What Does Our Faith Do (Hebrews 11:13-16)

It is not entirely clear who the writer is speaking about in these verses we are considering. Given that previously he mentioned the faith in action of Abel, Enoch, Noah and Abraham, we might think he is referring back to them. The problem with that suggestion is that the writer says that those he is referring to all died in faith, and Enoch did not die, but was taken to heaven without dying. So some suggest that the author has in mind the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob rather than the older names in his list. Since it is not possible to be certain, I think we should take his words as speaking generally of all those ancient believers and refer his words to them all apart from Enoch.  

Necessity of faith

As noted, the writer mentions how, of the names so far in his list of those who died, they all died in faith (apart from Enoch). They died in a range of circumstances. Abel was fairly young when he was murdered by his brother Cain, Noah’s was nine hundred and fifty when he died, Sarah died when she was one hundred and twenty-seven years old, and Abraham died when he was one hundred and seventy-five years of age. Abel and Noah may always have been believers whereas Abraham and Sarah were in their sixties or seventies when God appeared to him in Ur and called them to begin a journey into the unknown, unknown apart from what he had told them. They all had an interesting story, but what mattered ultimately is how they died. They died in faith.

The same is true of ourselves. Life is passing, but what was it all about? When the day came, what difference did it make that Noah could look back to almost a millennium of years? What difference did all his life experiences make on the day when the great change came? What difference did it make on that day to Abraham and Sarah that they had lived initially in the advanced ancient city of Ur and made some visits to Egypt and spent time with Pharaoh? Without faith it is impossible to please God, and on this important day in our calendar, faith is needed.

Of course, their lives were different from that of the criminal on the cross. He exercised faith during his last day, which was good for him. But the individuals in mind in this passage had lived by faith for long years, so in a certain sense, there was no difference to their dying day that there was regarding most of their previous days. Each of them was marked by faith.

Marks of true faith

In his description of their faith, the author mentions three things that characterise genuine faith. First, he mentions their attitude to certain matters that he describes as ‘the things promised’. Second, he tells us how those believers saw themselves – they were ‘strangers and exiles’. Third, he says that they were looking for a place to live that their deaths would not prevent them from having.

The things promised

What can be included among those things that were promised to those people that they did not live to see?  Here are a few suggestions. They did not live to see the coming of the Champion over evil, a coming that had been predicted in the Garden of Eden. They did not live to see the removal of the effects of the curse pronounced on Adam and the creation because of his sin; indeed as time went on death came quicker and became more common. They did not live to see their physical entrance into heaven, which was pointed to in the experience of Enoch who went there without having to pass through death. They did not live to see the ingathering of believers from all nations that was promised to Abraham, those who would believe in his special Descendent who would have followers as numerous as the stars.

What was their attitude to those promises? The writer says that they saw them and embraced them (some Bible versions add a third response in between those two attitudes – that they were persuaded of the promises). There was more than two thousand years between the death of Abel and the death of Abraham, and no promises fulfilled in that long period. Indeed, even the partial fulfilment of the first one and the fourth one I mentioned earlier was centuries away in the future from Abraham, and their complete fulfilment and the fulfilment of the removal of the curse and the entry into heaven has still not happened four thousand years on from Abraham. But their distance from the fulfilment of the promises did not hinder their appreciation of them.

In the verbs used to describe their response, we see two important aspects of saving faith that distinguishes it from a mere notion in their minds – they saw the fulfilment of the promises and they embraced the prospect. This is a reminder of how to use God’s promises. Those great promises are like a spiritual telescope which enables God’s people to see over great distances. They are not so much bringing the future to them as bringing them to the future. In the promises they saw the coming of the Deliverer, the ingathering of the global community of believers, and the removal of the curse and its effects. The fact that they only had a few promises does not mean that the promises they had were less real. They were full of wonderful matter and these believers delighted to contemplate what was included in them.

Moreover, they embraced the fulfilment of the promises. If to say ‘they saw’ means that the promises give them a telescope, then to say ‘they embraced’ means that they were able to touch in a spiritual manner what was promised to them. Embracing involves contact between people, and faith inevitably involves contact with the unseen, not just the unseen present, but also the unseen future that involves God and his activities. The promises brought the coming Saviour close to their hearts, or as we are told by Jesus about Abraham that he saw Christ’s day and was glad (the gladness is the embracing that he performed).

Their real identity

Secondly, they confessed who they were, and as with the promises which had two effects, so the confession has two details, that of strangers and exiles.  It is important to have both because it is possible in everyday life to be a stranger and not an exile. A person can leave their country and become a stranger in a new country and never want to be in their old country again. But a true exile wants to be in his original country and would return at the first opportunity.

I suppose we could say that the first word points to them being different from the residents of this world and the second word points to them as travellers moving to another world. They stand out from others as they move along rapidly to their intended destination. The old word ‘pilgrim’ gives the idea – in Pilgrim’s Progress Christian was on a journey from the old to the new, and he had no intention of ever going back to the City of Destruction.

The unusual feature of these fathers in the faith is that they had never been in the desired country in a physical sense. They had only been there by faith in the promises of God. Perhaps the experience of Enoch had opened a window for them because he had gone there in a physical sense. But their faith had caused them to become indifferent to the old country of this world.

Abraham confessed that he was a sojourner and a foreigner when he asked his neighbours for a cave in which to bury his deceased wife Sarah, and it was the place where he and Isaac and Jacob were also buried. It showed how he saw himself even as he lived in the promised land. Canaan was not his ultimate destination, but only a picture of it, of a better country, a heavenly one.

They longed for heaven

The writer identifies a third feature of their faith and it is their heavenly-mindedness. Although they lived in Old Testament times, they would have understood Paul’s exhortation to the Colossians to set their affections on things above. They would also have understood the instruction of Jesus to lay up treasure in heaven.

The author mentions three details of their outlook. One is that they regarded heaven as their homeland or their fatherland, the place of their spiritual birth, the place of their roots in divine election, the place of their family ties in the brotherhood of the church, the place of their inheritance as heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, the place of their eternal destiny in the presence of God, which is what a fatherland is.

The second detail is that they did not think about the land they had left. Noah did not look back to the world that had been destroyed, or even at the new world around him which quickly became undesirable after the flood. Abraham did not wish to be back in Ur – he did not even want his son Isaac to travel to Haran to find a wife. For those believers, their past were chapters in their biographies which they had no interest in rediscovering. It is impossible to look ahead if one is looking back.

The third detail is that they desired a heavenly country. This is another reminder that Canaan was not the final destination. Canaan for Abraham became a place not of fullness of life but the location where he buried his dead, and where he knew he would be buried himself. The cave would be their temporary resting place until the better country, the new heavens and new earth comes, the world where only righteousness dwells. It is important to not their intensity of desire. It was a sign of the livingness of their faith that they yearned for the perfect land, the place where the promises will be fulfilled in their fullness.

Their comfort

The implication of the statement about God not being ashamed of them has the implication that others were embarrassed of them. Perhaps the author has in mind that the Lord was willing to link his people with his own name, such as when he said he was the God of Abraham. The author had also mentioned in the second chapter of his book that Jesus is not ashamed to regard his people as his brothers. No doubt, they and we could think of many reasons for why God could be ashamed of them, mainly because they were sinners who sometimes did not live up to their high calling. Instead, he already has a city prepared for them, a community and place in which he and they will be together for ever.

Applications

The applications of this set of verses are straightforward, so I will repeat them briefly as four question. 

First, there is the inevitability of death bringing our lives here to an end and the importance of preparing for it by believing in the Saviour promised in the gospel. Have we made that preparation?

Second, there is the matter of the contents of our faith, whether it is marked by the two features of how to use the promises of God. Can we by faith look back to Calvary as well as ahead to the glory to come? And do we by faith touch what the promises describe and experience the benefits of them now?

Third, are we happy to live as strangers and exiles in this world because we know our home country is heaven and that we have no desire to live permanently in this world?

Fourth, do we rejoice in the astonishing fact that God is never ashamed to be called our God (on any day of the week), and that he has already prepared for us our eternal abiding place?