RELIGION —
Last week I wrote about how the writer of Hebrews 11 points to the past and the importance of us learning to use the past constructively. This week we’ll look at two additional things he does.
2. He points them to people. If the past can be painfully instructive, it can also be powerfully inspiring. The writer’s history lesson isn’t about the average rainfall in the Mediterranean, the political structure they lived under, or the leading export. He wants to tell them about people.
But not just any people. People like them. People who had committed themselves to live for God — come what may. Everything didn’t start with us. History is full of men and women who were committed to living His story out before their culture. We impoverish ourselves if we fail to familiarize ourselves with their stories.
The people he writes about are heroes. Heroes are always helpful to us, but especially when we’re up against the wall — when we’re tempted to “shrink back” (see 10:39). James Thompson writes, “Struggling people need heroes … The author of Hebrews knows the value of heroes for discouraged people.” They help us to see beyond our problems to our possibilities.
3. He points them to principles. Our greatest heroes are those whose lives are characterized by a deep and abiding faith. They don’t just talk about it — they live it. In Hebrews 11, they lived by certain principles. One principle was that through their faith, they saw the unseen. There’s Noah the boat-builder, Abraham the person who took off when God told him to go but didn’t tell him where, and Sarah, who was going to have a child in her old age. The journey of faith that we’re called to is predicated upon seeing the unseen. We haven’t physically seen Jesus, or God, or any of the people we read about in Scripture for that matter. But we see them and much, much more through the eyes of faith.
Because they saw the unseen, the people of Hebrews 11 endured. Moses’ parents hid him for three months after he was born. (Can you imagine how hard it would be to hide a baby for three months?) Moses grew up in Pharaoh’s palace but refused that identity and choose to suffer with the people of God. And Abraham endured three of the longest days ever as he took Isaac to Mt. Moriah to sacrifice him there.
Because they saw the unseen, the people of Hebrews 11 triumphed. Israel passed through the Red Sea while Pharaoh and his army drowned in it. The walls of Jericho fell down before the army of Israel. Three young Hebrew men emerged alive out of a furnace so hot the people who threw them in it were burned to death. But here’s the real truth we need to see — some of the people triumphed in life, but they all triumphed in death. It may or may not be that we’ll experience triumph in this life, but there’s no doubt it’s coming when this life is over.
Hebrews 11 is an amazing chapter! No matter how many times we read it, we always find something to speaks to wherever we are on our journey. It provides a wonderful lesson for us to look to people from the past who lived by godly principles and live not as people who shrink back and are destroyed but as those who faith and are saved.
You can find more of Bruce’s writings at his website: a-taste-of-grace-with-bruce-green.com.