For our study this morning, we are diving back into the book of Hebrews and our sermon text is Hebrews 11:23-40, if you have Bibles, I would invite you to turn with me there. Let me just say at the outset, too, that what we're going to see our author in Hebrews doing is like we've seen in previous studies and Hebrews. He's surveying the faith of so many people who came before him, of a number of people who lived in the Old Testament and whose stories are recorded for us in the Scriptures. Some of these stories we're going to take a deeper dive on than others as we study our text this morning. If you encounter any of the names or any of the stories and you're unsure just who these people were, I think this is a reason to promote a Bible reading plan. If you don't have a Bible reading plan, we'd encourage you to pick up one of the Bible reading plan brochures in the parlor at some point. Make the Bible a regular part of your own life so that the stories that our author is only briefly reflecting upon here would be stories that you become more and more familiar with in your own your own lives as well.

With that said, let me read our text. Our text is Hebrews 11:23-40. Hear now the word of the Lord.

23 By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king's edict. 24 By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, 25 choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. 26 He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. 27 By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. 28 By faith he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood, so that the Destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them.
29 By faith the people crossed the Red Sea as on dry land, but the Egyptians, when they attempted to do the same, were drowned. 30 By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days. 31 By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.
32 And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets— 33 who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. 35 Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. 36 Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37 They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated— 38 of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.
39 And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, 40 since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.
Hebrews 11:23-40, ESV

 

This is the Word of the Lord. About 100 years ago, the church in America went through a great deal of turbulence in what we call today the fundamentalist modernist controversy. Now, the essence of the tension between these two groups, the fundamentalists on the one side and the modernists on the other, lay in the question of what beliefs should be considered out of bounds for Christian ministers to hold or for something to be considered orthodox Christianity at all. Where do we draw the lines, in other words, for what's in bounds, theologically speaking, and what's out of bounds?

So on one side of the debate, the fundamentalist insisted that there are certain fundamentals that we have to insist upon, both as ministers of the Gospel and as Christians. We have to insist upon things like Christ's substitution in our atonement, like Christ's bodily resurrection, and the promise of Christ's bodily return at the end of the age. While the fundamentalists insisted upon the centrality of these core doctrines, these core beliefs, the other group, the so called modernists, labeled these teachings along with many other core beliefs of orthodox and historic Christianity simply theories. They insisted that for the sake of Christian unity and liberty, we need not insist upon these things. They unfortunately asserted that good Christians had good Christian ministers, we can agree to disagree on these things.

Now, at the end of the day, this conflict eventually led to a rupture in the Presbyterian Church, and there were a ripple effects that were felt throughout the broader church in America. One of the important lessons that emerged from this entire debate, a lesson that was insisted upon at the time by somebody named J. Gresham Meacham, is that unity has its limits. Now, of course, that's not to say that well-meaning Christians can't disagree over certain things and still maintain unity. Of course we can, but there reaches a point where we have to say that certain beliefs are Christian and other beliefs are not. A biblical and orthodox faith in Christ just can't harmonize with the beliefs and values of this world.

In the passage before us, a similar kind of lesson is reinforced for us. When our author surveys the enduring and long suffering faith of some of the most well-known figures of the Old Testament. Now to review, since it's been several weeks since we last looked at Hebrews 11, the author of Hebrews has been surveying a lot of different believers from the Old Testament throughout Hebrews 11. All with the goal of showing his readers and us today what it looks like to live out an enduring and a persevering faith, like them in the world.

Last time we were in Hebrews 11, we looked at Abraham was one of the big figures we studied. We heard how Abraham and his sons consider themselves to be strangers and exiles on Earth, but looking forward to great hope that they have stored up in heaven. They knew that the values of faith, the hope of faith, and the eyes of faith, they have no real home in this world. So they fix their eyes from start to finish on things of heaven.

Now, as we turn to the final figures of faith from Hebrews 11, we hear this same lesson reinforced with perhaps even greater potency. Our author we're going to hear surveys of the faith of Moses, the faith of Rahab, and the faith of so many other Old Testament believers. Along the way, he teaches us that there is an essential dissonance, a conflict between faith in Christ and the character of this world. We're always called to love our neighbors in this world, and we'll always live among our unbelieving neighbors in this world. Yet our author reminds us that the tune that moves us, the music as it were, that the people of faith dance by, and the tune that moves the world and the tune that our unbelieving neighbors dance by, always are and always will be in jarring and inharmonious conflict.

Our big idea this morning is this The way of faith stands in conflict with the whims of the world..

Essentially three points that we're going to look at as we work through our passage, which teach us about the character of this kind of dissonant faith.

1. Faith and Its Cost
2. Faith and Its Weakness
3. Faith and Its Triumph.

Faith and Its Cost

Let's start out, with faith and it's cost. We see right off the bat when our passage opens that our author shifts to the next figure of faith. He had a lot to say about Abraham, one of the most towering figures of the Old Testament in the previous few verses. Now he shifts to an equally towering figure, and that is Moses. Yet, curiously, even though he has much to say about Moses, we're going to hear a lot about Moses and versus 23 through 28. The first thing we hear about isn't necessarily the faith of Moses. It's the faith of Moses' parents whose names were Amram and Yocheved. We don't read their names here, but those are the names that are given in the Book of Exodus. We read not about the faith of Moses, but about the faith of his parents.

In verse 23, our author briefly reflects upon the story of Moses's birth to teach us about the faith of Moses' parents. Now the story of Moses' birth, and all the events surrounding that can be found in Exodus chapter one and two, if you're curious to read more about that. As the story goes, in that day, in the context of Moses' birth, Pharaoh, the King of Egypt, had issued an edict in order to stem the growth of Israelites, the Israelites who were living among them, that every Israelite male infant should be put to death. Something horrible.

When Moses was born, Moses mother hid Moses for three months to save his life. Then when she could hide him no longer, we read in Exodus. That she placed him in a basket in a river where he was eventually found and adopted by Pharaoh's daughter. All of those events, many of which you might be familiar with, can be found in Exodus chapter one and two. According to our author in Hebrews, reflecting on this story, this initial act to save Moses is attributed to the face of Moses parents.

Now, on the one hand, what Moses parents did is probably what I think most parents, believers or not, would do. I think most parents would give up much to save their children. Yet the driving reason cited by our author to explain what they did isn't some general parental love for Moses, although I'm sure they loved their son. Rather, it was faith that drove them to do what they did. Understand that Amram and Yocheved were willing to suffer potentially great costs at the hands of the Egyptians to spare their son. But they assumed that cost, according to our author, because they feared God far more than they would ever fear Pharaoh.

Their example reminds me of that of Corrie Ten Boom. If you don't know the story of Corrie Ten Boom, she was a Christian in the Dutch Reformed Church. Who, during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War Two, assumed great cost herself by hiding Jewish refugees in her home as they were sought out by the Gestapo. While she, Corrie Ten Boom, saved hundreds, I think 800 Jews were saved during the occupation because of her influence. An informant eventually revealed her secret to the authorities and she was arrested and sent to a concentration camp herself. She, too, like Moses' parents before her, was motivated by a costly faith in Christ. A costly faith that led to extraordinary action.

In that extraordinary example, and more particularly in the extraordinary example of Moses's parents, lies I think a rather ordinary but important lesson for us to consider. That is costly faith is contagious. A number of commentators in my study this week rightly pointed out that everything that we're going to read in a moment of Moses's costly faith that follows, in verses 24 through 28, can some way be traced to the costly faith of his parents. You see, in a moment, we're going to hear all about how Moses lived, a costly faith himself. How Moses recognized the great dissonance that exists between faith in Christ and the whims of the world and how he lived according to the former, what regardless of whatever costs might arise from the latter.

While we recognize that this kind of extraordinary, costly faith arises as a gift in the human heart by the Spirit of God, the Bible also teaches us that this kind of faith is ordinarily cultivated in the nursery of the home. So let me ask you this with that in mind. Parents, do your kids see costly faith in you in action? Do your children see you carve out time for things that the world doesn't esteem, but things that are instrumental to their discipleship, things that ultimately honor God? Do your kids see in you a long suffering commitment to the things of God? Or are you, if you're honest with yourself, are your habits and your priorities more or less indistinguishable from your unbelieving neighbors? Even if you don't have kids ask yourself the question, do your priorities and commitments speak something powerfully to your neighbors and coworkers?

I'm sure you've heard the old aphorism that more is caught than taught. I can recall early in college watching some young guys I looked up to spiritually say yes to certain things and no to other things, and realizing in that how different the tune they lived by sounded in comparison with the dissonant tune of the world. Now we're going to hear in a moment about costly faith, but pause for a second and ask yourself whether your life of faith communicates the costly faith that honors God to those you have influence over or not. So Moses learns a costly faith from the example of his parents.

When we look at these next examples of faith that are given, well we also discover that Moses lives this costly faith, too. It was a faith, presumably, that was contagious. In the next example, we hear that when Moses had grown old, he refused the comforts of Egypt's royal household comforts that were his by virtue of his adoption in Pharaoh's household. Some even speculate that Moses might have been next in line to the throne of Egypt. Instead he chose to be mistreated along with the weak, despised, and enslaved people of God.

Now, this reference in this verse is a reference to what happened in Exodus chapter two. When Moses saw a Hebrew, one of his own people, who was being beaten by an Egyptian taskmaster. In that moment, Moses made a decision. He chose to align himself with God's people by killing the Egyptian taskmaster and burying his body in the sand. A decision that we learn later in Exodus carried great cost in view of the comforts and the security that he enjoyed in Egypt and a decision that almost had him killed by Pharaoh.

The next example reinforces much of the same. In verse 27, we hear how by faith Moses departed from Egypt with God's people and the plunder of the Egyptians in tow. Not fearing Pharaoh's wrath or what life outside of Egypt, the only life that God's people had known for hundreds of years, might mean. He knew that decision would be costly. But he also knew that to fall dead in the desert, in the presence of God, was better than living with all of the treasures of Egypt, but outside of fellowship with the Lord.

You see, at every waypoint on the road of faith we hear that Moses willingly assumed cost, great cost, in fact, unbelievable cost. Yet we're also reminded in our passage that the costs he risked pale in comparison to the cost assumed by Jesus Christ our Lord. Look with me at verse 26, where we read that Moses considered the reproach of Christ greater than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.

Earlier in Hebrews, our author told us this is back in Hebrews 3:5-6, that Moses and Christ both identified with the people of God. Both Moses and Christ decided to identify, to ally themselves with the despised and rejected people of God. But whereas Moses was faithful in all God's household as a servant, Christ is faithful over God's house as a son. Understand that while both identified with the lowly and despised people of God and in doing so absorbed great cost, that both of them suffered rejection in this world. The greater sufferings by the greater son, Jesus Christ, are what makes Moses's sufferings as a servant and our sufferings as children of God bearable.

You see, unlike Moses, Christ doesn't simply switch national allegiances to identify with the people of God. No, Christ's humility is far greater. Because Jesus takes on human flesh and he assumes the nature of those he came to save in every way except sin. Unlike Moses, Christ didn't have to just bear the wrath of Pharaoh, the very human and very unholy king of Egypt. No, Christ bore the wrath of the Almighty God. The wrath that we rightly deserve for our sin. Unlike Moses, Christ doesn't simply point us to the Passover Lamb like Moses did. No, Christ becomes the Passover Lamb who takes away the sin of the world.

Moses lived a costly faith, to be sure, and we can think about all the costs he endured in his own life and be marveled by that. The costs he risked pale in comparison to the costs assumed by Jesus Christ for you and for me.

So what does this mean as we reflect on living a costly life of faith in our own world today? Well, first and most importantly, it has to mean that we look all the days of our lives to the one who identified with his people in order to save his people. It means that we have to look all the days of our lives to Jesus Christ. Throughout this passage, we find a multitude of references to what Moses and his parents saw.

Just look at a few of these. In verse 23, Moses parents saw that Moses was beautiful. Moses was looking, in verse 26, to the reward. Moses endured the wrath of Pharaoh and the reproach of Christ by seeing Him, who is invisible. That is setting the eyes of faith on the Lord and his Word. In other words, their costly faith was rooted fundamentally in what they look to and in who they saw. Likewise, the first feature of a costly faith is that we look to Jesus Christ with eyes of faith. That we look beyond the rewards of this world and say no to the things that everyone in our world screams yes. That we fix all that we are, heart, mind, body, soul, head and hands on Jesus Christ and his kingdom.

Now, this is, of course, costly, as our confession of Christ and its many implications just doesn't harmonize with the music of the spirit of our age. It's not a cost that Jesus Christ hasn't himself already bore. It's also not a cost that isn't worth it.

Second, it also means that we identify not just with Jesus Christ, although that's fundamentally what's in view, but also with the people. Of God as well. Unfortunately, far too much of Christianity in America presses home this point that the church is ancillary or secondary. It's a secondary benefit to the Christian life. Something we can either take or leave without it affecting our primary confession all that much. Yet the scriptures are clear, that to identify with the reproach of Christ, to live out the costly faith envisioned in our passage necessarily requires that we are identify ourselves with the people of Christ too.

We'll see this later in our passage with Rahab. Like Moses, we'll hear how Rahab the prostitute identified with the people of God. She identified with the church. Brothers and sisters, this is what the Lord summons us too as well. Namely, that we identify with the people who likewise identify with Jesus Christ. Now, this kind of commitment can, of course, be hard, because, let's face it, God's people aren't always lovely. Moses knew something of that, and Christ most certainly knew that we're not the loveliest people on this earth when he spilled his blood for the church. Yet the church is really important because the church is Christ's bride. As Charles Spurgeon reminds us, it's the only context fitted for living out the kind of endurance the scriptures would give us pursue.

Commentator Richard Phillips cites the great 19th century preacher Charles Spurgeon to this effect when he writes, "Affliction, nobody would choose affliction but affliction with the people of God, oh, that is another business altogether. Affliction with the people of God is affliction in glorious company. With the people of God that is the sweet which kills the bitter of affliction." So in a world where the tune of faith sounds jarring. Faith like Moses is costly, but faith like Moses is worth it.

Faith and Its Weakness

As we continue in our passage, we also learn of another characteristic or feature of a dissonant faith. That is that faith also embraces weakness. Faith embraces weakness. If you're looking at your Bibles, the next three examples of faith we encounter kind of touch on this. We first have the faith of those who departed Egypt in the Exodus and cross the Red Sea. Then the faith of Joshua and the people of God and the conquest some 40 years later. Then the faith of a non-Jewish Gentile prostitute named Rahab. Also, as we might expect in tracing the biblical narrative as our author does, he skips over the 40 years of the wilderness generation because he already labored back in Hebrews three and four to tell us that that was a generation mark, not by faith, but by unbelief.

Nevertheless, the one thing that these three examples he does cite have in common is that each one of them embrace a position of a weakness in the world and choose instead to trust in God's unseen power. Think about the example of those who crossed the Red Sea. After departing from Egypt, the book of Exodus tells us that they made their way down to the banks of the Red Sea, with Pharaoh's imposing army of 600 chariots in relentless pursuit. Israel, they were in a vulnerable position at that point. They were blind with fear. As we read in the narrative, they were actually ready to repent to the Egyptians and to return back to slavery in order to save their lives. Yet, in that moment, in their hysteria, Moses responds, calm down. He says, In Exodus 14:14, "The Lord will fight for you. You need only be silent."

You see, Moses alleviates their understandable fear with a reminder of the greater power in their midst. They need not take matters into their own hand, he tells them, that they need not question God's faithfulness towards them. Rather all they need to do is embrace a position of weakness and watch God get the glory. As we come to find out, that's exactly what happens.

The same thing can be said about the example of the walls of Jericho. Now God's people, when they enter into the land of promise and begin the conquest, they're not commanded curiously to build great siege works and storm Jericho by force. Rather, as the story goes, they're called to embrace a rather odd position of weakness and march around the city seven times and watch God work.

Then so too, with the example of the most unlikely inclusion in this list, Rahab the prostitute. Now, Rahab was an Amorite woman. She belonged to the people of the Amorites who were an idolatrous people. Beyond that, she was also a prostitute among the people. Yet we find in our texts that she's actually celebrated for her faith. So how in the world does that work?

Well, as the story goes, when Israel was spying out the land that they were set to invade and conquer, Joshua's spies, who were sent out before the army, got into a bit of a pickle, but they were saved and they were hidden by Rahab. Now, it would have been understandable at that moment for someone like Rahab when Israelite spies snuck into her city and were vulnerable to capture that, she would call out the enemies of her people and side with those who were in that moment in a position of strength and authority and maybe even get something of benefit for her loyalty.

What does Rahab do instead? Well, again, she embraces a position of weakness. She assumed a great cost herself by protecting those who were in a vulnerable position, namely the Israelite spies. The reason she did what she did was because she knew were true power is to be found. In fact, in the book of Joshua, we read that after Rahab had hidden the spies and then she lied to those who were seeking their lives. She essentially tells the spies what her motivation for doing what she did.

We read in Joshua 2:9-11, she says, “and said to the men, “I know that the LORD has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you. For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you devoted to destruction. And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you, for the LORD your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath.” You see in the moment when the spy sneak into the city of Jericho, Rahab embraces a position of temporary weakness because she, like Joshua before her, knew where real power lay.

If you recall in the definition of faith back in Hebrews 1:3 we read that by faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God. In other words, the universe was created by God's powerful word. This is a power, a power that could likewise raise the dead, that Rahab trusted in and that you and me, friends, brothers and sisters, are called to trust in from a position of weakness too.

You know, last weekend I had a brief conversation with a friend about English Premier League soccer, or what some would consider real football. Someone that I know discovered that I am a big fan of Liverpool. Liverpool is a big soccer team in England who just so happens to be one of the best teams in the world right now. They asked me suspiciously, they said, "Are you a bandwagon fan? Did you only start liking Liverpool because they're well known and they're one of the best teams in the world right now?" But I quickly responded, "Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I've been a Liverpool fan for the last 14 or 15 years. I followed and cheer them on when they were mediocre at best. I woke up early on Saturday mornings in college to watch Liverpool matches before many Americans were even into soccer." You see, the question I was asked assumed that the reason I might like a team like Liverpool is because they're now a team with great financial power. They're a global brand, they have incredible success on the field. Because it's not often in our nature to associate or think that other people would associate with weakness. That's why you don't find Bandwagon Orioles fans or bandwagon Nebraska fans. You have to be a true believer to embrace that sort of mediocrity.

All joking aside, it just doesn't feel good to be in a position of weakness. We don't readily embrace weakness ourselves. In fact, sometimes we'll go to crazy lengths, we'll even shoot our integrity in the foot, if it means that we can somehow get on top of the world, even if just for a moment. We do this, of course, in any number of ways. Sometimes we're so fixed on the goal of personal comfort or personal wealth that will lie or hedge our bets or break our word. Sometimes we treat people as steppingstones to some other goal or end and as soon as someone ceases to be valuable in our pursuit of power, for example, or comfort, as soon as we can't use them anymore, we abandon those relationships.

Recognize that the life of faith to which the Bible calls us is a life that's costly. It's a life that endures. It's a life that's long suffering. It's a life that cares about God and his word above everything else. It's a life that regularly and readily embraces a position of weakness because we know where true power lies. It's in that weakness, as Joshua found and as Rahab found after him, that God's power is made especially manifest. As we turn to our final point, we learn that the power of God made manifest in the people of God in their weakness will always lead to triumph. So this leads to our third point, faith and it's triumph.

Faith and It's Triumph

When we turn to this final section of our passage, it's almost as if the author of Hebrews realizes that he's running out of space. So in haste almost, he begins to pile up, example after example, each of which we could drill down into and reflect at length on what they teach us about faith. But lest we lose the forest for the trees, the main point in this final section focuses us in on the triumph that each of these men and women enjoyed by faith.

In other words, when we trust in God's unseen power, like the previous examples taught us, when we embrace a position of weakness and confess that when I am weak, then I am strong, as the Apostle Paul confessed. It's then and only then that we as the people of God are promised triumph. But as we discover in the examples before us, sometimes that triumph happens in life, but perhaps more regularly, it's a triumph that happens through death.

If you look at the first few examples of faith that are found in this final part of our passage, many of the names that we encounter first involve those who triumphed in life. Just highlight a few of them. First, we see Gideon. Now, Gideon is known for his triumph over the army of the Midian nights with just 300 men. As the story goes from the book of Judges, the Lord whittled down the number of Gideon and his army to just 300 so that Israel would know that it was God who was the source of their triumph and not their strength in numbers.

Now, Gideon was a judge whose story is found in the book of Judges, so too is Jephthah. Now, Jephthah, that had something of a scandalous and tragic childhood. He was born of a prostitute and then he was driven out of his father's home by his father's wife. When Israel was later under assault by the Ammonites, God raised up Jephthah to fight and to triumph for the people of God.

Then we hear in verses 33 through 34 about others who triumphed in life. There were those who stopped the mouths of lions and quenched the power of fire. These are references first to Daniel and then to Daniel's friends. Daniel, who spent an evening in the lion's den for worshipping the Lord at a time when that was forbidden. Then Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, Daniel's friends who were thrown into a fiery furnace for failing to worship the King of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar. Yet both Daniel in Daniel chapter six, and his friends in Daniel chapter three emerged unharmed by faith. We learn in those various texts how they triumphed through the fiery furnace of affliction, quite literally, for Daniel's friends by faith.

Now, it's also true that everyone in this list who triumphed by faith in life, were also sinners. Some of them might scratch our heads and wonder why they're even included here, because some were notorious for their sins. Think about Sampson, for example. But as Calvin correctly notes, though, "Even those notorious sinners are included here, though their faith was halting and imperfect, it was still approved by God." Faith, then, we learn, carries with it certain triumphs in this life.

Now, of course, for us that doesn't imply that should we have enough faith in this life that we'll experience the bounty of material prosperity and enjoy a veritable heaven on earth. Unfortunately, many Christians throughout history have walked with this sort of over realized eschatological assumptions. That is the assumption that we can have heaven on earth right now. That's what we mean when we talk about over realized eschatology. Many who have walked with those health and wealth assumptions have either made shipwreck of their faith or of the faith of those who have expected triumphs to happen that that haven't actually materialized. That doesn't mean that there aren't triumphs for us in this life of faith.

Faith in Christ can blossom a supernatural kind of contentment that the world does not know when we're discontented with life. Faith can bring victory over sins that seem hardwired to our nature. Faith helps kill our infatuation with the world that we were once powerless to overcome. Just like the figures our author highlights in our passage our imperfect faith really can triumph over things that we would otherwise be powerless to confront. Perhaps more important than the triumphs that faith issues in life are the triumphs that faith brings through death.

If you notice in our text, beginning in verse 35 or author mentions resurrection. He gives us this reference to women receiving back their dead, which is probably a reference to two events in the Old Testament, when two separate mothers had their sons revived from death back to mortality. There was the impoverished widow of Zarephath in 1 King chapter 17, and then there was the wealthy Israelite Shunammite woman and 2 Kings chapter four.

From this point on in our text, Hebrews 11, through the end of verse 38, our author highlights those who were faithful in life, who embraced the meekness of faith, who trusted in God's unseen power, but who didn't triumph in life. Now in these verses, our author never mentions any names, but we know of some of the people he alludes to. He mentions those who suffered in chains and imprisonment in verse 36, which is probably a reference to the prophet Jeremiah. Who was put in chains and later imprisoned, all for faithfully following God's commission and calling Israel to repentance in his own day. Tradition has it that Jeremiah was also killed, he was executed by stoning, something our author may allude to in verse 37.

Then we read about those who were sawn in two, a gruesome death. This is likely a reference to the prophet Isaiah, who was said to be sawn in two during the reign of King Manasseh, of Judah. Then we hear about those who wandered in dens and caves of the earth, which probably refers to many of the prophets in the Old Testament who were forced to the fringes of society. They were forced to live in abject poverty, all for faithfully following the prophetic call placed upon their lives by the Lord.

These Old Testament believers may have suffered much in their lives. They did suffer much in their lives, and many of them actually became martyrs. But they were willing to suffer great loss in this world. They were willing to give up their lives for their confession. In doing so, they carried with them to their graves the hope of resurrection. Not simply a kind of resurrection that verse 35 alluded to, where women receive back their dead. Those two events, as miraculous as they were, only revived the dead children back to mortal life and they would presumably die again. The resurrection that these believers looked forward to and the resurrection that we look forward to in our own day, is the resurrection of what Jesus Christ is already the first fruit.

You see, they were so fixed on the hope of resurrection life in the coming age and life with God in the interim that they were willing to suffer the greatest loss our world could ever imagine gaining that which our world does not know. It's that approach to life and death that leaves us with the all important question to ask ourselves. Are you willing to give up everything for that hope too? Ask yourself the question, what do I dread losing most in this life? What in this life are you so clutching to that to be forced to surrender it would feel like a veritable death.

Whatever it is, even if it's your very life, the gospel of Jesus Christ would have us take the same approach that Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and so many others have as well. In the closing verses of our passage, we're reminded that we have even greater reason to chart this course than the saints of the Old Testament did.

When our author brings the entire Hall of Faith to a close and verses 39 through 40, He reminds us that though all of these Old Testament saints were commended for their faith, that they didn't receive what was promised. Now, let's clarify what that means and what that doesn't mean. That doesn't mean that these Old Testament believers were not saved. They may have looked forward to the prophesied Christ by faith, whereas we look back to the crucified and resurrected Christ by faith. Both believers in the Old Testament and the New Testament looked by faith to the same Christ. Rather, the point is that they didn't see the things that we see. They, in the Old Testament didn't have the same advantages that we have as those who live on this Side of the cross. God has provided for us something better, something more final in the finished work of Jesus Christ. Together as the one people of God, both they and we triumph only through the triumphs of Christ. But we see Christ in a way that they did not.

Yet such advantages that we enjoy also carry a greater responsibility too. Listen to what John Calvin says on this, "For if they on whom the light of grace had not as yet so brightly shone displayed so great a constancy in enduring evils, what ought the full brightness of the Gospel to produce in us? A small spark of light led them to heaven. When the sun of righteousness shines over us, with what pretense can we excuse ourselves if we still cleave to the earth?" Now, Calvin's point there is that while we sometimes look back on these Old Testament saints. And maybe, we think that they somehow had it better or easier than we do because they had all of these visual reminders, they must have had it better than we.

Calvin reminds us that that the reverse is true. That we have far greater advantages than they ever did, and therefore we have no excuse for cleaving to this earth. Like them, we're called to join the triumph of Christ by looking to the triumphant Christ by faith. As we conclude our time this morning, let me leave us with just that. Friends, do not cleave, do not cling to earth when we have a bountiful home in heaven. Recognize that there will always be a great chasm between the values of earth and the values of heaven. A great dissonance between a life of faith and a life of sight.

Although there can be loss and costs in disentangling ourselves from the world, there is also great belonging when we live by the same kind of faith held out in our passage. There's belonging with the one people of God, the Hall of Faith, that we likewise join by faith in Christ. More importantly, there is residence in a kingdom, in the City of God and in a heavenly homeland. So the exhortation of this passage, from all the examples we studied, is very simply embrace the dissonance, embrace the weakness, because in that we have something better.

Pray with me. Gracious Heavenly Father. Lord, we thank you for all of these examples, this great cloud of witnesses that has gone before and has demonstrated an incredible, costly faith in Christ and what it looks like. Father, I pray that as we face great costs in our own lives, that we would consider the reproach of Christ worth facing any cost that might arise in this world under the sun. Lord, I pray that you would help each of us fix our eyes on Jesus Christ, come what may. That we would love Jesus Christ. That we would fix our eyes upon Him. That we would associate ourselves with the despised, lowly, and often rejected people of God. In doing so, we would be reminded all the days of our lives that there is a great triumph, both in life and through death, by fixing ourselves to your son and our Lord Jesus Christ and whose name we pray. Amen.