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SERMON OF THE MONTH
Scripture: Hebrews 11.1-16
In Good Company
To fully
appreciate the depth of our text from Hebrews, we have to remember, to keep in
view, that ‘faith’, or ‘belief’, (1) is itself always understood as a gift of
and from God; and (2) that ‘faith’ or ‘belief’ is not subscribing to a set of
beliefs – it is living as if what you believe to be true, even though you can’t
see it, taste it, touch it, hear it or smell it – living as if what you believe
to be true with little or no evidence is as true for you as all the things you
can see, taste, touch, smell and hear.
That, really, is the author of
Hebrews’ whole point . . . the people of faith he or she mentions were people of
faith and we can know that by what they did . . . not by what they said. And
what they did, what ties them all together, is act upon their beliefs, often to
their own peril, their own danger, at least in human terms.
Long ago an experiment was done with
babies placed on a black and white checkerboard floor. On one section, the
‘checkerboard tile’ was some distance below them, but there was clear plexiglass
that continued the actual flooring. But the babies could not see or discern the
plexiglass. And they all refused to continue to crawl once they came to the
checkerboard, because their senses told them they would fall if they did.
From this, scientists discovered that
babies have depth perception.
Think of us human beings as giant
crawling babies.
The evidence of whether we have this
thing called faith or not is whether we will step into what might seem to us
like empty space, simply because God has told us that there really is somewhere
for our feet to land.
It is believing God more than we
believe anything or anyone else, even ourselves.
Thus the author of Hebrews proclaims
that faith is the ‘assurance of things hoped for, the conviction (the sure
belief) in things not seen.’
By that assurance, by that conviction, the ancestors, the ones who came before,
who act as witnesses to us, even today, received understanding and divine
approval.
The understanding that they received was twofold: (1) that God is the author and
creator of all – in other words, that God is God, or more succinctly, that God
is; and (2) that God is a God to be trusted; that God is faithful to God’s own
promises.
In the beginning of a lengthy litany
of the cloud of witnesses, the author of Hebrews offers a beautiful and
challenging picture of this thing we call faith . . . ‘by faith Abel offered . .
. by faith, Enoch was taken up by God. . . by faith, Noah heeded. . . by faith,
Abraham obeyed. . . by faith, Sarah. . . got pregnant . .
By faith, Abel offered what? A
sacrifice ‘more’ acceptable [lit. greater] (than Cain’s) what did Abel get?
God’s approval. So that even though Abel died, ‘he still speaks’, a reference to
Gen. 4.10, where Abel’s blood cries out from the ground as a protest against the
violence done to him, a violence that pollutes even the very ground upon which
we walk. We would do well, perhaps, to remember that the modern notion that
ground is ‘sacred’ because of the human blood that is spilled upon it is
contradicted by Genesis, where God pronounces the very ground to be cursed
because of Abel’s spilled blood.
By faith Enoch . . . was taken up
(note the passive, applicable only to Enoch - the author refers to what happens
to Enoch as the result of his faith, rather than detailing what the works of his
faith were). Why was Enoch taken up (w/o dying?) - because he pleased God. You
can only please God if you have faith. Why? Well, says the author, stating the
obvious, belief in God requires faith – to approach God, one must have faith in
two things: (1) that God exists; and (2) that God rewards those who seek God, or
in other words, that God is a faithful God who will do as He says.
By faith Noah . . . heeded
(respected) God’s warning about things ‘unseen’ (took God’s word to heart with
no evidence to support God’s claim about what was to happen - remember, a flood
like this had never happened before.
Noah’s faith prompts an extraordinary
statement in Hebrews in verse 7 – Noah and his faith ‘condemned’ the world! The
Bauer-Danker A Greek-English Lexicon makes this observation about condemnation,
“The conduct of one person, since it sets a standard, can result in the
condemnation before God of another person whose conduct is inferior.”
The same language is used in Matthew
and Luke, when Jesus is asked by the scribes and Pharisees for a sign. Jesus
tells them that the Ninevites who repented because of the warning from Jonah and
the Queen of Sheba, who believed because of the words of Solomon, will “rise up
and condemn this generation” at the judgment, because the Ninevites and Sheba
believed through the words of lesser prophets than the one standing right in
front of them in the person of Jesus. Sheba and Ninevites belief condemns the
lack of belief by the scribes and pharisees
It is not Noah who condemns the world, but Noah’s reliance upon the faithfulness
of God.
It’s interesting how we humans try to pull others ‘down’ to our own level -
maybe this is at least partly why - we seem to instinctively know that when
someone is particularly good, they can make our sins seem particularly bad - if
they fall, then we aren’t so bad . . . are we?
By faith Abraham . . . obeyed . . .
went, not knowing where he was going . . . He didn’t even have a map - no GPS,
no AAA trip tick, only God’s word to guide him . . . and by faith he and his
family lived like strangers in a foreign land for a very long time . . . in
tents . . . like refugees . . . why? Because Abraham looked forward to God’s
promise rather than backward to where he had come from . . .
By faith Sarah got the power to
conceive a child . . . because She considered God faithful who had promised her
a child.
All of them, these ancestors in the
faith, died without having received the promises . . . they only ‘saw’ the
promises from a distance - from a far country . . . and lived out their lives as
pilgrims in a foreign land . . . living as people seeking a home . . . Living as
refugees, IDP’s . . . they could have gone back to their old homes, but they
desired a better land, a better country and so they took the risk of relying on
God and died anyway . . .
So what was the point? What did they
get for all their effort? All their sacrifice? All their faith? Well, the
interesting thing is that the author of Hebrews can only tell us about that
based on his or her own faith . . . “Therefore God is not ashamed to be called
their God; indeed, [God] has prepared a city for them.” . . . This is the writer
of Hebrews’ proclamation of faith: that we who believe are going towards
something . . . a destination worthy of the journey . . . the very city of God!
And note what the text does NOT say -
it does NOT say that Abel or Enoch or Noah or Abraham or Sarah had easy lives .
. . It does not say they were rewarded with riches . . . It does not say they
lived out their lives in safety and harmony . . . Indeed, Abel was murdered by
his own brother . . . Enoch we don’t know much about . . . Noah survived a
holocaust of the whole world . . . Having to rebuild everything when he was
already an old man . . . Abraham lived much of his old age as a wandering
Bedouin nomad in a tent, and Sarah with him . . . With no child to comfort her
until she was very near to her own death . . .
None of them saw the promises of God this side of heaven . . .
And yet they believed . . .
I don’t know why they believed . . .
But make no mistake about it . . .
If your belief depends on a good life . . .
There will come a time when your
belief will crumble . . .
For as Jesus himself said, ‘it rains on the just and the unjust alike’
but if you can manage to trust when there’s no reason
believe when there’s no evidence
take a step when it looks like only an abyss is before you . . .
To have faith when all is darkness
the light will dawn upon you
it will come
and in the meantime, you will be standing in good company
indeed
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McDowell Presbyterian Church & Headwaters
Chapel