A Sermon on Hebrews 11:8-16,20-22
For past sermons, please visit our Sermon Archives.
This is the transcript of a sermon on Hebrews 11:8-16, 20-22 “Faith & the Unseen.”
If you have your Bibles or your inserts there, please turn with me in those Bibles or take the insert up and at Hebrews chapter 11. Today we’re going to cover verses 8 through 16 and verses 20 through 22.
As we consider the patriarchs, let’s look now at the scriptures that we have before us in Hebrews 11 beginning in verse 8.
“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, no knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.
By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive even when she was past the age since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one man and him as good as dead were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.
These all died in faith not having received the things promised but having seen them and greeted them from afar and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out they would have had opportunity to return 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 for them a city. By faith Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau. By faith Jacob when dying blessed each of the sons of Joseph bowing in worship over the head of his staff.
By faith Joseph at the end of his life made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave directions concerning his bones.”
Let’s pray. To the great God above to the holy father in heaven we do come humbly before these words today asking that your holy spirit would first and foremost open our eyes and our ears so that we can hear and see your glory and your call to faith and to holiness.
Secondly I ask that the holy spirit would open my mouth so that the words of my mouth might be pleasing to you oh God for you are our rock you are our redeemer and lord we ask that you would specifically show us the glories and the goodness of your gospel. We pray all this in Jesus name amen.
INTRODUCTION
As we consider walking through the history of God’s people and seeing how the people of God have lived from since the time of the fall until today and on into the future that the people of God have lived by faith we begin to look at a group of people who are called the patriarchs of Israel—Abraham Isaac and Jacob, and then under the story of Abraham we’ll consider Sarah for a few moments and under the story of Jacob we will talk briefly about Joseph. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are considered to be the founding fathers of the nation of Israel, and we will see today that they lived by faith.
We see also that God is beginning to narrow down his focus, if you will, on bringing about that promised reconciliation, that promise of redemption, that he gave in chapter three of Genesis when he told Adam and Eve and he told the serpent that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the seed of the serpent even at such time as the serpent would strike at the heel of that seed of the woman. The hope has been as we have read through the genealogies that is this next man in the genealogy would be that promised seed of the woman who would provide reconciliation, and then we find out no he is not as he either dies or is taken up as Enoch was because he walked with God.
We also see as we encounter these men and women in the Old Testament that more information is given to us about these men and women. It takes eleven chapters to get from Adam to Abraham, and then from Abraham to his great grandson Joseph takes us the next 39 chapters in the book of Genesis. So we know much more about Abraham Isaac and Jacob and the other people in their lives as we consider them and this hopefully what we’ll see today will be a comfort to us, as well, as we think about living according to faith. God was delighted to be called their God because they live by faith, and today we will consider how they went by faith, how they wandered by faith, how they waited by faith and how this led God to no longer be ashamed to be called their God.
WENT BY FAITH
First, the patriarchs went by faith. If we were to consider the story of Abraham in the book of Genesis oftentimes, like Paul, we have a tendency to go straight to Genesis 15. In Genesis 15 Paul highlights this declaration about Abraham that he believed God when God promised that he would have a son through his own body, through his own marriage, that he would have a son that was a direct descendant of him.
He did not have to adopt his servant but when he believed God Abraham was credited, was counted as righteous before God. Paul in Romans 4 uses this to talk to us about justification, that decree that we are no longer legally guilty before God because of the righteousness of Jesus which we embrace by faith as he offers it to us through grace.
But the author of Hebrews takes us back to Abraham’s initial call in Genesis chapter 12 where God comes to him and says go from your country and from your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you and the author of Hebrews tells us that it was by faith that Abraham went to the land that God had promised to give him.
God promised Abraham that he would lead him to this new land, this land where he would have innumerable descendants and where his descendants would live in peace and prosperity. He promised that he would make Abraham a great nation and Abraham’s response, by faith, was that he got up and went where God called him.
Now remember we must keep in mind as you have heard me say over and over again throughout our walk through this chapter that it was not his getting up and going that made Abraham righteous before God.
It was his faith in God’s promise. That verse in Genesis 15:6 still stands. “Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.”
But we also keep in mind that this being declared righteous before God leads to us acting by faith in ways that God calls us to do. I’ll tell you brothers and sisters one of the reasons I am hitting that fact so hard beyond the fact that it is the most important thing we need to keep in mind. We need to keep the cart before the horse or the horse before the cart.
We need to keep in mind that we are saved by faith but we are also saved for good works. One of the reasons I hit this so hard is I did preach through Hebrews 11 back in 2011, and I went back I thought “Well I’ve got this made I’ve got all these old sermons on Hebrews chapter 11 I’ll just pull them out and work my way through them.” You know what I told you 13 years ago? I told you to go live well and I made faith the minor part of the sermon series.
And so that’s one of the reasons I’m hitting this so hard is because it’s a mistake that I made, and I want us to make sure that we all understand that we all hear that we are not saved by what we do. We are saved by faith in the work of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ just as Abraham believed and we are he was counted as righteous we believe and that is what makes us righteous. It’s nothing that we do it is the faith gifted to us by the grace of God.
But Abraham went to the land out of this faith that he had in God, the faith in God’s promises, the faith in who God was he got up and went in faith.
Wednesday evenings we’ve been looking through God’s mission on this earth in our prayer meeting. We looked at the call to humanity to fill and to subdue the earth in Genesis chapter 1. We looked the next week at Genesis chapter 12 and the blessing that would come through the descendants of Abraham.
But the last two weeks we’ve considered Matthew’s great commission and Mark’s great commission and both of those great commissions begin with the command go. Go into all the world. Sometimes this going involves air travel and learning a new language as we go to Rwanda or to Germany or to France or to anywhere else God might be calling you out of your homeland to go and to proclaim his good news.
But for the average Christian the command to go involves understanding that God has placed you in a home. He has placed you in a career. He has placed you in a community—all for the sake of going into those places to be the gospel light for the darkness that resides within your family within your co-workers within your friends within your community because we are called to go into all the world making disciples of those that God brings into our lives.
We do not go on our own. That passage from Matthew 28 says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” Who has received that authority? Well that’s Jesus speaking there picking up on imagery from Daniel chapter 7 where one like a son of man is given the glory and the authority and the power of God.
But not only has he been given authority over heaven and earth and authority over the church to tell us to go he promises “…and surely I am with you always to the very end of the age.” Why do we know it’s okay for us to go where God calls us to go? Because he’s already there. He’s with us as we go giving us power giving us words through the work of his Holy Spirit and reminding us that whatever he calls us to do he already has authority.
He is king over those places where he has called us to go. Yes by faith Abraham was counted as righteous before God. Because he was counted as righteous before God, by faith Abraham went.
WANDERED BY FAITH
We also see that by faith the patriarchs wandered. Abraham and his sons Isaac and Jacob lived as nomads in the land of Canaan.
For a while they lived together. We can do the math from Genesis and see that Jacob was probably about 15 years old when Abraham died. But they lived in a land of established cities. We know from the accounts of of Abraham’s life and his battle to rescue his his nephew Lot in in chapter 13 or excuse me chapter 14 of Genesis.
We know that there were established cities within the promised land, and yet, as we read through the account of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we see that they lived in tents and the only piece of property that they owned within the promised land was the family plot in the cemetery.
They were strangers and aliens. The the word translated for us in the NIV made his home or in the ESV went to live in verse nine carries with it in the original the sense of living as a foreigner or a stranger.
Living as an alien in the land that it’s the idea of temporary home in a land that God had promised them that they would own. By faith verse 13 says Abraham, Isaac and Jacob admitted and embraced their status as strangers and aliens in that land by faith and this land this faith kept them from the temptation to the return to the land that they had come from when the going got tough. Yes for a time Jacob went back to Haran but that was a temporary travel knowing that he would return to the promised land because God had given him those promises.
The faith that kept them there was faith in the unseen promises that God would build and establish a permanent city for them and their descendants in that promised land. We oftentimes think that maybe they were looking for Jerusalem. Maybe they were looking for that city where God would put his temple, but the author of Hebrews in verse 10 tells us that Abraham was actually looking for a city whose builder and architect was God.
That even though they were in the land that God had promised to give them they were looking for a better country. A heavenly country where they would once and for all and finally reside in peace.
We have read of that city. We have read of that better country as we considered Revelation 21 earlier today both in reading and in song. Remember for the original audience that read these words their temptation was to leave behind faith in Jesus. Faith in Jesus as their only hope for redemption and reconciliation with God and to return to the old country of temple worship and sacrifice, and the author writes to them and says “No look at Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; they wandered as strangers and aliens in the land that God promised to give to them and God recognized and rewarded them for that.”
What is the key to being a great citizen in our country today for the people of the church? Oddly enough it’s realizing that we are strangers and aliens. Foreigners in this land.
We are not Americans living as Christians. We are Christians who by the grace of God have been planted in America to live as Christians. This is not our home, and I think until we can get that truth ingrained into our head and into our heart and to begin to lift our gaze from the cesspool of current political diatribes and put our focus on that city that heavenly city that we long for that we wait for and realize that we are citizens traveling there—until such time as we can do that by faith then we can begin to let go of our idolatry of America and begin to truly be good citizens here because we do not put our hope here; we put our hope in that heavenly city the same heavenly city that Abraham had his hope in. Yes we vote; yes we are involved; but our hope is not in a check mark on a ballot.
Our hope is in that city whose architect and builder is God.
WAITED BY FAITH
The patriarchs went by faith the patriarchs wandered by faith and the patriarchs waited by faith. Verse 11 and 12 we see the story of Sarah.
“By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive even when she was past the age since she considered him faithful who promised.”
Sarah heard Abraham’s call from God to go in Genesis 12. Sarah at least heard from Abraham if not directly God’s promises to Abraham that they would have descendants that outnumbered the stars of the sky and that they would also have that first child that was necessary for that process to begin. But over and over again we are told in Genesis 12 through 20 we are told that Sarah was barren she was unable to conceive.
The author of Hebrews reminds us as well that it wasn’t only a problem with Sarah; even Abraham was too old to produce children. But the author says that by faith Sarah waited and in Genesis 21 we’re given the account of the birth of Isaac—the beginning of the fulfillment of the promise of innumerable descendants.
Now we need to take notice of a few things about their waiting.
First Sarah didn’t Sarah and the rest of the patriarchs which we’ll look at here in a few minutes Sarah did not necessarily wait well.
Sarah tried to take matters into her own hands by giving her maid Hagar to Abraham and Abraham went along willingly to produce an heir. Sarah laughed in God’s face when the angel of the Lord was there in Sarah and Abraham’s tent and said “This time next year when I return you will have a son.” And she laughed in God’s face.
If we were to read through the account in Genesis we will see that Isaac tried to circumvent God’s intentions to bless Jacob rather than Esau.
Jacob tried scheming and lying and treachery to get Isaac’s blessing from Esau. They did not wait well but by faith they waited. Where do you and I doubt the promises of God in our lives because oh man God’s just taking too long, and, since he’s taken too long, I’m just going to take matters into my own hands.
Brothers and sisters, the comfort in this is that God takes even the weakest most faltering, stumbling faith, and He rewards it. It is not the strength or the perfection of your faith. It is the immutable omnipotent power and righteousness of God the triune God that secures our faith. Yes when confronted with the reality that we are not waiting well we turn to God in repentance and renewed reliance upon his promises, but we do not lose hope.
Not only did they not wait well they waited a long time. In Genesis chapter 15 after Abraham is declared righteous because of his faith we hear these words.
“As the sun was setting Abraham fell into a deep sleep and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him.Then the Lord said to him know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and they will be enslaved and mistreated 400 years.”
That’s a long time 400 years. On average each of us is going to get what 75 to 78 on average which means that the author of Hebrews is correct when he said these all died in faith or as the NIV puts it they died living by faith.
There are promises of God given to you given to me that are yes and amen in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that will most definitely come to pass because God has made those promises, and yet we may not see fulfilled in this lifetime. Doesn’t make it any less real. Doesn’t make your faith any less important, but you and I must deal and understand and live by faith in light of the truth that God in his sovereignty works in His time.
That healing that you long for, for yourself or for a loved one may be delayed until it can be given perfectly in the presence of God.
That thorn in your flesh may not be removed until you see Jesus face to face.
That child, that parent, that friend, that brother or sister that you have been praying for to come to faith may not come to faith until after you’re gone. But we still live by faith and we still know that God rewards those who live by faith.
We should approach our deathbed as Jacob did worshiping God even as he was too feeble to get up himself and had to lean upon a staff in order to praise and to worship God. Or like Joseph who made plans for future generations, knowing that God would keep his promises and yet also knowing that he would not see them. The patriarchs waited by faith.
CONCLUSION
The patriarchs went, they wandered and they waited by faith and while there are many rewards for that there are two highlighted in this passage.
First, and this is one that we’ve already touched on throughout the service today, is that new and better country. That city whose foundation, whose architect, whose builder is God. Take some time this week to meditate on the promises and the glorious description of that city in Revelation 21.
God is going to call each of us to go, to wander, to wait, but when he does we must keep that heavenly city in our mind. That is what motivates us. That is what moves us. That is what keeps us in faith.
And secondly, brothers and sisters, it’s the verse we opened our service with. The second reward is the knowledge that therefore God is not ashamed to be their God.
When those 400 years had passed and Moses is in the wilderness and God calls Moses to lead his people out of slavery and Egypt, Moses says, “well, on whose authority,” basically is what he’s saying, “on whose authority am I going to tell these people all these things?” And God says, “My name is ‘I am that I am. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’” As sinful, as faltering as these men were, God chose to name himself the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob because they had faith in him.
Jesus later on, when he is arguing about the resurrection from the dead with the Sadducees, he references this title, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to say that God is the God of the living, not of the dead. For all of their failures in the faith, God still says I am their God and they are my people. For all your failures in the faith, God still says I am their God and they are my people.
In Psalm 95, we have these words.
“Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord. Let us shout aloud to the rock of our salvation.
Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. For the Lord is the great God, the great king above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it and his hands formed the dry land.”
The great creator God, the all-powerful, infinite God, then says this. “
Come, let us bow down in worship. Let us kneel before the Lord, our maker, for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.”
He delights in us, his children, who are his children by faith. Yes, we stumble. Yes, we fall. But he is not ashamed of us in Christ.
Have you come to God by faith?
If not, hear and obey his call to come to him by faith today. Hear and obey his call by faith so that his wrath and judgment can be removed from you and be replaced with his delight and his adoption.
If you have come to God by faith, live in the knowledge that regardless of your stumbles, regardless of your sin, regardless of your stubbornness, he still delights in you and is not ashamed to be claimed as your God. Take comfort, brothers and sisters.
In Christ, God is not ashamed to be called your God.
Let’s pray.
To the God above, help us to live in the hope of that city that Abraham longed for.
Help us to live in the hope of that city that is so gloriously and beautifully described in Revelation 21. And Lord, help us to know that in Christ you delight in us. In Christ, you are not ashamed of us.
In Christ, we are your children and you are our God. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
As you go this week, take this blessing upon you. Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep. May God equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever.
He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.”
Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!
This transcript of a sermon on Hebrews 11:8-16, 20-22 “Faith & the Unseen” has been lightly edited for readability.
Please visit our Facebook page.