MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Hebrews 11:13-16
Living and Dying in Faith.—This rhetorical chapter, reviewing rapidly the stories of the other saints, could not fail to interest the Jewish Christian readers to whom the epistle was addressed. It illustrates the fact, that the great secret of the mastery of life is faith—trust; and God is ever working to make that trust a really sanctifying power. That indeed is the key to all His dealings with us. Just this is shown in the example of the patriarchs. Special attention is directed to Abraham. He started life under a promise. But the promise was never fulfilled to Abraham in the letter. He died possessor of only a grave in a promised land. So he was led to trust for the fulfilment by-and-by, and even to reach forth to its fulfilment in spiritual ways. Faith toned the patriarch’s mind, and made him feel like a stranger. It filled him with longings for, and onlookings towards, and even preparations for, “the city which had foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” He died, not in possession, but “in faith.”
I. God’s promises seem, at first, to assure earthly good.—The promise made to Abraham seems to mean an actual earth-territory, a national inheritance, and our promises have a very earthly look. We are assured that we shall “inherit the earth.” Treating us very much as we treat our children, God gives assurances and promises which take shape for us as material and temporal good. And with our life all before us, that is what we seem chiefly to need and to desire. God’s Canaan for us always seems, at first, to be some earthly prosperity and blessing. And this is more evidently the case when we have some definite purpose in life, some country that we mean to win.
II. Life but seldom fulfils the promises just as we understand them.—It might be said that it never fulfils. The writer addresses Christian Jews, who were oppressively feeling how different Christian life was proving to be to the picture of their early hopefulness. Then it looked so fair, so bright. It proved to be a scene of care, and struggle, and persecution, and peril. And it is much the same with us.
1. Life seldom is, even in its outward circumstances, what we picture to ourselves that it will be. Could Jacob’s story or St. Paul’s story have been imagined beforehand? The fact is, that God’s promises are general, and God’s providences work out the precise fulfilments of them. God orders our place and our work very strangely. As life passes on we are even led to do exactly what we most shrink from doing, and what we even think ourselves altogether unfitted for doing. We are brought through scenes and experiences which would have seemed to us hopelessly overwhelming, if we had thought of them in the outset of life.
2. Life seldom permits any great work to be accomplished right through by the man who begins it. Moses must climb Nebo to die before his life-work was completed in the possession of Canaan. Joshua died before the whole country was cleared of the idolatrous inhabitants. David died before the Temple could be built. There is even a sense in which our Lord’s life was “cut off,” and He left an unfinished work to be carried on by His apostles. To do any entire work, from beginning to end, seems to be too great an honour for any man. Some sow, others weed, and others reap. Some die ere life is started; some live on long enough to see others put the topstones on their work. And thus the solemn lesson is taught us, that God absolutely needs no one of us.
III. By the seeming failure God graciously lifts us up to take the higher view of His promises.—How failure can open men’s eyes! How disappointment here, dissatisfaction with life as we find it, tends to lift our eyes away from earth, and makes us feel that this is not our rest! As one thing after another disappoints, we begin to see that the time and place for God’s fulfilment of His promises is—yonder and there; not here and now. We begin to find out that the seemingly earthly look of the promises in reality only veiled the heavenly meaning for us—veiled it for a while, until we have grown strong enough to bear the full and spiritual truth of them. Is not this just the sanctifying work that advancing life does for us all under God? Still we believe—as Abraham did, right to the end—these earthly promises of Canaan; but we grow to be quite willing that they should be fulfilled for others—for our sons and daughters. For ourselves, every year makes us look away, more and more, to the heavenly city. It is quite plain that the earthly Canaan, of which we had dreamed never will be ours. We seek a country.
Conclusion.—This is God’s gracious way of sanctifying us through the actual experiences of our life. He makes us feel here on earth like strangers. He enables us to give the witness of strangers, and show ourselves to be heavenly citizens, who are only “passing through.” He thus helps us to live in trust, and to die in trust, and to find and feel the present peace and power of a life that is a “life of faith on the Son of God, who loved us, and gave Himself for us.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Hebrews 11:13. Faith a Persuasion and a Power.—Faith was an actual present blessing to the men of old, though what faith led them to anticipate never came to them. They died with the faith, not with the possession. And yet they really had held the possession all through their waiting-time; for it had been to them, and it had done for them, everything that the actual possession could have done. It had comforted them, satisfied them, inspired them. The two terms “persuasion” and “power” suggest that our faith has a most gracious influence on our mind and heart, as well as a most powerful influence in ordering our conduct. Faith puts the heart right; faith puts the life right. Faith keeps for us the proper relativity of this life to the life to come.
Hebrews 11:13-14. The Christian Pilgrim.—The apostle is here setting forth the excellencies of the grace of faith, by the glorious effects and happy issue of it in the saints of the Old Testament.
1. What these saints confessed of themselves—that they were strangers and pilgrims.
2. The inference drawn by the apostle—they sought another country as their home.
I. This life ought to be so spent by us as to be only a journey or pilgrimage towards heaven.—
1. We ought not to rest in the world or in its enjoyments, but should desire heaven.—A traveller passing through pleasant places, flowery meadows, shady groves, only takes a transient view of them as he goes along. His journey’s end is in his mind.
2. We ought to seek heaven by travelling in the way that leads thither. This is a way of holiness, the way of obedience to God’s commands, an ascending way, a Christ-like way.
3. We should travel on in this way in a laborious manner. Many mountains, rocks, and rough plains demand our strength.
4. Our whole lives ought to be spent in travelling this road. We ought to begin early; we ought to travel with assiduity; we ought to persevere.
5. We ought to be continually growing in holiness. Thus we come nearer and nearer to heaven. “As new-born babes, desire the sincere milk of the word,” etc. “This one thing I do,” etc.
6. All other concerns of life ought to be subordinate to this. Business, money, temporal enjoyments, quit if they prove a hindrance.
II. Why the Christian’s life is a journey or pilgrimage.—
1. This world is not our abiding-place. Continuance here is short. God never designed that this world should be our home.
2. The future world was designed to be our settled and everlasting abode. The present state is short and transitory, but our state in the other world is everlasting.
2. Heaven is that place alone where our highest end and highest good is to be obtained. God hath made us for Himself. God is the highest good of the reasonable creature. Here we get but scattered beams—God is the sun; but streams—God is the fountain; but drops—God is the ocean.
III. Instruction afforded by this consideration.—
1. Moderation in our grief for the loss of friends who have died in Christ. Death is to them a great blessing; gone to Father’s house. “I heard a voice from heaven,” etc. (Revelation 14:13).
2. How ill do they improve their lives that spend them in travelling towards hell! Thus do backbiters, covetous, drunkards.
3. Converted persons do but begin their work, and set out in the way they have to go. They should be earnest and laborious, and should strive for grace.
IV. Exhortations.—
1. How worthy is heaven that your life should be wholly spent as a journey towards it! Where can you choose your home better than in heaven?
2. This is the way to have death comfortable to us.
3. It will make retrospect pleasant.
4. In journeying to heaven we may have heaven.
5. If our lives be not a journey towards heaven, they will be a journey to hell.
Conclusion.—A few directions.
1. Labour to get a sense of the vanity of this world.
2. Labour to be much acquainted with heaven.
3. Seek heaven only by Jesus Christ. “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
4. Let Christians help one another in going this journey. Go in company, conversing together, assisting one another. Go united. This will ensure a more successful travelling, and a more joyful meeting at the Father’s house in glory.—Jonathan Edwards, M.A.
Hebrews 11:13-16. General Lesson of the Patriarchal Times.—The reference of these verses is strictly to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Sarah. In a sense the older men, from Adam, may be called patriarchs; but the point of reference here is to those patriarchs who had a temporary home in Canaan, and held it together with the promise that it should be made a permanent home for them. They never actually had it as such a settled, permanent home; but their faith that God’s word would stand, and that their descendants would have Canaan for a possession, gave a practical power to the promises, and enabled them to bear, and suffer and enjoy, while they had but the temporary holding.
I. Their faith brought discontent with this life.—The peculiarity of the Abrahamic race, in this practical power of their faith in God’s word, may be shown by contrasting the Abrahamic as an Arab tribe, with the other Arab tribes around. Usually Arab tribes have no ambition to become settled nations. And even if we recognise that in Abraham’s time there was a general and widespread migratory restlessness among the Eastern peoples, still there were marked differences between the instinctive restlessness that was common, and the intelligent discontent that was peculiar to the Abrahamic race.
(1) This faith embraced the truth of the unity of God;
(2) conceived of the possibility of personal relations with Him;
(3) apprehended life as in the direct Divine lead;
(4) and saw duty as implicit and unquestioning obedience of the Divine will. Such faith made satisfaction with material conditions and worldly successes—the things which met all the needs of the tribes around—impossible to this tribe. Lift a man up to high things, and he must ever after fail to be content with the low, as those who can appreciate the art creations of this century are discontented with the pictures and figures of the fathers’ time. Touch a soul with the true and worthy thought of God, and the world can no longer be its rest.
II. Their faith brought content with the life to come.—A man can be in the present, and yet be really living in the future. That is the Christian state. To these patriarchs Canaan, which they knew not, was better than Chaldea, which they knew. To us heaven promised is better than any Canaan possessed.
Hebrews 11:14-16. Human Restlessness.—Faith does not crush down human aspirations. It guides them and tones them aright. The models of faith are stated to have been restlessly seeking something that they had not. Restlessness for humanity is a Divinely implanted condition; upon it depends the peopling and subduing of the whole earth. Human restlessness is so persistent that it cannot be satisfied with any earthly attainment. It may be considered:
(1) what various forms human restlessness may take; and
(2) how certainly the unrest will remain, whatever may be the measure of attainment in any direction. Man’s good time is always coming.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 11
Hebrews 11:13. Faith and its Fruits.—St. Chrysostom is wont to insist, by virtue of faith, rustic and mechanic idiots do, in true knowledge, surpass the most refined wits, and children prove wiser than old philosophers; an idiot can tell us that which a learned infidel does not know; a child can assure us that wherein a deep philosopher is not resolved; for ask a boor, as a boy educated in our religion, who made him, he will tell you God Almighty, which is more than Aristotle or Democritus would have told; demand of him why he was made, he will answer you, to serve and glorify his Maker; and hardly would Pythagoras or Plato have replied so wisely. Examine him concerning his soul, he will aver that it is immortal, that it shall undergo a judgment after this life, that accordingly it shall abide in a state of bliss or misery everlasting—about which points neither Socrates nor Seneca could assure anything; inquire of him how things are upheld, how governed and ordered; he presently will reply, by the powerful hand and wise providence of God; whereas, among philosophers, one would ascribe all events to the current of fate, another to the tides of fortune—one to blind influences of stars, another to a confused jumble of atoms. Pose him about the main points of morality and duty, and he will, in a few words, better inform you than Cicero, or Epictetus, or Aristotle, or Plutarch, in their large tracts and voluminous discourses about matters of that nature.—Barrow.
Dying in Faith.—A clergyman having occasion to wait on the late Princess Charlotte, was thus addressed by her: “Sir, I understand you are a clergyman.” “Yes, madam.” “Of the Church of England?” “Yes.” “Permit me to ask your opinion, sir, what is it that can make a death-bed easy?” Mr. W. was startled at so serious a question from a young and blooming female of so high rank, and modestly expressed his surprise that she should consult him, when she had access to many much more capable of answering the inquiry. She replied that she had proposed it to many, and wished to collect various opinions on this important subject. Mr. W. then felt it his duty to be explicit, and affectionately recommended to her the study of the Scriptures, which, as he stated, uniformly represent faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as the only means to make a death-bed easy. “Ah!” said she, bursting into tears, “that is what my grandfather often told me; but then he used to add, that, besides reading the Bible, I must pray for the Holy Spirit to understand its meaning.’
Strangers and Pilgrims.—Leighton had been used to say that if he were to choose a place to die in it should be an inn, for that would look so like a pilgrim’s going home, to whom this world was all as an inn. It was his opinion, also, as we read in the memoir of him by Aikman, that “the officious tenderness and care of friends was an entanglement to a dying man, and that the unconcerned attendance of those who could be procured in such a place would give less disturbance.” He had his wish. At the Bell Inn, Warwick Lane, Robert Leighton, in his seventy-fourth year, stranger and pilgrim, drew his last breath.—Jacox.
A City that hath Foundations.—
Beyond the dark and stormy bound
That guards our dull horizon round
A lovelier landscape swells;
Resplendent seat of light and peace,
In thee the sounds of conflict cease,
And glory ever dwells.
For thee the early patriarch sighed,
Thy distant beauty faint descried,
And hailed the blest abode;
A stranger here, he sought a home
Fixed in a city yet to come,
The city of his God.
Anon.
Citizenship in Heaven.—A Christian man’s true affinities are with the things not seen, and with the persons there, however the surface relationships knit him to the earth. In the degree in which he is a Christian, he is a stranger here and a native of the heavens. That great city is, like some of the capitals of Europe, built on a broad river, with the mass of the metropolis on the one bank, but a wide-spreading suburb on the other. As the Trastevere is to Rome, as Southwark is to London, so is earth to heaven, the bit of the city on the other side the bridge.—A. Maclaren, D.D.
The City yet to come.—We do belong to another polity or order of things than that with which we are connected by the bonds of flesh and sense. Our true affinities are with the mother-city. True, we are here on earth, but far beyond the blue waters is another community of which we are truly members; and sometimes in calm weather we can see, if we climb to a height above the smoke of the valley where we dwell, the faint outline of the mountains of that other land, lying dreamlike on the opal waves and bathed in sunlight.—Ibid.