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 Each one of these people of faith died not yet having in hand what was promised, but still believing. How did they do it? They saw it way off in the distance, waved their greeting, and accepted the fact that they were transients in this world. People who live this way make it plain that they are looking for their true home. If they were homesick for the old country, they could have gone back any time they wanted. But they were after a far better country than that—heaven country. You can see why God is so proud of them, and has a City waiting for them.

We have noted before that ”better” is a key word in Hebrews. It is used many times (1:4; 6:9; 7:7, 19, 22; 8:6; 9:23; 10:34; 11:16, 35, 40; 12:24). It can also be translated ”superior”. Everything about Jesus and all He brought in is ”better” than anything enjoyed under the Old Covenant.

In today’s reading we run into the idea of a ”far better country”.

My mum was a big fan of the country singer Jim Reeves. I remember she had an E.P. (45 rpm!!) of Jim singing:

”This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through,
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue;
The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door,
And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.”

I think it is fair to say that the heroes of faith described in Hebrews 11 lived in something of that spirit. When they died, they were still believing that God had something ”better” for them.

It takes me back in thought to the C.S. Lewis quote we considered recently:

”If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.”

Tim Keller said: “All death can now do to Christians is to make their lives infinitely better.” This is Biblically true.

Following Tim’s death in May of this year, Carey Nieuwhof shared certain insightful observations. Here is one that stays with me:

”David Kinnaman and I interviewed Tim in 2021, a year after his pancreatic cancer diagnosis. I asked Tim what he was thinking about day-to-day in light of his diagnosis.

Tim’s honest answer is worth reading and re-reading:

I would say that as a man who was 69 years old, I actually was pretty unfocused because the reality is it doesn’t matter whether you have cancer or not. When you’re approaching 70, you should actually know the time is short. You don’t really have decades anymore. You’ve got years anyway.

And so I should have been more focused, but I was tending to do whatever anybody asked me to do….You’re a nice person, you’re a minister. So you do whatever anybody asks you to do.

And I had no focus. I really didn’t. I wasn’t saying what do I really —if I finally had one year left, two, three, four, five years—what should I be doing? I didn’t have that focus. Now I do.”

All these people were still living by faith when they died. 

These words remind us of the inevitability of death. ‘Death is the ultimate statistic: one out of one dies.’

But they also speak to us regarding the invincibility of genuine faith. It does ‘keep right on to the end of the road.’

As we have seen repeatedly, these Hebrew Christians were tempted to ”shrink back” (10:39). Under the pressure of persecution, they felt the pull to return to the old Jewish religion, and they needed to be severely warned about the spiritual danger they were in (e.g. 10:26ff), and to be exhorted:

”You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised” (10:36).

Jesus warned of a coming time when, He said:

”Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will wax cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24:12,13).

” Integrity is built by defeating the temptation to be dishonest; humility grows when we refuse to be prideful; and endurance develops every time you reject the temptation to give up.” Rick Warren.

PRAYER: Lord God, please help me to keep walking by faith and not sight until that day when faith becomes sight.

And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise. ¹² And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.

The highlighted words above show that Abraham and Sarah were facing double-trouble. It wasn’t just Sarah who was infertile. They were both biologically incapable of having children.

One of the celebrated heroes of the Christian faith said,

‘The borderline of human helplessness is the borderline of divine miracle.’

‘Faith, mighty faith, the promise sees
And looks to that alone;
Laughs at impossibilities
And cries: It shall be done!’ Charles Wesley

‘Got any rivers you think are uncrossable?
Got any mountains you can’t tunnel through?
God specializes in things thought impossible
and he will do what no other power can do…

…God is the same and his word is dependable
He’ll make a way through the waters for you
Life’s situations by him are amendable
Mountains and hills he will part for you too.’

“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness
    and who seek the Lord:
Look to the rock from which you were cut
    and to the quarry from which you were hewn;
² look to Abraham, your father,
    and to Sarah, who gave you birth.
When I called him he was only one man,
    and I blessed him and made him many.” (Isaiah 51:1,2).

This is an example of what can happen when God’s promise and power encounters our barrenness at the borderline.

And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise. ¹² And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.

I read a book some years ago that described prayer as ‘invading the impossible.’

”…even Sarah…”

Here is another thing faith does: it enables.

It enables the miraculous (11).

But note that the miracle is not so much attributed to the believer, nor to her belief, but to the One believed in. Nevertheless, she played her part. We must not miss this.

It is God who is ”able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Eph. 3:20: see verse 12 and Isaiah 51:1,2). But it is ”according to his power that is at work in us…”

It is God who does the ”immeasurably more”;

It is ”his power” that is operative;

Nevertheless, Sarah had her believing part to play (and so do we), and play it she must (and so must we).

But the glory rightly goes to the great miracle-Worker: ”to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen” (Eph.3:20).

So the prayer of faith invades the impossible. But we are not to take this passage to mean we can have any random miracle we pluck out of mid-air. Faith lays hold of what God has said (promised). It therefore has rock upon which to stand.

 By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. ⁹ By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. ¹⁰ For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. 

Faith goes.

If God shows the way, faith is willing to go.

He was probably in his mid-70’s when he went out from his own country. Sarah, his wife, was also elderly. We are never too old to be used in God’s purposes, if we are willing to step out with Him.

Martin Luther wrote:

‘In the first place, it was hard for him to leave his native land, which it is natural for us to love…Furthermore, it is hard to leave friends and their companionship, but most of all to leave relatives and one’s father’s house.’

It is probably hardest of all to leave behind the secure known in advanced years, when every instinct fights to stay with the known and with perceived comfort and safety. But what Abraham and Sarah would have missed if they had remained in their own land! What we would have missed!! So much hung on their going.

Calvin comments on Abraham’s obedience that the patriarch ‘did nothing that was not by the command of God. This is surely one of the principles of faith that we do not move a step unless the Word of God shows the way and shines before us like a lantern.’

It is important to point out that, for all these heroes of faith, although they had great adventures with God in this world, they were strengthened, encouraged and motivated by the hope of the next.

C.S. Lewis observed, “If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth “thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.

It was by faith that Noah built a large boat to save his family from the flood. He obeyed God, who warned him about things that had never happened before. By his faith Noah condemned the rest of the world, and he received the righteousness that comes by faith. (New Living Translation).

By faith, Noah built a ship in the middle of dry land. He was warned about something he couldn’t see, and acted on what he was told. The result? His family was saved. His act of faith drew a sharp line between the evil of the unbelieving world and the rightness of the believing world. As a result, Noah became intimate with God. (The Message).

Faith works (see James 2:14-26).

Faith does certain things in response to what God has said or shown.

It regularly acts in daring and surprising ways.

‘Noah is a splendid example of the attentive believer, eager to hear what God is saying and ready to do what he commands…God said it, so Noah did it.’ (Raymond Brown: ‘Christ above all’, p.201)

Faith responds to God in certain ways that may well cause an unbelieving world to laugh or to loathe. People of faith are operating by a totally different principle to the rest of the world, and so they stand out from the crowd. They are like a light exposing things hidden in darkness. This does not necessarily make them popular. The New English Bible says: through his faith he put the whole world in the wrong.’

‘In every generation Christian obedience has powerful evangelistic value. Men and women are influenced not only by what we say to them, but by the way we respond to what God says to us.’ (Raymond 6 Brown: ‘Christ above all’, p.202).

Genesis 6:22 tells us that Noah did everything as God had commanded him.

But it was not his obedience that put him in the right with God. It was faith; and that faith was exhibited in radical and costly obedience.

 By an act of faith, Enoch skipped death completely. “They looked all over and couldn’t find him because God had taken him.” We know on the basis of reliable testimony that before he was taken “he pleased God.” It’s impossible to please God apart from faith. And why? Because anyone who wants to approach God must believe both that he exists and that he cares enough to respond to those who seek him.

Faith prays.

Enoch prayed. He walked with God. At its heart, prayer is a relationship with God.

Someone said that Enoch walked so far with God, that one day the Lord said to him, ‘You’ve come all this way; there’s no point going back!’

Enoch and all the other people of faith listed in this chapter sought God earnestly, and they did so with the confidence that He would reward them. Raymond Brown notes that God not only reveals His existence to us, but also proves His generosity. Those who seek Him in every day life can testify to His goodness.

He also points this out:

‘The brief Genesis account of his long life contains the fascinating detail that Enoch did not always walk with God. There was a time, it appears, when the walk began. He ‘walked with God after the birth of Methuselah’. It may not be too much to assume that the responsibilities of parenthood forced Enoch to recognise his serious moral and spiritual limitations, and in this experience of inadequacy he may have felt himself cast upon God for help.’ (‘Christ above all’, p.200).

”You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” (Jer.29:13);

”Come near to God and he will come near to you” (James 4:8).

What promises praying people have to feed their faith. The above are just two of many.

By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead.

It is correct to observe, I believe, that faith gives. Indeed, that faith is willing to give its very best. Faith is always involved in giving. This includes trusting God to meet our needs, and also trusting Him to use what we have given for His own purposes.

But the most important point to make here is that it is by faith (in Jesus) that we also come to be regarded as ”righteous” before God. In Scripture faith and righteousness always go together. They are conjoined – inseparable. On this point Abel speaks to us today, even though he is long dead.

We can no doubt think of others today who, although are no longer with us, still speak to us. We remember them with gratitude.

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. ² This is what the ancients were commended for.

³ By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

“I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.” George Washington Carver

As we work our way through this chapter we are going to see what faith does.

First of all, faith understands. The world says, ‘Seeing is believing’, but for people of faith ‘believing is seeing’.

Like Moses, paradoxically, we see the invisible (verse 27).

‘Faith sees the invisible, believes the unbelievable, and receives the impossible.’ Corrie Ten Boom.

Every preacher – or so it seems to me – should take heart from understanding that God created the universe by His almighty Word. What worlds of beauty might He continue to create (and sustain) in the hearts of those who hear His Word expounded?