When he argued like this he was not interested in the scientific side of the matter; he wanted to stress the fact that this is God's world. He made nothing of himself, because he knew they were God's people. The patriarchs mentioned here likewise looked to the future in faith. If you say," For where a covenant is, there must also of necessity be the death of the covenanter" the person. STREAM DOWNLOAD. Hebrews 11 teaches them the nature of faith through word (11:1) and story (11:2-40). In that day it will be the joy of Him who is the true Melchisedec, to bring out not the mere signs, but the reality of all that can be the stay and comfort of man, and all that sustains and cheers, the patent proof of the beneficent might of God, when "no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.". Think of the shaking of heaven and earth being a promise! If God had reserved the epistle to the Hebrews until after He sent forth His armies and burned up their city, destroying their polity root and branch, it might have been retorted that the Christians valued the Jewish ritual as loner as it was available, and only gave it up when earthly temple and sacrifice and priest were gone. It was so sure to him that he instructed his sons to carry his bones with them for burial in Canaan. (2.). The apostle next proceeds to. Man was tried by all sorts of tests from time to time God knew perfectly well, and even declared here and there, the end from the beginning; but He would make it manifest to every conscience, that all He got from man in these His varied dealings was sin. The pleasures of this world, and especially those of a court, are too often the pleasures of sin; and they are always so when we cannot enjoy them without deserting God and his people. and of Elisha ( 2 Kings 4:8 ff.) (1.) He had parted with him to God, and God gave him back again. The mount of the Lord, where Abraham offered his son Isaac, two thousand years later God offered His only begotten Son. Observe here, (1.) Cain was bitterly dissatisfied. It was, parabolically, like that of Christ himself. such power and prosperity as, was never reached again. A priest is always in connection with the people of God, never as such with those that are outside, but a positive known relation with God "seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. The other man replies: "Do you know what happens to Christians? "Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.". 11:7 It was by faith that Noah, when he had been informed by God about things that were still unseen, reverently accepted the message and built an ark to preserve his household in safety. They endeavoured to lay aside every weight, to gird up the loins of their minds to mind their way, to keep company and pace with their fellow-travellers, looking for difficulties, and bearing them, and longing to get home. 2. But now ours is the victory. Do you not discern in this striking combination the distinctive features of Christianity? He even commanded them to take his bones with them when they left. The two extremes, offensive to every lover of the vi media of religious rationalism, must be combined in Christianity and the Christian man, if he is to maintain it unimpaired and pure. It is not only that we believe it, but we understand it thereby. He says to him: "I have decided to become a Christian." Steven was stoned to death. Joseph (Hebrews 11:22; this story is found in Genesis 50:24-25). not as the papists dream, that he worshipped some image of God engraven on the head of his staff, but intimating to us his great natural weakness, that he was not able to support himself so far as to sit up in his bed without a staff, and yet that he would not make this an excuse for neglecting the worshipping of God; he would do it as well as he could with his body, as well as with his spirit, though he could not do it as well as he would. The Isaac story, told in Genesis 22:1-18, is that most dramatic account of how Abraham met the supreme test of the demand for the life of his own son. Never used by Paul. We have just the fact of their passing through the Red sea, and no more; as we have the fall of Jericho, and no more. ", But again the solemn notice of Jehovah's oath is enlarged on. For there is nothing in this world commensurate to the love of God in being the God of his people; and, if God neither could nor would give his people anything better than this world affords, he would be ashamed to be called their God. No Jew could or ought to pretend to such purgation as its result. Time and again in the early Church it happened. He sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange country.This was an exercise of his faith. In 4 Ezra the writer says: "It came to pass when they practised ungodliness before thee, that thou didst choose one from among them whose name was Abraham; him thou didst love and to him only thou didst reveal the end of the times, secretly, by night" (4: 13). Good examples will either convert sinners or condemn them. Again the legends help to light up the picture. Here is the very point the writer to the Hebrews wishes to make. She was a Canaanite, a stranger to the commonwealth of Israel, and had but little help for faith, and yet she was a believer; the power of divine grace greatly appears when it works without the usual means of grace. People came in to buy idols. III. Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me) to do, thy will, O God." The ground of Abraham's faith, the call and promise of God, ; Hebrews 11:8. But when Cain saw that his offering was rejected and Abel's was accepted, he was angry with the Lord for rejecting his offering. ". "Whereupon neither the first [covenant] was dedicated without blood. God is the God of all true believers; faith gives them an interest in God, and in all his fullness. 2. They all believed that there would be made the provision for their sins by God. The answer is, that the language is peculiar and precise in these same two verses, requiring not a covenant but a testament, and therefore the sense of testament here is the preferable one, and not covenant. (3.) The Egyptian tried to secure some sort of immortality. The Lord will provide. When a man leaves this world, he leaves something in it. The thing which is pleasant at the moment may bring pain in the long run; the thing which hurts like fury at the moment may bring joy in the long run. She offered him a way into Jerusalem by stealth; and then, having gained his confidence, she slew him in his drunken sleep with his own dagger, cut off his head and carried it back to her people. he made mention of the departing of the children of Israel; that is, out of the land of Egypt: he remembered it himself, and put his brethren in mind of it, by speaking of it to their comfort, with great assurance; he knew they were well situated in the land of Egypt, and yet speaks of their departure out of it; he foresaw, and firmly believed they would be greatly afflicted in it, and that God would look upon them, and visit them, and bring them out of it, into the land of Canaan; all which shows the strength of his faith, and that it was about things not seen. Basic fact of our existence--you were created for God's pleasure. The description given of heaven: it is a city, a regular society, well established, well defended, and well supplied: it is a city that hath foundations, even the immutable purposes and almighty power of God, the infinite merits and mediation of the Lord Jesus Christ, the promises of an everlasting covenant, its own purity, and the perfection of its inhabitants: and it is a city whose builder and maker is God. They cared not to engage much in it. "I've done it! Though believers are chiefly concerned for their souls, yet they cannot wholly neglect their bodies, as being members of Christ and parts of themselves, which shall at length be raised up, and be the happy companions of their glorified souls to all eternity. (Compare Acts 15:22.) Believers may and ought to have respect to this recompense of reward; they should acquaint themselves with it, approve of it, and live in the daily and delightful expectation of it. In point of fact they were reaching out after something better, I mean, the heavenly country. This is one of the first instances that is upon record of fallen men going in to worship God; and it was a wonder of mercy that all intercourse between God and man was not cut off by the fall. This was aiming a blow at the current belief that God created the world out of existing matter which, being necessarily imperfect, meant that from the beginning this was an imperfect world. THE FAITH WHICH DEFIED THE FACTS ( Hebrews 11:30-31 ). In truth, the substratum was the same, and therefore it was not only quite lawful so to call it, but if he had not, the design would have been marred. That which to us alone is impossible is always possible with him. Those whose names are barely mentioned, and an account given in general of the exploits of their faith, which it is left to the reader to accommodate, and apply to the particular persons from what he gathers up in the sacred story. (3.) What infinite thoughts are those that God's word gives; as glorifying for Himself as elevating for our souls! That strange old story is told in Joshua 6:1-20. 1. Hezekiah, the good king, died, and Manasseh came to the throne. Yet, he dwelt in it as a stranger. The blessing was: "in them let my name be perpetuated, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth" ( Genesis 48:15-16). 1. This inheritance is not immediately possessed by them; they must wait some time for it: but the promise is sure, and shall have its seasonable accomplishment. He sits there not merely as the proof of the perfectness with which He has purged our sins by Himself alone, but as the Priest; and accordingly it is not merely said "on high," but "in the heavens." This was the very thing that these Jewish Christians were shrinking, from, if not rebelling against. He blessed both the sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh; he adopted them into the number of his own sons, and so into the congregation of Israel, though they were born in Egypt. He had the evidence of it in his own conscience, and the Spirit of God witnessed with his spirit. "This corruption must put on incorruption, this mortal must put on immortality" ( 1 Corinthians 15:53 ). First, He makes a scene where sin enters at once. If you have and prize one alone, you have only got the half of Christianity yea, of its foundations. 2 This is what the ancients were commended for. In the end they carried him to the fire and threw him on it, "burning him with cruelly contrived instruments and pouring stinking liquids into his nostrils." Then, very gently, Popilius told Antiochus that Rome did not wish him to proceed with the campaign but wished him to go home. "By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king." Isaac was still a nomad, Jacob wits an exile in Egypt. But let not the Gentile boast, no less unbelieving no less arrogant, against true Christianity. While living in this tent I often groan earnestly desiring to be free, not that I would be unclothed or an unembodied spirit, but I want to be clothed upon with a body which is from heaven. For let me say this as a parting word, and I say it advisedly, because of circumstances that might well be before our hearts, no deliverance, however enjoyed, no place of death to law, world, or sin, no privilege of union with Christ, will enable a soul to dispense with the truths contained in this epistle to the Hebrews. In Hebrews 11:17, the tense of offered indicates that in purpose and intent, he offered Isaac. If I know what Christ's redemption has accomplished for all who believe, I must know that God has given me this. If we have to wait for the exercise at a future day, the order is as true and plain now as it ever can be. There it was more particularly the activity of faith; here it is the suffering of faith. The first is the story of Eleazar, the aged priest ( 4Ma_5:1-38 ; 4Ma_6:1-35 ; 4Ma_7:1-23 ). Demosthenes said: "Envy is the sign of a nature that is altogether evil." And so Abraham said to the servants, "You wait here. By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should afterward receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing where he was going ( Hebrews 11:8 ). It is possible for a person to be victorious over the enemy, to wax valiant in battle, to subdue the aliens, but it is also possible for the man of faith to be tortured for his faith. 2 Chronicles 24:20-22 tells how the prophet Zechariah was stoned by his own people because he told them the truth. There it was in the Psalms. The wise man will pass over it but will not build his house upon it." 12 Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable. The gracious and great reward of their faith: he gives them leave to call him so; and he gives them the spirit of adoption, to enable them to cry, (3.) This priesthood is not based on physical requirement (15-17) The expression used for stopping the mouths of lions is that used of Daniel in Daniel 6:18; Daniel 6:23. We must believe not only that God exists but also that he cares and is involved in the human situation. ii. It probably accounted for the longevity of life, averaged nine hundred years or so. Seeing Abraham afar off, and Lazarus there being comforted in Abraham's bosom, said, 'Father Abraham, send Lazarus to me, that he might take his finger and dip it in water, and touch my tongue; for I am tormented in this heat.' 2. But, notwithstanding all this, Isaac's faith recovered itself, and he ratified the blessing: I have blessed him yea, and he shall be blessed. Those with faith look beyond what they see. It was ordered that they should compass the walls about once a day for seven days together and seven times the last day, that the priests should carry the ark when they compassed the walls about, and should blow with trumpets made of rams' horns, and sound a longer blast than before, and then all the people should shout, and the walls of Jericho should fall before them. Isaiah 53 , "numbered with the transgressors in His death." Their descendants, when they were in the desert, often wished to go back to the fleshpots of Egypt. This then is the monument for such as we are. What is the end of the story? After the children of Israel entered the land of Canaan under the leadership of Joshua, he allowed each tribe to go to its own home. His fear, thus excited by believing God's threatening, moved him to prepare an ark, in which, no doubt, he met with the scorns and reproaches of a wicked generation. He answered; "He that has something ayont (beyond) need never weary." When he came to pronounce the blessing, he trembled very exceedingly (Genesis 27:33); and he charged Jacob that he had subtly taken away Esau's blessing, Genesis 27:33, Genesis 27:35. The Jewish town of Bethulia had determined to surrender in five days' time for its supplies of food and water were at an end. 4 By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh. For the Christian that is easy, for God came to the world in Jesus Christ to tell us how much he cares. The Jews had still another story to explain the first murder. Xenos ( G3581) can even mean a refugee. (2.) The doctrine follows: "Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost." In point of fact the English translators did not know what to make of the matter; for they give sometimes one, sometimes the other, without any apparent reason for it, except to vary the phrase. which cleave to Christ the rejected King, and Holy Sufferer, who is now in glory above. (2.) He could not have exacted this oaths, nor could they have taken it, unless both he and they had a sure confidence that what God had spoken would be performed. [1.] The father of the faithful was the one first called out by promise. They talked; they both knew Rome and they had been friendly. 2. There has to be that conformity, but faith has to come first. But where in the Old Testament is there a prophecy of His rising again the third day? Indeed, at no time will its order be more apparent than at present; for I think there can be little doubt to any unbiassed Christian who enters with intelligence into the Old Testament prophecies, that there is yet to be an earthly sanctuary, and, consequently, earthly priests and sacrifices for Israel in their own land; that the sons of Zadok, as Ezekiel lets us know, will perpetuate the line at the time when the Lord shall be owned to be there, in the person of the true David their King, blessing His people long distressed but now joyful on earth. God has prescribed means and ways wherein he may be found; to with, a strict attention to his oracles, attendance on his ordinances, and ministers duly discharging their office and associating with his people, observing his providential guidance, and in all things humbly waiting his gracious presence. The world wasn't worthy of them and yet, what things they endured as the result of their faith in God.Your faith in God is not always going to bring you tremendous triumph and victories over the enemy, but your faith in God will sustain you through any kind of exigency that you may face in life. So knowing that God's word was to be fulfilled that the land would one day be theirs, some three hundred years later after the death of Joseph, when the children of Israel began their trek from Egypt to the Promise Land, with them they carried the mummy of Joseph to bury it in the land of promise. That story left an indelible mark upon the memory of Israel. The severest and final trial of Abraham's faith was giving up the son, in whom all the promises were infolded, to receive him back on a resurrection ground in figure. God had before this tempted or tried the faith of Abraham, when he called him away from his country and father's house,when by a famine he was forced out of Canaan into Egypt,when he was obliged to fight with five kings to rescue Lot,when Sarah was taken from him by Abimelech, and in many other instances. I know He is able.May the Lord be with you and strengthen you and bless you and keep you in all your ways as you walk in fellowship with Him. I'm just a stranger and a pilgrim here. the lad Abraham asked. He is the same unchangingly and evermore, as He has ever been. Even the Greeks saw its horror. But works cannot produce faith, nor can they substitute for faith. (1.) In the first section is pretty much powerful, positive kind of reactions and responses to their faith. As far as the soul is concerned, Christ would not go up to heaven until sin was abrogated before God. It is then that we are so liable to give up our hopes and lower our ideals and sink into an apathy whose dreams are dead. The substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. Heaven and earth have not been united, nor have they been in fact possessed for the blessing of man by the power of God, since sin severed between the earth and that which is above it, and the prince of the power of the air perverted all, so that what should have been, according to God's nature and counsels, the source of every blessing, became rather the point from which the guilty conscience of man cannot but look for judgment. It is characteristic of the best of us that we are in a hurry. Pharaoh's daughter is said to have been his only child, and was herself childless; and having found Moses, and saved him as she did, she resolved to take him and bring him up as her son; and so he stood fair to be in time king of Egypt, and he might thereby have been serviceable to Israel. The promise of a posterity, and of the Messiah, must either be fulfilled by means of this son or not at all; so that, besides his most tender affection to this his son, all his expectations were bound up in him, and, if he perished, must perish with him. They gave full proof of their sincerity in making such a confession. But the apostle lets them know that if they understood their true blessing, this was the very part of it that was inseparably bound up with their present nearness to God, as set forth typically by the central and most important rite of the Jewish system. He is the second of those elders that through faith have a good report. These were the actings of their faith. But why should it be "testament" in these two verses alone, and "covenant" in all other places? You that go after the tabernacle (as he persists in calling it, even though now the temple) have no title to our altar, with its exhaustless supplies. (i) This story teaches us that we must be ready to sacrifice what is dearest to us for the sake of loyalty to God. It was by faith that he carried out the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, so that the destroying angel might not touch the children of his people. According, to the Jews it was quite impossible, if God had once established a covenant, He could ever change; but the apostle replies that their own prophet is against their theory. A promise teaches them the truth hezekiah, the good king, died, and Manasseh came the. 2 Kings 4:8 ff. hebrews 11:22 commentary God gave him back again that conformity, but faith to! Fearing the wrath of the king. as far as the soul is,! Answered ; `` he that has something ayont ( beyond ) need never.. The king. a nomad, Jacob wits an exile in Egypt and Manasseh came to the throne to his. Whereupon neither the first section is pretty much powerful, positive kind of reactions and responses to faith! 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