Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word. We are now on Hebrews chapter 11, which is often called the Hall of Faith. It defines faith as confidence in God’s promises despite perhaps not seeing them fulfilled immediately. There’s a great deal of information that goes with this chapter, like who demonstrated faith and how, and so much more. Let’s listen in. Hebrews chapter 11: The One Indispensable Thing.

February is a big month for the National Football League. Besides the Super Bowl, which has grown into an enormous event in my lifetime, that whole week now seems taken up with related events like, for example, the NFL Honors Show, which features as its highlight the announcement of the latest inductees into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. This year there were five new inductees who will be enshrined, that’s the term they use, into the Hall of Fame and have their bronze bust displayed at their museum in Canton, Ohio. If you visit there, and I’d like to, I’ve never done that, you will see them in the Hall of Honor along with the past 380-some great football players. It’s the biggest honor in the American football world to be enshrined there.

Chapter 11, the best-known section in Hebrews, is called by many the Hall of Faith because similarly it features some extraordinary people from the past with a brief summary as to why they were outstanding in God’s eyes. Reading through it, you can’t miss the fact the author points to one indispensable quality they all shared, and the subject is introduced with these lines: Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it These men of old gained approval, meaning God’s approval, the only approval that ultimately matters. When I hear the word faith today, I often don’t even know what people mean by it. It’s so vague.

I’m never quite sure if the speaker or writer is referring to something akin to what the writer of Hebrews means, that is, confidence in God and His Word, or whether they just mean that someone believes in themselves or believes in the magical power of believing, like the so-called law of attraction in the universe or some similar thing. By definition, faith means to put your trust in someone or something. In the Bible, the someone is God, the something is His Word. What He says is true. It’s very clear that’s how the term is being used here in chapter 11, since the author’s opening example is, By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the Word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. He’s referring to creation.

He’s saying the world didn’t create itself. It exists because of an unseen power, that is God, and it came about, like we’re told in Genesis. None of us were there, of course, and other theories have been posited, but none of them are likely, and they seem to just keep getting replaced. Christians trust God and His Word about how it all happened, and that’s not to say there is no evidence for the claims in Genesis. There is evidence. But again, none of us were there.

So Christians believe the Genesis account based on what God told us in His Word. When challenged, some people smarter than me can cite scientific evidence for the creation and design of the universe, but the author is pointing out we believe things happen the way the Bible says because ultimately we trust God and His Word. We have faith. He launches then into several stellar examples of that kind of faith. These are some of God’s Hall of Fame honorees. They each trusted what God had revealed to them as true when he told them what would happen, even when it seemed highly unlikely and was personally very costly.

For example, he mentions Noah, who believed that what God told him about coming judgment in the form of a universal deluge, even though the idea of flooding the whole earth was very out there at the time when it didn’t even rain. The Bible says that when Noah was given that instruction about building the ark, the earth was watered by mist or dew rising from underground streams. Nevertheless, he believed God, and he and his sons worked on that project for years and years in order to be ready for what God says was coming. And although no one else believed it, it came as God said it would. And when it did, because Noah trusted God and prepared the ark, he and his family were saved. Another example of great faith he calls out is Moses, who, although reared a prince in Pharaoh’s household, when God called him to lead the Jewish people out of Egypt, he obeyed.

In the author’s words, when he had grown up, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to endure ill treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin. By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as one seeing him who is unseen. Because Moses trusted God and believed his word, he rallied the Jewish people then enslaved in Egypt and led the great exodus. The Red Sea parted for them, and the nation of Israel was born. The first readers of this epistle were very, very familiar with that history. Like people touring the Hall of Fame in Canton, debating who is the greatest NFL player of all times, maybe, we could go back and forth about who the greatest example of faith is among all those we read about on the pages of Scripture.

But for my money, it’s got to be Abraham. When I say that, I’m on the bandwagon of the Apostle Paul, who often points to that Old Testament hero in his writings as the greatest example of faith. When God first called Abraham, he lived in what is today southern Iraq, a city-state called Ur. If you’ve ever seen photos of an ancient ziggurat, kind of Mesopotamian pyramid, you were probably looking at what remains of the ziggurat of Ur. It was uncovered in the 1920s by a team of archaeologists and was in the process of being restored in the 1980s by Saddam Hussein when he was interrupted by the U.S. invasion and the Iraq War. I remember seeing photos of U.S. servicemen climbing around on that massive ancient pagan temple, which had been built right around the time of Abraham.

In Genesis chapter 12, where we read about the beginnings of God’s covenant with Abraham, it says, Go forth from your country, from your relatives, from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you; and I will make of you there a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. Verse 8 in our chapter says, Abraham obeyed God and went out from his home country, not even knowing where he was going. If you follow Abraham’s story in the Genesis accounts, he didn’t always get things perfectly. I appreciate the fact that even the greatest heroes of the Bible are shown making sometimes really bad decisions. It’d be hard to identify with them if that was not the case.

So the Bible honestly shows us their lows as well as their highs. But these heroes of the faith extolled in chapter 11 are in God’s hall because, man, their highs were extraordinarily high. Some of the things they did trusting God, I can’t help but be in awe of. In Abraham’s case, the high point of his faith was demonstrated. Well, here’s how the verses in this chapter describe it, starting at verse 17. By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac.

He who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son. He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead, from which he also received him, Isaac, back as a type. You may not know exactly what this is about, so I’m going to tell you, because it was just an astounding display of faith. Part of the unconditional covenant with Abraham was that God was going to create a great nation from his descendants and that all the nations of the world would be blessed through them. I understand that second part. So does the author of Hebrews as a reference to the coming Messiah, to Jesus.

But to have that happen meant Abraham had to have children, and he and his wife did not have any. In fact, seemed incapable of having any. Yet God promised they would, even though they aged well past the years that seemed possible. Abraham’s wife Sarah actually laughed at the idea. But God did give them a son in their old age, and he was appropriately named Isaac, which means laughter in Hebrew. He was a miracle child and the one on whom the promises hinged.

It would be hard to overstate how much Isaac was loved and valued by his father. That’s what makes what we read next in Genesis chapter 22 so shocking. Listen. Now it came about after these things that God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham, take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering. What? Wait a minute.

Offer Isaac like a sacrifice? Amazingly, that was the word from God. Or maybe more amazingly, Abraham set about to obey it. Because the account goes on, so Abraham arose in the early morning and saddled his donkey, took two of his young men and Isaac with him, and they set out for the place that God had told him. And on the third day, Abraham raised his eyes and he saw it from a distance. And he said to the young men with them, Stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go up there and we will worship and then return to you.

Then Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife, and the two of them walked on together. Then Isaac spoke to Abraham and said, Father, we have the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Man, what a question. He’s called a lad here, a boy, so maybe eight, ten, at most twelve years old at the time. He had seen animal sacrifices. Where’s the animal?

he’s asking. How could Abraham even answer such a question? What he said to his son was, God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, son. So the two of them walked on together. I am a father, and I have only one son, so I think I can imagine the things that probably were going on in Abraham’s mind as they climbed that hill together. You might be thinking, This whole story is nuts.

It’s crazy. No one would do such a thing. But you’re looking back through a modern lens. I told you about the ziggurat of Ur for a reason. That pagan temple, the ruins of which are still standing to this day near Ur, was a site for human sacrifices. The ziggurat of Ur was dedicated to the Sumerian moon god Nanna-Suen.

The ziggurat had at its summit an altar, and humans were sacrificed there. When the site was excavated in the 1920s, the archaeological team found death pits around it containing obvious evidence of that. More than 2,000 skeletons were buried there. So yes, Abraham was from a culture, like many pagan cultures, that practiced human sacrifice. Nevertheless, somehow he trusted God, and he led his only son Isaac up that mountain. The text goes on.

Then they came to the place of which God had told him, and Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood and bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Oh my. And Abraham took the knife and stretched out his hand to slay his son. But at the last second, the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, Abraham, Abraham! And he said, Here, I’m here. Can you imagine how hard his heart had to be pounding?

And the angel of the Lord said to him, Don’t stretch out your hand against the lad. Don’t do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me. Whew. Whew. Crazy.

But Abraham would have done it. Listen, the writer of Hebrews, in his commentary on this here at verse 17, says, By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. He who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son, of whom it had been told, In Isaac your descendants will be called. That boy he loved more than anything or anyone else in the world, the one in whom all the promises were invested, Abraham was ready to sacrifice even him if God really demanded that. So how in the world could he do such a thing? Verse 19 answers, He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead.

The answer is, he completely trusted God. The resolution of that dramatic experience for Abraham and Isaac is at verse 13 and following. Then Abraham raised his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram was caught in the thicket by his horns. How providential. And Abraham took that ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the place of his son. And he called that place Jehovah Jireh, meaning, The Lord will provide.

Wow, what a story. What extraordinary faith Abraham displayed. Maybe now, if not before, you understand what the apostle Paul meant when, in Romans 4, as he was doing his best to explain justification by faith, he wrote. Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him as righteousness. Abraham fully trusted God. He’s not presented in the Bible as a perfect man, not at all.

He’s extolled as a person of remarkable faith. He trusted God enough to believe that even if he killed his own son that day on the altar at God’s call, the son on whom all the future promises hinged, God had the power to, and in fact would, raise him up again, because God would never break His word, and Isaac was a part of the promises. Fifty years ago, I was asked to preach at a church in a town a couple hours from where I grew up. I still remember this. I actually preached that Sunday morning on these passages about Abraham and Isaac and God’s promises and faith. I didn’t know much.

I was still in college. I think it was the second time I had ever stepped into a pulpit. But I understood what the writer of Hebrews meant when he wrote at verse 19 that Abraham received his son back, received him back from the brink of death, he meant, as a type. Like many other Old Testament things the author has told us about, this account of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22 was not only something that really happened, it was more than that. It was a type. It was illustrative, to use our word, of something greater that happened 2,000 years later, namely, when God walked with His own Son up the hill called Calvary, and where His own only begotten Son lay down on the cross as a sacrifice for our sin.

In Abraham’s case, at the last second, an atrocity was averted. The ram caught in the thicket nearby became a substitute for Isaac, and that animal was slain in his place. The typology is that Jesus became our substitute. Yet for His Father, when He laid down on the cross, there was no reprieve because there was no possible substitute for what Jesus did. In that case, God actually sacrificed His own begotten Son as an atonement for the world’s sin, yours and mine. Probably the best known verse in Hebrews 11 is verse 6, where it says, Without faith it is impossible to please God, for he who comes to God must first believe that He is, that is, He exists, and that He will reward those who diligently seek Him.

Faith is not one way to please God; it’s the only way to please God. It’s impossible to really please Him any other way. Trusting Him enough to act on what He says is what He’s looking for from us above anything else. It’s the one indispensable thing. I was thinking as I worked on this episode how faith is already kind of built into the human experience, although that doesn’t mean everyone has the kind of faith the author is describing here: trust in God and His Word. That’s for sure.

But we all exercise faith in many ways. We have faith in a pilot, the guys that built the jet, or we’d never board a plane. We have faith in doctors and surgeons; we put our lives in their hands. We have faith in the meat manager at Food Lion and believe what we buy there is safe to eat. We all demonstrate faith every day in many ways, often without even thinking about it, and often in matters we don’t even understand. But with God, it’s somehow different.

With God, many people say they need more evidence, and so they never even get to the starting place with Him. Even though there’s really plenty of evidence all around us in what He’s made, there’s evidence inside of us because we’re created in His image. There’s evidence in history, in the coming of Jesus, His remarkable life, His world-changing teachings, His irrefutable resurrection from the dead. There’s evidence in fulfilled prophecies all throughout the Bible, some coming true right now in our time. And undeniably, there’s evidence in the changed lives of millions who’ve accepted Christ. There’s plenty of evidence.

People will say, I want more evidence in order to believe. God says, Believe, and you will experience more evidence. The problem is, as Paul suggests in Romans chapter 1, many of those who don’t believe God don’t, not for a lack of evidence, but because they do not want to, because of what that would mean, because of the changes that would require. Like the crowd outside Pilate’s judgment hall who heard Jesus, saw His miracles, knew the prophecies about Him, who nevertheless, when asked by the governor, Shall I crucify your king? shouted back, We will not have this man rule over us. Crucify him.

Faith in God is trusting Him even though we don’t see how it’s all going to work out, like Noah building that ark, or Moses turning his back on a life of royalty to side with slaves, or like Abraham walking up that hill with his only son. Do you trust God in what His Word says is true? Do you believe what it tells us about Jesus and why He came? Do you believe what it says about coming judgment and the reality of eternity? We all have the capacity for faith, and we all choose the things and the people in whom we trust. The writer of Hebrews is urging us, trust God, trust His Word.

Join with a long line of people of faith who’ve believed Him and what He says. When he wrote, It’s appointed to man to die once, and after that comes judgment, he doesn’t say, We’re appointed to die twice. No, the second death, the final separation from God and everything good, is our choice. We can decide whether to believe God, to trust the Savior that He sent, to put our faith in the atonement Jesus made on the cross for us and be saved. But if we decide against Him, the author asks, how can we escape if we neglect so great salvation? If we won’t believe Him, if we won’t trust Him, sadly, we won’t, because without faith, it is impossible to please God.

Faith, it’s the one indispensable thing. Thanks for listening to me. This is Paul for Share the Word. Thanks, Paul, and thanks again for joining us. Share the Word is a Great Commission project sharing the big ideas of the New Testament chapter by chapter. We are a crowdfunded nonprofit organization, and wherever you’re listening to this podcast, if you see that follow button, please click on it and follow us.

If you have any questions about this or any other podcast, please email us at info at sharetheword.org. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.