32 And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell
about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the
prophets, 33 who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and
gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the fury of
the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to
strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. 35 Women
received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were
tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better
resurrection. 36 Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and
imprisonment. 37 They were put to death by stoning;[e] they were sawed in two;
they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins,
destitute, persecuted and mistreated— 38 the world was not worthy of them. They
wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.
39 These were all commended for their faith, yet none of
them received what had been promised, 40 since God had planned something better
for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.
Dig Deeper
Over the years I have really grown to love running in
marathons. It is truly my favorite
physical activity these days. Recently I
completed another marathon and had a great time. I finished with my personal best time and,
although it wasn’t a perfect race, I was pretty happy with how I did. I was pushing pretty hard most of the race
and there were a few times that I felt like quitting but I kept going and
finished. At the finish line my youngest
son came up to me and said, “Dad, did you win the race?” I turned to him and in all of my confidence
and wisdom I said, “well you see son, marathons like this are not the type of
races that you we saw at the Olympics during the track and field.” I continued, “Marathons are not about winning
and losing and being successful based on that standard. Marathons are about endurance, personal
achievement, and finishing what you started.”
“Every person,” I reasoned, “is competing with themselves so success is
very different in a marathon, rather than just looking at concepts like winning
or losing or finishing first.” I was
sure that this would help him to see the transcendent nature of competing against
oneself in a marathon. But instead my
son tilted his head, looked at me with a look of disdain that communicated that
he had already thoroughly discredited everything about which I had just waxed
so eloquent, and said, “so, you lost.”
What my little cherub failed to understand is that the
standard of success in a local marathon is not finishing first. It really does have to do with
finishing. When he can grasp that concept
he will see that everyone who finished that race was successful whether it took
them 2 ½ hours or 6 hours, or anything in between.
As we close out the eleventh chapter of Hebrews we
should have come fully to terms with the idea that God has radically shifted
the idea of what success is in his kingdom.
It is a cataclysmic shift that changes everything. We humans tend to wander through our lives
constantly wondering what it’s all about it.
What is the purpose of life? Why
am I here? What is a successful
life? When we read passages like the
section today, it starts to become clear.
God is not interested in success from a worldly perspective. Being rich, powerful, or famous means nothing
to God. He is not looking for success
but for faithfulness. Everyone who is
faithful to God is a success in the only eyes that matter.
As we turn to the text, verse 32 is another of those
moments in Hebrews where the author, like any good teacher or preacher
occasionally does, hints that there is much more that he could say on the topic
but will cut it in interest of time or space available. We are left to wonder longingly at what great
teaching he might have unveiled had he felt that he had the time, but are
comforted by the fact that the Holy Spirit certainly inspired our author to
include the necessary details.
This section offers a good summary of people that faced
incredible challenges and overcame them all through faith. Some conquered the unconquerable. Others did the impossible. Still others saw incredible miracles, such as
Daniel in the lion’s den. Some of the
people or incidents listed are named directly while others are only alluded
to. These were people, however that
stood the test in faith and as a result saw their area of weakness become
strength, because where we are weak and allow God to work, we become mighty
beyond anything we could ever ask or imagine.
There were women like the widow of Zarephath and the woman of Shunem who
received their sons back from the dead through the prophets Elijah and Elisha
respectively. But there were also many
others who did not fare so well. Some
experienced great victories through their faith, but the faith of others saw
them tortured, beaten, stoned, sawed in two, and killed in many horrific ways.
So what is the point of all that? Why would some receive great victories
through faith while others went through genuinely horrible experiences? Does that seem to make any sense at all? Certainly the author gives us the first
answer to those questions directly. They
were all looking towards a better resurrection.
They were living according to the promises of God that were largely
unseen as yet, rather than living for the temporal promises that the world
tries to muster up but on which it can never seem to deliver. Thus, the great miraculous moments as well as
the times of harrowing and relentless faith in the face of persecution and
death both derive their strength from the same source. They both come from faith that God will be
true to his promises. The key that God
is looking for is not brilliant “victory” at every turn. That’s not how God judges success or what he
wants. God is looking for
faithfulness. He is looking for those
that take him at his word when promised resurrection for his people. Or as Hebrews put it in 11:6, faith is both
believing that God exists and that “he rewards those who earnestly seek
him.”
The amazing thing is that many in this list did not even
have the full revelation or all of the facts regarding what God would do one
day. Early on in the times covered by
the Old Testament, resurrection is something that is only hinted at. It was not until the time of prophets such as
Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel that God began to flesh out his promises regarding
resurrection. Simply knowing that God
promised to reward those that were faithful was enough for these great
vanguards of the faith.
But there is more here that we are to see than just the
idea that some experienced great miracles and others endured incredible
persecution because they were focused on the inheritance to come (as important
as that is). What the author of Hebrews
is making clear is that their willingness to live by faith was not only
evidence that God would one day restore all things. The fact that they were faithful, combined
with the faithful lives of the Christians at the time that Hebrews was written
(and beyond), were actually proof of that age to come. These faith-people lived at odds with the
world. They lived lives that were out of
tune with the present age. They lived by
the values of the coming resurrection age and made that their reality. The world around them lived as though the
present age was all there ever was, all there is, and all there ever will
be. But God gave them the ability and
strength to live by the power and values of the future age, which proved their
faith to be true. This is not circular
reasoning mind you. The fact is that
people claiming faith in a coming age and truly being able to live their lives
out as samples of the power of that coming age, clearly serves as proof that
the coming age is real and has begun to break into the present age even now.
Therein lies the purpose for living these radical lives
of faith. They both demonstrate our
belief in God’s promises of resurrection but they also serve as powerful
evidence that the future age has already begun to break in. It is all about faith in the promises of
God. Some, we are told, escaped the edge
of the sword through faith while others felt the end of the sword through that
same kind of faith. The measure of their
lives could not be taken in the things that the world valued. Some were great conquerors and rulers, others
were outcasts and the persecuted. What
mattered was not the results of their life or the “success” as the world would
define it. What mattered was that they
remained faithful to God.
In fact, they all died without so much as having even
received the ultimate promises that God gave.
Some of them saw small manifestations of the fruit of following God but
some saw nothing but hardship. The harsh
reality is that either comfort or persecution; rule or subjugation; power or
complete impotence, can all pull us away from faith in God. The important part is not whether we taste of
the great power or the great persecution but in whether or not we are
demonstrating faith in God’s promises.
So what does it mean for 21st century Christians to live
by faith? It means to live as though we
really believe that God’s resurrection age is the reality by which we order our
lives. It means that we live by a time
when there will be no evil and no hate so we become a people that know only the
language of love and forgiveness (see passages such as Luke 6:27-39). It means that even though the world is mired
in darkness right now that we don’t accept that darkness as the reality of
life, but rather we recognize that the daylight from the sun is already on the
way. We cannot yet see the resurrection
age but we can begin to live by its power right now. We can embrace it as more of a reality than
what we see and what the world around us values. We can, in short, live our lives as though
spending eternity with Jesus and his people in the resurrection is all that
will matter one day soon and so it is all that matters now.
Devotional Thought
Is your faith built on God’s promises of resurrection
and his faithfulness to those promises?
Or does it often hinge on things going the way you would like them
to? Would you continue to have the same
rock-solid faith in God if you were one of those that faced the business end of
the sword? Are you demonstrating faith
in God’s promises despite your circumstances or is your faith all too connected
to your circumstances?
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