Hebrews 11:32-12:3
Finishing Well
Today’s passage is one of the most beautiful and most moving passages of the Bible. It brings us to the end of our two-week walk through the Bible’s “Hall of Faith.” Hebrews chapter 11 lists many of the great faith heroes of the Bible, people who trusted God to bring them through tight, sometimes death-defying situations.
I want to use today’s passage to attack three myths prevalent in today’s world, the myth that if you have enough faith, you will live a prosperous life, the myth that you can live this Christian life alone, and the myth that all roads lead to heaven.
First, consider the myth that, if you have enough faith, you will live a prosperous life. This is nothing new. We are wired to look for cause and effect. At the least sign of injustice, our kids cry out, “It’s not fair!” Likewise, Jesus’ 12 disciples once asked their Master, “Why is this man blind? Is it because of his own sin or his parents’ sin?” Trick question. Jesus replied, “Neither, but that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:1-3).
There is not always a direct link between our obedience and our reward or our disobedience and punishment. In other words, God doesn’t settle all his accounts in 30 days. The psalmist asked about a bazillion times, “Why do you let my enemies prosper, God?” Despite what some TV preachers assure you, things will not always go right if you send enough money for their prayer rug.
Hebrews chapter 11 lists some incredible victories, some truly God-sized events. Abraham and Sarah had a baby in their sunset years, as they began to parent a nation. Moses led the people across the Red Sea on dry land. Gideon and his three hundred routed the Midianites with only torches and jars (Judges 7:7-25). David and others enjoyed great victory over their enemies through their faith in God. Mothers saw their sons brought from death to life. Lots of victories, and yet,
We come to the second half of verse 35 and find that faith doesn’t always end happily ever after, at least in this life. Some were tortured and still held to their faith even to death, knowing their resurrection lay ahead. Some were flogged, chained, and imprisoned like the Apostle Paul. Some were stoned to death, like Stephen and the prophet Zechariah. Some were sawed in two. (Tradition says the prophet Isaiah died this way.) Others suffered in poverty because of their faith. And verse 38 says, “This world was not worthy of them.” Verse 39 tell us that in this life, “None of them received what was promised.”
What kind of faith is this? I want something that delivers all the time, not just some of the time! What about you? But these people in Hebrews 11 hung on! They kept the faith at all costs. When things got tough, they just kept believing. When people tortured them and even killed them, they said, “Bring it on! I know where I’m heading. And if God doesn’t save me in this life, he’ll save me in the next.” Kind of like Daniel’s reply to the king as he entered the lion’s den!
One of my study Bibles noted, “Faith is not a bridge over troubled waters, but is a pathway through them” (New Spirit-filled Life Bible). I wish I could promise you that, if you have enough faith, everything will go right in this life. But we both know that is a lie. Enough faith may help you to endure well the hard times, but it will not necessarily take you out of those times.
We don’t really know much about suffering for our faith in America. But people around the globe suffer and die for Jesus every day. The worst we might get for now is a little ridicule that hurts our feelings. I think our greater challenge is to keep the faith in adversity, when our health declines, when our marriage breaks up or we lose a spouse, when greedy bankers mess with our retirement accounts, when family or friends let us down, when life just becomes really hard. Will we hold onto a God who will see us through every challenge? That is the question.
And part of the answer is to know that you are not running the race alone. You are surrounded by a “great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1). All of these saints of old are cheering you toward the finish line. Someone once asked me, “Do you think everybody in heaven is spying on us all the time?” No, I think they have better things to do in heaven. F. F. Bruce says, “It is not so much they who look at us as we who look to them—for encouragement.” Even though chapter 12 might envision a coliseum of people watching us crossing the finish line of our own marathon of life, the word “witness” carries a richer thought than passively sitting in the grandstands. In the Greek, the word “witness” is the same as the word for “martyr.” These people listed in chapter 11 witness to us by the example of their lives. Sometimes our perseverance will lead to incredible victory, other times to agonizing defeat. Yet, ultimately the victory is ours. Life is a marathon, not a sprint. And the writer of Hebrews urges us to keep running, even when everything seems against us.
And that leads us to myth #2, that you can go this Christian life alone. I’ve met lots of people who assure me their church is in a fishing boat on a still lake. I agree that’s a great place to worship our creator God. But the fact is, we need others in this marathon of life. When crisis strikes your family, are you going to call a fish? If you run the race alone, you are not running it the way God intended. There is no such thing as a “lone ranger Christian.” (Even Lone Ranger had Tonto, after all.)
Today’s passage has an incredible truth tucked in the middle. Verses 39 and 40 say, “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect” (Hebrews 11:39-40). Think about that: Abraham, our great pillar of faith, only finds his perfect faith in you and me! Sarah’s faith is only perfected in our faith. And so it goes. All of these Old Testament mega-heroes: David, Samson, Samuel, Gideon, Rahab, Isaiah—they all had their faith perfected only in concert with our faith. None of them could make it on their own. God says there is something important about community here, Old and New Testament believers bound together. Their faith is finished in ours, and our faith is finished in theirs. We are in this together!
Don’t you know that to be true in your own life, that your faith grows through the encouragement of others? Have you ever been down about your circumstances, and a kind word, a nice note, a gentle hug came as gifts from heaven above just when you needed them? That encouragement, that faith-building moment when someone comes alongside us just when we need it, that is part of being a Christian. We are in this together. Together we will be made perfect.
Notice that is passive tense. We don’t make ourselves perfect. No, no. We need God’s help for that. “We will be made perfect.” And that leads us to the third myth, that all roads lead to heaven. This is a popular idea right now, that if you’re any kind of religious label, any brand of spiritual, that ought to count for something. It sounds nice. It sounds inclusive. But it’s not biblical.
The rest of our passage today tells us HOW we are bound together with those Old Testament saints, or more precisely, WHO binds us together. The writer urges us in Hebrews 12:2 to “fix our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.” Here is the one who came up with faith and now brings it to perfection. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. It’s all in his name, given by the angel Gabriel. The name “Jesus” means, “Yahweh saves” (Matthew 1:21). The God of Israel, the covenant God Yahweh who met Moses at the burning bush, the great I AM: that God saves. And he saves us through a person, the God-man, Jesus.
The rest of the verse points us to the greatest role model of faith ever: “For the joy set before him [Jesus] endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Jesus knew the cross was going to be painful. But I believe, in the fullness of his humanity, the one thing he did not know was what it would feel like to be cut off from the God he loved. As Jesus poured out his life on the cross, scripture tells us he literally became sin on our behalf. He exchanged his life for our collective sin. And in that moment, he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In that moment, when a holy God could not look on sin in its ugliness, the sin of all of us who would believe—Old Testament and New Testament believers and us today—in that moment, Jesus still had faith. In the greatest moment of darkness recorded among the human race, Jesus still cried out to his God. Jesus is the greatest faith hero of all!
Scripture says, when your days are dark, look to the cross for comfort. Know that as Jesus endured such a painful and shameful demise, you can endure. Verse 3 says, “Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” Jesus persevered. You can persevere. Jesus went through pain and suffering. You and I can go through pain and suffering.
And best of all, Jesus rose from the dead. And you and I can as well, as we keep our eyes fixed on him, the author and perfecter of our faith. We can pray like the Apostle Paul, then, to “know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:10-11).
Christine Caine says, “When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit and trust the engineer.”
No matter how dark your tunnel, trust God your engineer. God says, “I will bring you through it.” Yes, bad things happen to good people, even good Christian people. And yet, we are not alone. God places us in the family of faith, tracing our roots back to Abraham and forward to Christ. And as we keep our eyes on Jesus, we can endure anything, for his sake, knowing that our faith will be rewarded, if not in this life, then in the next. Let us pray.
Lord, you know life is sometimes painful, sometimes challenging. We don’t want to whine, because we realize we are so blessed to be Americans, so blessed to have freedom to worship you openly, without fear, at least at this point in history. Yet, we still have our moments of doubt, our times of despair. Help us, Lord, to lean on each other and to lean on these saints of old, knowing that we are not alone, knowing that Jesus is our way, knowing that you will help us finish the race well, so that one day we can stand before you and hear those words, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Now come and share your master’s happiness.” We pray this in the name of the author and perfecter of our faith, Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.
