for the fulfillment of God's promises. And that is what faith in Christ does to Abraham's children (those who are of faith-Gal. 3:29). Faith builds in us that sense of anticipation to receive all that is promised us through Christ. The word that Paul and Peter use so often to describe this is "inheritance." The Holy Spirit "is given as a pledge of our inheritance" (Eph. 1:14). Because of our living hope through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead you have "an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you" (I Peter 1:4). It is in seeing the unseen that we have the motivation to keep pressing forward in faith regardless of the difficulty or even dangers in the way. Like Abraham, we look for the city that is eternal-which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

2. Faithful who promised

Faith is no simple, positive-thinking state of mind. How can you exercise mind over matter when sand is blowing through your tent flaps and you own nothing upon which you can erect a permanent home? Sometimes things are not so very positive. In faith we are never called upon to abandon reason completely to follow our feelings (this is known as fideism); rather we are to exercise reason upon the truth of God so that we might trust in Him. That is exactly what Abraham did. Both he and Sarah realized the impossibility of having a child, but they (the context seems to imply both rather than just Sarah) "considered Him faithful who had promised." Reason alone would lead to despair in their situation. They would have given way to rationalizing upon God's command, stating how impossible and unreasonable it was of God to call them away from civilization to go to this unknown land and bear a son when Sarah was well beyond childbearing age. But their reasoning married faith so that they counted on the faithfulness of God to sustain them in their pilgrimage.

We have been hearing a lot about "faith" in the past couple of weeks. And it is true that everyone has some capacity and exercise of faith. It is just that faith itself is worthless other than to give one an emotional boost in tough times. Real faith-the kind spoken of in this chapter and through Scripture is all about trusting in the faithfulness of God. Faith looks to the integrity of God, the absoluteness of his attributes and character, to do what he has promised. Paul reminded the spasmodic Thessalonian believers who were so characterized by ups and downs, "Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass" (I Thess. 5:24). Faith is, believing that God is who He says He is and will do what He says He will do (Heb. 11:6). Leon Morris has rightly expressed, faith is not "a good guess based on the best human estimate of the possibilities," it is relying upon the faithfulness of the God who has revealed Himself ultimately through Jesus Christ [EBC, 117]. "To leave the certainties one knows and go out into what is quite unknown-relying on nothing other than the Word of God-is the essence of faith, as the author sees it," adds Morris [118].

The Lord is faithful. Do you believe this? Then, by faith, step forth.

III. A truth to confess

Now our writer recaps something of the faith exercised by Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Sarah: "All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth." None of them received what God later gave to their descendents in terms of land and a nation, nor did they find that city with a foundation whose architect and builder was God while in this life. But they persevered by faith. That is what this ancient pastor wants us to see. This is what we need right now as our Christianity is tested to see how it fares in the crucible of international trouble. Will we persevere by faith in our God who promises through Christ?

We might ask Abraham and the other patriarchs, was it worth it? Was it worth all the trouble and agony you endured to walk by faith in the Lord? Here is what our writer tells us: they welcomed the promises of God from a distance. The word "welcomed" literally means to greet or hail someone from afar. Suppose a few years back before air travel became popular that you took a ship voyage across the ocean. After many months, maybe even years, you arrived back to the United States. You crossed under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge as you entered the Upper Bay. You catch a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty and the Ellis Island Monument. Your heart begins to pound. You gaze in the distance to the wharf where you will dock because you know that your loved ones will be gathered to welcome you. At first sight you begin to wave, and they do the same. You call out to each other over the roar of the crowd and groan of the ship's engines. You wait in eager anticipation of being joined to those that are your own.

That is what Abraham and the others mentioned here were doing. Though they had not reached the shore, they welcomed from afar the promises of God. They could not touch them but they saw them. They had not experienced the fullness of these promises but found the greatest delight in anticipation of them. They found the promises of God to be food, delight, joy, and pleasure. They enjoyed and lived in the promises of God from afar.

We are called to the same anticipation from afar! I think John Piper has captured the heart of this.

Faith "seeks" another country. It sees the promise from afar, is stunned by it and greets it and begins to confess...to being a stranger and sojourner here.... There are many people who water down what saving faith is by making it a mere decision with no change of what one "desires" and "seeks." But the point of his text is that living and dying by faith means having new desires and seeking new satisfactions [www.soundofgrace.com/piper976-29-97.htm].

1. Strangers and exiles

When you welcome the promises of God from a distance then it changes your affections in this world. Notice the confession: "they were strangers and exiles on the earth." And again, "For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own. And indeed if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return." This worldly existence is not the end-all. A hedonist is one who lives for the moment, who is consumed by pleasure, and bound by the indulgences of this world. If you are a hedonist, then when buildings and economies begin to crumble around you, then you have nothing for which to live. Those who are in greatest despair at this time in our nation are those who are not living as "strangers and exiles on the earth."

We must not think that Abraham's sense of being a stranger was merely cultural difference. He was part of the culture of his day, though not ensnared by its weaknesses. He engaged in the political and social opportunities around him, and was even well respected by those of the world. But he knew that this world was not his permanent home. And as lovely as it is with all of the opportunities for education, recreation, enjoyment, travel, and pleasure, when you are a Christian you must grow by faith into the realization that this world is not your final home. You are a sojourner on mission as an ambassador for Christ, living as salt and light for those about you, but keeping your desires on what God has promised ahead. And there is no turning back. These men of faith "had opportunity to return," but refused to do so because "they were seeking a country of their own." No more pigpens for those who have faith in Christ!

2. The pleasure of God

There is one more arresting thought to help encourage us. "But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them." Faith so affects our desires that there is a new longing for the believer: to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven (II Cor. 5:2). It is those who have this desire that he said, "God is not ashamed to be called their God." Why is He not ashamed to be called Abraham's God or Enoch's God or Sarah's God? The reason is very simple, "they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one." By faith the believer looks for the unseen, looking beyond the pleasures of this world to the eternal dwellings in the presence of the Lord.

I must ask this question, "Is God ashamed to be called your God?" Only if your desire is more for the world than for Him and the promises that He has given you. Do you agree with this? The, by faith, step forth.

Conclusion

By faith, let us purify our desires and set our affections on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God (Col. 3:1). "Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth," Paul counsels, "for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory" (Col. 3:2-4). By faith, step forth. Hear the call of God, anticipate the promise of God, and confess the truth of God that this world is not your final home.

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